Absolutely no offense intended to anybody, but it always seemed to me that RMS is more pro-RMS than he is anything else. His ideas on freedom, in particular, seem quite unusual. For example, he advocates absolute freedom in one breath and tells everybody what to do in the next. He's very odd, in my opinion.
I don't have a "problem" with it, but whats wrong with a more general testing program that covers other manufacturers products as well?
Where do you draw the line? If you take all businesses-- in the English-speaking world, at least; I'm sure things are different elsewhere in ways I'm not educated about-- and lump them together, you'd probably find that about 90% of the desktop computers run Windows and MS Office. If you narrow down your sample by choosing a particular field-- like graphic arts, or programming-- the fractions would come out differently. The vast majority of graphic arts is done on Macs, and a significant minority of programmers run UNIX on their desktops. But in order to see those things, you have to choose your sample carefully.
The more carefully you choose your sample, the more skewed your results. For example, if you went back in time to about 1992 and examined only 3D animators' workstations, you'd find that more than half of all desktop computers run SGI IRIX. Does that mean that schools should offer proficiency tests in IRIS Showcase instead of (or even in addition to) PowerPoint? Like I said, where you draw that line?
I'm sure you're right, that familiarity with a tool leads to entrenchment-- if I can get away with using such a loaded word-- of that tool, but you've got to be realistic, I think.
The web classes have a similar approach. They teach outdated 1996ish table-based and pixel-based HTML for Exploiter and Netscape 4.x, and don't give a fuck about standards and more legitimate web techniques. The WIN-DOS labs have Internet Exploiter 5 and Netscape Communicator 4.79. Mozilla is not known, and they really don't care about the Mozilla-based Netscape 7.
Well, in all fairness, the purpose of those classes is to reflect the real world, right? For the same reason that you rightfully complain about teaching a graphics class with Corel PhotoPaint, it would be kind of silly to teach a web class with Mozilla. Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 4 (on both Windows and Mac) represent the vast majority of web clients out there. (There's a significant fraction of IE 6 for Windows, too, but I understand that it's pretty much bug-for-bug compatible with IE 5, so it doesn't really count.)
I'm this close --><-- to launching into a rant about how Mozilla would be a much more useful browser if it had been written to be fully compatible with the various quirks of IE 5 as well as all those new-fangled standards that lots of people talk about but hardly anyone uses. This is neither the time or the place for it, so I'll abstain. But it's there, just below the surface, and it would be dishonest of me to try to hide it.
No. Traction is more than just friction. It's the combination of simple sliding friction with surface area, weight, and other factors.
To think about sliding friction in terms of your car, imagine locking all the wheels and then trying to tow the car over a flat surface. Basically, you'd be dragging your car down the road. Do it once with normal tire pressure, and measure the amount of force required to do it. That force is N. (Newtons, horsepower, whatever units you prefer. It doesn't matter; because all we're doing is comparing before-and-after.)
Now reduce the air pressure in your tires. Your tires get softer, and they flatten out a bit, increasing the surface area that touches the road. This increases the sliding friction of the car-road system, but decreases the pressure at the tire-road interface. So this time, when you drag the car, you'll find that it takes exactly N units of force to do the job. The net result in terms of sliding resistance is zero.
But traction is a more complex idea than simple sliding friction. Traction, as I said before, is a function of friction, surface area, weight-- even the mechanical factors associated with the "knobbiness" of your tires. If you were to put slick, skinny tires on your car, you'd find that they slip on the pavement quite easily. On the other hand, fat, knobby tires are less likely to slip when spinning against the ground, because of those factors I mentioned. This becomes especially apparent when you're driving on dry soil or sand. Because of the traction factors, skinny tires will tend to slip and dig themselves into the ground, while fat tires will be more able to grab the loose surface.
You know, a quick google search will show you that lots of people enjoyed that book as much as both you and I did. You can find "Twirlips" all over Usenet.
I'm just lucky that is wasn't already taken.
I'm also amazed that nobody has snatched up "vrimini.org" yet.;-)
This post will mean nothing to the innocent bystanders who haven't read A Fire Upon the Deep.
It's kind of boring, compared to the others, but any experiment that shows that surface area has no relationship to friction goes against most peoples intuition.
Just to clarify, friction does have a relationship to surface area. It's a very simple relationship, too: more surface area between two objects means more friction.
The net result, though, is zero, because increasing the surface area of contact increases the friction by a factor, X, and decreases the pressure at the interface, which in turn reduces the friction by the same factor, X. The net result is that friction is constant as surface area of contact varies.
But it's not true to say that there's no relationship between friction and surface area. It's just that it's a complex, dysfunctional relationship, that's all.
