You can't use an unassisted light sail to really crank your velocity for a human crewed vessel without subjecting them to lethal accelerations, but for a robot probe, 58km/sec sounds *very* tame, especially in view of the fact that you could probably manage to hit 100km/sec with a plasma sail.
They only quoted the velocity in this article 58 *miles* per sec (which is nearly 100 km per sec, btw). I assume this speed is reached rather slowly (it takes 15 years to get there, so whats a few days/monthes to get up to speed). So the acceleration shouldn't be a problem for humans. The fact that if using this mechanism (solar sail) they couldn't turn around, and come back, is. Also if you had humans in the spacecraft you'd need living space and food and oxygen for 15 years! Much much much higher mass to propel, so a much much larger sail (more difficult to contstruct) would be needed.
However, a dvd played through a macrovision stripper, into the inputs would probably record ok though...
But then you lose the point. If you output from one player and strip out the macrovision junk then into the recorder it has gone from digital -> analog -> digital. Its probably better then a VHS recording, but not a "perfect" copy anymore.
Also the other problem with this player. It only records 4.7GB per disc, which means all those dual layer discs (half of my very small collection of DVDs) must be recorded on 2 DVDs.
The publics fear is perhaps not unjustified. The destruction that has been caused by nuclear forces unleashed is quite awesome, as demonstrated by the atomic bombs used in WWII and the Chernobyl disaster in Russia. For many, that remains the most visible meaning of the word nuclear. However, the fact remains that nuclear power is very very safe when properly managed, and far healthier for the environment then fossil fuel based plants.
I've recently heard several ads on the radio promoting nuclear technology. A nuclear council (forget the name) has been funding these ads. Perhaps it is also government sponsored. At any rate, it's quite clear that the nuclear industry needs to work on its image. Right now it is shrouded in mystery and danger in the public eye. I hope that these ads are effective in swaying popular opinion to a return to nucleics popular in the 50s. If fusion ever becomes a practical reality, much of these fears will hopefully be allayed. Still many people are fine with nuclear technology as long as its "not in my backyard". Personally I'd rather have a nuclear power plant in my backyard then a dirty fossil fuel power plant.
Why does DC have so much crime? I'm guessing people go slowly insane from the massive buildup of politicians.
Hehe true. I'm from DC, btw, but like most, I live in the suburbs. The problem with DC arises from the its demographic nature. There are some nice parts of DC certainly, and a lot of businesses, but most people commute from the suburbs (see: DC has worst traffic in the US). Relatively few members of the middle and upper classes live in DC. I don't think you will disagree that crime is a common problem among large urban poor areas. That's exactly what most of the residential part of DC is (southeast).
Anyway, since DC is populated by a *large* number of politicians, lobbyists, etc. Making a law tends to be the solution to nearly everything. Enforcement isn't the job of the legislative branch remember? Thus, high crime: solution, make handguns illegal. Does it work? Well the crime rate *has* decreased. Is it fair to law abiding citizens? Maybe not, but a majority of the voting population in DC seems to think it's the best choice. Is it Constitutional? It depends on your interpretation of the Constitution, let us just say that the 2nd Amendment is not entirely clear. Who constitutes a militia after all?
Essentially I applaud any efforts to reduce crime, even at the cost of the 2nd Amendment. My support for this measure is purely pragmatic. Crime has been reduced in DC, whether or not its due to this measure I don't know. But it certainly doesn't seem that the "only the outlaws have guns" premise is causing the law-abiding citizens of DC to flee from the menacing criminals. Crime and murder rates have decreased and the number of middle and upper class living in DC has *increased* over the last few years.
I'm not an idiot, you are putting words into my mouth. I did not intend or imply that Joe Crackhead's weapon was concealed. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. As I said that the weapon could only be taken if a crime is commited. If its concealed, without a permit, thats a crime, hence the weapon would be taken.
The law in DC simply makes it easier to confiscate weapons. Less weapons = less crime.
This part wouldn't make much difference in any of the places I've worked. When someone changes offices, I just switch a cable (cat5, even) from one port to another in the closet, and the phone number follows the individual without even having to carry the phone.
True, this is how PBXs work. Its pretty simple, but the IP phone is absolutely idiot proof. No need to mess with cables at all. Since I left the place where I used to work no one even remotely technically capable works there, who knows how badly they can screw things up if they try going in the closet with 150+ cat5 cables and try to move the right one:-)
Still this is a pretty minor point, the cost savings (not having duplicate wiring) are the most substantial in my opinion.
