Hard to get modded anything but troll when you ask questions or make comments about how "good" Linux is, versus how good it "could" be.
Seems you were wrong this time... your comment is at +4 insightful, mine is at -1 troll. There's very heated (and often very insightful) discussion of the pros and cons of Linux here but I see highly rated Linux criticisms quite often, so it's definitely not one-sided. I can see how you'd feel a bit vulnerable, but come on, it's just a net board so just stick to what you mean.
We live in Canada, and actually won a trip to Switzerland this summer. We went to Geneva and rode the #9 down to CERN. Couldn't get a tour booked in under a year, never mind the few months we had, unfortunately, and when we got there, even the Microcosm exhibit was closed, so my attempts at getting to a scientific "mecca" were foiled (though I did eat in the cafe and had the Menu Proton special:)
I've seen the exhibit and you didn't miss very much except maybe the chance to buy souvenirs. When I went there we managed to see quite non-public stuff through a combination of the right contacts and downtime from a power-outage:-) If I'm lucky I might get the chance to go again and see the LHC detectors before the beams are switched on.
There are so many things over there - it's a shame we're at such a distance. At least my fiancée-soon-to-be-wife, who's a high school science teacher, has a lot of Danish heritage - which might make a good excuse to visit. I trust you don't have to book campus tours or anything too far in advance?:)
When you know you're going, try to contact the Niels Bohr Archive. They might be willing to show you a couple of the interesting rooms and tell funny anecdotes. You can also drop me a slashdot message. I don't know how long I'll be staying at the institute but if nothing else I might have suggestions on how to get in and who to talk to.
It's good to have a central repository for installing distro-packaged applications, but what's wrong with also having the file manager doing "the right thing" when clicking on a separately downloaded package?
Mine does. If it's an.rpm. (I use Mandriva). This still leaves the problem that the publisher of the program must make packages for the different distros, which as you note scales poorly. And then we're stuck with tar-balls which are generally hard to handle without human (techie) intervention. Even with autopackage, klik etc. I have a feeling that this problem is not going away really soon.
In the meantime I prefer the URPMI GUI to InstallShield packages and newbies might too, once they discover the "Install software" option in their menu.
Red Hat's Fedora... it seems the logical choice but as I may have motioned towards... I'm a total neophyte with Linux. I know the THEORY, I just don't know the application.
Ok. So the first thing to learn is that for many Linux distributions the smartest way to get software is through the distributions repositories. This is different from Windows, but I don't think it's harder. At least not on Mandriva which I use and as I described there's a nice GUI to handle it. You're right that someone trying to go from the tarball would find it very difficult without more experience than can be expected of average desktop user.
Besides I prefer to learn the hard way as it usually provides shortcuts for things later on. I still regularly drop to DOS windows in Windows to get things done quickly:)
Well, I'm sure you'll feel at home with Linux eventually then. Unfortunately the average Windows user would probably stall on the kind of learning curves you seem to enjoy. In the meantime I hope you have fun.
What do you mean? If his example doesn't demonstrate the point his point is not very convincing.
Not that I mind a simpler Linux, I'd really like to see it, but with a good modern distro installing software is rarely hard. Sure, it's a bit different from Windows, but not worse IMHO. The worst problems are usually elsewhere.
I'm pretty glad to hear of your experience. The Copenhagen institute has a mythical quality for those of us looking at the last 100 years of science. Niels cast a pretty big shadow. I'm glad that it's still pretty open and free.
Well, when it comes to QM we're only taught (what else?) the Copenhagen interpretation - the rest aren't even mentioned, except maybe for some graduate courses which is really a shame. Not that I mind the Copenhagen interpretation, it works for me, and AFAIK the interpretations are equivalent anyway.
P.S. Drop by sometime. You can see the library where Heisenbergs office used to be - we know exactly where he discovered the uncertainty relation;-)
"Downloading may turn you into a teenager" a scientist in lab coat commented. "We may have stumbled upon the fountain of youth".
Re:Why should you.. or anyone care?: Slave Mentali
on
Pay vs. Happiness
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It could be Denmark:
37-hour week, though many people put quite a bit more than that in their jobs.
5 weeks of paid holiday. (And a few "extras")
Free schooling through masters level (M.Sc.). You have to get good grades to get into popular studies like humanities, medicine etc. though. Students receive a government grant (not to be repaid) of about $600/mo.
Guaranteed old age pension. I'd recommend topping it off with your own savings though.
OTOH, there's a 180% (one hundred and eighty!) tax on cars, VAT is 25% and if you hit upper middle class income you'll pay about two thirds of your last earned krone in income tax.. Not to mention that even with a well-paying job, the guy flipping burgers isn't that far behind you on the scale. This is of course reflected in the price of your fries.
There's an even simpler mnemonic. OTOH it only works for sin/cos:
Look at the unit circle. Mark the x axis with cos and -cos and the y axis with sin and -sin (on positive and negative sides respectively). Now differentiation takes you clockwise, integration goes counterclockwise.