Also, try goobleck. It's a cornstarch based substance that behaves as a solid or a liquid. Water is the other ingredient, but I don't remember the ratio.
It's actually called "ooblech," not "gooblech," but what you're talking about is what you call a "non-Newtonian fluid." Technically, a non-Newtonian fluid is one whose viscosity is not constant for all shear rates. There are two types of non-Newtonian fluids: rheopectic and thixotropic. The viscosity of rheopectic fluids increases with increasing force; in other words, the harder you smack them, the stiffer they get. Thixotropic fluids are the opposite; their viscosity decreases as the amount of force applied increases.
If you read much science fiction, you'll inevitably run across the idea of liquid armor, sometimes called "armorgel" in the books. The basic premise is that you could cover vulnerable parts of your body-- like your torso, or your elbows-- with a garment that incorporates pockets filled with rheopectic fluid. As you move around, it feels like these little pockets have water in them, but when something dramatic happens-- like getting shot, or cracking your elbow on the tarmac-- the fluid hardens to absorb some of the force and to protect you. It's a fairly common idea, and one that's not totally far-fetched.
The suspension of cornstarch in water forms a rheopectic fluid. It looks and acts like a liquid when it's inert, but when subjected to force, it changes is viscosity pretty dramatically. For example, you can take a handful of cornstarch-water liquid and pass it from hand to hand rapidly. While you're doing it, it feels like it has the approximate consistency of silly putty or bread dough. As soon as you stop moving it, the viscosity drops drastically and it runs through your fingers.
Another fun demonstration is to take a moderate amount of cornstarch-water suspension-- say, 500 ml or so-- and pour it from a height of about five feet onto a tile floor. The fluid will pour like water, but when it hits the floor, it'll bounce like dough or putty. After a bounce, or two if you're really lucky, the mass will return to its liquid state and go all puddly.
Thixotropic fluids are more common and less interesting, because they're very thick when at rest, but grow thinner when subjected to force. The most common thixotropic fluid is ordinary tomato ketchup.
The thing about "it widens the imbalance between the rich and poor" is pretty typical Marxist rhetoric, but for one little thing. Marx would probably say that "widening the imbalance" between rich and poor is a good thing, because things have to get worse before they can get better. Only when the world has hit rock-bottom, economically and socially, will the working people of the world wake up to their circumstances and bring in the True Revolution.
Or so Marx would say. It seems clear from history that Marx was wrong about just about everything. He seemed to base his reasoning on the assumption that the upper classes (the bourgeoisie-- cool, that's in my spell checker!) are inherently corrupt and that the working classes (the proletariat) are inherently noble. Thing is, though, that if you take somebody out of the working class and put him into the upper class, nine times out of ten he'll become a died-in-the-wool capitalist. Marx didn't count on this aspect of human nature.
So yeah, I agree with you. This is, in fact, just bullshit, but I think so for a slightly different reason. See, the capitalist thinks that inequity is a good thing because it creates a slope of upward mobility that all people can aspire to climb, thereby inspiring all sorts of good things that make the world a better place. And the socialist or communist thinks that inequity is a good thing because it will, sooner or later, bring about the Revolution that will make the world a better place. I don't know of a rationalized political philosophy that argues that inequity between classes is something you should oppose directly.
I think the author of this article was probably an amateur.
The Senate currently considering a bill which would require all personal computers to have DRM built in and Microsoft holds the patent on DRM Operating Systems.
I grew up in Louisiana. When I was a teenager, the state legislature considered a bill that would make marriages between first cousins legal.
Just because a bill has been introduced in a legislative body doesn't mean it in any immediate danger of being passed. Slashdotters need to stop jumping to conclusions based on bills that never even made it out of committee.
It's unreasonable like carving a roast beast-- er, sorry, too much Dr. Seuss-- carving a roast beef with a screwdriver is unreasonable. If the person doing the job finds the tool inappropriate, maybe the mandate should be reconsidered.
I'll note again that I don't think mandating a specific way of writing things is at all unreasonable.
Ah, but that's the thing. Mandating the use of XML for technical writing gets in the way of the job. If you're spending time tweaking document structure in an obscure language, you're not writing.
All I'm saying is this: you will almost certainly gain more efficiency and productivity by letting your people do their jobs with the tools they prefer than by requiring the use of any one tool, not matter what its technical or political merits might be.
Your knowledge of physics is seriously out of date.
I'm sure this is true, but I understood that beta decay happens when a down quark in a neutron turns into an up quark plus a W boson, which in turn decays into an electron and an anti-electron neutrino. The electron-- along with the neutrino-- skitters off, and the original neutron (two down quarks and one up) becomes a proton (two up quarks and a down).
