I started out with Red Hat pre-installed on a computer from Penguin Computing, but none of it made any sense to me. Reading the manuals, I found that nothing was where I expected it to be, so I gave up on that.
I installed Slackware instead--found that things were where the manpages and web pages said they were, and liked it.
After a few installs, and a lot of help from the community, I was able to record video to CD-ROM using an iomega video capture card (zoran chip) I got from ebay for $25.00 There were no windows drivers, but it worked fine in linux.
At the time, though, there just weren't enough CPU cycles to process video in a timely manner--so after making 2 or 3 videos, I gave up and just used the box as a general purpose computer. Word processing, web browsing, etc.
Linux was fun and I learned a lot when I had time to screw with it.
Now, I mostly use windows XP because it's easiest and I've got better ways to spend my time (wife, job, house, dogs, cats...).
I still have puppy on a microSD card, though, because there are some things that are easier (or even possible) in linux that aren't in XP.
Right tool for the right job.
Ideologically, I prefer G/L/X, but rigid adherence to ideology is expensive in many ways.
I don't think the motive here is really to criminalize erotic comics.
The community generally agrees that sex involving children is abuse and that's something that should be punished. And that if you've got pictures of that sort of thing happening, that's evidence of the crime.
The problem is that it's a lot of work to prove the pictures are (1) sexual (2) involving children. The solution is to simply redefine the crime--If it looks like sex and it looks like children, a crime has occurred. "looks like" to be defined to suit the convenience of the prosecutor.
From the prosecutors' point of view, the rights of the accused are an impediment to justice. The law works for the good, and the prosecutor (but not the accused) is part of the law. Any impediment to good is evil, and should be removed.
So, the burden of proof is technically on the prosecutor--but the bar is so low that for practical purposes, he's guilty until proven innocent. Simply criminalizing everything and then selecting those you're going to prosecute is NOT the impartial rule of law--it's the rule of the person who happens to be sitting in the prosecutor's office at the moment. Perhaps someone educated in Australian constitutional law can tell us if this is even a concern over there.
If you want workers to innovate, pay them to do it.
Don't read management self-help books; talk to folks who did it in your field: Information? Google (at one time), Small Manufacturing: Lincoln Electric (recent history), Automotive: Saturn, HMMA
Wages: If I'm an Engineer whose job is to create and implement profitable designs, pay me a competitive rate.
Bounties: If I'm a line worker whose job is to put parts in machines and slap two buttons--and I come up with an idea that saves/earns the company money, give me 5%. If I save the company $20,000, I get a grand. If I save the company a million bucks, I get $50K.
Profit Sharing/employee ownership: If the company makes money, we all get some. Or, when you hire me, offer me part of my salary in company stock options at 90% of FMV, with a rolling holding period of 5 years. Offer that (with the same restrictions) to EVERYONE--CEO to line workers. Make it less attractive to fire all the workers, then take the money and run.
Morale: If you shit on people, you lose the use of their imagination. They'll still show up to collect their paycheck, and they'll be JUST productive enough to keep their jobs, but that's all.
DON'T weasel out of rewarding your line workers by defining saying "innovation is everyone's job" unless you're going to start paying those line workers according to their new job description. These are the guys that watch the process all day every day; they KNOW where the waste is.
Don't slap the innovator in the face by capping the bounty. Why is $50K too much to reward somebody if they come up with a million dollar idea? They just saved you a million bucks!.
Keep your profit-sharing simple and transparent. Your employees are not likely to all be accountants, but if the profit sharing each year is a hundred bucks, they'll know it's BS.
My '98 Nissan 200SX rustbucket gets 40mpg. At LEAST 40MPG on EVERY tank.
No "hypermiling" BS; just keep the tires inflated and drive the speed limit.
12 years later, I have to buy a hybrid to get that mileage! Something is wrong here.
It's paid for, the insurance is cheap because it has almost no book value, it's already a POS, so I never have to wash it. When I get pulled over for speeding, the cop feels sorry for a 42 year old man driving a pile of rust with hard-hat and steel-toes in the back seat, he lets me go.