Ex: sin(x) differentiated becomes cos(x), differentiate again and you end at -sin(x). Integrating sin(x) gives you -cos(x). (Going counterclockwise).
Four levels of gray are good for text, but poor for B&W photos and certain types of graphs.
I read lots of plain text on a daily basis and I'm not the only one. I'd be very happy to have a book-like device with internet updates, especially since it'd save me a bunch of reading off a screen.
that 1+2+3+... = -1/12. (The proof starts at p. 2 bottom) This "proof" uses nothing but 1st year university analysis. Unfortunately the version i found is in danish, but it's sufficiently formula-dense that it can be followed by anyone with some mathematical training.
The result is of course wrong, but it (or its equivalent) is actually used for renormalizing quantum field theories to get rid of ugly infinities. Don't ask me what's happening here, I just use the results:-)
One more thing : This is my first post on slashdot! After 4 years of wasting my time just reading/. I finally signed UP to waste more time reading AND commenting;):p
It would be inaccurate to characterize the EU as an economic superpower in the same league as the United States
Check again The EU has a higher GDP than the US. (Lower per capita, but that's not the point here.) And when it comes to trade agreements eg. in the WTO the EU acts relatively cohesively.
As for the Turkey-Russia-Iraq expansion I completely agree with you. Just getting Turkey in will be really hard and Russia and Iraq are so much further down the list.
I'm not so worried about a strong welfare state that you are - in fact I'd like to keep it here and I think it's possible if done right. For many years OECD analyses have consistently doomed the danish economy but it's still quite ok and better than many of the bigger EU countries. I'm not sure how to implement it EU-wide though. (And I'd really prefer some independence for the nations in this manner).
This is America, and when you buy something for your own use, you are allowed to personally do whatever you want with it.
This is the EU, and we slept our chance away while the "anti-circumvention" directive was passed. You might note that the same happened in the US. To make America live up to the noblest connotation of the name takes active citizens. (The same goes for the EU and the respective nation states except that "EU" has much fewer positive connotations to live up to.)
You mean the efforts we thought were farther along, in Saddam's pursuit thereof? That would be "we thought" as in, we and the intelligence agencies of a dozen other countries (including France, Germany, Russia, and so on).
For example, stuff like govWorks IS the future. There is a big opportunity to streamline and automate interaction between government and citizens. Not only is this cheaper, it is is more efficient too.
In Denmark tax authorities communicate with businesses through standardized interfaces. It's saving a huge bunch of money for both parties. I don't have hard facts or a reference, sorry.
The EU doesn't allow for software nor business practices to be patented.
That's unfortunately an oversimplification.
Basically the European Patent Convention (EPC) forbids patenting business methods and "software as such". You can't patent a an algorithm. You can patent a computer running the algorithm. (Functionally equivalent). You can't patent a business method, but you can patent a computer network implementing the business method. (So competitors must do business "by hand").
The exact interpretations differ among the member states, which is why we need a harmonizing anti-swpat directive. It's difficult though, what with governments ignoring their parliaments and all. More here
The name "Vores Øl"/"Our Beer" is a slogan used by a major danish brewery (Tuborg I think). So the beer may be very nice and the recipe free but expect a name change if it becomes popular.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems you were wrong this time ... your comment is at +4 insightful, mine is at -1 troll. There's very heated (and often very insightful) discussion of the pros and cons of Linux here but I see highly rated Linux criticisms quite often, so it's definitely not one-sided. I can see how you'd feel a bit vulnerable, but come on, it's just a net board so just stick to what you mean.
I've seen the exhibit and you didn't miss very much except maybe the chance to buy souvenirs. When I went there we managed to see quite non-public stuff through a combination of the right contacts and downtime from a power-outage :-) If I'm lucky I might get the chance to go again and see the LHC detectors before the beams are switched on.
There are so many things over there - it's a shame we're at such a distance. At least my fiancée-soon-to-be-wife, who's a high school science teacher, has a lot of Danish heritage - which might make a good excuse to visit. I trust you don't have to book campus tours or anything too far in advance? :)
When you know you're going, try to contact the Niels Bohr Archive. They might be willing to show you a couple of the interesting rooms and tell funny anecdotes. You can also drop me a slashdot message. I don't know how long I'll be staying at the institute but if nothing else I might have suggestions on how to get in and who to talk to.
Mine does. If it's an .rpm. (I use Mandriva). This still leaves the problem that the publisher of the program must make packages for the different distros, which as you note scales poorly. And then we're stuck with tar-balls which are generally hard to handle without human (techie) intervention. Even with autopackage, klik etc. I have a feeling that this problem is not going away really soon.
In the meantime I prefer the URPMI GUI to InstallShield packages and newbies might too, once they discover the "Install software" option in their menu.
Ok. So the first thing to learn is that for many Linux distributions the smartest way to get software is through the distributions repositories. This is different from Windows, but I don't think it's harder. At least not on Mandriva which I use and as I described there's a nice GUI to handle it. You're right that someone trying to go from the tarball would find it very difficult without more experience than can be expected of average desktop user.