Electron capture, as I understand it, happens when the inner orbital of an atom overlaps with the nuclear radius in such a way that, essentially, beta decay can happen in reverse. That is, a proton can "absorb" an electron, turning into a neutron.
I guess you could say that beta decay is "replusion" and electron capture is "attraction," but isn't it more accurate to say that these are forward and backward instances of the weak interaction? It's more of a parity thing than a push-pull thing, right?
But, of course, you're fundamentally correct. My understanding is seriously out of date.;-)
The fact that gravity is the only force without a (known) negative version....
Uhhh... did somebody find "negative versions" of the strong and weak interactions while I wasn't looking?
Unless my knowledge of physics is as out of date as my education is-- a possibility I admit freely-- I believe the electromagnetic force is the only known force that has a repulsion component. The strong, weak, and gravitational forces are all attraction-only gizmos.
Well, this thing about 10.3 is based in reality. Somebody at Apple said that odd major releases would be free. This was said after the whole Jag price gripefest. Do some googling and I'm sure you will find it.
As it turns out, googling did not reveal what you're talking about. Unless you have something more to offer than "somebody at Apple said," I'm afraid I have to conclude that you're just talking out of your ear on this. No offense, but when an anonymous coward posts information with no sources and says, "google for it," ninety-nine times out of a hundred he's just making stuff up.
Saddam does not have the capacity to cause any big damage to USA, but the other way around.
That's not true. Iraq is known to have the capability to deliver chemical and biological weapons to our allies in that region, and also to our troops in Saudi and elsewhere. Iraq certainly has the capability to deliver said weapons directly to the US itself, albeit through what we would normally consider to be terrorist channels. And Iraq is working very hard to develop the capability to deliver nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons directly to the US mainland via its ballistic missile program.
Iraq's stockpile of weapons, plus the clandestine network of partisans and agents that wounded us so severely last September, adds up to a credible threat.
USA has weapons of mass destruction, and chemical and biological weapons as well.
As do many other countries. Simply having the weapons doesn't constitute a threat. Having the weapons, being willing to use them against one's enemies, and making it clear that one considers the US to be one's enemy: these three things together constitute a threat to the US. Iraq fits all three of these criteria.
USA did not sign the Kyoto agreement or any other UN resolutions towards banning such weapons. Should the world enforce USA compliance?
No. The UN charter recognizes the right of sovereign nations to arm themselves. Having weapons-- even weapons of mass destruction-- is not in violation of any UN agreement or resolution.
USA IS willing (EAGER!!!) to use WMD's against Iraq.
No, we're not. The United States has a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons, and a no-use policy on chemical and biological weapons. However, that policy also says that we as a nation consider all weapons of mass destruction to be equivalent, and that we are willing, if necessary, to respond to attacks in kind. If the US is ever attacked with chemical, biological, or radiological weapons, we will consider-- not necessarily act, but consider-- responding with the only weapons of mass destruction in our arsenal: nuclear weapons.
In other words, US military doctrine is that we will never use chemical, biological, or radiological weapons, and that we will only consider the use of nuclear weapons if we are directly attacked with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.
That's a long way from "willing and eager to use WMDs against Iraq."
Now, in the interest of complete honesty, I will admit to something. If you took WMDs out of the question and asked me, "Do you think the US is eager to go to war with Iraq," I wouldn't be able to give you an unqualified "no" answer. I think there are some people in the US that hate and fear Saddam Hussein and Iraq under his rule. I think there are some people in the US who think that Hussein is a madman who could hurt us far worse than Osama bin Laden has, if we gave him half a chance. I think there are some people in the US who wouldn't be upset if some noble soul snuck into Hussein's bedroom and put a bullet through his head.
But I don't think that necessarily means we're eager for war. War is a scary thing, no matter which side you're on. There are certainly a huge number of people in the US that oppose the idea of war based on sheer principle, and there's another big group of people that doesn't agree that war with Iraq is the right thing at this time.
But I don't think, as a nation, that we're completely opposed to it, either. I think there are probably some people who think the way I do: that a quick and contained invasion of Iraq, followed immediately by the destruction of the Hussein regime and the longer-term formation of a new democratic government, would be the pretty good way to put and end to this situation.
Eager for war? No. Willing to do what we think is best? Yes, definitely.
Nobody depends/relys more on oil then USA, while nobody has more oil than Iraq.
Let's get specific here. According to "Monthly Energy Review," published by the US DOE in October, 2001, the US imports 619,000 barrels of oil per day from Iraq. That sounds like a lot. However, that's only about 6.5% of our total daily oil imports; our biggest oil import partner is Canada, with 1,784,000 barrels per day, followed by Saudi with 1,858,000. So Iraq's contribution to US oil supplies is negligible.
