The paste could magically deliver money to my bank account and I still wouldn't buy it.
I utterly refuse to willingly spend a cent on any Sony product. I suspect you know why; for those who don't, there's Groklaw.
Re:Eucalyptus trees are a bio terror weapon
on
Insects As Weapons
·
· Score: 0
I think the planet will recover.
I'm a little more concerned that the immune system it develops will target us...
Re:Eucalyptus trees are a bio terror weapon
on
Insects As Weapons
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Eucalyptus foilage is highly flammable when green; the oil in the leaves is the thing. Fire tends to strip the tree, but leaves the acorns able to sprout. The only thing that seems to kill them here in Aus is a grub infestation followed by a small flock of rather large black cockatoos. Those birds will tear the tree completely apart; they usually fall over a day or two after the birds arrive. I've seen this happen a couple of times myself, down in our old property in Tasmania.
VBA in Excel - the cause of more programmer misery than anything else, ever.
A very close second: the inclusion of MS Access in Office Professional...
(A) A disturbingly large amount of the world's wealth resides entirely on the common Excel spreadsheet. Carl Sagan-like numbers. Found that out working at the managed funds division of a major bank. Spreadsheets, with a rather enormous amount of VBA. Scared yet?
(B) There is a path for MS Access home-schooling. (1) Build business on Access; (2) Upsize Access DB with SQL Server back-end; (3) Systematically replace Access front-end with IronSpeed; (3) Become popular since their DB apps aren't crashing daily; (4) Become glum when the breathing room and feeling of success you've given your employer allows them to outsource your department to a hosted SAP house.
I believe the relatively new Lightswitch is an attempt to meet this exact need with the added benefit of creating a web deployable front-end.
I've had a fairly in-depth look at LightSwitch. It's kind of pretty, but it has a certain opacity too. Try building a Make/Model/Year interface with it. It's possible, but I can guarantee you won't find it easy or elegant. In contrast, the third-party.NET code generator IronSpeed handles that pretty well, without driving you down the Silverlight runway. I've built a couple dozen IronSpeed apps, and it works pretty well at exposing a database to a web site.
There's also the concern of the post-ROHS lead-free solder in newer gear -- the old stuff doesn't grow tin whiskers, and can be expected to last much longer than the stuff that does, given equal treatment. That old Vax might still be pumping transactions out for a very long time; replace it with something new, and the same might not be said.
As a long-time follower of Groklaw.net, I've read of this happening before. Lawyers trying to seize the wind by asking for a machine's RAM. Not the contents, the RAM itself. Little green sticks. Lovely, no?
I think I may be even more out on a limb -- I'm not sure there was a one-off "Creation" of any type. I think the logical requirement for such a thing is undermined by an anthropomorphic bias, i.e. because we were born, everything has to have been born. The Big Bang, followed by the Heat Death of the Universe, seems like it could have been a cyclical phenomenon (being of a scientific bend, I'm happy to entertain any sort of refutation short of biblical authority-quoting). Local Big Bangs everywhere. The macro Universe, always was.
Of course, our Bronze Age fore bearers had everything right because a bush burned at them:-)
Terry Pratchett wrote a brilliant send-up of this, one of his early books -- "Strata". Hilarious. I've been on the lookout for news of a pocket watch in a coal seam ever since.
Sometimes a white trailer is the right tool for the job. I've worked with civil engineers for years, and the ones I've worked with were pretty full-on professional. If a job needs a white trailer, that's what they trot out. If the job needs a million dollar visitor centre, then that goes into the spec.
It's probably worth mentioning that there's GPS, and then there's GPS. The sort that we are used to ("In 400 metres, exit ramp, on left, to Proposed Western Freeway"*) depends entirely on trig between orbiting satellites, another more sophisticated type augments that with intertial guidance systems. If you can read the RF from the satellites, you can use the former - and that depends on a combination of antenna design and how much (generally metal) is in the way that might soak up the radio frequency energy before it gets to the box. To a point, you can make up a lot of signal strength with a higher-spec antenna.
The latter type of (what's erroneously, but conveniently called GPS), the inertial guidance system, measures and sums accelerations and gives you a vector -- sort of like summing the movements of a small mass in an enclosed box over time. These can use accelerometers and gyroscopes to add up quite small movements and tell a computer in summary that it's gone this far, in this direction, over this interval of time. If it sounds complex, you're right -- but the technology has been available since the advent of the ICBM.
The Wikipedia entry on the subject is really quite good -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_guidance_system -- worth reading (warning, there is a lure and fascination in these things, especially when you get to laser gyroscopes...)
