Quoting That site: United Virtualities announced it has developed Persistent Identification Element (PIE), a backup ID system that will restore erased cookies.
Anyways, I've since become financially successful enough to buy hard drives normally, and I've bought a ton of Western Digitals (only the Caviar line) to make up for it. Never had one fail, and I know they provide an excellent warranty;)
Do they still honor such a warranty? I've had two WD's fail (a 40gig with only a couple bad blocks, an 80gig with so many that now it makes funny noises) that I bought within the last five years, with failure coincident with a CRT monitor running sitting next to the computer for a few days (no one ever said don't do that!). This was about a month ago, and they were running perfectly for years up until this. What is dissapointing is you can no longer do a "low level" format to rewrite the sector marks as you could 15+ years ago when drives were under 50 meg (and Spinrite saved the day). WD claims/implies their "write zero" utility does a LLF but it clearly doesn't.
I asked about this (if there was any hope for the drive) on Usenet where I got mixed responses, then on the WDC website's 'moderated' forums and got a seriously patronizing response. I can only wonder if the responder has any official connection to WD, I'd hate to think that if I buy another WD drive I'd be supporting him.
From Google.com: the best defense is a good offence: 600,000 the best offence is a good defense: 242,000
I'm surprised the second one give so many in proportion to the first even though it's over 2 to 1, but it's surely because all the words, regardless of order, appear on so many pages. Redoing with quotes:
"the best defense is a good offence" about 1,940 "the best offence is a good defense" "about 91"
Yes, "the best defense is a good offence" wins again, this time by over an order of magnitude.
And watch out, because We Arrogant Americans are more offensive (all puns intended) than ever. Someone knocked down Our Towers, and We're pissed.
Not quite addressing the question, but perhaps others will find this interesting. This is a webpage I wrote six years ago about doing factorials (also prime numbers on micros, but scroll down about halfway for factorials), and what a difference a couple of decades made in the availability of computing power: http://www.mindspring.com/~benbradley/number_theor y.html
They don't call it reboot, they call it a "re-IPL" [Initial Program Load] and depending on the machine it takes up to 30+ people, each with specialized knowledge about a specific part of the process. [you can mod me funny, but THIS IS NOT A JOKE]
Unix guys reboot the system occasionally.
Only because of a hardware upgrade, and only because the technician convinces them it REALLY DOES need to be turned off to add more RAM or a (non-hot-swap) disk drive.
Windows guys reboot their machine several times a week.
"Several" in this context is a number greater than ten. A boot often lasts through the day, but not always. But I remember the 3.1 days (it shudda been called "three point one over six point two two"), it was boot-in-the-morning and reboot-after-lunch, as well as many other times.
1. Swap drive with new one that's only large enough to hold user's current amount of data usage (save user's old drive for formatting and reuse if desired). 2. Charge half the cost of a new PC. 3.... 4. Profit $$$
Thanks for the exposure. However, I wish you would not copy these. I have a private counter and it will break when you do that.
My apologies, I was only thinking of preventing your server from getting slashdotted. Looks like the topic is off the front page, old and petered out by now anyway.
Did anybody else notice they monkeyed with the enter key?
It's gigantic and moved WAY off to the right.
The worst part of this is it's a HARDWARE problem.
In retrospect, it's amazing the Model M layout has lasted so long. Most computer keyboards from the '60's and '70's were only 'approximations' to typewriter layouts (at least the letter keys stayed in the same place). The original IBM PC keyboard was really screwed compared to the then-standard IBM(!) Selectric typewriter. Then they 'got it right' with the AT keyboard with a large Enter key much like (size, shape and position) the Selectric's Return key. Then came the PS/2 Model M, with a smaller enter key, but the separate cursor keys and numeric keypad became a standard, even though it made for a larger, wider keyboard.
I recall being frustrated going between the AT and Model M keyboards mostly because of the different locations of the function keys.
-Play games -Do office functions -Do web stuff to communicate -Play music and movies
And most of that needs to be done all at once.