Incidentally, about 40% of all the oil we consume in the US is produced domestically. Canada, Saudi, and Venezuela comprise about another 25%. Oil imports from Iraq, contrary to some opinions, just aren't that important to the US.
Does it make you think?
Absolutely this situation makes me think. Two weeks ago, I was strongly opposed to any war between the US and Iraq at this time. Then I listened to the President's speech on Monday night, and it piqued my interest. I did some research, and learned what appear to be some pretty well documented facts about Iraq's military capabilities, their track record, and their stated policies. Now I think an invasion of Iraq to facilitate regime change is an entirely justified and appropriate action.
I don't think the world is as black-and-white as you think it is. Within certain boundaries, I think the world does-- and should-- work just as you describe. But outside the envelope, things aren't as predictable. I think IT's requiring technical writers to use XML or LaTeX (which is a contrived example, of course) would be unreasonable. When you put unreasonable demands on people-- people who are just trying to do their jobs, by the way-- it's pretty likely that people are going to respond unreasonably.
My opinion on the whole matter is that people should use whatever tools they like to do their jobs-- to the extend that it's practical for them to do so. XML might have some technical merits over Microsoft Word, but if the writer wants to use Word, that's his call.
There is no place for someone who is deliberately not doing their job. Discipline them. They should use legitimate channels to handle their problems, not act like spoiled two-year-olds.
You know, I normally find your posts pretty thoughtful, and I often agree with them. But this time I think you're way off the mark. "Discipline them?" If you treat people like children, you shouldn't really be surprised if they act like children in return, should you?
General-purpose computers are great things because they allow people to use the tools they find most effective to get the job done. In this example, what's the job? Producing documentation. (The submitter was talking about internal documentation, but the OP was talking about docs in general, evidently.) To produce documentation, you should use the tool that's best suited for producing documentation, not the one that looks coolest on paper or that has the neatest feature set or whatever.
Writing structured documents in something like LaTeX (with which I have some experience) or XML (with which I have less) works well up to a point... but only up to a point. If your document is going to be basically prose-- unformatted paragraphs organized into sections, chapters, and books-- then writing with a markup language will probably work well. The ratio of content to markup will be small, so you can just concentrate on your words.
But if you want to create even something as simple as a bulleted list, suddenly you have to deal with markup. Creating a bulleted list in Word is trivial; you click the "bulleted list" button and go to town. Creating a bulleted list in LaTeX or XML is more work, and it scatters markup throughout your document in an unappealing and unpleasant way.
So markup works in some situations, but in others it's not a good solution. This is what we should be talking about here. Not talking about disciplining coworkers who "act like spoiled two-year-olds."
I just think you're forgetting what the purpose of computers and IT is: to give people the tools they need to do their jobs. Any system that requires its users to work in a way that they're not happy with is flawed, and could be improved somehow.
If the ordinary UNCRITICAL lay audience judges that "perfect" digital DLP actually isn't quite as good as 35mm...
The problem, though, is that DLP is "perfect" every time, while 35 mm prints can only be "perfect" once. After the first pass through the projector, you've got scratches and dust and gate weave and so on, and it just gets worse over time.
So a DLP projection of the current generation may not be quite as sharp as a clean 35 mm print made right off the internegative. But that's not what you see when you go to your local cineplex. Instead, you have to compare DLP to bog-quality, scratched, stretched 35 mm prints that were never that great to begin with due to the number of iterations in the duplication process.
I've seen several movies in a DLP theater, most recently "Signs." I was pretty impressed most of the time, but "Signs" was a little too dark to look good on DLP. DLP can't hold black as well as film, so the movie looked washed out. If they can somehow fix that problem-- I'm not sure if it's even theoretically possible-- I think 35 mm theater projection will have lost the fight.
Wow. If I didn't know better, I would swear that I wrote this and simply forgot about it. It's amazing how close this poster came to voicing my precise opinions on this subject.
Wow.
(Yeah, I know. This post was just a thinly disguised "me too!" Sorry about that.)
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely no offense intended to anybody, but it always seemed to me that RMS is more pro-RMS than he is anything else. His ideas on freedom, in particular, seem quite unusual. For example, he advocates absolute freedom in one breath and tells everybody what to do in the next. He's very odd, in my opinion.
I don't have a "problem" with it, but whats wrong with a more general testing program that covers other manufacturers products as well?
