See those three holes in hte bottom left, bottom right and top right wit the red block in the bottom? There are three matching pins build onto the panel that covers this hole. Slide the panel to the left and it lifts right off! =Smidge=
Uh, no... I think he means 12% of all the gasoline sold in the US contains ethanol, not gasoline is 12% ethanol. In fact, the article you linked to says exactly that: In the United States, one out of every eight gallons of gasoline sold contains ethanol. (1/8 = 12.5%)
Thanks for the link, though. I find it interesting that MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether), which is used during the winter to reduce air pollution, in turn increases groundwater pollution. Where I live our only source of water is groundwater, so the local governments are SUPER DUPER anal about pollution control like septic/chemical waste systems and fuel storage... but the pumps say that the fuel is oxygenated with an ether from November to February. I wonder if it's the same stuff... =Smidge=
But you are not a mirror. At best you are acting as a cache, since you would still use their tracker server to gain access to the material and you would still have to go to them to get the.torrent file in the first place. It's stil a single point of download that they can control.
I'm sure they wouldn't mind shedding the bandwidth bill off on others if they didn't have to sacrifice the ability to remove access to the file at any time. =Smidge=
The problem with that comparison is that things like os.py are standard libraries that are used by a very wide selection of programs. The 15 lines here are actually unique, meaningful code specific to the application's task. The libraries are available to everyone. Nobody counts the code in header files as their own.
Your "web browser" example is just invoking another program, and so it doesn't do anything unique or application specific.
So when he says "done in 15 lines of code", it means that all the programmer has to do is type out 15 lines of code, and that using libraries for support functions is pretty much a given.
Unless you're a pedantic shithead, of course.
I will grant you that putting multiple commands on one line is cheating, though. However if the symantics of the language allow you to shorthand multiple actions in a single command then it'sa fair game! =Smidge=
That's all fine and good, as long as they don't update the design at any point.
But sooner or later they will have to come out sith something new just to keep up with the rest of the world. Are they going to have the infastructure to design it well, steal the designs from elsewhere, or end up making cheap "die cast" hardware?
I think the 5 year limitation on the brand name might be IBM saying they don't want to be associated with the cheap junk they might be making down the road. =Smidge=
Read the text. The image is not digitally enhanced.
Right, because anything in text - especially on the internet - is 100% true by default. Read it again: The photographer insists that the streak and flash on the above image has not been created digitally. It's only the photographer's word that we have as evidence it hasn't been tampered with.
What I think is the most concerning is how the "event" is almost EXACTLY in the middle of the frame. You would think that, if something was going to fall unexpectedly out of the sky, the chance that you'd be taking a picture at that exact instant and at the exact spot it's going to hit would be all but nil.
The "Before" and "After" shots are also suspicious, since they are all identical except for the clouds. Though this is more easily explained: The camera was on a tripod.
Someone else noted that the internal timestamps for the three images are inconsistent with the order they are presented. According to this, the image with the streak was taken first at 15:20:49, the "After" picture was taken two minutes later at 15:22:47, and the "before" picture was taken only 24 seconds later at 15:23:11.
I call shenanigans. Either it's a doctored photo or the event was staged. Or both. =Smidge=
Which would be closer to taking several outputs of a semi-random "black box" function which is reasonably well understood, and trying to determine the common input that generated the various outputs.
Even that's not a terrific analogy, really, but it's a little closer. =Smidge=
Spam is a huge amount of traffic on the net, that is my problem with it. Turning clueless lycos users into antispambots will not DECREASE the traffic on the net but increase it.
But it WILL decrease SPAM traffic on the net!
For sake of example, let's say spam takes up 30% of all internet traffic. (I think I remember reading somewhere that this is about right, but it's just an example anyway so bear with me!)
Let's say you then produce an equal amount of "anti-spam" traffic. Your total traffic is now 130% of what it used to be. Which means SPAM related traffic now only composes 23% of all internet traffic! See? We cut spam traffic by 7%! =Smidge=
Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along
on
SCO.com Defaced
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Maybe it's not vandalism... perhaps they're just being more open about their business plan?
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity! =Smidge=
This should come as no surprize, but that's how you can get killed in ANY vehicle collision.
The problem here is a little thing called INERTIA.
Let's assume you are wearing your safety belt properly, so you are reasonably well fixed to the car. For all intents and purposes you and the car are one.
Two cars of identical mass and velocity collide head on. In a perfect world they would come to a complete stop that the point of collision.
Now, two cars.. one of mass m, one of mass 3m, with the same velocity, collide head on. The 3m car has more inertia. as a result, the smaller car gets pushed back by the difference in energy.
Which is a worse acceleration? "V1 -> 0" or "V1 -> 0 -> V2" (Where V2 is in the opposite direction of V1)? =Smidge=
You can buy those as kits. They're called "LTD" (Low Temperature Differential) engines. They even run backwards if you put them on ice!
