...I submitted this story, based on a BBC article, way back on March 22; this can be seen from the Recent Submissions list at the bottom of my user page.
I'm not worried about having a story rejected, but then when the same story is submitted by somebody else, and accepted, I get mighty pissed. However, I mustn't gripe; I guess the/, editors have just as much right to be fuckwit tossers as the next man...
These people don't need computers, they need basic electric applicances like a refrigerator and indoor lights FIRST.
From personal experience, kerosine-powered fridges and lamps are far, far better options than electrically-powered equivalents. They can be repaied using local know-how, and distribution networks for kerosene are typically already well established in developing countries.
It's always best to save the electricity for those items that absolutely need it. Computers fall into this category, fridges and lights do not.
As an ex Sun guy with plenty of JDS experience let me just say this is farking insane unless these tactical deployments are not mission critical deployments.
Don't worry, I imagine the deployments will be standard desktop use. However, from the article:
An NHS representative could not elaborate on exactly where in the agency's sprawling system, incorporating tens of thousands of users, the software would be deployed.
This makes me concerned that the NHS administration is adopting the classic 'head up arse' approach to IT administration, buying 'cool' new kit before they have any clue what they will be using it for.
... so my clock doesn't drift by like five minutes a day, necessitating a daily ping to the USNO time servers? anyone?
My MythTV box has a rather old clock that drifts a lot. This could create problems with program scheduling, so I've set up a cron job to run rdate every couple of hours, and keep the clock synchronized with one of the NIST NTP servers.
If you're on a Windows box, I'm sure that a similar automated functionality can be set up.
Almost certainly not. The amplitude of the brightness variations, caused by the transit of a terrestrial planet, varies as the square of the ratio between the radius of the star and the planet. For the Sun/Earth values, this figure comes out as a 0.008% variation in brightness, or -- in astronomical terms -- a change of 0.2 millimagnitudes.
Measuring such small changes is extremely difficult, even using very large (5-10m) ground-based telescopes that have fancy optics and a high throughput. That's why terrestrial planet finding using the transit method will have to wait for NASA's Kepler mission. Scheduled for launch in 2007, this mission will look for minute brightness variations in c. 100,000 nearby Solar-type stars.
Think distributions with heavy tails, such as the wealth distribution
But I thought intelligence (or, rather, IQ) was normally distributed -- hence the name of the controversial book The Bell Curve . A normal distribution is symmetric, so the claim of the OP is correct!
I do. That's why I have healthcare coverage, rather than hoping -- as the GP poster suggested -- that a doctor, through their kind heart, will treat me for free. You've totally failed to grasp the whole point of my post, haven't you?
I don't know about you, but if you just use dimensional analysis, any conversion is easy.
I'm always suspicious of dimensional analysis -- judging from the number of crackpot theories which are built on it, it appears to be the calculus of the loon.
Not true. There are a lot of organizations that help out in such cases, and many doctors who do the work for free for people who can't afford it.
And there's the rub. "Lots of" and "many" just doesn't cut the mustard for John Doe whose life is on the line. There is no guarantee that either of these support mechanisms will help an individual.
And of course, that wonderful, non-fluorinated water, which must do SUCH a superb job of preventing cavities in people's dentals.
Fool, everyone knows that flourination of the water supply is a damn commie plot to make us all impotent! We must defend our Purity of Essense!
Note to moderators: this post is on-topic, because (a) I reference the former Soviet Union, and (b) Dr Strangelove was modelled on Edward Teller, who led the development of the Hydrogen bomb.
Are you trying to infer that dental health is not related to longevity?
Yes, I am. How often does 'bad teeth' appear as the cause of death in a coroner's report?
If the English healthcare system is so great, why is there a separate, private healthcare system there for those who can afford to pay?
Because people will always be willing to pay for a private room, shorter waiting lists, etc.
In any case, you've totally missed my point: in the US, if you do not have private health coverage, you have nothing. Operable brain tumour? If your job doesn't come with health coverage (and for blue collar workers, increasingly few do), and you can't afford the operation using your savings, then you're going to die. Period.
I believe that's correct. The greater mass of Alpha particles causes them to be more easily deflected than beta particles. Gamma radiation has a near-zero mass, so it can penetrate most forms of matter. (Penetration being the act of "missing" most of the matter.)
No, the greater mass of alpha particles (2 protons and 2 neutrons, basically a Helium nucleus) makes them more difficult to deflect, not less. However, other factors have an impact on the scattering cross section, including particle charge and energy.
Gamma particles have a zero rest mass, since they are simply energetic photons.
I think you may be getting confused by Neutron radiation, which is the most massive type of radiative particle. Neutrons do a LOT of damage due to their mass, but they don't actually have a lot of penetrating power.
No, Neutrons are less massive than alpha particles.
Seriously - you went to the Soviet Union while it still existed and did a large, statistically significant sampling of people with respect to the appearance of their teeth? Enough to make generalizations about dental care for several hundred million people?