Where do you draw the line? If you take all businesses-- in the English-speaking world, at least; I'm sure things are different elsewhere in ways I'm not educated about-- and lump them together, you'd probably find that about 90% of the desktop computers run Windows and MS Office. If you narrow down your sample by choosing a particular field-- like graphic arts, or programming-- the fractions would come out differently. The vast majority of graphic arts is done on Macs, and a significant minority of programmers run UNIX on their desktops. But in order to see those things, you have to choose your sample carefully.
The more carefully you choose your sample, the more skewed your results. For example, if you went back in time to about 1992 and examined only 3D animators' workstations, you'd find that more than half of all desktop computers run SGI IRIX. Does that mean that schools should offer proficiency tests in IRIS Showcase instead of (or even in addition to) PowerPoint? Like I said, where you draw that line?
I'm sure you're right, that familiarity with a tool leads to entrenchment-- if I can get away with using such a loaded word-- of that tool, but you've got to be realistic, I think.
The web classes have a similar approach. They teach outdated 1996ish table-based and pixel-based HTML for Exploiter and Netscape 4.x, and don't give a fuck about standards and more legitimate web techniques. The WIN-DOS labs have Internet Exploiter 5 and Netscape Communicator 4.79. Mozilla is not known, and they really don't care about the Mozilla-based Netscape 7.
Well, in all fairness, the purpose of those classes is to reflect the real world, right? For the same reason that you rightfully complain about teaching a graphics class with Corel PhotoPaint, it would be kind of silly to teach a web class with Mozilla. Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 4 (on both Windows and Mac) represent the vast majority of web clients out there. (There's a significant fraction of IE 6 for Windows, too, but I understand that it's pretty much bug-for-bug compatible with IE 5, so it doesn't really count.)
I'm this close --><-- to launching into a rant about how Mozilla would be a much more useful browser if it had been written to be fully compatible with the various quirks of IE 5 as well as all those new-fangled standards that lots of people talk about but hardly anyone uses. This is neither the time or the place for it, so I'll abstain. But it's there, just below the surface, and it would be dishonest of me to try to hide it.
No. Traction is more than just friction. It's the combination of simple sliding friction with surface area, weight, and other factors.
To think about sliding friction in terms of your car, imagine locking all the wheels and then trying to tow the car over a flat surface. Basically, you'd be dragging your car down the road. Do it once with normal tire pressure, and measure the amount of force required to do it. That force is N. (Newtons, horsepower, whatever units you prefer. It doesn't matter; because all we're doing is comparing before-and-after.)
Now reduce the air pressure in your tires. Your tires get softer, and they flatten out a bit, increasing the surface area that touches the road. This increases the sliding friction of the car-road system, but decreases the pressure at the tire-road interface. So this time, when you drag the car, you'll find that it takes exactly N units of force to do the job. The net result in terms of sliding resistance is zero.
But traction is a more complex idea than simple sliding friction. Traction, as I said before, is a function of friction, surface area, weight-- even the mechanical factors associated with the "knobbiness" of your tires. If you were to put slick, skinny tires on your car, you'd find that they slip on the pavement quite easily. On the other hand, fat, knobby tires are less likely to slip when spinning against the ground, because of those factors I mentioned. This becomes especially apparent when you're driving on dry soil or sand. Because of the traction factors, skinny tires will tend to slip and dig themselves into the ground, while fat tires will be more able to grab the loose surface.
You know, a quick google search will show you that lots of people enjoyed that book as much as both you and I did. You can find "Twirlips" all over Usenet.
;-)
I'm just lucky that is wasn't already taken.
I'm also amazed that nobody has snatched up "vrimini.org" yet.
This post will mean nothing to the innocent bystanders who haven't read A Fire Upon the Deep.
If you were to release the cinder block with the flat side facing you and the rope attached in the middle....
That's why the wise man uses a bowling ball with a hook in it for this particular party trick: no corners.
>>3: Pouring liquid nitrogen on your hand (the back, not your cupped hand)
This would dovetail nicely with the molten lead demonstration.
And, in all likelihood, you could wrap up the session with the ever-popular "trip to the emergency room" demonstration.
Although you don't quite qualify for the darwin awards...
Oh, come on, isn't there some kind of Darwin Honorable Mention that we can give him? Lord knows he deserves it....
It's kind of boring, compared to the others, but any experiment that shows that surface area has no relationship to friction goes against most peoples intuition.
Just to clarify, friction does have a relationship to surface area. It's a very simple relationship, too: more surface area between two objects means more friction.
The net result, though, is zero, because increasing the surface area of contact increases the friction by a factor, X, and decreases the pressure at the interface, which in turn reduces the friction by the same factor, X. The net result is that friction is constant as surface area of contact varies.
But it's not true to say that there's no relationship between friction and surface area. It's just that it's a complex, dysfunctional relationship, that's all.
