Interesting -- but isn't "ch" an approximation too? IANAWSP but I understand the Welsh do a lot of approximation with double consonants -- "dd" replacing "th" etc. Then there's all that business about the Anglo-Saxon "thorn" character looking like the letter "d" (although the Greek letter PI is closer). I guess when a language diverges, it seldom fractures only in one spot.
Interestingly (if a bit off-topic) I think there are current American English terms that haven't been seen in British English since 1776 -- the British form evolved away, while the American retained the older forms ("c" vs. "s" usage in many spellings).
None of this however is as difficult to parse as the language shift from Fortran 66 to Fortran IV, however. I had a lovely proof of this, but there's not enough space in the margin to write the Fermat statement.
The general public can run their operating system of choice, and virtualize Windows for games...
Actually, um, no, don't think so -- at least not for a while yet. VMWare doesn't allow direct access to graphics accellerator video cards. And Virtual Server has problems connecting to CD's and other peripherals (mind you this last one could have changed, my last memory of this problem is two years old).
Vertical columnar wind turbines are independent of wind direction and can pipe rotational kinetic directly to a propellor. Wind powered, propellor driven, independence from wind direction, plenty of power to be had. Best of both worlds; if the drive train can be made efficient enough you get fuel-free shipping.
To listen to my medieval language student friends, it isn't so much that the written language suffered from letter-bloat (additional vocal constructs rendered via insertion of odd letter combinations) but that (a) the actual pronunciation of the letters drifted, and (b) all the extra letters were actually proneauncedde. Also, spelling was also considered more of an art than a consistent science, too.
An example might be some of the sounds coming from Welsh such as the double "d" which is not terribly close to modern pronunciation of "D". It was probably an outgrowth of the Anglo-Saxon thorn which, although it looks like the greek letter for "pi" is actually a semi-hard "th" sound.
Welsh, by many accounts, is the only language that can correctly and phonetically spell a sneeze.
It follows that Superman must cancel inertia -- or perhaps be a form of flesh energised by the Arisians, and the whole Krypton thing there to put us off the track. I think he's really Dr. Nels Bergenholm in disguise -- possibly Eukonidor.
Another must-read on the physics of superheroes is Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex". Unless you're heavily humour-impared though, please don't read it while dining on a bowl of soup.
Reflexes, too, if you follow one of the character premises in Gordon Dickson's "Hour of the Horde". The chief of a local band of losers came from a high-gravity planet. He wasn't particularly massive, but he was fast. The idea was that if you fell down on such a planet, you'd better have uber reflexes or you'd break bones in the fall.
IBM ServeRAID units described in the Inquirer article have "Adaptec" written on the card. And we've had a number of problems with them on our IBM x226 servers, which we buy by the 100's -- not reliability or performance problems, but watch your BIOS compatibility as IBM shifts part numbers mid-delivery and blows up your builds.
Backup is a simple issue and a huge issue, and the playing field drifts. Intuitively simple, but very complex to manage when you grow into the enterprise space.
An interesting issue for us, because the moment we did away with MT backup and replaced them with nice little SEAGATE USB external hdd's (we're *very* distributed) they started getting nicked, so the security people keystone locked the little items next to the server. Result is we're keeping the backup media next to the server, even after one site burnt to the ground. Comedy is not pretty. I suggested burying a unit in a floor safe underground (cable through the sealed cash slot) but the only people who thought that was a good idea was the Fire Department. RAID ain't backup, it's hardware fault-tolerance. There's a difference.
Yes, we really are that vocal about politics. I think it stems from a long-term comedy called "Question Time in Parliament" where the insults are as formally and carefully structured as Japanese Kabuki theatre.
Please understand that we are indeed an extremely intolerant people, but only to politicians and cane toads (there are Wiki articles sufficiently detailed to allow you to tell the difference between the two, if need be). We will laugh at a joke, but don't you dare even think about criticising our beer, or there will be war, mate, don't you worry about that.
Stereotypes? Me? Well yes, I'm definitely in the Marantz camp if it comes to that...
It's still illegal, whether you press charges or not. To press charges is to insist on enforcement of penalties due to contravention of a criminal act, the fairness of which can then be contested in a court of law.
"Microsoft employs many of the smartest programmers and engineers out there" --Yes, but what do they DO to them?
Well, Microsoft is big enough now that they probably have to write 1000 lines of documentation, justification and test cases for each 1 line of code. They can't spend it on Open Source (to do so is to become badly PF'd) I'd guess -- while waiting for approvals to come through the workflow (those that make it past their Outlook filters) they draw the blinds, check the hallways, and hand-craft firmware for ECU's using only Notepad (the paper kind) and EEPROM controllers hidden within XBox game controllers.
Ahh, yes, good old Lan Damager. I made a fair quid off that o/s version too. I liked the interface rather a lot, some bits of it better than XP.
