So, we ended up with a foot being, well, the length of a foot, It made sense at the time, and worked well enough.
The history of temperature units is interesting and convoluted, but 32 for freezing is based on binary divisions (64 units) between that and human body temperature (96).
Fahrenheit is quite useful when you are thinking in terms of human comfort and safety.
Summer weight clothing will be appropriate and comfortable at 75, autumn weight at 50, winter weight at 25.
"Unlimited Access" is a marketing legacy from the days of dial-up AOL, as the geek knows perfectly well. It implied nothing more than affordable flat rate monthly billing for a mass market consumer-grade service.
Combine that with affordable flat rate monthly billing plans for local and regional calling plans and you had a winner.
It's a commercial entity behind this, which means the government has easy leverage to make them snoop on all their millions of users.
The commercial product has at least the virtue of being usable by ordinary mortals and the placement and promotion needed to build a significant base of users.
The Enterprise computer was not hampered by being in another galaxy... They had local copies of all the data at all times
The Enterprise computer knew what it needed to know to serve the plot. No information lost, corrupted or concealed. No conflicts in interpretation. The perfect machine for a culture turned self-righteous and complacent, without doubts or uncertainties.
Did anyone really expect the MPEG-LA to offer license terms that were amenable to FOSS goals? That would eliminate their ability to exert and enforce control over the market.
WebM is a distribution codec for the web.
The MPEG LA licensors are a global R&D and manufacturing combine of breathtaking size, scope and power. The licensees are built on the same scale. MPEG LA
The fact is that neither Lotus nor WordPerfect ever successfully managed the transition from DOS text-mode to Windows GUI. This is due to a lot of factors, including bad management; W. Pete Peterson's book Almost Perfect is unintentionally revealing of this...
Word Perfect supported every platform known to man, each with its own fiefdom within the company. In the DOS era it shipped with customized drivers for every printer known to man. The slightest change in the product became a nightmare to implement..
In the Windows era, the word processor would expand into the space occupied by print shop, desktop publishing and other applications. The quick-and-dirty solution for dozens of home, school, industrial and office projects,
Word Perfect didn't see that coming, didn't see its value.
Word Perfect never evolved into an integrated office suite, much less an integrated --- managed --- office system.
OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior
Preventable only if your daughter has no intimate sexual relationships ever.
Who is at risk for HPV?
Anyone who is having (or has ever had) sex can get HPV. HPV is so common that nearly all sexually-active men and women get it at some point in their lives. This is true even for people who only have sex with one person in their lifetime.
How do people get HPV?
HPV is passed on through genital contact, most often during vaginal and anal sex. HPV may also be passed on during oral sex and genital-to-genital contact. HPV can be passed on between straight and same-sex partners --- even when the infected person has no signs or symptoms.
Most infected persons do not realize they are infected, or that they are passing HPV on to a sex partner. A person can still have HPV, even if years have passed since he or she has had sexual contact with an infected person. It is also possible to get more than one type of HPV.
Show a judge clear evidence of great many similar and lethal asbestos related cancers in an industry that knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it and he will least be willing to hear you out.
There is a terrible urgency to such cases and the stakes are high.
The division of add revenues from a gamer's YouTube video ---- a clearly derivative work based on Nintendo's IP? The chances that any individual plaintiff will have been damaged enough to meet the legal threshold for a lawsuit are dim. The chances that he would win on the merits are dim.
Internet was in many households long before Microsoft implemented it on the "commodized PC platform".
The numbers aren't there to support such a claim. In fact, they prove just the opposite. The US Census figures are particularly striking and persuasive.
In 1990 the Internet had existed for only 7 years; just 3 million people had access to it worldwide. 73% of these people were living in the United States, 15% were in Western Europe.
There's no more Carl Sagan, no more Bill Nye on television, nothing except Mythbusters to inspire future generations of engineers and scientific thinkers.
PBS is the obvious response.
But there are others and there is more to science and to scientific thinking than engineering.
So instead of drawing a cartoon face yourself, which is something everyone can do...
Not everyone can draw a plausible caricature of themselves. Try it sometime.