Also, try goobleck. It's a cornstarch based substance that behaves as a solid or a liquid. Water is the other ingredient, but I don't remember the ratio.
It's actually called "ooblech," not "gooblech," but what you're talking about is what you call a "non-Newtonian fluid." Technically, a non-Newtonian fluid is one whose viscosity is not constant for all shear rates. There are two types of non-Newtonian fluids: rheopectic and thixotropic. The viscosity of rheopectic fluids increases with increasing force; in other words, the harder you smack them, the stiffer they get. Thixotropic fluids are the opposite; their viscosity decreases as the amount of force applied increases.
If you read much science fiction, you'll inevitably run across the idea of liquid armor, sometimes called "armorgel" in the books. The basic premise is that you could cover vulnerable parts of your body-- like your torso, or your elbows-- with a garment that incorporates pockets filled with rheopectic fluid. As you move around, it feels like these little pockets have water in them, but when something dramatic happens-- like getting shot, or cracking your elbow on the tarmac-- the fluid hardens to absorb some of the force and to protect you. It's a fairly common idea, and one that's not totally far-fetched.
The suspension of cornstarch in water forms a rheopectic fluid. It looks and acts like a liquid when it's inert, but when subjected to force, it changes is viscosity pretty dramatically. For example, you can take a handful of cornstarch-water liquid and pass it from hand to hand rapidly. While you're doing it, it feels like it has the approximate consistency of silly putty or bread dough. As soon as you stop moving it, the viscosity drops drastically and it runs through your fingers.
Another fun demonstration is to take a moderate amount of cornstarch-water suspension-- say, 500 ml or so-- and pour it from a height of about five feet onto a tile floor. The fluid will pour like water, but when it hits the floor, it'll bounce like dough or putty. After a bounce, or two if you're really lucky, the mass will return to its liquid state and go all puddly.
Thixotropic fluids are more common and less interesting, because they're very thick when at rest, but grow thinner when subjected to force. The most common thixotropic fluid is ordinary tomato ketchup.
The thing about "it widens the imbalance between the rich and poor" is pretty typical Marxist rhetoric, but for one little thing. Marx would probably say that "widening the imbalance" between rich and poor is a good thing, because things have to get worse before they can get better. Only when the world has hit rock-bottom, economically and socially, will the working people of the world wake up to their circumstances and bring in the True Revolution.
Or so Marx would say. It seems clear from history that Marx was wrong about just about everything. He seemed to base his reasoning on the assumption that the upper classes (the bourgeoisie-- cool, that's in my spell checker!) are inherently corrupt and that the working classes (the proletariat) are inherently noble. Thing is, though, that if you take somebody out of the working class and put him into the upper class, nine times out of ten he'll become a died-in-the-wool capitalist. Marx didn't count on this aspect of human nature.
So yeah, I agree with you. This is, in fact, just bullshit, but I think so for a slightly different reason. See, the capitalist thinks that inequity is a good thing because it creates a slope of upward mobility that all people can aspire to climb, thereby inspiring all sorts of good things that make the world a better place. And the socialist or communist thinks that inequity is a good thing because it will, sooner or later, bring about the Revolution that will make the world a better place. I don't know of a rationalized political philosophy that argues that inequity between classes is something you should oppose directly.
I think the author of this article was probably an amateur.
The Senate currently considering a bill which would require all personal computers to have DRM built in and Microsoft holds the patent on DRM Operating Systems.
I grew up in Louisiana. When I was a teenager, the state legislature considered a bill that would make marriages between first cousins legal.
Just because a bill has been introduced in a legislative body doesn't mean it in any immediate danger of being passed. Slashdotters need to stop jumping to conclusions based on bills that never even made it out of committee.
Erm. . . How would this be unreasonable?
It's unreasonable like carving a roast beast-- er, sorry, too much Dr. Seuss-- carving a roast beef with a screwdriver is unreasonable. If the person doing the job finds the tool inappropriate, maybe the mandate should be reconsidered.
I'll note again that I don't think mandating a specific way of writing things is at all unreasonable.
Ah, but that's the thing. Mandating the use of XML for technical writing gets in the way of the job. If you're spending time tweaking document structure in an obscure language, you're not writing.
All I'm saying is this: you will almost certainly gain more efficiency and productivity by letting your people do their jobs with the tools they prefer than by requiring the use of any one tool, not matter what its technical or political merits might be.
Okay, you win. ;-)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
Of course, the corollary is also true: "Any sufficiently rigged demo is indistinguishable from magic."
Your knowledge of physics is seriously out of date.
;-)
I'm sure this is true, but I understood that beta decay happens when a down quark in a neutron turns into an up quark plus a W boson, which in turn decays into an electron and an anti-electron neutrino. The electron-- along with the neutrino-- skitters off, and the original neutron (two down quarks and one up) becomes a proton (two up quarks and a down).