If only I hadn't had to install the Exchange client on an early Novell stack.... I think there were two or three bytes left to do other work after it loaded...
Gawd yes. Alpha chip designers -- back to KESU model? Complete eradication of buffer overrun problems?
Maybe they could get Dave Cutler to help. He moved VMS to WNT (to a security-crippled chip architecture, compared to Vax / Alpha wrt. instruction/address space ring-fencing). I wonder what magic he could weave if given his 'druthers in a chip's instruction design. I wonder what he would do to the Linux kernel. I wonder how many chairs Ballmer would throw.
Of course, they'd have the challenge of inventing a backronym for XOU, the next logical TLA in the chain. eXtended Operand Unit?
What about toxic smells? If those could be reproduced it could act as a passive barrier defense (note I am NOT in flavour if this).
I think it was in one of the Feist books where the guild of thieves kept one of their headquarters' secret entrances concealed by throwing a dead cat into it once per week, which I find rather clever.
Would the smell of rotting meat be more effective than a loud siren as a burglar alarm? ("Call the police, honey, I think somebody died in there").
Would stores buy "smell printers" to pipe the smell of popcorn or fresh-baked bread near the high-margin retail shelves? Conceal the true value of a shelf of wines by piping in the smell of Grange Hermitage over the top? Bad smells near the cash office or complaints desk?
Could we truly be led around by our noses by people who installed these things commercially? Niven and Barnes made low-grade smell manufacture ("Neutral Scent") a plot element in the original Dream Park, which I think was some sort of unscented pheremone base. It's value was in the fact that the effect was totally and completely stealthy.
If what we know about their different personalities from public appearances (Geek vs. Monkey Dancer) I'd say that a lot of people in high places are happy to work for the Borg under one Locutus, but not the other. Frankly I see Ballmer as a very rich sociopath, and if were in those circles I wouldn't want to work for him either. Gates would be ok, as a person, I think. But I would be terrified of working for Ballmer, and would jump ship at the nearest opportunity. Money can only go so far in overcoming fear for your life.
in germany, the town gets together, find out all who need to be involved,
and then lay down one large pipe --
I presume that the Germans, because of the constraints of their language's syntax at the end of which their sentences most of their verbs must put, cultural constraints that ahead they must think required are.
While Boeing's X-32 was indeed an ugly airplane, it wasn't beaten due to aesthetics...
I never did get that level of detail from the rather brief article I read on that competition, and I appreciate your providing it. Big thank you, and I withdraw my previous assertion.
Isn't nickel (required for stainless steel) getting rather rare these days? Yet it's plentiful in the asteroid belt.
I agree, and the concept was a thought-starter. Here's an idea -- it feels a bit trollish, but I hope it's not taken that way:
Imagine for a moment what would happen if an asteroid of nearly pure gold that was not quite a dinosaur killer, yet capable of some considerable ecospheric shock, was found to be on a collision course for Earth?
What would the matrix of political pressures look like?
An aircraft can look unlikely and still work; symmetric forms found in nature did not evolve this sort of design because frankly, a duck has never needed to go supersonic in order to raise more ducks. We are pushing the envelope, and a lot of what we intuit as correct design has to be re-evaluated under the "form follows function" rule.
That said, an aircraft may look unlikely, but may not look ludicrous if it is to succeed. Consider -- wasn't there a recent Boeing strike fighter design that got canned because of the negative impact on morale it would have generated? I think the pilots had immediately tagged it the "Monica".
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Interestingly (if a bit off-topic) I think there are current American English terms that haven't been seen in British English since 1776 -- the British form evolved away, while the American retained the older forms ("c" vs. "s" usage in many spellings).
None of this however is as difficult to parse as the language shift from Fortran 66 to Fortran IV, however. I had a lovely proof of this, but there's not enough space in the margin to write the Fermat statement.
Actually, um, no, don't think so -- at least not for a while yet. VMWare doesn't allow direct access to graphics accellerator video cards. And Virtual Server has problems connecting to CD's and other peripherals (mind you this last one could have changed, my last memory of this problem is two years old).
Vertical columnar wind turbines are independent of wind direction and can pipe rotational kinetic directly to a propellor. Wind powered, propellor driven, independence from wind direction, plenty of power to be had. Best of both worlds; if the drive train can be made efficient enough you get fuel-free shipping.
An example might be some of the sounds coming from Welsh such as the double "d" which is not terribly close to modern pronunciation of "D". It was probably an outgrowth of the Anglo-Saxon thorn which, although it looks like the greek letter for "pi" is actually a semi-hard "th" sound.
Welsh, by many accounts, is the only language that can correctly and phonetically spell a sneeze.
-- this little line has helped me throttle down a lot of rants over the years.
We miss you, Dr. Smith
The iPad?