Those things are anything BUT efficent. They are just very delicate and carefully constructed so they don't need much to run. Remember Carnot efficiency is 1-(Th/Tc) =Smidge=
I'd like to see something set up so onboard video hardware can take advantage of this. It's difficult to get a motherboard that doesn't have onboard video anyway, and if you buy the right video card (ie: same manufacturer) they can both run to get an added performance boost. (You should, of course, be able to install any graphics card, but won't get anything extra for it)
I added an integer value "browser.cache.memory.capacity" with a value of 4096, then restarted the browser. Mem usage hasn't gotten up above 37MB since and performance has not been effected at all.
While I'm not going to disagree with you, I fail to see how this absolves the developer's responsibility to build the application such that it doesn't try to absorb all the system's resources in the first place.
I'm currently using FireFox PR1.0, it's been open for about 5 days straight, running on Win2KPro. It's using 104MB of RAM. Why I don't know... I only have 4 tabs open at the moment and no flash or java running, and no third party plugins... but it's using 104MB or memory right now. It probably would have locked up if I didn't have a gig of RAM in this machine...
Went up to 108MB when I hit preview, and it's not going down... =Smidge=
Not that I ever fook forward to loosing my lower legs, but if I do I can think of a few possible alternatives to traditional prostetics... Why try to restore natural function when you can have something better?
You are correct that it's a media player, and that there are lots of media players out there. But IMO, WinAMP is the ideal choice for music. WMP doesn't have the functionality and extendability that WinAMP has, and many other free media players are clogged up with overly fancy interfaces and/or just don't perform as well.
WinAMP always was free. There's a "pro" version with extended capabilities, but at no point was there NOT a free version that did everything any other media player did (and often more).
And I do not recall WinAMP ever being open source. There is an extensive SDK available, but the program itself is not available in source form... at least not through any legit channels that I could find. =Smidge=
Re:Its not the H2s
on
Killer Ozone?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Ozone is pure oxygen, just in tri-atomic instead of di-atomic form. It has a very distinct "electric" odor (not a burning smell) and prolonged exposure can be a problem. The occasional breif whiff isn't going to hurt you.
The black stuff is dust and dirt and other crud that used to be in the air. The devices work by ionizing particles and some gas molecules in the air and using an electric field to move them through the device. The "collection plates" are the positive electrode, and when the ionized air and dust contact with it, they lose their negative charge. Dust particles get stuck on the plate and are thus removed from the air.
Some ionized material makes it through, and this is what collects on your walls. Ever try rubbing a baloon on your shirt and sticking it to the wall? Same thing.
If properly designed, the voltages are not sufficient to generate significant ozone. =Smidge=
Re:Its not the H2s
on
Killer Ozone?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Most of what is on the "collection grids" is actually burnt ozone
How do you "burn" oxygen?:)
A properly designed ionic air filter does not produce any detectable ozone. There ARE some types of air cleaners that are designed specifically for ozone production - ozone is a powerful antiseptic and rids the air of all sorts of airborne bacteria and the like.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't think it's REQUIRED that you make a second or third choice... it's certainly not required for you to make a first choice!
If you want John to win, vote for him. If you DON'T want Tim to win, don't vote for him. You are not obligated to choose a candidate you absolutely hate as a 2nd choice. (Unless you're Australian, I hear...)
And based on the description of the electoral fusion thing, I don't see why the two are mutually exclusive. It would just be redundant in some cases. IRV lets you confidently vote for a third party, but avoids the spoiler and wasted vote problems by letting you say who you would have voted for if your primary choice wasn't available. EF seems to be a sort of underhanded, placing the same candidate on the same ballot in multiple spots and then adding up the total votes. This probably works best when people blindly vote "down the line" for their party without considering the individuals they're voting for (god forbid) and essentially tricking them into voting for candidates that are technically from other parties. =Smidge=
So which is more likely, a terrorist/rouge nation launching a missle at us, or a terrorist/rouge nation driving a nuke by truck into a city?
Put it in a shipping container and send it by freight ship into NY harbor. It would be virtually impossible to stop that. The people operating the ship don't even have to know about it once you forge some paperwork. Customs doesn't get at it until the ship docks, and even then they rarely inspect more than 5% of the cargo!
It's neat, but this system seems to be too little too late in terms of national defence. I'm sure it will still prove useful to the military for protecting their own craft and such, but it does nothing for the safety of the nation in general. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
Referring to this image...
See those three holes in hte bottom left, bottom right and top right wit the red block in the bottom? There are three matching pins build onto the panel that covers this hole. Slide the panel to the left and it lifts right off!
