First, there were about 600 astronauts (~100 shuttle flights), as someone else has pointed out. This is a 2% fatality rate. Second, there are about 40,000 traffic fatalities in the US per year. Assuming a population of roughly 200 million drivers, a given driver has a 0.02% chance of dying in any given year. Over 40 years, this comes out to 0.8% if my probability calculations are right. Thus, it's only about twice as risky to fly on the shuttle as it is to drive a car. Considering that at least one of the accidents (Challenger) was due to NASA's idiocy and not any flaw with the shuttle, this means the shuttle is about as safe as a car.
How exactly would a database file system do that? If it keeps a revision log, it would be a huge resource hog and nobody would want to use it. Not to mention that an ordinary user cannot screw up anything outside his home directory.
* If a program crashes, it can overwrite any part of the drive at all, not just your home directory. This could mean it belches over your programs, or worse, your kernel, meaning your computer won't boot.
Yeah, like it's really hard to reimage your hard drive. The Lindows people rightfully pointed out that the most valuable thing a typical user has is his documents, and those aren't protected at all with the UNIX security model.
* If you run a malicious program (like a virus or trojan) it can make changes to the entire configuration of your system, infecting every program on your computer. This can make it impossible to remove without a reinstall. Note: this does not have to mean you explicitly running such a program... a virus could exploit a bug in Gaim or Evolution/KMail to get malicious code to run.
On a single-user machine, making changes to the local configuration is just as destructive.
* If you type a command wrong by accident ("rm -rf//bin" instead of "rm -rf./bin") you can seriously corrupt your install.
One good reason to be careful. But what's worse, deleting your OS (which takes 15 minutes to reinstall from CD) or deleting a paper you have been working on for the last 6 months?
Whatever. Flying on a space shuttle is considerably less riskier than many jobs out there (police officers, construction workers, etc.). I don't even know why such a huge deal is made of shuttle accidents. There has been what, 15 dead astronauts in the last 40 years? Compared to thousands of traffic fatalities a year? Thousands of dead and injured soldiers in Iraq? Sure, flying on a space shuttle is not the safest job in the world, but it's not unacceptably risky.
Burt Rutan built something that basically amounts to a toy if you compare it to a shuttle (or anything else that can go into orbit). Going up a hundred miles and going into orbit are two fundamentally different tasks. It's sort of like comparing a bicycle to a Ferrari.
Well, the thing is, Amtrak should cost less than Greyhound, but doesn't. Part of this is due to the screwed-up tax structure in the US. If highways were funded completely from fuel taxes (which would make a lot of sense), cars would be significantly more expensive to drive. Trains should not cost as much as airlines (which also get large subsidies from the government). In fact, they should cost less than Greyhound because they get much better fuel efficiency and railroads cost much less to maintain than highways.
Spend a few millions of dollars on a high-profile TV advertising campaign and other lobbying, and you might get what you want. Seriously, this is about the only way, unless you know of some other way to raise public awareness of the issue. It's just how American politics works.
I've seen coal plants, nuclear plants, and gas plants, but I've yet to see an oil-powered power plant. Given that oil costs a lot more than coal, I really doubt there are too many of those. Most oil gets burned up in car and diesel engines.
How exactly does it save anything? Most people work in offices these days, and most offices have artificial lighting that's on 24/7 anyway, so how does it matter? Not to mention that the only thing it can save is electricity used for lighting, which does not come from oil.
For the money you can lease most systems for a year, you can buy/build a box that will last three.
Only if you work for free. Ordering parts and Building a system takes several hours. If you are paid at $50 an hour, that's pretty expensive. Plus, you get to deal with hardware incompatibilities and so on.
This sure as hell won't save you any money.
The reason the dot is spotted is due to interference. Since you have coherent light, any roughness in the surface (we are talking fractions of a micron here) will cause an interference pattern. It has nothing to do with the type of laser. Any laser should produce this phenomenon.
- Why? Apple's hardware prices are far from unreasonable. You would have a hard time putting a similar system together for less, especially if you have to reverse engineer stuff. They do a good job manufacturing and marketing the stuff. What would a clone bring to the table?
- It's probably fairly difficult to reverse-engineer all the supporting circuitry. A clone probably won't run all that well. Apple probably has patents on random things which are hard to bypass.
- It's not a big market. People who want a Mac buy a Mac. People who don't care buy a PC. A clone won't sell well enough.
And yes, this license agreement is binding: that's why no one makes clones.