Long time back, Microsoft Research China released an IM client for low bandwidth video chat at dial-up speeds. (less than a 15K modem)
It's just like the horror that is Microsoft Song Smith, where Microsoft wanted to automate the "tedious chore of composing music" by letting a computer generate tunes instead.
Not stupid at all.
The most obvious practical application would be in video games, where synching art, animation, music, audio and visual effects to the player's actions without odd incongruities and obvious repetition is a major problem and expense.
only allow individual human beings to donate to campaigns, and then only in campaigns they can vote in. Bam, money out of politics instantly.
There are the minor constitutional problems of freedom of speech and freedom of association. "In union there is strength." A concept foreign to the geek. Which is why he is on the outside looking in. Organization and a common purpose wins elections.
Enormous sums of money can raised and spent outside the campaign itself. The NRA has this down to a science.
I'm not sure this is the best example, because congresspeople would have another incentive to support the measure: all of their home town local shops will have also been calling them up (and directing their customers to do so as well) in support of it,
Not to mention their employees, suppliers and supporting B2B services.
The electrician. The truck driver. The guy who mows the grass. Everyone who doesn't want to see another storefront boarded up. But when the geek hears the word "bribery," rational thought and plain common sense goes out the window.
Senators who voted last week for the bill allowing states to directly collect taxes on sales via the Internet, AKA The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, received 40 times as much campaign donation money (yes, that's four-oh, not just four) from businesses in favor of the bill as those who voted against it received from businesses that were against Internet sales taxes. Was this bribery? Of course not!
How many businesses in your state have significant out of state sales?
How many people do online retailers employ in your state, how much revenues do these retailers generate for state and local government?
Monsanto has a policy...that prohibits farmers from saving or reusing the seeds once the crop is grown. Farmers must buy new seeds every year.
That's a very harsh policy and they probably charge a premium for their seed, it must be tough to be a farmer nowadays.
Get a grip.
Farming here has been commercial not subsistence since the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825. In the next generation, half the population of the U,S, would be urban. Think about how that impacts the expense and recruitment of agricultural labor.
Harvesting seed has a cost, Everything has a cost. What matters is the return on your investment.
Unlike in Europe, oyster consumption in North America after colonization by Europeans was never confined to class, and oysters were commonly served in taverns. During the early 1800s, express wagons filled with oysters crossed the Allegheny Mountains to reach the American Midwest. The oldest oyster bar in the United States is Union Oyster House in Boston, which opened in 1826. It features oyster shucking in front of the customer, and patrons may make their own oyster sauces from condiments on the tables. It has served as a model for many oyster bars in the United States.
By 1850, nearly every major town in North America had oyster bar, oyster cellar, oyster parlor, or oyster saloon --- almost always located in the basement of the establishment (where keeping ice was easier). Oysters and bars often went hand-in-hand in the United States, because oysters were seen as a cheap food to serve alongside beer and liquor.
By the late 1880s, an "oyster craze" had swept the United States, and oyster bars were prominent gathering places in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Lousiville, New York City, and St. Louis. An 1881 U.S. government fisheries study counted 379 oyster houses in the Philadelphia city directory alone...
The Maverick --- designed for medical missionary work and similar applications --- is an ATV that can take to the air with a reasonable payload when needed. Top speed in flight is a modest 40 mph. It was never intended for use in high winds or other extreme conditions.
When it's time to fly, the Maverick's central telescopic mast raises and acts as a wing spar for its chute, properly known as a ram-air wing. The flip of a switch diverts engine power from the rear wheels to the rear-mounted five-blade propeller, which propels the car across the ground, up to its take-off speed of 40mph (64km/h). Thanks to its ram-air wing design, the Maverick can take flight in only 300 feet (91 meters).
Once in the air, the vehicle's electronic fly-by-wire system allows the pilot to steer it with the steering wheel, just like they would on the ground. According to I-TEC, existing sport pilots can learn to fly the Maverick within 12 hours. A dash-mounted Garmin GPS allows for both aerial and ground-based navigation. In flight mode, it has a maximum payload of 330 pounds (150 kg).
the nanny-state mentality that is gripping government first world countries will soon forbid the growing of beef-life tissue because of its increasing the risk of arterial clogging, etc.