=Smidge=
Uh, no... I think he means 12% of all the gasoline sold in the US contains ethanol, not gasoline is 12% ethanol. In fact, the article you linked to says exactly that: In the United States, one out of every eight gallons of gasoline sold contains ethanol. (1/8 = 12.5%)
Thanks for the link, though. I find it interesting that MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether), which is used during the winter to reduce air pollution, in turn increases groundwater pollution. Where I live our only source of water is groundwater, so the local governments are SUPER DUPER anal about pollution control like septic/chemical waste systems and fuel storage... but the pumps say that the fuel is oxygenated with an ether from November to February. I wonder if it's the same stuff...
=Smidge=
Probably because there's no such thing as an "anarchist government"...
=Smidge=
Hey, we have another 25 years for that...
Even if we never get the cyberbrains, I won't be upset as long as I get my Tachikoma.
=Smidge=
But you are not a mirror. At best you are acting as a cache, since you would still use their tracker server to gain access to the material and you would still have to go to them to get the .torrent file in the first place. It's stil a single point of download that they can control.
I'm sure they wouldn't mind shedding the bandwidth bill off on others if they didn't have to sacrifice the ability to remove access to the file at any time.
=Smidge=
I fail to see how that clause prevents BitTorrenting the file, if they control the .torrent file and the tracker.
Not that clauses like that ever actually stopped anyone before, obviously...
=Smidge=
The problem with that comparison is that things like os.py are standard libraries that are used by a very wide selection of programs. The 15 lines here are actually unique, meaningful code specific to the application's task. The libraries are available to everyone. Nobody counts the code in header files as their own.
Your "web browser" example is just invoking another program, and so it doesn't do anything unique or application specific.
So when he says "done in 15 lines of code", it means that all the programmer has to do is type out 15 lines of code, and that using libraries for support functions is pretty much a given.
Unless you're a pedantic shithead, of course.
I will grant you that putting multiple commands on one line is cheating, though. However if the symantics of the language allow you to shorthand multiple actions in a single command then it'sa fair game!
=Smidge=
DOS...
=Smidge=
That's all fine and good, as long as they don't update the design at any point.
But sooner or later they will have to come out sith something new just to keep up with the rest of the world. Are they going to have the infastructure to design it well, steal the designs from elsewhere, or end up making cheap "die cast" hardware?
I think the 5 year limitation on the brand name might be IBM saying they don't want to be associated with the cheap junk they might be making down the road.
=Smidge=
Read the text. The image is not digitally enhanced.
Right, because anything in text - especially on the internet - is 100% true by default. Read it again: The photographer insists that the streak and flash on the above image has not been created digitally. It's only the photographer's word that we have as evidence it hasn't been tampered with.
What I think is the most concerning is how the "event" is almost EXACTLY in the middle of the frame. You would think that, if something was going to fall unexpectedly out of the sky, the chance that you'd be taking a picture at that exact instant and at the exact spot it's going to hit would be all but nil.
The "Before" and "After" shots are also suspicious, since they are all identical except for the clouds. Though this is more easily explained: The camera was on a tripod.
Someone else noted that the internal timestamps for the three images are inconsistent with the order they are presented. According to this, the image with the streak was taken first at 15:20:49, the "After" picture was taken two minutes later at 15:22:47, and the "before" picture was taken only 24 seconds later at 15:23:11.
I call shenanigans. Either it's a doctored photo or the event was staged. Or both.
=Smidge=
Almost, but not quite.
Which would be closer to taking several outputs of a semi-random "black box" function which is reasonably well understood, and trying to determine the common input that generated the various outputs.
Even that's not a terrific analogy, really, but it's a little closer.
=Smidge=
Spam is a huge amount of traffic on the net, that is my problem with it. Turning clueless lycos users into antispambots will not DECREASE the traffic on the net but increase it.
But it WILL decrease SPAM traffic on the net!
For sake of example, let's say spam takes up 30% of all internet traffic. (I think I remember reading somewhere that this is about right, but it's just an example anyway so bear with me!)
Let's say you then produce an equal amount of "anti-spam" traffic. Your total traffic is now 130% of what it used to be. Which means SPAM related traffic now only composes 23% of all internet traffic! See? We cut spam traffic by 7%!
=Smidge=
Maybe it's not vandalism... perhaps they're just being more open about their business plan?
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity!
=Smidge=
This should come as no surprize, but that's how you can get killed in ANY vehicle collision.
The problem here is a little thing called INERTIA.
Let's assume you are wearing your safety belt properly, so you are reasonably well fixed to the car. For all intents and purposes you and the car are one.
Two cars of identical mass and velocity collide head on. In a perfect world they would come to a complete stop that the point of collision.
Now, two cars.. one of mass m, one of mass 3m, with the same velocity, collide head on. The 3m car has more inertia. as a result, the smaller car gets pushed back by the difference in energy.