I suspect you're overrating the desire to do all these things at once. I suspect if you can do any one of these things while it does Tivo-type TV recording in the background, it'll be a competitive product (and of course add the feature of playing back previously recorded video programs).
Replacing the DVD drive with DVD/RW would make it a better product in the consumer's view, but I can see the reluctance to do so because of the maker being harrased by Hollywood and such.
OTOH, the hardware difference between doing any and all is a few dollars of RAM.
His addy from a Usenet post, and website
on
The New C Standard
·
· Score: 1
You can do the obvious demunging with this email address Derek M Jones derek@NOSPAMknosof.co.uk He also has a website: http://www.knosof.co.uk/ Amusingly, the "Year 2000 problems in C" link is 404 compliant.
Again, it's all just a theory in the end.... cringe...
There is a serious confusion between the word theory as used in common English and as how it is used in science. This is intentionally abused by creationists when they say "evolution is just a theory."
The common use of theory is closer to the scientific use of hypothesis, meaning an untested idea. The scientific use of theory is much stronger, meaning an idea that has been tested, and that some scientists may have reason to believe is true.
A scientific theory can still be shown to be wrong, but it carries credibility in science.
Of course, whether this simulation is based on a good theory or a weak hypothesis is up for debate.
Amazon sells anything to people who want it. People that shop at Amazon are probably more affluent than your average Wal-Mart shopper - they have to have credit, a computer, and an internet connection.
What's more, people who shop Amazon like to read, perhaps a stronger sign of affluence than the ones you mentioned.
It's not art because the finished product doesn't make you think about how you think about things. The source code might, but that's not for public consumption.
They'll just adjust the placement of the leap year, which is much simpler than doing constant leap second adjustments.
Dunno if that's an attempt to get a funny mod or what, but I'll take it seriously.
There's only one slight problem with this, noontime as the clock will happen an hour and a half earlier in the day every year, until after eight years noon occurs in the middle of the night. After another eight years of this silliness, you can add an extra Leap Day to compensate.
Leap seconds adjust for the speed of rotation of the Earth, where Leap Year/Day adjusts for the Earth's orbital period around the Sun not being an integral multiple of its daily rotation.
I have calculated[1] that in 1000 years a leap second will be required about every two months. It's likely that at that time we would still be using time standards similar to those in use now.
Simple solution, change the 60 Hz power line frequency to 59.9999885922 Hz, causing power-line synchronous clocks to slow down to match the daily rotation of the Earth (as referenced to the Sun).
On the other hand, in 1 million years, about 15 leap seconds will be required each day.
Simple solution, change the 59.9999885922 Hz power line frequency to 59.9895833333 Hz, causing power-line synchronous clocks to slow down to match the daily rotation of the Earth (as referenced to the Sun).
Therefore, at some point timekeeping must necessarily divide the day into units that are not an integral number of seconds.
More seriously, I can see where all watches (except the old-fashioned mechanical ones rich people have) will be synchronized to whichever standard the wearer specifies, receiving and converting from an absolote standard such as WWVB as "atomic clocks" do now. Most people will use the daily rotation of the Earth (as referenced to the Sun) standard, but perhaps the stopwatch function can use the "historically established" value for the duration of a second.
Having a watch that keeps several times with good accuracy and converts between them is not a problem now. There are several easily available low-power microcontrollers that will give reasonable battery life. To quote bad sci-fi, "We have the technology."
This livescience.com site looks like the Reader's Digest (disparaging comments intended for livescience, apologies to RD which is sometimes enjoyable and doesn't claim to be a science journal) of science websites. What a horrible article, on several levels. I'll say it one more time: Screw this crap.
But on to the parent post:
Cargo Cult Science
Richard Feynman
From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974. Also in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
It's been a long time (16+ years) since I read "Surely You're Joking,..." so this was an interesting re-read, especially in light of what I've read since then: Susan Blackmore's "The Adventures of a Parapsychologist," current edition titled "Searching For The Light."