Your Canon fax machine still requires an analog line to connect to the outside world. It just happens to be a step forward from older fax machines since you can directly send documents to it, and fax, instead of print (or both). This avoids printing a copy (wasting paper and toner), and then faxing it to someone where it prints again. What I don't understand, is if you have the document in electronic form, why not send it as an email attachment? For most cases, where content, not format is crucial, this is far more effective.
Another thing I thought of though. IPV6 better come along pretty soon. Each of these phones will require its own IP address, presumably, to communicate, effectively doubling the amount of IPs needed per office, and we are already running out:-)
However, if Joe Crackhead gets pulled over in his pimp-mobile and there is a gun in it. The police can't take it under your existing laws. With existing laws, a crime has to be commited in order for the police to take the gun. Kind of too late if someone just got shot, don't you think?
As far as DC goes, the law abiding citizens of DC have decided (through their legislature and elected officials) that gun control is a necessary measure, and crime in DC has been reduced in recent years. Though your idealistic views may be true in some cases, reality doesn't always hold with them.
I'm from DC. DC has had a very high, not the highest, but very high murder rate through the '80s and early '90s. However this rate is significantly lower now, one could even call DC "safe", at least as far as large cities go. DC still gets a bad rap, but as long as you don't tread in to South East while visiting, DC quite safe.
I imagine that these phones work fairly similarly to a standard PBX (digital or analog) phone system found in many offices. That is, it's going to require a device that manages multiple physical "trunk lines" that go out to the real world and the phone companies. This device also generally handles voice mail, receptionist routing, etc. The difference between this phone system and the PBX phones systems is that its traffic is routed over standard network Cat5, using the same hubs, switches, etc. as the rest of the network.
What does this mean for the adopters of the system? Well PBX systems are generally supplied by phone companies and contractors and are, in a word, fantastically expensive for what they really are. I think that CISCO/IDEO can probably provide this system for the same cost or even less then traditional PBX systems! Any additional cost of the devices (if any) will be offset by the cheaper installation, because it shares the same network cables as the computer network. Running extra sets of cables in offices (or expanding current runs) is extremely expensive, as evidenced by several estimates my company recieved when it expanded its office space and took over a suite next door. Also as far as administration goes, these phones, designed by the talented people at IDEO are probably far more user friendly then the gastly telco-designed PBX systems. Being able to move the phone physically (to a bigger office when you get promoted) just makes management of the system easier.
However, it (unless my thoughts on how this system works are totally wrong) will still require telcos to contract blocks of phone numbers and trunk lines, which allow communication with the outside world. The telcos aren't going anywhere, until we start being able to route IP voice traffic *outside* of internal networks. Note: this is going to require a more reliable internet service. Users are going to scream a whole lot louder when then can't use their phones than when they can't access their email (and they scream pretty loud about email, trust me)
As for those who mentioned that fax and modems are still going to require traditional telephone lines. This is true, except this doesn't really change anything. Most current PBX systems are digital internal to the site, and many use RJ-45 connectors instead of old RJ-11s. Fax machines and modems *already* require a seperate phone line under most current systems. However, modem support is mostly a legacy (but sometimes necessary) application, not every person's office is going to need a modem, every office requires a phone. Expect fax machines to move towards a similar IP-based internal system. Some current products allow the routing of incoming faxes to a "fax server" to be sorted and sent via email to the users email. The problem arises when handwritten cover pages are used (OCR can't figure out who the fax should be sent to). This technology is really interesting, but definitely has a ways to go. Personally I eschew the user of fax machines, but they are sometimes required when original documents with signatures need to be sent immediately.
At any rate, this system is definitely a god-send for us techs who deal with both computer and phone networks, and its likely to save the company money in the long run.
We had about 30-40 people (and PCs) where I worked for the last two summers (college student). 2-3 networked printers, 1 fileserver. It would be overkill to have one IT person for 30-40 people on a windows based network if the one IT person is competent. Given the wealth of people who *aren't* competent, but get jobs anyway, 1/30-40 seems to work out pretty well. If companies were willing to pay twice as much for a more able person to cover twice as many users, the whole operation would run much more smoothly, and not cost a penny more. But thats not the way it seems to work out
I hardly think Adobe qualifies as a rival too Apple. Actually I think they have a fairly genial relationship. In fact with Apple releasing its dumbed down iMovie will probably inspire more people to move to Premiere when they want more features.