I really doubt Apple has the right to restrict installation of their OS to their brand of computers. They sell it as a separate product, not as a part of the computer. Therefore, this action would most likely constitute illegal product tying under antitrust law if the market for Mac-compatible hardware is big enough. This is most likely the reason they refer to the computers using a strange phrase like "Apple-labeled" instead of something more specific. Read this for a short description of some antitrust laws.
A space shuttle isn't a car. I really doubt you could make a craft that can go into orbit and re-enter the atmosphere without any damage. This means you have to service the spacecraft, which will always be more expensive. It is rarely, if ever, economical to do major servicing even on a car. Once the engine or transmission needs rebuilding, the car is often sold or junked. And a space shuttle is infinitely more complex. How do you make sure that every one of thousands of hoses, wires, and other parts is not damaged after a flight?
From an engineering standpoint, there isn't a single design goal that demands a reusable spacecraft. By removing the requirement of reusability, the design can be made simpler, cheaper, and more robust. Another shuttle could be made cheaper, but it could never be made as cheap as a mass-produced rocket. It's kind of like trying to make reusable bullets.
What's the point of making it reusable? That's the main reason the shuttle is so expensive. They would save a bunch of money if they started building lots of single-use rockets on an assembly line, rather than having to repair, rebuild, and recertify 20-year-old spacecraft.
This is more than just degree requirements. It seems that you are attending a trade school. In a trade school, they teach you how to do something -- repair cars, service air conditioners, or write code. In a university, you are supposed to be taught the theory behind that.
Granted, many of the crappier universities out there have turned into trade schools, but a CS degree is not supposed to teach you how to code. Computer science is about the theory behind computing. It applies equally whether you are writing in Lisp, assembler, C++, or BASIC.
In a typical CS program, you spend very little time learning to write code (usually no more than two semesters of introductory classes). Most of the time is spent learning mathematical theory (typically calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, probability, and a discrete math course), data structures, numerical methods, operating system theory, language and compiler theory, and perhaps some software engineering stuff. Any decent program should use at least two languages (preferably not as similar as C and Java, but rather something like Lisp).
You will not see a single "Introduction to PHP" class -- if they taught things like this, your BSCS would not be worth much in 2 years. This is the main reason why companies like to hire CS majors to do coding, even though a CS program does not teach coding. Someone who was trained in computer science will have much less trouble switching to a completely different programming language than someone with only vocational training. You don't want to be a one-trick pony.
Equities are just as likely to gain you money as they are to lose you money in this economy (and I really don't think it will get much better). And a small business is many times more likely to fail than it is to succeed, largely due to circumstances outside of your control.
Don't be so quick to extend the post-WWII expansion too far. Do not assume that the stock market will perform as well in the next 50 years as it did in the previous 50 years. You are betting on exponential growth, and it's way past its prime.
However, this is besides the point. Money from investments is still income. I don't care where your money comes from. Whether you have a $10 million a year salary, $10 million a year from the stock market, $10 million a year from robbing banks, you are still making $10 million a year.
Obviously using BT for legit purposes is not anymore dangerous than, say, browsing the web.
Not really. First, a web browser is strictly a client. If you disable the server feature of BT, they would not even be able to detect it. Second, the #1 application for BT is illegal file sharing. Say all you want about Linux ISOs and game patches, but you can't ignore the fact that 99% of BT traffic is illegal files. If they allow BT, then it's their responsibility to ensure that there are no illegal files on their network. Otherwise, the university is opening itself to some nice big lawsuits from the RIAA/MPAA.
In any case, the university had a point. This IS potentially dangerous. If you get sued, even if you did nothing wrong, it would be YOUR responsibility to PROVE that you did nothing wrong. That can get awfully expensive. And the university will lose in any case: if they allow BT, someone will inevitably use it to share illegal files. And again, the university probably does not want to have to fight various organizations in court. It's bad publicity, and it's expensive.
Actually, you don't have a right to privacy if you are on their network. They can portscan and investigate all they want -- it's their network, and it's generally a condition of using it.
Slashdot Mirror
First, there were about 600 astronauts (~100 shuttle flights), as someone else has pointed out. This is a 2% fatality rate. Second, there are about 40,000 traffic fatalities in the US per year. Assuming a population of roughly 200 million drivers, a given driver has a 0.02% chance of dying in any given year. Over 40 years, this comes out to 0.8% if my probability calculations are right. Thus, it's only about twice as risky to fly on the shuttle as it is to drive a car. Considering that at least one of the accidents (Challenger) was due to NASA's idiocy and not any flaw with the shuttle, this means the shuttle is about as safe as a car.