Blackmore wrote of being the first to get a Master's degree in parapsychology, and what she did along the way to getting it. Her "downfall" was strict adherence to methods Feynman wrote about. She started enthusiastically enough, believing she would be the one to prove the existence of some sort of ESP phenomenon, doing many experiments designed to detect it, but all of them failing. She had colleagues that had successful experiments (showing someething statistically unlikely), but she always found problems and irregularities with their experiments. She was labeled psi-negative.
What struck me was how these people, even with their motivation to find hard evidence that they thought was "just around the corner," were unable to find it, but they kept on going, because they BELIEVED it was there, in the same sense as a religious believer.
At the time I had some spurious beliefs brought about by having been around a "good group of people" for a few years. I was already questioning some of these beliefs before I read Blackmore's book, and while reading it my (actually the group's) beliefs fell like a house of cards. I suppose I should be, uh, 'grateful' that I read Blackmore's book.
Feynman mentions Rhine (click on the parent's "Read the rest of this comment..." link), and Blackmore writes about visiting the USA and meeting him, and she and others had a seance or some such with him. Rhine was defininely the most respected person in parapsychology, making his suggestion of picking only the positive-testing students all the more outrageous.
Slashdot Mirror
Quoting That site:
7 7238&tid=95&tid=158
United Virtualities announced it has developed Persistent Identification Element (PIE), a backup ID system that will restore erased cookies.
This flash-based tracking technology was discussed here:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/04/1
Throughout 40 years of manned space flight, there were no fatalaties.
0 4/
Which 40 year period was this?
There was this tragedy in 1967, perhaps not often mentioned since it was an on-pad test and not part of an actual space flight:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo2
Anyways, I've since become financially successful enough to buy hard drives normally, and I've bought a ton of Western Digitals (only the Caviar line) to make up for it. Never had one fail, and I know they provide an excellent warranty ;)
Do they still honor such a warranty? I've had two WD's fail (a 40gig with only a couple bad blocks, an 80gig with so many that now it makes funny noises) that I bought within the last five years, with failure coincident with a CRT monitor running sitting next to the computer for a few days (no one ever said don't do that!). This was about a month ago, and they were running perfectly for years up until this. What is dissapointing is you can no longer do a "low level" format to rewrite the sector marks as you could 15+ years ago when drives were under 50 meg (and Spinrite saved the day). WD claims/implies their "write zero" utility does a LLF but it clearly doesn't.
I asked about this (if there was any hope for the drive) on Usenet where I got mixed responses, then on the WDC website's 'moderated' forums and got a seriously patronizing response. I can only wonder if the responder has any official connection to WD, I'd hate to think that if I buy another WD drive I'd be supporting him.
From Google.com:
the best defense is a good offence: 600,000
the best offence is a good defense: 242,000
I'm surprised the second one give so many in proportion to the first even though it's over 2 to 1, but it's surely because all the words, regardless of order, appear on so many pages. Redoing with quotes:
"the best defense is a good offence" about 1,940
"the best offence is a good defense" "about 91"
Yes, "the best defense is a good offence" wins again, this time by over an order of magnitude.
And watch out, because We Arrogant Americans are more offensive (all puns intended) than ever. Someone knocked down Our Towers, and We're pissed.
Not quite addressing the question, but perhaps others will find this interesting. This is a webpage I wrote six years ago about doing factorials (also prime numbers on micros, but scroll down about halfway for factorials), and what a difference a couple of decades made in the availability of computing power:r y.html
http://www.mindspring.com/~benbradley/number_theo
Mainframe guys don't reboot their system.
They don't call it reboot, they call it a "re-IPL" [Initial Program Load] and depending on the machine it takes up to 30+ people, each with specialized knowledge about a specific part of the process. [you can mod me funny, but THIS IS NOT A JOKE]
Unix guys reboot the system occasionally.
Only because of a hardware upgrade, and only because the technician convinces them it REALLY DOES need to be turned off to add more RAM or a (non-hot-swap) disk drive.