Besides I prefer to learn the hard way as it usually provides shortcuts for things later on. I still regularly drop to DOS windows in Windows to get things done quickly :)
Well, I'm sure you'll feel at home with Linux eventually then. Unfortunately the average Windows user would probably stall on the kind of learning curves you seem to enjoy. In the meantime I hope you have fun.
Not that I mind a simpler Linux, I'd really like to see it, but with a good modern distro installing software is rarely hard. Sure, it's a bit different from Windows, but not worse IMHO. The worst problems are usually elsewhere.
I did the following to install Firefox:
I've installed stuff on Windows. It's regularly harder than that. Are you trolling on purpose or is it just ignorance?
Well, when it comes to QM we're only taught (what else?) the Copenhagen interpretation - the rest aren't even mentioned, except maybe for some graduate courses which is really a shame. Not that I mind the Copenhagen interpretation, it works for me, and AFAIK the interpretations are equivalent anyway.
P.S. Drop by sometime. You can see the library where Heisenbergs office used to be - we know exactly where he discovered the uncertainty relation ;-)
"Downloading may turn you into a teenager" a scientist in lab coat commented. "We may have stumbled upon the fountain of youth".
37-hour week, though many people put quite a bit more than that in their jobs.
5 weeks of paid holiday. (And a few "extras")
Free schooling through masters level (M.Sc.). You have to get good grades to get into popular studies like humanities, medicine etc. though. Students receive a government grant (not to be repaid) of about $600/mo.
Guaranteed old age pension. I'd recommend topping it off with your own savings though.
OTOH, there's a 180% (one hundred and eighty!) tax on cars, VAT is 25% and if you hit upper middle class income you'll pay about two thirds of your last earned krone in income tax..
Not to mention that even with a well-paying job, the guy flipping burgers isn't that far behind you on the scale. This is of course reflected in the price of your fries.
Look at the unit circle. Mark the x axis with cos and -cos and the y axis with sin and -sin (on positive and negative sides respectively). Now differentiation takes you clockwise, integration goes counterclockwise.
Ex: sin(x) differentiated becomes cos(x), differentiate again and you end at -sin(x). Integrating sin(x) gives you -cos(x). (Going counterclockwise).
What's the chance of seeing them?
I live on 56N12E
I read lots of plain text on a daily basis and I'm not the only one. I'd be very happy to have a book-like device with internet updates, especially since it'd save me a bunch of reading off a screen.
The result is of course wrong, but it (or its equivalent) is actually used for renormalizing quantum field theories to get rid of ugly infinities. Don't ask me what's happening here, I just use the results :-)
Linux users will find the same functionality in kwallet (if they use a not-too-ancient KDE). I don't know about GNOME.
You do. Not against China, but against most small to medium states. It's just that they're in Iraq.
*Ahem*
Welcome!
Check again The EU has a higher GDP than the US. (Lower per capita, but that's not the point here.) And when it comes to trade agreements eg. in the WTO the EU acts relatively cohesively.
As for the Turkey-Russia-Iraq expansion I completely agree with you. Just getting Turkey in will be really hard and Russia and Iraq are so much further down the list.
I'm not so worried about a strong welfare state that you are - in fact I'd like to keep it here and I think it's possible if done right. For many years OECD analyses have consistently doomed the danish economy but it's still quite ok and better than many of the bigger EU countries. I'm not sure how to implement it EU-wide though. (And I'd really prefer some independence for the nations in this manner).
This is the EU, and we slept our chance away while the "anti-circumvention" directive was passed. You might note that the same happened in the US. To make America live up to the noblest connotation of the name takes active citizens. (The same goes for the EU and the respective nation states except that "EU" has much fewer positive connotations to live up to.)
You mean the efforts we thought were farther along, in Saddam's pursuit thereof? That would be "we thought" as in, we and the intelligence agencies of a dozen other countries (including France, Germany, Russia, and so on).
Sources? If your statement is true, why did Robin Cook resign saying that "Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction" ? Was the intelligence too secret for a member of her majesty's government?
In Denmark tax authorities communicate with businesses through standardized interfaces. It's saving a huge bunch of money for both parties. I don't have hard facts or a reference, sorry.
That's unfortunately an oversimplification.
Basically the European Patent Convention (EPC) forbids patenting business methods and "software as such". You can't patent a an algorithm. You can patent a computer running the algorithm. (Functionally equivalent). You can't patent a business method, but you can patent a computer network implementing the business method. (So competitors must do business "by hand").
The exact interpretations differ among the member states, which is why we need a harmonizing anti-swpat directive. It's difficult though, what with governments ignoring their parliaments and all. More here
The name "Vores Øl"/"Our Beer" is a slogan used by a major danish brewery (Tuborg I think). So the beer may be very nice and the recipe free but expect a name change if it becomes popular.
(Score:5, Insightful)
The mods are smoking....Gandalfs Wisdom Weed
It's been a while since i meta-modded. Now I feel like doing it, just to give the meta-nod to that insightful "insightful" guy.
Y'know, fark seems to be doing pretty well...
Other FFII servers are holding up with the news, and a slightly updated version of the press release