So, yes I realize this is supposed to be ironic. But its not.
Well, this didn't come from a mom and pop store. At least not initially. The fact that it has a replica (and a good one apparently) replacement case and sticker means that this is definitely a fairly sophisticated operation. Its not hard to track down the source once several counterfeit CPUs are found. I guess the difficulty would be in actually doing anything about it, since the development plant could be in some 3rd world country were laws are different. Even so, it could lead to helping shut down the export of the CPUs from wherever they are being counterfeited.
The original site was not a satire. It was an informational site about cache, that uses the "for dummies" catch-phrase, which is copy-righted. Granted, since they were providing it for free, not selling it, I don't think its *really* necessary for IDGB to persue the issue. If I owned the trademark "for dummies" I would only go after people who intended to put other "for dummies" books on the shelf next to mine, or a "for dummies" training service (for profit) on the internet. However their policy is obviously that use of their trademark, whether for profit or not, is an infringement and they are entirely within their legal rights to persue such a policy.
Here is an interesting little quote from the article:
The remedy plan, which is being drafted by Microsoft attorneys, appears to fall somewhat short of what the company offered the government in out-of-court settlement talks before Jackson's verdict.
Seeing as how this is *less* then what Microsoft offered before in an out of court settlement, it seems clear that the DOJ doesn't expect them to just walk off that easy. Otherwise they would have accepted the stricter proposals (whatever they may be) that Microsoft offered before.
So basically this probably isn't going to happen. It still seems most likely that the company will be broken up, seeing that there is pretty strong support for it (17 states for, 2 states against). Even if that doesn't happen, the sentence is going to be a lot stricter then open "part of" the OS and play nicer.
oops, yeah thats what I meant. Wel actually the inverse: its impossible for a particle *with* mass to reach the speed of light. For some silly reason I put "massless" instead of "with mass". The rest makes sense though, because thats what I was thinking.
Unfortunately it is impossible for a massless particle to reach the speed of light, therefore, as you turn with the pole in your hands, the end of the pole (1 light day away) cannot have a tangential velocity reaching c (the speed of light). Lets say for the sake of argument you can apply a large but finite force to the end of the pole to make it rotate, causing the speed of the end of the pole to move at just less then c. Since you are rotating the pole through a half-circle, the distance the end of the pole must travel is pi light days, thus it will take you just greater then pi days to rotate (pi days if you could move the pole at the speed of light, but you can't). Thus when you finally stop, the end of the pole will appear to you to be approximately one pi-th (around 1/3) of the distance between where the end started (because thats where it was when the light that is currently reaching your eyes left the end of the pole), and where it will appear to be (from your perspective) one day from now. Thus the pole in your hand appear to curve from pointing straigh ahead of you towards a point about 57 (180/pi) degrees from straight ahead. if you observe the pole exactly when you stop after rotating 180 degrees.
I guess another problem is, there are a whole lot more people out there these days getting degrees, and producing papers. Some of it is just rehashing what someone else has done, or as you say "pure crap", but certainly some of it is valuable.
Back in the early 20th century some brilliant researchers produced a wealth of new information and ideas that created an entire new subject, quantum physics. Back then it wasn't hard to keep track of the few hundred or so physicists and chemists who contributed to the developments. But now there are probably tens of thousands trying to continue research in the field. Too much to be able to adequately moderate. Interesting and important stuff can get lost in the sheer volume of information being produced.
I'm rather fond of a radio commercial I heard not long ago that said something along the lines of "In the last 3 years more information has been produced then in the last 3 centuries." Too bad I can't remember what the commercial was for. But it illustrates my point. Information (and technology) is still increasing at an exponential rate, and it is becoming more and more difficult to begin to make sense of it all. I think the best we can hope for is system that can store data so that at some point in the future, when development slows, maybe someone can begin to sift through the massive amounts of information. Like archaeologists as you suggest (informationologists maybe?). However, doesn't that require preserving what we have? If information is "moderated out of usage through neglect" how will it be preserved for later generations?
Well this started a long way before the 20th century, with the industrial revolution lead by Britain in the late 18th early 19th century (nearly complete by 1850). So more mechanization is just a continuation of the industrial revolution, which was primarily the 19th century. Fertilization has been practiced (manure) since the middle ages, probably before. Agrichemicals, while significant, are just refinements of age old techniques combined with modern science, evolutionary, not revolutionary.