Windows guys reboot their machine several times a week.
"Several" in this context is a number greater than ten. A boot often lasts through the day, but not always. But I remember the 3.1 days (it shudda been called "three point one over six point two two"), it was boot-in-the-morning and reboot-after-lunch, as well as many other times.
And mainframe guys were copying 40MB files around long before you were born ;)
Yeah, but that was tape-to-tape...
Mainframes DO get thrown in dumpsters, but not because of spyware.
1. Swap drive with new one that's only large enough to hold user's current amount of data usage (save user's old drive for formatting and reuse if desired). ...
2. Charge half the cost of a new PC.
3.
4. Profit $$$
I mean, okay, as many others have pointed out, the ability to switch languages or switch layouts could be useful, but that doesn't happen very often.
This appears to be the appropriate place to mourn the passing of APL as a viable language.
Thanks for the exposure. However, I wish you would not copy these. I have a private counter and it will break when you do that.
My apologies, I was only thinking of preventing your server from getting slashdotted. Looks like the topic is off the front page, old and petered out by now anyway.
How soon will I need a PS/2 to USB converter?
No doubt that keyboard needs USB just to update the key displays in a reasonably short time.
Did anybody else notice they monkeyed with the enter key?
It's gigantic and moved WAY off to the right.
The worst part of this is it's a HARDWARE problem.
In retrospect, it's amazing the Model M layout has lasted so long. Most computer keyboards from the '60's and '70's were only 'approximations' to typewriter layouts (at least the letter keys stayed in the same place). The original IBM PC keyboard was really screwed compared to the then-standard IBM(!) Selectric typewriter. Then they 'got it right' with the AT keyboard with a large Enter key much like (size, shape and position) the Selectric's Return key. Then came the PS/2 Model M, with a smaller enter key, but the separate cursor keys and numeric keypad became a standard, even though it made for a larger, wider keyboard.
I recall being frustrated going between the AT and Model M keyboards mostly because of the different locations of the function keys.
Firstly, someone should make a mirror of this site and post the URL in response to this post. It's just some guy's site, and these pics are big.
Here goes:
http://aubrey.vima.austin.tx.us/pipestone.html
People need to be able to:
-Play games
-Do office functions
-Do web stuff to communicate
-Play music and movies
And most of that needs to be done all at once.
I suspect you're overrating the desire to do all these things at once. I suspect if you can do any one of these things while it does Tivo-type TV recording in the background, it'll be a competitive product (and of course add the feature of playing back previously recorded video programs).
Replacing the DVD drive with DVD/RW would make it a better product in the consumer's view, but I can see the reluctance to do so because of the maker being harrased by Hollywood and such.
OTOH, the hardware difference between doing any and all is a few dollars of RAM.
LINUX virii?
You can do the obvious demunging with this email address
Derek M Jones derek@NOSPAMknosof.co.uk
He also has a website: http://www.knosof.co.uk/
Amusingly, the "Year 2000 problems in C" link is 404 compliant.
One of the basic principals ...
I remember Ms. McKown (McKowan?), she was the principal at Capital View Elementary when I was a student, she was one mean principal.
What I really want to know is what was the universe like a split nanosecond before the big bang.
It was creating nuclear fusion for people who ask questions like that!
Again, it's all just a theory in the end. ... cringe ...
There is a serious confusion between the word theory as used in common English and as how it is used in science. This is intentionally abused by creationists when they say "evolution is just a theory."
The common use of theory is closer to the scientific use of hypothesis, meaning an untested idea. The scientific use of theory is much stronger, meaning an idea that has been tested, and that some scientists may have reason to believe is true.
A scientific theory can still be shown to be wrong, but it carries credibility in science.
Of course, whether this simulation is based on a good theory or a weak hypothesis is up for debate.
Amazon sells anything to people who want it. People that shop at Amazon are probably more affluent than your average Wal-Mart shopper - they have to have credit, a computer, and an internet connection.