When it finally does die, I'll have to buy new (to me) car, but I expect be hard pressed to find anything close to its replacement.
If you don't want to schlep the generator in the rain or snow (that's when the power goes out!), spend the money and get an automatic transfer switch and a pad-mounted generator in a weatherproof box.
Understand the difference between prime power and backup power. You want backup power unless you're made of money. Air cooled means less maintenance and more reliability. Propane or natural gas fuel means you don't worry about feeding it (as long as the gas co. keeps your tank filled!).
Every time that thing kicks on, especially when I'm out of town, I'm glad I bought it. 'Cause if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
It's not rated to run a central A/C, (not enough starting inertia) but it runs ours just fine.
The hardware cost us $3000, and comes with clear instructions for installation. I'd suggest hiring a licensed electrician to install it, but if you know the code, knock yourself out.
Finally, somebody besides a fictional archaeologist who understands the difference between knowledge and belief.
I can know only what I have observed or logically deduced from observation. Knowledge can be modified through experience or the presentation and interpretation of evidence (that is, argument).
I believe whatever in the hell I choose to for no reason at all except that's what I want to believe. Belief can only be modified by the personal choice of the believer.
If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground Monday morning, I would hope they wouldn't get too close to it
Why the concern?
By the time it's on the ground, it's stopped, all the ammonia has boiled off, and if it's still hot, it'll cool off pretty quickly?
What's the danger? Is there some green goop on it that will turn you into the blob?
I worked with a Dutchman in Turkey for a couple weeks and he brought "salty licorice".
I munched about half the bag on the first day. If I ate that much NaCl, I'd be miserable for two days. Wonderful stuff--my whole head would turn into a licorice fog with every bite.
BTW, If you live in the US and like that sort of thing, "World Market" sells salty licorice fish.
I don't know if it's illegal or not. If you see election fraud, collect the evidence. If you have evidence of election fraud report it to the appropriate authorities.
If you suspect the folks responsible for regulating the elections are complicit or negligent, then the appropriate "authorities" are the media. That's their JOB. Look up the term "fourth estate".
The "media" is whoever can help you get the evidence to the populace. Eywitness News, Youtube, alt.binaries.movies.us.election.fraud, a political blog, slashdot, whatever gets the word out.
I've been a user of oo.o for about 5 years, and haven't had MSOffice installed on my laptop for the whole time.
Currently, I'm using OOO300m9 (v3.0, RC4) and it does everything I need it to do except operate smoothly with MSOffice documents.
I have NOT been able to get it to open Microsoft Word 2007 files--It fails to parse Word 2007.docx and.doc. (one of our clients just upgraded). Fortunately, Microsoft supplies a conversion tool that will save.docx as Word 97.doc and office 2007.doc as.docx (which I can then save as Word 97.doc). THOSE files, Oo.o will open just fine.
If there's a way to simply open those.docx and Word 07.doc files with Oo.o, I haven't found it yet.
Lack of vba support has also been another minor annoyance, but this version purports to have support for SOME vba. I haven't seen it in action yet, though. Oh, it still pukes on references to hidden sheets in excel workbooks.
"Every woman dreams of the perfect "fairy princes" wedding."
For some women, I suppose that's an important dream. My wife still dreams of such a wedding. She also dreams of no unsecured debt, a nice house on a quiet country road, and money in the bank.
She's smart, and understands that she can have any of those things, but not ALL of them. She chose the latter. Not all women are irrational children.
And yes, the short answer IS "whatever she wants". The long answer is whatever we want.
"How likely do you think it is that any two people in this classroom have the same birthday?"
Most of the kids take a quick look around, see ~30 people in the room, know there's 365 days in a year and think--not very likely.
But there's usually a match.
In a classroom full of kids, the probability that any two children have the same birthday is (we'll ignore leap year for simplicity) 1/365.
We need to know the probability that none of the kids have the same birthday. The probability of there being no collisions between two kids is still 1/365--this is just a more useful wording of the criterion.