I give a big raspberry and a big snotty sneeze to all those who think Air conditioning and refrigeration are mere luxuries.
I'm sorry but it is a luxury. In America and Europe most people enjoy air conditioning. In many countries its unheard of, yet somehow people there manage to survive. In fact people have survived for thousands of years in cities that get VERY hot. The birth of human civilization after all did occur in Egypt and other rather warm areas.
Also let's not forget the difficulty of supporting huge cities and far flung locals without food refrigeration. Food poisoning is no joke. Well if refrigeration just stopped working, I admit we'd be in trouble. If it had never happened, we'd still be curing our meat with salt, and finding other ways around it.
As far as your networking equipment goes, well it's built to work in a air-conditioned room. If we didn't have air conditioning, speed would be sacrificed for functionality in the heat.
As far as your health is concerned. Asthma and allergies (yes I do have both) are mostly a 20th century phenomenon. The conditions are definitely enhanced by our dependance on air-conditioned air.
So I have to agree with the Hemos and others that air conditioning has had a less significant impact on human civilization then you might think. Certainly less so then petroleum. But thats a whole different argument. In short I'm very thankful for my A/C (well actually my dorm last year didn't have it), but in terms of significance I'd have to rate it a bit lower then several others on this list.
I completely agree. I think requiring these tools to be made in a particular language is self defeating, not to mention you limit your applicants to those proficient in a certain language. On top of that they pick Python, which is probably the only language they could pick that I have absolutely no knowledge of:-)
On the other hand. I think they picked some really good tools to work on. I don't have much experience with the other two tools, But make and autoconf I have to say are *seriously* in need of some updating. Make has a bad tendancy to break on stuff that I worked on years ago, requiring a whole lot more work then I really want to put into it trying to fix it. And autoconf, geez, call me lazy, but its just too complex to be worth the trouble, at least in my experience. Putting some money on the table is certainly one way to make things happen. Kudos to ACL for making this possible.
Spyky
Re:This is linux's biggest problem w.r.t. companie
on
Motif's Not Dead
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· Score: 1
The orignal netscapes (2 and 3 anyway) used motif. And they were ugly.
First off, while there's a place for MS Word, a 3000-page document ain't it. In my experience it tends to severe breakage in this situation.
Amen to that. I wouldn't trust Word for anything much over 20+ pages.
I know several other people have mentioned it, but LaTeX is seriously the way to go. I know it has somewhat of a learning curve, and there aren't any really good/stable gui front ends for it. But it works. It doesn't eat your data, and it makes elegant formatting easy, and as long as you use your definitions properly, its very easy to change entire document formats with ease. Added benefits are available dvi->HTML converters, so you can make your document available in a easy to read, web-accessible format, and also have a hard copy with nice postscript fonts.
I used LaTeX to document a year long project for a CS course that I worked on. It took all of a week to learn everything I needed to use and become very proficient with the system. I have nothing but good things to say about it.
Also several very large and respectable publishing companies (Addison-Wesley for one) use LaTeX almost exclusively for their typesetting. In fact Addison-Wesley's "Latex users guide and reference manual" is a simple resource for LaTeX. Trust me, its worth learning a system that works NOW. Sure XML has some benefits, and hopefully we'll see some systems that really take advantage of XML formatting, but for now, there just isn't much out there. Trust your 3000+ page documents to a system thats been in use since the '80s, you can't go wrong.
Well this is Netwons gravitational constant, big G, which is the interaction between two objects with mass, not earths gravitational constant little g which most know to be approximately 9.8m/s^2.
I believe the first measurement of this quantity was by Henry Cavendish. He was a wealthy noble and could afford to do physics experiments and nothing else. Must be nice;-) His experiment involved suspending two very very large masses by a thin wire, and measuring the attraction caused by another mass placed nearby (causing the wire to twist). Think of a gigantic barbell suspended by a cable in the middle, the tourque caused by gravitational attraction of another mass placed near one end would cause the cable to twist slightly. Using Newton's law of gravitation and some measurements, the constant could be calculated
Well thats all for today's physics lesson. Have a good one:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Also the fact that we have a rather handy source of photons, ie the sun. At least as long as we are interested in travelling *away* from the sun.