When the state is paying the medical bills for tens or hundreds of millions of people why shouldn't it have a say in the sale and marketing of products which increase its costs?
"We say that you should do whatever you want with the exploit. It's your vulnerability, you found it, it's your thing. You have no obligation to report it at all. In fact, reporting it can get you into a lot of trouble."
It is not your thing ---
and it is precisely this kind of thinking that brings the hacker increasingly into conflict with society and the law.
It would be nice to have a grass roots standards body which impletments the good works of standards bodies but chooses not to implement shill standards.
Now all you need is a product with mass market appeal and shelf space at Walmart which implements the geek's "grass roots" standards --- but can't play the Netflix, Amazon, Hulu or Google subscription video. Nothing Disney, Pixar or Marvel Comics.
The reality is that every Internet enabled device in your home or car supports subscription services and protected media content. Each to some degree pushes the "open web" browser further into the background.
The Windows 8 Start Page makes that explicit.
If the app becomes your primary source for music, videos, books, newspapers, magazines and games, it isn't much of a stretch to imagine the app becoming your primary source for other content and services as well.
Slashdot Mirror
So, we ended up with a foot being, well, the length of a foot,
It made sense at the time, and worked well enough.
The history of temperature units is interesting and convoluted, but 32 for freezing is based on binary divisions (64 units) between that and human body temperature (96).
Fahrenheit is quite useful when you are thinking in terms of human comfort and safety.
Summer weight clothing will be appropriate and comfortable at 75, autumn weight at 50, winter weight at 25.
what part of 'unlimited' don't you understand ?
"Unlimited Access" is a marketing legacy from the days of dial-up AOL, as the geek knows perfectly well. It implied nothing more than affordable flat rate monthly billing for a mass market consumer-grade service.
Combine that with affordable flat rate monthly billing plans for local and regional calling plans and you had a winner.
In those situations where I've recommended and warned against the functionality, and the user still demands it...
Is the "user" you speak of the client commissioning the software or the guy or gal who will be working on site at the chemical plant when it blows?
It's a commercial entity behind this, which means the government has easy leverage to make them snoop on all their millions of users.
The commercial product has at least the virtue of being usable by ordinary mortals and the placement and promotion needed to build a significant base of users.
The Enterprise computer was not hampered by being in another galaxy... They had local copies of all the data at all times
The Enterprise computer knew what it needed to know to serve the plot. No information lost, corrupted or concealed. No conflicts in interpretation. The perfect machine for a culture turned self-righteous and complacent, without doubts or uncertainties.
Did anyone really expect the MPEG-LA to offer license terms that were amenable to FOSS goals? That would eliminate their ability to exert and enforce control over the market.
WebM is a distribution codec for the web.
The MPEG LA licensors are a global R&D and manufacturing combine of breathtaking size, scope and power. The licensees are built on the same scale. MPEG LA
The fact is that neither Lotus nor WordPerfect ever successfully managed the transition from DOS text-mode to Windows GUI. This is due to a lot of factors, including bad management; W. Pete Peterson's book Almost Perfect is unintentionally revealing of this...
Almost Perfect [full text]
Word Perfect supported every platform known to man, each with its own fiefdom within the company. In the DOS era it shipped with customized drivers for every printer known to man. The slightest change in the product became a nightmare to implement..
In the Windows era, the word processor would expand into the space occupied by print shop, desktop publishing and other applications. The quick-and-dirty solution for dozens of home, school, industrial and office projects,
Word Perfect didn't see that coming, didn't see its value.
Word Perfect never evolved into an integrated office suite, much less an integrated --- managed --- office system.
OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior
Preventable only if your daughter has no intimate sexual relationships ever.
Who is at risk for HPV?
Anyone who is having (or has ever had) sex can get HPV. HPV is so common that nearly all sexually-active men and women get it at some point in their lives. This is true even for people who only have sex with one person in their lifetime.
How do people get HPV?