So, first 2 kids, probability of a collision: 1/365 Third kid--if his b-day lands on either of the first two kids' you get a hit: 2/365 Fourth--3/365 chance of a collision.... And, of course, if you had 366 kids in the room, the last one's a sure thing.
You multiply the probabilities a series of independant events to get the probability of the whole series.
If we have 30 kids and 365 days, we want to know the chances of 30 misses (no collisions) in a row. If P is the probability of something happening, then probability of NOT (something happening) is 1-P
So, probability of 30 misses in a row will be 1-(1/365) * 1-(2/365) * 1-(3/365) *... * 1-(30/365). Which is ~.2703.
So, 1-.2703 tells you that if you've got 30 kids in the room you've got nearly a 3/4 shot at two of them having the same birthday.
Quickly iterating through the same process in oo.o calc for an FBI database with......ability to recognize 113E+09 unique DNA profiles...DNA from a million folks (no idea how many of us they really have) gives you.988 probability of collision.
BTW, the general formula for the "birthday problem" is written as follows: P=d!/[(d-n)!(d^n)] Where P=probability of no collisions d=number of days in the year n=number of students in the sample
Remember the "birthday problem"?
"How likely do you think it is that any two people in this classroom have the same birthday?"
Most of the kids take a quick look around, see ~30 people in the room, know there's 365 days in a year and think--not very likely.
But there's usually a match.
In a classroom full of kids, the probability that any two children have the same birthday is (we'll ignore leap year for simplicity) 1/365.
We need to know the probability that none of the kids have the same birthday.
The probability of there being no collisions between two kids is still 1/365--this is just a more useful wording of the criterion.
So, first 2 kids, probability of a collision: 1/365
Third kid--if his b-day lands on either of the first two kids' you get a hit: 2/365
Fourth--3/365 chance of a collision....
And, of course, if you had 366 kids in the room, the last one's a sure thing.
You multiply the probabilities a series of independant events to get the probability of the whole series.
If we have 30 kids and 365 days, we want to know the chances of 30 misses (no collisions) in a row.
If P is the probability of something happening, then probability of NOT (something happening) is 1-P
So, probability of 30 misses in a row will be 1-(1/365) * 1-(2/365) * 1-(3/365) *... * 1-(30/365).
Which is ~.2703.
So, 1-.2703 tells you that if you've got 30 kids in the room you've got nearly a 3/4 shot at two of them having the same birthday.
Quickly iterating through the same process in oo.o calc for an FBI database with......ability to recognize 113E+09 unique DNA profiles...DNA from a million folks (no idea how many of us they really have)
gives you.988 probability of collision.
BTW, the general formula for the "birthday problem" is written as follows:
P=d!/[(d-n)!(d^n)]
Where
P=probability of no collisions
d=number of days in the year
n=number of students in the sample
Usenet gives people the ability (note I did not say "provides"--you still have to know what you're doing) to say anything to everybody anonymously.
Functionally, it's a completely unregulated public forum. Free speech taken to its extreme, where you CAN yell "fire" in a crowded theatre and suffer no legal retribution. While I can see how some folks would oppose such unregulated behaviour, it's pertinent to note that society has not crumbled into chaos because of this "anyone can say anything" freedom.
Frankly, I'm amazed this has been allowed to last for as long as it has, but maybe we're finally seeing the death of usenet.
Slashdot Mirror
I started out with Red Hat pre-installed on a computer from Penguin Computing, but none of it made any sense to me. Reading the manuals, I found that nothing was where I expected it to be, so I gave up on that.
I installed Slackware instead--found that things were where the manpages and web pages said they were, and liked it.
After a few installs, and a lot of help from the community, I was able to record video to CD-ROM using an iomega video capture card (zoran chip) I got from ebay for $25.00 There were no windows drivers, but it worked fine in linux.
At the time, though, there just weren't enough CPU cycles to process video in a timely manner--so after making 2 or 3 videos, I gave up and just used the box as a general purpose computer.
Word processing, web browsing, etc.
Linux was fun and I learned a lot when I had time to screw with it.
Now, I mostly use windows XP because it's easiest and I've got better ways to spend my time (wife, job, house, dogs, cats...).