Spyky
You can't use an unassisted light sail to really crank your velocity for a human crewed vessel without subjecting them to lethal accelerations, but for a robot probe, 58km/sec sounds *very* tame, especially in view of the fact that you could probably manage to hit 100km/sec with a plasma sail.
They only quoted the velocity in this article 58 *miles* per sec (which is nearly 100 km per sec, btw). I assume this speed is reached rather slowly (it takes 15 years to get there, so whats a few days/monthes to get up to speed). So the acceleration shouldn't be a problem for humans. The fact that if using this mechanism (solar sail) they couldn't turn around, and come back, is. Also if you had humans in the spacecraft you'd need living space and food and oxygen for 15 years! Much much much higher mass to propel, so a much much larger sail (more difficult to contstruct) would be needed.
Spyky
However, a dvd played through a macrovision stripper, into the inputs would probably record ok though...
But then you lose the point. If you output from one player and strip out the macrovision junk then into the recorder it has gone from digital -> analog -> digital. Its probably better then a VHS recording, but not a "perfect" copy anymore.
Also the other problem with this player. It only records 4.7GB per disc, which means all those dual layer discs (half of my very small collection of DVDs) must be recorded on 2 DVDs.
Spyky
You're just pissed because I used words too large for your vocabulary :-) I'll remember to tone it down for the ACs out there next time
Spyky
I agree.
The publics fear is perhaps not unjustified. The destruction that has been caused by nuclear forces unleashed is quite awesome, as demonstrated by the atomic bombs used in WWII and the Chernobyl disaster in Russia. For many, that remains the most visible meaning of the word nuclear. However, the fact remains that nuclear power is very very safe when properly managed, and far healthier for the environment then fossil fuel based plants.
I've recently heard several ads on the radio promoting nuclear technology. A nuclear council (forget the name) has been funding these ads. Perhaps it is also government sponsored. At any rate, it's quite clear that the nuclear industry needs to work on its image. Right now it is shrouded in mystery and danger in the public eye. I hope that these ads are effective in swaying popular opinion to a return to nucleics popular in the 50s. If fusion ever becomes a practical reality, much of these fears will hopefully be allayed. Still many people are fine with nuclear technology as long as its "not in my backyard". Personally I'd rather have a nuclear power plant in my backyard then a dirty fossil fuel power plant.
Spyky
Why does DC have so much crime? I'm guessing people go slowly insane from the massive buildup of politicians.
Hehe true. I'm from DC, btw, but like most, I live in the suburbs. The problem with DC arises from the its demographic nature. There are some nice parts of DC certainly, and a lot of businesses, but most people commute from the suburbs (see: DC has worst traffic in the US). Relatively few members of the middle and upper classes live in DC. I don't think you will disagree that crime is a common problem among large urban poor areas. That's exactly what most of the residential part of DC is (southeast).
Anyway, since DC is populated by a *large* number of politicians, lobbyists, etc. Making a law tends to be the solution to nearly everything. Enforcement isn't the job of the legislative branch remember? Thus, high crime: solution, make handguns illegal. Does it work? Well the crime rate *has* decreased. Is it fair to law abiding citizens? Maybe not, but a majority of the voting population in DC seems to think it's the best choice. Is it Constitutional? It depends on your interpretation of the Constitution, let us just say that the 2nd Amendment is not entirely clear. Who constitutes a militia after all?
Essentially I applaud any efforts to reduce crime, even at the cost of the 2nd Amendment. My support for this measure is purely pragmatic. Crime has been reduced in DC, whether or not its due to this measure I don't know. But it certainly doesn't seem that the "only the outlaws have guns" premise is causing the law-abiding citizens of DC to flee from the menacing criminals. Crime and murder rates have decreased and the number of middle and upper class living in DC has *increased* over the last few years.
Spyky
I'm not an idiot, you are putting words into my mouth. I did not intend or imply that Joe Crackhead's weapon was concealed. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. As I said that the weapon could only be taken if a crime is commited. If its concealed, without a permit, thats a crime, hence the weapon would be taken.
The law in DC simply makes it easier to confiscate weapons. Less weapons = less crime.
Spyky
This part wouldn't make much difference in any of the places I've worked. When someone changes offices, I just switch a cable (cat5, even) from one port to another in the closet, and the phone number follows the individual without even having to carry the phone.
:-)
:-)
True, this is how PBXs work. Its pretty simple, but the IP phone is absolutely idiot proof. No need to mess with cables at all. Since I left the place where I used to work no one even remotely technically capable works there, who knows how badly they can screw things up if they try going in the closet with 150+ cat5 cables and try to move the right one
Still this is a pretty minor point, the cost savings (not having duplicate wiring) are the most substantial in my opinion.