HPV is passed on through genital contact, most often during vaginal and anal sex. HPV may also be passed on during oral sex and genital-to-genital contact. HPV can be passed on between straight and same-sex partners --- even when the infected person has no signs or symptoms.
Most infected persons do not realize they are infected, or that they are passing HPV on to a sex partner. A person can still have HPV, even if years have passed since he or she has had sexual contact with an infected person. It is also possible to get more than one type of HPV.
Genital HPV Infection - Fact Sheet
Of course their wage base is slightly higher than us mere mortals.
$99,000 makes the developer a demi-god.
US Household Income
According to the Census ACS survey, the median household income for the United States was $50,502 in 2011, the latest data available.
US Per Capita Income
The ACS 1-year shows the per capita income in the United States was $26,708 in 2011, the latest year available.
Income US
Or just as likely, they just faked the data.
The geek is remarkably quick to accuse others of bribery or fraud. Bonus points for the instant mod-up to +4.
Or how about a class action lawsuit?
US federal courts are hostile to class actions.
Show a judge clear evidence of great many similar and lethal asbestos related cancers in an industry that knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it and he will least be willing to hear you out.
There is a terrible urgency to such cases and the stakes are high.
The division of add revenues from a gamer's YouTube video ---- a clearly derivative work based on Nintendo's IP? The chances that any individual plaintiff will have been damaged enough to meet the legal threshold for a lawsuit are dim. The chances that he would win on the merits are dim.
Internet was in many households long before Microsoft implemented it on the "commodized PC platform".
The numbers aren't there to support such a claim. In fact, they prove just the opposite. The US Census figures are particularly striking and persuasive.
Households With a Computer and Internet Access 1984 to 2003
Internet Adoption 1995-2011
In 1990 the Internet had existed for only 7 years; just 3 million people had access to it worldwide. 73% of these people were living in the United States, 15% were in Western Europe.
Internet Users 1990
LibreOffice comes pre-packed in most Linux distributions. If you want OpenOffice you have to download it from Apache.
You aren't suggesting all those 50 million downloads were to the Windows PC and the Mac?
There's no more Carl Sagan, no more Bill Nye on television, nothing except Mythbusters to inspire future generations of engineers and scientific thinkers.
PBS is the obvious response.
But there are others and there is more to science and to scientific thinking than engineering.
National Geographic Channel
Smithsonian Channel
Science Channel
The Discovery Channel --- in its many incarnations --- has a lot to offer if you are willing to poke around a bit.
So instead of drawing a cartoon face yourself, which is something everyone can do...
Not everyone can draw a plausible caricature of themselves. Try it sometime.
Long time back, Microsoft Research China released an IM client for low bandwidth video chat at dial-up speeds. (less than a 15K modem)
It's just like the horror that is Microsoft Song Smith, where Microsoft wanted to automate the "tedious chore of composing music" by letting a computer generate tunes instead.
Not stupid at all.
The most obvious practical application would be in video games, where synching art, animation, music, audio and visual effects to the player's actions without odd incongruities and obvious repetition is a major problem and expense.
only allow individual human beings to donate to campaigns, and then only in campaigns they can vote in. Bam, money out of politics instantly.
There are the minor constitutional problems of freedom of speech and freedom of association. "In union there is strength." A concept foreign to the geek. Which is why he is on the outside looking in. Organization and a common purpose wins elections.
Enormous sums of money can raised and spent outside the campaign itself. The NRA has this down to a science.
I'm not sure this is the best example, because congresspeople would have another incentive to support the measure: all of their home town local shops will have also been calling them up (and directing their customers to do so as well) in support of it,
Not to mention their employees, suppliers and supporting B2B services.
The electrician. The truck driver. The guy who mows the grass. Everyone who doesn't want to see another storefront boarded up. But when the geek hears the word "bribery," rational thought and plain common sense goes out the window.
Senators who voted last week for the bill allowing states to directly collect taxes on sales via the Internet, AKA The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013, received 40 times as much campaign donation money (yes, that's four-oh, not just four) from businesses in favor of the bill as those who voted against it received from businesses that were against Internet sales taxes. Was this bribery? Of course not!
How many businesses in your state have significant out of state sales?