Another must-read on the physics of superheroes is Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex". Unless you're heavily humour-impared though, please don't read it while dining on a bowl of soup.
Reflexes, too, if you follow one of the character premises in Gordon Dickson's "Hour of the Horde". The chief of a local band of losers came from a high-gravity planet. He wasn't particularly massive, but he was fast. The idea was that if you fell down on such a planet, you'd better have uber reflexes or you'd break bones in the fall.
Backup is a simple issue and a huge issue, and the playing field drifts. Intuitively simple, but very complex to manage when you grow into the enterprise space.
An interesting issue for us, because the moment we did away with MT backup and replaced them with nice little SEAGATE USB external hdd's (we're *very* distributed) they started getting nicked, so the security people keystone locked the little items next to the server. Result is we're keeping the backup media next to the server, even after one site burnt to the ground. Comedy is not pretty. I suggested burying a unit in a floor safe underground (cable through the sealed cash slot) but the only people who thought that was a good idea was the Fire Department. RAID ain't backup, it's hardware fault-tolerance. There's a difference.
Please understand that we are indeed an extremely intolerant people, but only to politicians and cane toads (there are Wiki articles sufficiently detailed to allow you to tell the difference between the two, if need be). We will laugh at a joke, but don't you dare even think about criticising our beer, or there will be war, mate, don't you worry about that.
Stereotypes? Me? Well yes, I'm definitely in the Marantz camp if it comes to that...
True. 4am should be reserved for raiding on the Xegony server, not watching Big Brother. Ever try to get a decent chanter in a group at +10 GMT?
It's still illegal, whether you press charges or not. To press charges is to insist on enforcement of penalties due to contravention of a criminal act, the fairness of which can then be contested in a court of law.
Well, Microsoft is big enough now that they probably have to write 1000 lines of documentation, justification and test cases for each 1 line of code. They can't spend it on Open Source (to do so is to become badly PF'd) I'd guess -- while waiting for approvals to come through the workflow (those that make it past their Outlook filters) they draw the blinds, check the hallways, and hand-craft firmware for ECU's using only Notepad (the paper kind) and EEPROM controllers hidden within XBox game controllers.
If only I hadn't had to install the Exchange client on an early Novell stack.... I think there were two or three bytes left to do other work after it loaded...
Tiered sales .... um, hint #1. Invitation only, hint #2. Minimum sell to achieve "privileged" status ...hm.
Can't I just buy the box of soap and go home?
...Calls to participate in an open-source replacement for Windows 3.11 / Windows for Workgroups are now being heard...
Of course, they'd have the challenge of inventing a backronym for XOU, the next logical TLA in the chain. eXtended Operand Unit?
I think it was in one of the Feist books where the guild of thieves kept one of their headquarters' secret entrances concealed by throwing a dead cat into it once per week, which I find rather clever.
Would the smell of rotting meat be more effective than a loud siren as a burglar alarm? ("Call the police, honey, I think somebody died in there").
Would stores buy "smell printers" to pipe the smell of popcorn or fresh-baked bread near the high-margin retail shelves? Conceal the true value of a shelf of wines by piping in the smell of Grange Hermitage over the top? Bad smells near the cash office or complaints desk?
Could we truly be led around by our noses by people who installed these things commercially? Niven and Barnes made low-grade smell manufacture ("Neutral Scent") a plot element in the original Dream Park, which I think was some sort of unscented pheremone base. It's value was in the fact that the effect was totally and completely stealthy.
I'd be scared, if I had a sense of smell left.
If what we know about their different personalities from public appearances (Geek vs. Monkey Dancer) I'd say that a lot of people in high places are happy to work for the Borg under one Locutus, but not the other. Frankly I see Ballmer as a very rich sociopath, and if were in those circles I wouldn't want to work for him either. Gates would be ok, as a person, I think. But I would be terrified of working for Ballmer, and would jump ship at the nearest opportunity. Money can only go so far in overcoming fear for your life.
Well, in any competition you have to set the rules for the class...
Wait, we're not talking about the American Hot Rod Association?
I presume that the Germans, because of the constraints of their language's syntax at the end of which their sentences most of their verbs must put, cultural constraints that ahead they must think required are.
I never did get that level of detail from the rather brief article I read on that competition, and I appreciate your providing it. Big thank you, and I withdraw my previous assertion.
I agree, and the concept was a thought-starter. Here's an idea -- it feels a bit trollish, but I hope it's not taken that way:
Imagine for a moment what would happen if an asteroid of nearly pure gold that was not quite a dinosaur killer, yet capable of some considerable ecospheric shock, was found to be on a collision course for Earth?
What would the matrix of political pressures look like?
That said, an aircraft may look unlikely, but may not look ludicrous if it is to succeed. Consider -- wasn't there a recent Boeing strike fighter design that got canned because of the negative impact on morale it would have generated? I think the pilots had immediately tagged it the "Monica".