Likely, the GP is from the USA, a country which judges the healthcare of foreign nations by the quality of their citizens' teeth. Hence, the long-standing jokes about English bad teeth, which totally overlook the fact that the UK has a comprehensive, state-run healthcare system which -- for the less wealthy -- knocks the spots off the private coverage in the US.
i hope that your remarks are not racially motivated,
as your signature seems to indicate,
My sig is nothing to do with this discussion, it is a general comment on an uglier side of Slashdot. Too bad that you've taken offense at it, but I'm not going to alter it for your sake. If you think it is specifically targetted at you, get over it; I neither know nor care about your race, creed, color or ethnicity. And don't forget that, likewise, you know nothing of me -- so ease up with your assumptions, boyo.
MD5 is a bad choice of hash algorithm for the purpose that
you indicate.
Would you care to back this up with an argument, or am I supposed to just swallow it on your fiat?
You talk like pointer aliasing is something common within an application.
That's missing the point. If I have a C/C++ routine taking two pointer dummy arguments of the same type, then there is no way of guaranteeing that the pointers won't be aliased (i.e., point at the same object). Therefore, notwithstanding whether they are aliased in a given program which uses the routine, the optimizations that can be performed when compiling the routine are severely limited, in order to allow for the possibility that the arguments might be aliased.
it's not the random collisions that we worry about,
it's rather the engineered ones which take advantage
of weaknesses in the hash algorithms to achieve
their goals that we should worry about.
Go back and read why I advocated md5sum in the first place. This thread is nothing to do with cryptography or security, it's about checking that the temporary backup of data to a remote server avoided random corruption. There is no real scope here for engineered collisions.
No, apparently you don't. By your argument, the NAACP would be a racist organization.
ok, i'll use your own words, YOUR SIGNATURE IS A GROSS, SLANDEROUS,
RACIST MISCHARACTERIZATION OF THE IN INHABITANTS OF planet earth,
save for THE IDIAN SUBCONTINENT.
The first-grade errors in your post aptly characterize your inability to conduct a reasoned argument.
Slashdot Mirror
...I submitted this story, based on a BBC article, way back on March 22; this can be seen from the Recent Submissions list at the bottom of my user page.
I'm not worried about having a story rejected, but then when the same story is submitted by somebody else, and accepted, I get mighty pissed. However, I mustn't gripe; I guess the /, editors have just as much right to be fuckwit tossers as the next man...
These people don't need computers, they need basic electric applicances like a refrigerator and indoor lights FIRST.
From personal experience, kerosine-powered fridges and lamps are far, far better options than electrically-powered equivalents. They can be repaied using local know-how, and distribution networks for kerosene are typically already well established in developing countries.
It's always best to save the electricity for those items that absolutely need it. Computers fall into this category, fridges and lights do not.
As an ex Sun guy with plenty of JDS experience let me just say this is farking insane unless these tactical deployments are not mission critical deployments.
Don't worry, I imagine the deployments will be standard desktop use. However, from the article:
An NHS representative could not elaborate on exactly where in the agency's sprawling system, incorporating tens of thousands of users, the software would be deployed.
This makes me concerned that the NHS administration is adopting the classic 'head up arse' approach to IT administration, buying 'cool' new kit before they have any clue what they will be using it for.
India: Where discrimination against Dalits has been acceptable for 3000 years
Indeed. I deplore all forms of racism, including that against Indians and by Indians. Neither excuses the other.
...doom! Doom! DOOM! DOOM!
My MythTV box has a rather old clock that drifts a lot. This could create problems with program scheduling, so I've set up a cron job to run rdate every couple of hours, and keep the clock synchronized with one of the NIST NTP servers.
If you're on a Windows box, I'm sure that a similar automated functionality can be set up.
...Netgear can start manufacturing routers that don't totally fuck the NTP server at University of Wisconsin, Madison.
...John Wayne Bobbit has succesfully re-grown his own boner.
Or maybe... IT'S A JOKE?
What, like your career as a musician?
If the girl said some racial epitaph and it got spread over AIM and her school suggested she leave so be it.
I had no idea that AIM is heaving with cadavers...
His answer to the question: "What chair?"
Probably an urban legend, as discussed by Snopes. Nice analogy, though!
Will this method help find smaller planets?
Almost certainly not. The amplitude of the brightness variations, caused by the transit of a terrestrial planet, varies as the square of the ratio between the radius of the star and the planet. For the Sun/Earth values, this figure comes out as a 0.008% variation in brightness, or -- in astronomical terms -- a change of 0.2 millimagnitudes.
Measuring such small changes is extremely difficult, even using very large (5-10m) ground-based telescopes that have fancy optics and a high throughput. That's why terrestrial planet finding using the transit method will have to wait for NASA's Kepler mission. Scheduled for launch in 2007, this mission will look for minute brightness variations in c. 100,000 nearby Solar-type stars.
Think distributions with heavy tails, such as the wealth distribution
But I thought intelligence (or, rather, IQ) was normally distributed -- hence the name of the controversial book The Bell Curve . A normal distribution is symmetric, so the claim of the OP is correct!