Electron capture, as I understand it, happens when the inner orbital of an atom overlaps with the nuclear radius in such a way that, essentially, beta decay can happen in reverse. That is, a proton can "absorb" an electron, turning into a neutron.
I guess you could say that beta decay is "replusion" and electron capture is "attraction," but isn't it more accurate to say that these are forward and backward instances of the weak interaction? It's more of a parity thing than a push-pull thing, right?
But, of course, you're fundamentally correct. My understanding is seriously out of date.
The fact that gravity is the only force without a (known) negative version....
Uhhh... did somebody find "negative versions" of the strong and weak interactions while I wasn't looking?
Unless my knowledge of physics is as out of date as my education is-- a possibility I admit freely-- I believe the electromagnetic force is the only known force that has a repulsion component. The strong, weak, and gravitational forces are all attraction-only gizmos.
Well, this thing about 10.3 is based in reality. Somebody at Apple said that odd major releases would be free. This was said after the whole Jag price gripefest. Do some googling and I'm sure you will find it.
As it turns out, googling did not reveal what you're talking about. Unless you have something more to offer than "somebody at Apple said," I'm afraid I have to conclude that you're just talking out of your ear on this. No offense, but when an anonymous coward posts information with no sources and says, "google for it," ninety-nine times out of a hundred he's just making stuff up.
Can you do better than this?
I've been screwed so many times by buying a $17.99 CD and having only 1 or 2 good songs on it.
Just to play the Devil's advocate, you know you can still buy singles, right?
Don't flame me or anything. I'm just trying to offer a slightly different perspective.
for the humor impaired, this is a joke, not a troll
I guess it worked! You got -1 troll the first time you posted this, and +1 funny the second time! Pretty impressive!
Saddam does not have the capacity to cause any big damage to USA, but the other way around.
That's not true. Iraq is known to have the capability to deliver chemical and biological weapons to our allies in that region, and also to our troops in Saudi and elsewhere. Iraq certainly has the capability to deliver said weapons directly to the US itself, albeit through what we would normally consider to be terrorist channels. And Iraq is working very hard to develop the capability to deliver nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons directly to the US mainland via its ballistic missile program.
Iraq's stockpile of weapons, plus the clandestine network of partisans and agents that wounded us so severely last September, adds up to a credible threat.
USA has weapons of mass destruction, and chemical and biological weapons as well.
As do many other countries. Simply having the weapons doesn't constitute a threat. Having the weapons, being willing to use them against one's enemies, and making it clear that one considers the US to be one's enemy: these three things together constitute a threat to the US. Iraq fits all three of these criteria.
USA did not sign the Kyoto agreement or any other UN resolutions towards banning such weapons. Should the world enforce USA compliance?
No. The UN charter recognizes the right of sovereign nations to arm themselves. Having weapons-- even weapons of mass destruction-- is not in violation of any UN agreement or resolution.
USA IS willing (EAGER!!!) to use WMD's against Iraq.
No, we're not. The United States has a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons, and a no-use policy on chemical and biological weapons. However, that policy also says that we as a nation consider all weapons of mass destruction to be equivalent, and that we are willing, if necessary, to respond to attacks in kind. If the US is ever attacked with chemical, biological, or radiological weapons, we will consider-- not necessarily act, but consider-- responding with the only weapons of mass destruction in our arsenal: nuclear weapons.
In other words, US military doctrine is that we will never use chemical, biological, or radiological weapons, and that we will only consider the use of nuclear weapons if we are directly attacked with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.
That's a long way from "willing and eager to use WMDs against Iraq."
Now, in the interest of complete honesty, I will admit to something. If you took WMDs out of the question and asked me, "Do you think the US is eager to go to war with Iraq," I wouldn't be able to give you an unqualified "no" answer. I think there are some people in the US that hate and fear Saddam Hussein and Iraq under his rule. I think there are some people in the US who think that Hussein is a madman who could hurt us far worse than Osama bin Laden has, if we gave him half a chance. I think there are some people in the US who wouldn't be upset if some noble soul snuck into Hussein's bedroom and put a bullet through his head.
But I don't think that necessarily means we're eager for war. War is a scary thing, no matter which side you're on. There are certainly a huge number of people in the US that oppose the idea of war based on sheer principle, and there's another big group of people that doesn't agree that war with Iraq is the right thing at this time.
But I don't think, as a nation, that we're completely opposed to it, either. I think there are probably some people who think the way I do: that a quick and contained invasion of Iraq, followed immediately by the destruction of the Hussein regime and the longer-term formation of a new democratic government, would be the pretty good way to put and end to this situation.