Your Canon fax machine still requires an analog line to connect to the outside world. It just happens to be a step forward from older fax machines since you can directly send documents to it, and fax, instead of print (or both). This avoids printing a copy (wasting paper and toner), and then faxing it to someone where it prints again. What I don't understand, is if you have the document in electronic form, why not send it as an email attachment? For most cases, where content, not format is crucial, this is far more effective.
Another thing I thought of though. IPV6 better come along pretty soon. Each of these phones will require its own IP address, presumably, to communicate, effectively doubling the amount of IPs needed per office, and we are already running out
Spyky
However, if Joe Crackhead gets pulled over in his pimp-mobile and there is a gun in it. The police can't take it under your existing laws. With existing laws, a crime has to be commited in order for the police to take the gun. Kind of too late if someone just got shot, don't you think?
As far as DC goes, the law abiding citizens of DC have decided (through their legislature and elected officials) that gun control is a necessary measure, and crime in DC has been reduced in recent years. Though your idealistic views may be true in some cases, reality doesn't always hold with them.
Spyky
I'm from DC. DC has had a very high, not the highest, but very high murder rate through the '80s and early '90s. However this rate is significantly lower now, one could even call DC "safe", at least as far as large cities go. DC still gets a bad rap, but as long as you don't tread in to South East while visiting, DC quite safe.
Spyky
I imagine that these phones work fairly similarly to a standard PBX (digital or analog) phone system found in many offices. That is, it's going to require a device that manages multiple physical "trunk lines" that go out to the real world and the phone companies. This device also generally handles voice mail, receptionist routing, etc. The difference between this phone system and the PBX phones systems is that its traffic is routed over standard network Cat5, using the same hubs, switches, etc. as the rest of the network.
What does this mean for the adopters of the system? Well PBX systems are generally supplied by phone companies and contractors and are, in a word, fantastically expensive for what they really are. I think that CISCO/IDEO can probably provide this system for the same cost or even less then traditional PBX systems! Any additional cost of the devices (if any) will be offset by the cheaper installation, because it shares the same network cables as the computer network. Running extra sets of cables in offices (or expanding current runs) is extremely expensive, as evidenced by several estimates my company recieved when it expanded its office space and took over a suite next door. Also as far as administration goes, these phones, designed by the talented people at IDEO are probably far more user friendly then the gastly telco-designed PBX systems. Being able to move the phone physically (to a bigger office when you get promoted) just makes management of the system easier.
However, it (unless my thoughts on how this system works are totally wrong) will still require telcos to contract blocks of phone numbers and trunk lines, which allow communication with the outside world. The telcos aren't going anywhere, until we start being able to route IP voice traffic *outside* of internal networks. Note: this is going to require a more reliable internet service. Users are going to scream a whole lot louder when then can't use their phones than when they can't access their email (and they scream pretty loud about email, trust me)
As for those who mentioned that fax and modems are still going to require traditional telephone lines. This is true, except this doesn't really change anything. Most current PBX systems are digital internal to the site, and many use RJ-45 connectors instead of old RJ-11s. Fax machines and modems *already* require a seperate phone line under most current systems. However, modem support is mostly a legacy (but sometimes necessary) application, not every person's office is going to need a modem, every office requires a phone. Expect fax machines to move towards a similar IP-based internal system. Some current products allow the routing of incoming faxes to a "fax server" to be sorted and sent via email to the users email. The problem arises when handwritten cover pages are used (OCR can't figure out who the fax should be sent to). This technology is really interesting, but definitely has a ways to go. Personally I eschew the user of fax machines, but they are sometimes required when original documents with signatures need to be sent immediately.
At any rate, this system is definitely a god-send for us techs who deal with both computer and phone networks, and its likely to save the company money in the long run.
Spyky
We had about 30-40 people (and PCs) where I worked for the last two summers (college student). 2-3 networked printers, 1 fileserver. It would be overkill to have one IT person for 30-40 people on a windows based network if the one IT person is competent. Given the wealth of people who *aren't* competent, but get jobs anyway, 1/30-40 seems to work out pretty well. If companies were willing to pay twice as much for a more able person to cover twice as many users, the whole operation would run much more smoothly, and not cost a penny more. But thats not the way it seems to work out
Spyky
I hardly think Adobe qualifies as a rival too Apple. Actually I think they have a fairly genial relationship. In fact with Apple releasing its dumbed down iMovie will probably inspire more people to move to Premiere when they want more features.