I still have puppy on a microSD card, though, because there are some things that are easier (or even possible) in linux that aren't in XP.
Right tool for the right job.
Ideologically, I prefer G/L/X, but rigid adherence to ideology is expensive in many ways.
has this problem.
Granted, I've only been developing apps for them since about 1991, but I've NEVER seen any "calibration drift".
Heck, if the Client wants to "calibrate" them, I usually have to root around in the menus to find the CAL function. Touch the top right corner...
They just work.
What sort of cheap crap are the voters paying for?
I don't think the motive here is really to criminalize erotic comics.
The community generally agrees that sex involving children is abuse and that's something that should be punished. And that if you've got pictures of that sort of thing happening, that's evidence of the crime.
The problem is that it's a lot of work to prove the pictures are (1) sexual (2) involving children.
The solution is to simply redefine the crime--If it looks like sex and it looks like children, a crime has occurred.
"looks like" to be defined to suit the convenience of the prosecutor.
From the prosecutors' point of view, the rights of the accused are an impediment to justice. The law works for the good, and the prosecutor (but not the accused) is part of the law. Any impediment to good is evil, and should be removed.
So, the burden of proof is technically on the prosecutor--but the bar is so low that for practical purposes, he's guilty until proven innocent.
Simply criminalizing everything and then selecting those you're going to prosecute is NOT the impartial rule of law--it's the rule of the person who happens to be sitting in the prosecutor's office at the moment. Perhaps someone educated in Australian constitutional law can tell us if this is even a concern over there.
'Cause NOBODY fucks with The Mouse.
Kick ass, Harlan.
Oh, yeah--I know McCoy didn't shoot up by accident.
If you want workers to innovate, pay them to do it.
Don't read management self-help books; talk to folks who did it in your field:
Information? Google (at one time), Small Manufacturing: Lincoln Electric (recent history), Automotive: Saturn, HMMA
Wages:
If I'm an Engineer whose job is to create and implement profitable designs, pay me a competitive rate.
Bounties:
If I'm a line worker whose job is to put parts in machines and slap two buttons--and I come up with an idea that saves/earns the company money, give me 5%.
If I save the company $20,000, I get a grand.
If I save the company a million bucks, I get $50K.
Profit Sharing/employee ownership:
If the company makes money, we all get some.
Or, when you hire me, offer me part of my salary in company stock options at 90% of FMV, with a rolling holding period of 5 years.
Offer that (with the same restrictions) to EVERYONE--CEO to line workers. Make it less attractive to fire all the workers, then take the money and run.
Morale:
If you shit on people, you lose the use of their imagination.
They'll still show up to collect their paycheck, and they'll be JUST productive enough to keep their jobs, but that's all.
DON'T weasel out of rewarding your line workers by defining saying "innovation is everyone's job" unless you're going to start paying those line workers according to their new job description.
These are the guys that watch the process all day every day; they KNOW where the waste is.
Don't slap the innovator in the face by capping the bounty. Why is $50K too much to reward somebody if they come up with a million dollar idea? They just saved you a million bucks!.
Keep your profit-sharing simple and transparent. Your employees are not likely to all be accountants, but if the profit sharing each year is a hundred bucks, they'll know it's BS.
Installed Ad-Aware again, didn't find anything interesting, then booted from a microSD reloaded an image from 3 weeks ago.
Oh, well--at least I proved the image was good!
My '98 Nissan 200SX rustbucket gets 40mpg.
At LEAST 40MPG on EVERY tank.
No "hypermiling" BS; just keep the tires inflated and drive the speed limit.
12 years later, I have to buy a hybrid to get that mileage!
Something is wrong here.
It's paid for, the insurance is cheap because it has almost no book value, it's already a POS, so I never have to wash it. When I get pulled over for speeding, the cop feels sorry for a 42 year old man driving a pile of rust with hard-hat and steel-toes in the back seat, he lets me go.
When it finally does die, I'll have to buy new (to me) car, but I expect be hard pressed to find anything close to its replacement.