Eager for war? No. Willing to do what we think is best? Yes, definitely.
Nobody depends/relys more on oil then USA, while nobody has more oil than Iraq.
Let's get specific here. According to "Monthly Energy Review," published by the US DOE in October, 2001, the US imports 619,000 barrels of oil per day from Iraq. That sounds like a lot. However, that's only about 6.5% of our total daily oil imports; our biggest oil import partner is Canada, with 1,784,000 barrels per day, followed by Saudi with 1,858,000. So Iraq's contribution to US oil supplies is negligible.
Incidentally, about 40% of all the oil we consume in the US is produced domestically. Canada, Saudi, and Venezuela comprise about another 25%. Oil imports from Iraq, contrary to some opinions, just aren't that important to the US.
Does it make you think?
Absolutely this situation makes me think. Two weeks ago, I was strongly opposed to any war between the US and Iraq at this time. Then I listened to the President's speech on Monday night, and it piqued my interest. I did some research, and learned what appear to be some pretty well documented facts about Iraq's military capabilities, their track record, and their stated policies. Now I think an invasion of Iraq to facilitate regime change is an entirely justified and appropriate action.
I don't think the world is as black-and-white as you think it is. Within certain boundaries, I think the world does-- and should-- work just as you describe. But outside the envelope, things aren't as predictable. I think IT's requiring technical writers to use XML or LaTeX (which is a contrived example, of course) would be unreasonable. When you put unreasonable demands on people-- people who are just trying to do their jobs, by the way-- it's pretty likely that people are going to respond unreasonably.
My opinion on the whole matter is that people should use whatever tools they like to do their jobs-- to the extend that it's practical for them to do so. XML might have some technical merits over Microsoft Word, but if the writer wants to use Word, that's his call.
But that's just my opinion.
There is no place for someone who is deliberately not doing their job. Discipline them. They should use legitimate channels to handle their problems, not act like spoiled two-year-olds.
You know, I normally find your posts pretty thoughtful, and I often agree with them. But this time I think you're way off the mark. "Discipline them?" If you treat people like children, you shouldn't really be surprised if they act like children in return, should you?
General-purpose computers are great things because they allow people to use the tools they find most effective to get the job done. In this example, what's the job? Producing documentation. (The submitter was talking about internal documentation, but the OP was talking about docs in general, evidently.) To produce documentation, you should use the tool that's best suited for producing documentation, not the one that looks coolest on paper or that has the neatest feature set or whatever.
Writing structured documents in something like LaTeX (with which I have some experience) or XML (with which I have less) works well up to a point... but only up to a point. If your document is going to be basically prose-- unformatted paragraphs organized into sections, chapters, and books-- then writing with a markup language will probably work well. The ratio of content to markup will be small, so you can just concentrate on your words.
But if you want to create even something as simple as a bulleted list, suddenly you have to deal with markup. Creating a bulleted list in Word is trivial; you click the "bulleted list" button and go to town. Creating a bulleted list in LaTeX or XML is more work, and it scatters markup throughout your document in an unappealing and unpleasant way.
So markup works in some situations, but in others it's not a good solution. This is what we should be talking about here. Not talking about disciplining coworkers who "act like spoiled two-year-olds."
I just think you're forgetting what the purpose of computers and IT is: to give people the tools they need to do their jobs. Any system that requires its users to work in a way that they're not happy with is flawed, and could be improved somehow.
(Sorry about the rant.)
If the ordinary UNCRITICAL lay audience judges that "perfect" digital DLP actually isn't quite as good as 35mm...
The problem, though, is that DLP is "perfect" every time, while 35 mm prints can only be "perfect" once. After the first pass through the projector, you've got scratches and dust and gate weave and so on, and it just gets worse over time.
So a DLP projection of the current generation may not be quite as sharp as a clean 35 mm print made right off the internegative. But that's not what you see when you go to your local cineplex. Instead, you have to compare DLP to bog-quality, scratched, stretched 35 mm prints that were never that great to begin with due to the number of iterations in the duplication process.
I've seen several movies in a DLP theater, most recently "Signs." I was pretty impressed most of the time, but "Signs" was a little too dark to look good on DLP. DLP can't hold black as well as film, so the movie looked washed out. If they can somehow fix that problem-- I'm not sure if it's even theoretically possible-- I think 35 mm theater projection will have lost the fight.
Wow. If I didn't know better, I would swear that I wrote this and simply forgot about it. It's amazing how close this poster came to voicing my precise opinions on this subject.
Wow.
(Yeah, I know. This post was just a thinly disguised "me too!" Sorry about that.)