How exactly would a database file system do that? If it keeps a revision log, it would be a huge resource hog and nobody would want to use it. Not to mention that an ordinary user cannot screw up anything outside his home directory.
* If a program crashes, it can overwrite any part of the drive at all, not just your home directory. This could mean it belches over your programs, or worse, your kernel, meaning your computer won't boot.
//bin" instead of "rm -rf ./bin") you can seriously corrupt your install.
Yeah, like it's really hard to reimage your hard drive. The Lindows people rightfully pointed out that the most valuable thing a typical user has is his documents, and those aren't protected at all with the UNIX security model.
* If you run a malicious program (like a virus or trojan) it can make changes to the entire configuration of your system, infecting every program on your computer. This can make it impossible to remove without a reinstall. Note: this does not have to mean you explicitly running such a program... a virus could exploit a bug in Gaim or Evolution/KMail to get malicious code to run.
On a single-user machine, making changes to the local configuration is just as destructive.
* If you type a command wrong by accident ("rm -rf
One good reason to be careful. But what's worse, deleting your OS (which takes 15 minutes to reinstall from CD) or deleting a paper you have been working on for the last 6 months?
Whatever. Flying on a space shuttle is considerably less riskier than many jobs out there (police officers, construction workers, etc.). I don't even know why such a huge deal is made of shuttle accidents. There has been what, 15 dead astronauts in the last 40 years? Compared to thousands of traffic fatalities a year? Thousands of dead and injured soldiers in Iraq? Sure, flying on a space shuttle is not the safest job in the world, but it's not unacceptably risky.
Burt Rutan built something that basically amounts to a toy if you compare it to a shuttle (or anything else that can go into orbit). Going up a hundred miles and going into orbit are two fundamentally different tasks. It's sort of like comparing a bicycle to a Ferrari.
Well, the thing is, Amtrak should cost less than Greyhound, but doesn't. Part of this is due to the screwed-up tax structure in the US. If highways were funded completely from fuel taxes (which would make a lot of sense), cars would be significantly more expensive to drive. Trains should not cost as much as airlines (which also get large subsidies from the government). In fact, they should cost less than Greyhound because they get much better fuel efficiency and railroads cost much less to maintain than highways.
Spend a few millions of dollars on a high-profile TV advertising campaign and other lobbying, and you might get what you want. Seriously, this is about the only way, unless you know of some other way to raise public awareness of the issue. It's just how American politics works.
I've seen coal plants, nuclear plants, and gas plants, but I've yet to see an oil-powered power plant. Given that oil costs a lot more than coal, I really doubt there are too many of those. Most oil gets burned up in car and diesel engines.
How exactly does it save anything? Most people work in offices these days, and most offices have artificial lighting that's on 24/7 anyway, so how does it matter? Not to mention that the only thing it can save is electricity used for lighting, which does not come from oil.
For the money you can lease most systems for a year, you can buy/build a box that will last three.
Only if you work for free. Ordering parts and Building a system takes several hours. If you are paid at $50 an hour, that's pretty expensive. Plus, you get to deal with hardware incompatibilities and so on.
This sure as hell won't save you any money.
I've yet to see a network vendor advertising in mainstream media.
If you think people are too stupid to use a non-localized version, think again. Not to mention that most people in India know English quite well.
The reason the dot is spotted is due to interference. Since you have coherent light, any roughness in the surface (we are talking fractions of a micron here) will cause an interference pattern. It has nothing to do with the type of laser. Any laser should produce this phenomenon.
These arn't very different from those on a commercial aircraft.
I think the other comment pretty much took care of this one.
In which case why isn't NASA looking at alternatives, rather than returning their "deathtrap design" to service.
Lots of reasons. Money. Politics. Publicity. Admitting that they were wrong. None of this is good for business.
I think the major issues with clones are:
- Why? Apple's hardware prices are far from unreasonable. You would have a hard time putting a similar system together for less, especially if you have to reverse engineer stuff. They do a good job manufacturing and marketing the stuff. What would a clone bring to the table?
- It's probably fairly difficult to reverse-engineer all the supporting circuitry. A clone probably won't run all that well. Apple probably has patents on random things which are hard to bypass.