Get used to it and plan to take care of yourself.
I do. That's why I have healthcare coverage, rather than hoping -- as the GP poster suggested -- that a doctor, through their kind heart, will treat me for free. You've totally failed to grasp the whole point of my post, haven't you?
Imagine a few hundred million cans full of dessicant...
Dessicant.... judging from the way I feel after a long night's partying, I take it you're referring to beer?
I have no problem in recycling beer; I imbibe Coors, piss comes out ten minutes later. What's the problem here?
I don't know about you, but if you just use dimensional analysis, any conversion is easy.
I'm always suspicious of dimensional analysis -- judging from the number of crackpot theories which are built on it, it appears to be the calculus of the loon.
Not true. There are a lot of organizations that help out in such cases, and many doctors who do the work for free for people who can't afford it.
And there's the rub. "Lots of" and "many" just doesn't cut the mustard for John Doe whose life is on the line. There is no guarantee that either of these support mechanisms will help an individual.
And of course, that wonderful, non-fluorinated water, which must do SUCH a superb job of preventing cavities in people's dentals.
Fool, everyone knows that flourination of the water supply is a damn commie plot to make us all impotent! We must defend our Purity of Essense!
Note to moderators: this post is on-topic, because (a) I reference the former Soviet Union, and (b) Dr Strangelove was modelled on Edward Teller, who led the development of the Hydrogen bomb.
Are you trying to infer that dental health is not related to longevity?
Yes, I am. How often does 'bad teeth' appear as the cause of death in a coroner's report?
If the English healthcare system is so great, why is there a separate, private healthcare system there for those who can afford to pay?
Because people will always be willing to pay for a private room, shorter waiting lists, etc.
In any case, you've totally missed my point: in the US, if you do not have private health coverage, you have nothing. Operable brain tumour? If your job doesn't come with health coverage (and for blue collar workers, increasingly few do), and you can't afford the operation using your savings, then you're going to die. Period.
I believe that's correct. The greater mass of Alpha particles causes them to be more easily deflected than beta particles. Gamma radiation has a near-zero mass, so it can penetrate most forms of matter. (Penetration being the act of "missing" most of the matter.)
No, the greater mass of alpha particles (2 protons and 2 neutrons, basically a Helium nucleus) makes them more difficult to deflect, not less. However, other factors have an impact on the scattering cross section, including particle charge and energy.
Gamma particles have a zero rest mass, since they are simply energetic photons.
I think you may be getting confused by Neutron radiation, which is the most massive type of radiative particle. Neutrons do a LOT of damage due to their mass, but they don't actually have a lot of penetrating power.
No, Neutrons are less massive than alpha particles.
Seriously - you went to the Soviet Union while it still existed and did a large, statistically significant sampling of people with respect to the appearance of their teeth? Enough to make generalizations about dental care for several hundred million people?
Likely, the GP is from the USA, a country which judges the healthcare of foreign nations by the quality of their citizens' teeth. Hence, the long-standing jokes about English bad teeth, which totally overlook the fact that the UK has a comprehensive, state-run healthcare system which -- for the less wealthy -- knocks the spots off the private coverage in the US.
i hope that your remarks are not racially motivated, as your signature seems to indicate,
My sig is nothing to do with this discussion, it is a general comment on an uglier side of Slashdot. Too bad that you've taken offense at it, but I'm not going to alter it for your sake. If you think it is specifically targetted at you, get over it; I neither know nor care about your race, creed, color or ethnicity. And don't forget that, likewise, you know nothing of me -- so ease up with your assumptions, boyo.
MD5 is a bad choice of hash algorithm for the purpose that you indicate.
Would you care to back this up with an argument, or am I supposed to just swallow it on your fiat?
You talk like pointer aliasing is something common within an application.
That's missing the point. If I have a C/C++ routine taking two pointer dummy arguments of the same type, then there is no way of guaranteeing that the pointers won't be aliased (i.e., point at the same object). Therefore, notwithstanding whether they are aliased in a given program which uses the routine, the optimizations that can be performed when compiling the routine are severely limited, in order to allow for the possibility that the arguments might be aliased.
it's not the random collisions that we worry about, it's rather the engineered ones which take advantage of weaknesses in the hash algorithms to achieve their goals that we should worry about.
Go back and read why I advocated md5sum in the first place. This thread is nothing to do with cryptography or security, it's about checking that the temporary backup of data to a remote server avoided random corruption. There is no real scope here for engineered collisions.
hey Aardpig, don't you get it??
No, apparently you don't. By your argument, the NAACP would be a racist organization.
ok, i'll use your own words, YOUR SIGNATURE IS A GROSS, SLANDEROUS, RACIST MISCHARACTERIZATION OF THE IN INHABITANTS OF planet earth, save for THE IDIAN SUBCONTINENT.
The first-grade errors in your post aptly characterize your inability to conduct a reasoned argument.