How many people do online retailers employ in your state, how much revenues do these retailers generate for state and local government?
Monsanto has a policy...that prohibits farmers from saving or reusing the seeds once the crop is grown. Farmers must buy new seeds every year.
That's a very harsh policy and they probably charge a premium for their seed, it must be tough to be a farmer nowadays.
Get a grip.
Farming here has been commercial not subsistence since the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825. In the next generation, half the population of the U,S, would be urban. Think about how that impacts the expense and recruitment of agricultural labor.
Harvesting seed has a cost, Everything has a cost. What matters is the return on your investment.
You need to set the price as high as possible to sell otherwise unsellable stuff. Caviar, escargots, oysters....
Oysters were the universal snack food in nineteenth century America.
Upmarket you'd find handsomely decorated and now very collectable plates and utensils. The Art of Oyster Plate Collecting
Unlike in Europe, oyster consumption in North America after colonization by Europeans was never confined to class, and oysters were commonly served in taverns. During the early 1800s, express wagons filled with oysters crossed the Allegheny Mountains to reach the American Midwest. The oldest oyster bar in the United States is Union Oyster House in Boston, which opened in 1826. It features oyster shucking in front of the customer, and patrons may make their own oyster sauces from condiments on the tables. It has served as a model for many oyster bars in the United States.
By 1850, nearly every major town in North America had oyster bar, oyster cellar, oyster parlor, or oyster saloon --- almost always located in the basement of the establishment (where keeping ice was easier). Oysters and bars often went hand-in-hand in the United States, because oysters were seen as a cheap food to serve alongside beer and liquor.
By the late 1880s, an "oyster craze" had swept the United States, and oyster bars were prominent gathering places in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Lousiville, New York City, and St. Louis. An 1881 U.S. government fisheries study counted 379 oyster houses in the Philadelphia city directory alone...
Oyster bar
It is a streetable car, and it does fly.
The Maverick --- designed for medical missionary work and similar applications --- is an ATV that can take to the air with a reasonable payload when needed. Top speed in flight is a modest 40 mph. It was never intended for use in high winds or other extreme conditions.
When it's time to fly, the Maverick's central telescopic mast raises and acts as a wing spar for its chute, properly known as a ram-air wing. The flip of a switch diverts engine power from the rear wheels to the rear-mounted five-blade propeller, which propels the car across the ground, up to its take-off speed of 40mph (64km/h). Thanks to its ram-air wing design, the Maverick can take flight in only 300 feet (91 meters).
Once in the air, the vehicle's electronic fly-by-wire system allows the pilot to steer it with the steering wheel, just like they would on the ground. According to I-TEC, existing sport pilots can learn to fly the Maverick within 12 hours. A dash-mounted Garmin GPS allows for both aerial and ground-based navigation. In flight mode, it has a maximum payload of 330 pounds (150 kg).
The Maverick flying car
the nanny-state mentality that is gripping government first world countries will soon forbid the growing of beef-life tissue because of its increasing the risk of arterial clogging, etc.
When the state is paying the medical bills for tens or hundreds of millions of people why shouldn't it have a say in the sale and marketing of products which increase its costs?
"We say that you should do whatever you want with the exploit. It's your vulnerability, you found it, it's your thing. You have no obligation to report it at all. In fact, reporting it can get you into a lot of trouble."
It is not your thing ---
and it is precisely this kind of thinking that brings the hacker increasingly into conflict with society and the law.
It would be nice to have a grass roots standards body which impletments the good works of standards bodies but chooses not to implement shill standards.
Now all you need is a product with mass market appeal and shelf space at Walmart which implements the geek's "grass roots" standards --- but can't play the Netflix, Amazon, Hulu or Google subscription video. Nothing Disney, Pixar or Marvel Comics.
No Downton Abbey, no Game of Thrones.
The reality is that every Internet enabled device in your home or car supports subscription services and protected media content. Each to some degree pushes the "open web" browser further into the background.
The Windows 8 Start Page makes that explicit.
If the app becomes your primary source for music, videos, books, newspapers, magazines and games, it isn't much of a stretch to imagine the app becoming your primary source for other content and services as well.