- It's not a big market. People who want a Mac buy a Mac. People who don't care buy a PC. A clone won't sell well enough.
And yes, this license agreement is binding: that's why no one makes clones.
I really doubt Apple has the right to restrict installation of their OS to their brand of computers. They sell it as a separate product, not as a part of the computer. Therefore, this action would most likely constitute illegal product tying under antitrust law if the market for Mac-compatible hardware is big enough. This is most likely the reason they refer to the computers using a strange phrase like "Apple-labeled" instead of something more specific. Read this for a short description of some antitrust laws.
A space shuttle isn't a car. I really doubt you could make a craft that can go into orbit and re-enter the atmosphere without any damage. This means you have to service the spacecraft, which will always be more expensive. It is rarely, if ever, economical to do major servicing even on a car. Once the engine or transmission needs rebuilding, the car is often sold or junked. And a space shuttle is infinitely more complex. How do you make sure that every one of thousands of hoses, wires, and other parts is not damaged after a flight?
From an engineering standpoint, there isn't a single design goal that demands a reusable spacecraft. By removing the requirement of reusability, the design can be made simpler, cheaper, and more robust. Another shuttle could be made cheaper, but it could never be made as cheap as a mass-produced rocket. It's kind of like trying to make reusable bullets.
What's the point of making it reusable? That's the main reason the shuttle is so expensive. They would save a bunch of money if they started building lots of single-use rockets on an assembly line, rather than having to repair, rebuild, and recertify 20-year-old spacecraft.
This is more than just degree requirements. It seems that you are attending a trade school. In a trade school, they teach you how to do something -- repair cars, service air conditioners, or write code. In a university, you are supposed to be taught the theory behind that.
Granted, many of the crappier universities out there have turned into trade schools, but a CS degree is not supposed to teach you how to code. Computer science is about the theory behind computing. It applies equally whether you are writing in Lisp, assembler, C++, or BASIC.
In a typical CS program, you spend very little time learning to write code (usually no more than two semesters of introductory classes). Most of the time is spent learning mathematical theory (typically calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, probability, and a discrete math course), data structures, numerical methods, operating system theory, language and compiler theory, and perhaps some software engineering stuff. Any decent program should use at least two languages (preferably not as similar as C and Java, but rather something like Lisp).
You will not see a single "Introduction to PHP" class -- if they taught things like this, your BSCS would not be worth much in 2 years. This is the main reason why companies like to hire CS majors to do coding, even though a CS program does not teach coding. Someone who was trained in computer science will have much less trouble switching to a completely different programming language than someone with only vocational training. You don't want to be a one-trick pony.
You can get an 80 hour TiVo for $99 after rebate.
Only if you pay another $150 for a year of service. Do you think it costs $15 a month to provide TV guide information?
I thought the grandparent meant to let them scan the BT share remotely, not to come into his room and rummage through his porn collection.
Equities are just as likely to gain you money as they are to lose you money in this economy (and I really don't think it will get much better). And a small business is many times more likely to fail than it is to succeed, largely due to circumstances outside of your control.
Don't be so quick to extend the post-WWII expansion too far. Do not assume that the stock market will perform as well in the next 50 years as it did in the previous 50 years. You are betting on exponential growth, and it's way past its prime.
However, this is besides the point. Money from investments is still income. I don't care where your money comes from. Whether you have a $10 million a year salary, $10 million a year from the stock market, $10 million a year from robbing banks, you are still making $10 million a year.
Obviously using BT for legit purposes is not anymore dangerous than, say, browsing the web.
Not really. First, a web browser is strictly a client. If you disable the server feature of BT, they would not even be able to detect it. Second, the #1 application for BT is illegal file sharing. Say all you want about Linux ISOs and game patches, but you can't ignore the fact that 99% of BT traffic is illegal files. If they allow BT, then it's their responsibility to ensure that there are no illegal files on their network. Otherwise, the university is opening itself to some nice big lawsuits from the RIAA/MPAA.
In any case, the university had a point. This IS potentially dangerous. If you get sued, even if you did nothing wrong, it would be YOUR responsibility to PROVE that you did nothing wrong. That can get awfully expensive. And the university will lose in any case: if they allow BT, someone will inevitably use it to share illegal files. And again, the university probably does not want to have to fight various organizations in court. It's bad publicity, and it's expensive.
Actually, you don't have a right to privacy if you are on their network. They can portscan and investigate all they want -- it's their network, and it's generally a condition of using it.