If you don't want to schlep the generator in the rain or snow (that's when the power goes out!), spend the money and get an automatic transfer switch and a pad-mounted generator in a weatherproof box.
Understand the difference between prime power and backup power. You want backup power unless you're made of money. Air cooled means less maintenance and more reliability. Propane or natural gas fuel means you don't worry about feeding it (as long as the gas co. keeps your tank filled!).
Every time that thing kicks on, especially when I'm out of town, I'm glad I bought it. 'Cause if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
It's not rated to run a central A/C, (not enough starting inertia) but it runs ours just fine.
The hardware cost us $3000, and comes with clear instructions for installation. I'd suggest hiring a licensed electrician to install it, but if you know the code, knock yourself out.
You can download the installation drawings and review them before you buy.
The flying circus of physics with answers
The elegant universe
Also, the 1936 Chemical Dictionary had some neat syntheses.
Finally, somebody besides a fictional archaeologist who understands the difference between knowledge and belief.
I can know only what I have observed or logically deduced from observation. Knowledge can be modified through experience or the presentation and interpretation of evidence (that is, argument).
I believe whatever in the hell I choose to for no reason at all except that's what I want to believe. Belief can only be modified by the personal choice of the believer.
Why the concern? By the time it's on the ground, it's stopped, all the ammonia has boiled off, and if it's still hot, it'll cool off pretty quickly? What's the danger? Is there some green goop on it that will turn you into the blob?
Sammiak?
I worked with a Dutchman in Turkey for a couple weeks and he brought "salty licorice".
I munched about half the bag on the first day.
If I ate that much NaCl, I'd be miserable for two days.
Wonderful stuff--my whole head would turn into a licorice fog with every bite.
BTW, If you live in the US and like that sort of thing, "World Market" sells salty licorice fish.
I don't know if it's illegal or not.
If you see election fraud, collect the evidence.
If you have evidence of election fraud report it to the appropriate authorities.
If you suspect the folks responsible for regulating the elections are complicit or negligent, then the appropriate "authorities" are the media.
That's their JOB. Look up the term "fourth estate".
The "media" is whoever can help you get the evidence to the populace.
Eywitness News, Youtube, alt.binaries.movies.us.election.fraud, a political blog, slashdot, whatever gets the word out.
For the apple //e
I've been a user of oo.o for about 5 years, and haven't had MSOffice installed on my laptop for the whole time.
Currently, I'm using OOO300m9 (v3.0, RC4) and it does everything I need it to do except operate smoothly with MSOffice documents.
I have NOT been able to get it to open Microsoft Word 2007 files--It fails to parse Word 2007 .docx and .doc. (one of our clients just upgraded). Fortunately, Microsoft supplies a conversion tool that will save .docx as Word 97 .doc and office 2007 .doc as .docx (which I can then save as Word 97 .doc). THOSE files, Oo.o will open just fine.
If there's a way to simply open those .docx and Word 07 .doc files with Oo.o, I haven't found it yet.
Lack of vba support has also been another minor annoyance, but this version purports to have support for SOME vba. I haven't seen it in action yet, though.
Oh, it still pukes on references to hidden sheets in excel workbooks.
Other than that, it works just great.
is a barrel of sewage.
But a teaspoon of sewage in a barrel of wine is a barrel of sewage.
This thing works on exactly the same principle as fuel line magnets.
"Every woman dreams of the perfect "fairy princes" wedding."
For some women, I suppose that's an important dream.
My wife still dreams of such a wedding.
She also dreams of no unsecured debt, a nice house on a quiet country road, and money in the bank.
She's smart, and understands that she can have any of those things, but not ALL of them.
She chose the latter.
Not all women are irrational children.
And yes, the short answer IS "whatever she wants".
The long answer is whatever we want.
1.5 Mbit/s Low Speed
12 Mbit/s Full Speed
480 Mbit/s High Speed
4.8 Gbit/s Super Speed
4E+08 Gbit/s Plaid!
The tesseract is 3d
They hypercube (of which the tesseract is a "shadow") is 4D.
Print away.