What's more, people who shop Amazon like to read, perhaps a stronger sign of affluence than the ones you mentioned.
It's not art because the finished product doesn't make you think about how you think about things. The source code might, but that's not for public consumption.
?
15 leap seconds times 365 days = 91 minutes
They'll just adjust the placement of the leap year, which is much simpler than doing constant leap second adjustments.
Dunno if that's an attempt to get a funny mod or what, but I'll take it seriously.
There's only one slight problem with this, noontime as the clock will happen an hour and a half earlier in the day every year, until after eight years noon occurs in the middle of the night. After another eight years of this silliness, you can add an extra Leap Day to compensate.
Leap seconds adjust for the speed of rotation of the Earth, where Leap Year/Day adjusts for the Earth's orbital period around the Sun not being an integral multiple of its daily rotation.
I have calculated[1] that in 1000 years a leap second will be required about every two months. It's likely that at that time we would still be using time standards similar to those in use now.
Simple solution, change the 60 Hz power line frequency to 59.9999885922 Hz, causing power-line synchronous clocks to slow down to match the daily rotation of the Earth (as referenced to the Sun).
On the other hand, in 1 million years, about 15 leap seconds will be required each day.
Simple solution, change the 59.9999885922 Hz power line frequency to 59.9895833333 Hz, causing power-line synchronous clocks to slow down to match the daily rotation of the Earth (as referenced to the Sun).
Therefore, at some point timekeeping must necessarily divide the day into units that are not an integral number of seconds.
More seriously, I can see where all watches (except the old-fashioned mechanical ones rich people have) will be synchronized to whichever standard the wearer specifies, receiving and converting from an absolote standard such as WWVB as "atomic clocks" do now. Most people will use the daily rotation of the Earth (as referenced to the Sun) standard, but perhaps the stopwatch function can use the "historically established" value for the duration of a second.
Having a watch that keeps several times with good accuracy and converts between them is not a problem now. There are several easily available low-power microcontrollers that will give reasonable battery life. To quote bad sci-fi, "We have the technology."
I just wanted to be the first to mention this site, someone wanted to view the previous leap second, and that became an obsession.
Okay, here's a clickable link:
http://leapsecond.com/
An obsession in another are of time is this Y10K Compliant clock:
http://longnow.org/
This livescience.com site looks like the Reader's Digest (disparaging comments intended for livescience, apologies to RD which is sometimes enjoyable and doesn't claim to be a science journal) of science websites. What a horrible article, on several levels. I'll say it one more time: Screw this crap.
But on to the parent post:
Cargo Cult Science
Richard Feynman
From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974. Also in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
It's been a long time (16+ years) since I read "Surely You're Joking,..." so this was an interesting re-read, especially in light of what I've read since then: Susan Blackmore's "The Adventures of a Parapsychologist," current edition titled "Searching For The Light."
Blackmore wrote of being the first to get a Master's degree in parapsychology, and what she did along the way to getting it. Her "downfall" was strict adherence to methods Feynman wrote about. She started enthusiastically enough, believing she would be the one to prove the existence of some sort of ESP phenomenon, doing many experiments designed to detect it, but all of them failing. She had colleagues that had successful experiments (showing someething statistically unlikely), but she always found problems and irregularities with their experiments. She was labeled psi-negative.
What struck me was how these people, even with their motivation to find hard evidence that they thought was "just around the corner," were unable to find it, but they kept on going, because they BELIEVED it was there, in the same sense as a religious believer.
At the time I had some spurious beliefs brought about by having been around a "good group of people" for a few years. I was already questioning some of these beliefs before I read Blackmore's book, and while reading it my (actually the group's) beliefs fell like a house of cards. I suppose I should be, uh, 'grateful' that I read Blackmore's book.
Feynman mentions Rhine (click on the parent's "Read the rest of this comment..." link), and Blackmore writes about visiting the USA and meeting him, and she and others had a seance or some such with him. Rhine was defininely the most respected person in parapsychology, making his suggestion of picking only the positive-testing students all the more outrageous.