Which is a worse acceleration? "V1 -> 0" or "V1 -> 0 -> V2" (Where V2 is in the opposite direction of V1)?
=Smidge=
You can buy those as kits. They're called "LTD" (Low Temperature Differential) engines. They even run backwards if you put them on ice!
Those things are anything BUT efficent. They are just very delicate and carefully constructed so they don't need much to run. Remember Carnot efficiency is 1-(Th/Tc)
=Smidge=
I'd like to see something set up so onboard video hardware can take advantage of this. It's difficult to get a motherboard that doesn't have onboard video anyway, and if you buy the right video card (ie: same manufacturer) they can both run to get an added performance boost. (You should, of course, be able to install any graphics card, but won't get anything extra for it)
=Smidge=
Because as with internal combustion engines and turbines, building smaller makes them much less efficient. The technology does NOT scale well at all.
=Smidge=
Aha! This actually worked very, very well!
I added an integer value "browser.cache.memory.capacity" with a value of 4096, then restarted the browser. Mem usage hasn't gotten up above 37MB since and performance has not been effected at all.
Thanks for the tip JB!
=Smidge=
While I'm not going to disagree with you, I fail to see how this absolves the developer's responsibility to build the application such that it doesn't try to absorb all the system's resources in the first place.
I'm currently using FireFox PR1.0, it's been open for about 5 days straight, running on Win2KPro. It's using 104MB of RAM. Why I don't know... I only have 4 tabs open at the moment and no flash or java running, and no third party plugins... but it's using 104MB or memory right now. It probably would have locked up if I didn't have a gig of RAM in this machine...
Went up to 108MB when I hit preview, and it's not going down...
=Smidge=
Not that I ever fook forward to loosing my lower legs, but if I do I can think of a few possible alternatives to traditional prostetics... Why try to restore natural function when you can have something better?
=Smidge=
You are correct that it's a media player, and that there are lots of media players out there. But IMO, WinAMP is the ideal choice for music. WMP doesn't have the functionality and extendability that WinAMP has, and many other free media players are clogged up with overly fancy interfaces and/or just don't perform as well.
WinAMP always was free. There's a "pro" version with extended capabilities, but at no point was there NOT a free version that did everything any other media player did (and often more).
And I do not recall WinAMP ever being open source. There is an extensive SDK available, but the program itself is not available in source form... at least not through any legit channels that I could find.
=Smidge=
Ozone is pure oxygen, just in tri-atomic instead of di-atomic form. It has a very distinct "electric" odor (not a burning smell) and prolonged exposure can be a problem. The occasional breif whiff isn't going to hurt you.
The black stuff is dust and dirt and other crud that used to be in the air. The devices work by ionizing particles and some gas molecules in the air and using an electric field to move them through the device. The "collection plates" are the positive electrode, and when the ionized air and dust contact with it, they lose their negative charge. Dust particles get stuck on the plate and are thus removed from the air.
Some ionized material makes it through, and this is what collects on your walls. Ever try rubbing a baloon on your shirt and sticking it to the wall? Same thing.
If properly designed, the voltages are not sufficient to generate significant ozone.
=Smidge=
Most of what is on the "collection grids" is actually burnt ozone
:)
How do you "burn" oxygen?
A properly designed ionic air filter does not produce any detectable ozone. There ARE some types of air cleaners that are designed specifically for ozone production - ozone is a powerful antiseptic and rids the air of all sorts of airborne bacteria and the like.
=Smidge=
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't think it's REQUIRED that you make a second or third choice... it's certainly not required for you to make a first choice!
If you want John to win, vote for him. If you DON'T want Tim to win, don't vote for him. You are not obligated to choose a candidate you absolutely hate as a 2nd choice. (Unless you're Australian, I hear...)
And based on the description of the electoral fusion thing, I don't see why the two are mutually exclusive. It would just be redundant in some cases. IRV lets you confidently vote for a third party, but avoids the spoiler and wasted vote problems by letting you say who you would have voted for if your primary choice wasn't available. EF seems to be a sort of underhanded, placing the same candidate on the same ballot in multiple spots and then adding up the total votes. This probably works best when people blindly vote "down the line" for their party without considering the individuals they're voting for (god forbid) and essentially tricking them into voting for candidates that are technically from other parties.
=Smidge=
So which is more likely, a terrorist/rouge nation launching a missle at us, or a terrorist/rouge nation driving a nuke by truck into a city?
Put it in a shipping container and send it by freight ship into NY harbor. It would be virtually impossible to stop that. The people operating the ship don't even have to know about it once you forge some paperwork. Customs doesn't get at it until the ship docks, and even then they rarely inspect more than 5% of the cargo!
It's neat, but this system seems to be too little too late in terms of national defence. I'm sure it will still prove useful to the military for protecting their own craft and such, but it does nothing for the safety of the nation in general.
=Smidge=