So, yes I realize this is supposed to be ironic. But its not.
Spyky
Well, this didn't come from a mom and pop store. At least not initially. The fact that it has a replica (and a good one apparently) replacement case and sticker means that this is definitely a fairly sophisticated operation. Its not hard to track down the source once several counterfeit CPUs are found. I guess the difficulty would be in actually doing anything about it, since the development plant could be in some 3rd world country were laws are different. Even so, it could lead to helping shut down the export of the CPUs from wherever they are being counterfeited.
Spyky
The original site was not a satire. It was an informational site about cache, that uses the "for dummies" catch-phrase, which is copy-righted. Granted, since they were providing it for free, not selling it, I don't think its *really* necessary for IDGB to persue the issue. If I owned the trademark "for dummies" I would only go after people who intended to put other "for dummies" books on the shelf next to mine, or a "for dummies" training service (for profit) on the internet. However their policy is obviously that use of their trademark, whether for profit or not, is an infringement and they are entirely within their legal rights to persue such a policy.
Spyky
Here is an interesting little quote from the article:
The remedy plan, which is being drafted by Microsoft attorneys, appears to fall somewhat short of what the company offered the government in out-of-court settlement talks before Jackson's verdict.
Seeing as how this is *less* then what Microsoft offered before in an out of court settlement, it seems clear that the DOJ doesn't expect them to just walk off that easy. Otherwise they would have accepted the stricter proposals (whatever they may be) that Microsoft offered before.
So basically this probably isn't going to happen. It still seems most likely that the company will be broken up, seeing that there is pretty strong support for it (17 states for, 2 states against). Even if that doesn't happen, the sentence is going to be a lot stricter then open "part of" the OS and play nicer.
Spyky
oops, yeah thats what I meant. Wel actually the inverse: its impossible for a particle *with* mass to reach the speed of light. For some silly reason I put "massless" instead of "with mass". The rest makes sense though, because thats what I was thinking.
Spyky
Unfortunately it is impossible for a massless particle to reach the speed of light, therefore, as you turn with the pole in your hands, the end of the pole (1 light day away) cannot have a tangential velocity reaching c (the speed of light). Lets say for the sake of argument you can apply a large but finite force to the end of the pole to make it rotate, causing the speed of the end of the pole to move at just less then c. Since you are rotating the pole through a half-circle, the distance the end of the pole must travel is pi light days, thus it will take you just greater then pi days to rotate (pi days if you could move the pole at the speed of light, but you can't). Thus when you finally stop, the end of the pole will appear to you to be approximately one pi-th (around 1/3) of the distance between where the end started (because thats where it was when the light that is currently reaching your eyes left the end of the pole), and where it will appear to be (from your perspective) one day from now. Thus the pole in your hand appear to curve from pointing straigh ahead of you towards a point about 57 (180/pi) degrees from straight ahead. if you observe the pole exactly when you stop after rotating 180 degrees.
:-)
Where is my free gift
Spyky
I guess another problem is, there are a whole lot more people out there these days getting degrees, and producing papers. Some of it is just rehashing what someone else has done, or as you say "pure crap", but certainly some of it is valuable.
Back in the early 20th century some brilliant researchers produced a wealth of new information and ideas that created an entire new subject, quantum physics. Back then it wasn't hard to keep track of the few hundred or so physicists and chemists who contributed to the developments. But now there are probably tens of thousands trying to continue research in the field. Too much to be able to adequately moderate. Interesting and important stuff can get lost in the sheer volume of information being produced.
I'm rather fond of a radio commercial I heard not long ago that said something along the lines of "In the last 3 years more information has been produced then in the last 3 centuries." Too bad I can't remember what the commercial was for. But it illustrates my point. Information (and technology) is still increasing at an exponential rate, and it is becoming more and more difficult to begin to make sense of it all. I think the best we can hope for is system that can store data so that at some point in the future, when development slows, maybe someone can begin to sift through the massive amounts of information. Like archaeologists as you suggest (informationologists maybe?). However, doesn't that require preserving what we have? If information is "moderated out of usage through neglect" how will it be preserved for later generations?