Wow. Just Wow. Look at his bio--he's an administrator who supervises medical research. With (apparently) a background as an actual researcher.
And this is his professional recommendation?
This is SOP, folks. Just keep sending in your money.
Remember the "birthday problem"?
"How likely do you think it is that any two people in this classroom have the same birthday?"
Most of the kids take a quick look around, see ~30 people in the room, know there's 365 days in a year and think--not very likely.
But there's usually a match.
In a classroom full of kids, the probability that any two children have the same birthday is (we'll ignore leap year for simplicity) 1/365.
We need to know the probability that none of the kids have the same birthday.
The probability of there being no collisions between two kids is still 1/365--this is just a more useful wording of the criterion.
So, first 2 kids, probability of a collision: 1/365 ...
Third kid--if his b-day lands on either of the first two kids' you get a hit: 2/365
Fourth--3/365 chance of a collision.
And, of course, if you had 366 kids in the room, the last one's a sure thing.
You multiply the probabilities a series of independant events to get the probability of the whole series.
If we have 30 kids and 365 days, we want to know the chances of 30 misses (no collisions) in a row.
If P is the probability of something happening, then probability of NOT (something happening) is 1-P
So, probability of 30 misses in a row will be 1-(1/365) * 1-(2/365) * 1-(3/365) * ... * 1-(30/365).
Which is ~.2703.
So, 1-.2703 tells you that if you've got 30 kids in the room you've got nearly a 3/4 shot at two of them having the same birthday.
Quickly iterating through the same process in oo.o calc for an FBI database with... ...ability to recognize 113E+09 unique DNA profiles ...DNA from a million folks (no idea how many of us they really have) .988 probability of collision.
gives you
BTW, the general formula for the "birthday problem" is written as follows:
P=d!/[(d-n)!(d^n)]
Where
P=probability of no collisions
d=number of days in the year
n=number of students in the sample
Remember the "birthday problem"? "How likely do you think it is that any two people in this classroom have the same birthday?" Most of the kids take a quick look around, see ~30 people in the room, know there's 365 days in a year and think--not very likely. But there's usually a match. In a classroom full of kids, the probability that any two children have the same birthday is (we'll ignore leap year for simplicity) 1/365. We need to know the probability that none of the kids have the same birthday. The probability of there being no collisions between two kids is still 1/365--this is just a more useful wording of the criterion. So, first 2 kids, probability of a collision: 1/365 Third kid--if his b-day lands on either of the first two kids' you get a hit: 2/365 Fourth--3/365 chance of a collision. ...
And, of course, if you had 366 kids in the room, the last one's a sure thing.
You multiply the probabilities a series of independant events to get the probability of the whole series.
If we have 30 kids and 365 days, we want to know the chances of 30 misses (no collisions) in a row.
If P is the probability of something happening, then probability of NOT (something happening) is 1-P
So, probability of 30 misses in a row will be 1-(1/365) * 1-(2/365) * 1-(3/365) * ... * 1-(30/365).
Which is ~.2703.
So, 1-.2703 tells you that if you've got 30 kids in the room you've got nearly a 3/4 shot at two of them having the same birthday.
Quickly iterating through the same process in oo.o calc for an FBI database with... ...ability to recognize 113E+09 unique DNA profiles ...DNA from a million folks (no idea how many of us they really have)
gives you .988 probability of collision.
BTW, the general formula for the "birthday problem" is written as follows:
P=d!/[(d-n)!(d^n)]
Where
P=probability of no collisions
d=number of days in the year
n=number of students in the sample
That's awesome!
As an aside, Star Trekkin' got stuck in the Funny 5 for so many weeks when I was in college that I got absolutely sick of it.
Functionally, it's a completely unregulated public forum. Free speech taken to its extreme, where you CAN yell "fire" in a crowded theatre and suffer no legal retribution. While I can see how some folks would oppose such unregulated behaviour, it's pertinent to note that society has not crumbled into chaos because of this "anyone can say anything" freedom.
Frankly, I'm amazed this has been allowed to last for as long as it has, but maybe we're finally seeing the death of usenet.
It will be missed.