Spyky
Well this started a long way before the 20th century, with the industrial revolution lead by Britain in the late 18th early 19th century (nearly complete by 1850). So more mechanization is just a continuation of the industrial revolution, which was primarily the 19th century. Fertilization has been practiced (manure) since the middle ages, probably before. Agrichemicals, while significant, are just refinements of age old techniques combined with modern science, evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Spyky
I give a big raspberry and a big snotty sneeze to all those who think Air conditioning and refrigeration are mere luxuries.
I'm sorry but it is a luxury. In America and Europe most people enjoy air conditioning. In many countries its unheard of, yet somehow people there manage to survive. In fact people have survived for thousands of years in cities that get VERY hot. The birth of human civilization after all did occur in Egypt and other rather warm areas.
Also let's not forget the difficulty of supporting huge cities and far flung locals without food refrigeration. Food poisoning is no joke.
Well if refrigeration just stopped working, I admit we'd be in trouble. If it had never happened, we'd still be curing our meat with salt, and finding other ways around it.
As far as your networking equipment goes, well it's built to work in a air-conditioned room. If we didn't have air conditioning, speed would be sacrificed for functionality in the heat.
As far as your health is concerned. Asthma and allergies (yes I do have both) are mostly a 20th century phenomenon. The conditions are definitely enhanced by our dependance on air-conditioned air.
So I have to agree with the Hemos and others that air conditioning has had a less significant impact on human civilization then you might think. Certainly less so then petroleum. But thats a whole different argument. In short I'm very thankful for my A/C (well actually my dorm last year didn't have it), but in terms of significance I'd have to rate it a bit lower then several others on this list.
Spyky
I completely agree. I think requiring these tools to be made in a particular language is self defeating, not to mention you limit your applicants to those proficient in a certain language. On top of that they pick Python, which is probably the only language they could pick that I have absolutely no knowledge of :-)
On the other hand. I think they picked some really good tools to work on. I don't have much experience with the other two tools, But make and autoconf I have to say are *seriously* in need of some updating. Make has a bad tendancy to break on stuff that I worked on years ago, requiring a whole lot more work then I really want to put into it trying to fix it. And autoconf, geez, call me lazy, but its just too complex to be worth the trouble, at least in my experience. Putting some money on the table is certainly one way to make things happen. Kudos to ACL for making this possible.
Spyky
The orignal netscapes (2 and 3 anyway) used motif. And they were ugly.
Spyky
First off, while there's a place for MS Word, a 3000-page document ain't it. In my experience it tends to severe breakage in this situation.
:-)
Amen to that. I wouldn't trust Word for anything much over 20+ pages.
I know several other people have mentioned it, but LaTeX is seriously the way to go. I know it has somewhat of a learning curve, and there aren't any really good/stable gui front ends for it. But it works. It doesn't eat your data, and it makes elegant formatting easy, and as long as you use your definitions properly, its very easy to change entire document formats with ease. Added benefits are available dvi->HTML converters, so you can make your document available in a easy to read, web-accessible format, and also have a hard copy with nice postscript fonts.
I used LaTeX to document a year long project for a CS course that I worked on. It took all of a week to learn everything I needed to use and become very proficient with the system. I have nothing but good things to say about it.
Also several very large and respectable publishing companies (Addison-Wesley for one) use LaTeX almost exclusively for their typesetting. In fact Addison-Wesley's "Latex users guide and reference manual" is a simple resource for LaTeX. Trust me, its worth learning a system that works NOW. Sure XML has some benefits, and hopefully we'll see some systems that really take advantage of XML formatting, but for now, there just isn't much out there. Trust your 3000+ page documents to a system thats been in use since the '80s, you can't go wrong.
Oh, and the added benefit, its free
Spyky
Well this is Netwons gravitational constant, big G, which is the interaction between two objects with mass, not earths gravitational constant little g which most know to be approximately 9.8m/s^2.
;-) His experiment involved suspending two very very large masses by a thin wire, and measuring the attraction caused by another mass placed nearby (causing the wire to twist). Think of a gigantic barbell suspended by a cable in the middle, the tourque caused by gravitational attraction of another mass placed near one end would cause the cable to twist slightly. Using Newton's law of gravitation and some measurements, the constant could be calculated
:-)
I believe the first measurement of this quantity was by Henry Cavendish. He was a wealthy noble and could afford to do physics experiments and nothing else. Must be nice
Well thats all for today's physics lesson. Have a good one
Spyky