And as much as I like my little Garman Nuvi (*yes, it really did give me that direction once) it wouldn't be the GPS of choice for locating a major piece of underground tunnelling kit.
I forecast a rise in secret reading sessions -- word passed among friends, person to person, with... Where the Wild Things Are read to a carefully-selected band of Reading Rebels. In secret.
In Australia (Victoria, at least) there's a hard and fast metric for DUI: it's.05% BAC. Over it, you're jobbed. Makes for some interesting news articles, where people are named and their BAC published. Some folks are stopped so far over the limit you wonder how they got into the car in the first place. If you're a touch under the limit, they wave you off and say "be careful, ok?"
People give more credence to arguments from folk who use fair and unbalanced language. By using the above language you are getting your opinion across, but at the cost of your point. Maybe you're ok with that, but for the rest of us it just identifies you as another sheep.
Imagine a company using, say, YouTube to post their internal instructional videos. Great idea!
Then, a competitor starts using your instructional videos too. I guess that's cool, it's the Internet, sharing is good etc. (mild frown)
Another competitor thinks they could get a touch more mind share if you didn't look that good online, and issues a bogus DMCA take-down on your site. All gone. Fire the IT guy responsible for security!
SCO vs. IBM et.al. I see as a sort of infinitely recyclable training ground for the legal profession. The suit can be seen as similar to those burnt-out aircraft fuselages you see at some airports - the ones used by firemen to train their staff.
Nobody expects the aircraft to ever get into the air again.
This is not a new topic of conversation. Early SF pioneer George O. Smith in the "Venus Equilateral" series, last book I think, had to deal with the problem of people and the value of the "original copy" vs. the duplicate. It was effectively the original idea that progressed into Star Trek transporter technology.
Slashdot Mirror
The paste could magically deliver money to my bank account and I still wouldn't buy it.
I utterly refuse to willingly spend a cent on any Sony product. I suspect you know why; for those who don't, there's Groklaw.
I think the planet will recover.
I'm a little more concerned that the immune system it develops will target us...
Eucalyptus foilage is highly flammable when green; the oil in the leaves is the thing. Fire tends to strip the tree, but leaves the acorns able to sprout. The only thing that seems to kill them here in Aus is a grub infestation followed by a small flock of rather large black cockatoos. Those birds will tear the tree completely apart; they usually fall over a day or two after the birds arrive. I've seen this happen a couple of times myself, down in our old property in Tasmania.
You've got japanese beetles?
We've got this natural predator of the japanese beetle here in Australia, called the Cane Toad. Let us know if you want a few million or so.
VBA in Excel - the cause of more programmer misery than anything else, ever.
A very close second: the inclusion of MS Access in Office Professional...
(A) A disturbingly large amount of the world's wealth resides entirely on the common Excel spreadsheet. Carl Sagan-like numbers. Found that out working at the managed funds division of a major bank. Spreadsheets, with a rather enormous amount of VBA. Scared yet?
(B) There is a path for MS Access home-schooling. (1) Build business on Access; (2) Upsize Access DB with SQL Server back-end; (3) Systematically replace Access front-end with IronSpeed; (3) Become popular since their DB apps aren't crashing daily; (4) Become glum when the breathing room and feeling of success you've given your employer allows them to outsource your department to a hosted SAP house.
Been there, done that, ate the shirt.
I believe the relatively new Lightswitch is an attempt to meet this exact need with the added benefit of creating a web deployable front-end.
I've had a fairly in-depth look at LightSwitch. It's kind of pretty, but it has a certain opacity too. Try building a Make/Model/Year interface with it. It's possible, but I can guarantee you won't find it easy or elegant. In contrast, the third-party .NET code generator IronSpeed handles that pretty well, without driving you down the Silverlight runway. I've built a couple dozen IronSpeed apps, and it works pretty well at exposing a database to a web site.
There's also the concern of the post-ROHS lead-free solder in newer gear -- the old stuff doesn't grow tin whiskers, and can be expected to last much longer than the stuff that does, given equal treatment. That old Vax might still be pumping transactions out for a very long time; replace it with something new, and the same might not be said.
I want SlashBacon now.
As a long-time follower of Groklaw.net, I've read of this happening before. Lawyers trying to seize the wind by asking for a machine's RAM. Not the contents, the RAM itself. Little green sticks. Lovely, no?
... The catch is that the USA are kind of a Central Station for cultural interchange
Was. I think the word is was .
-- Just some English-speaking foreigner
And every offense should be punishable by The Hook.
"What's in that beaker, sir?"
"Nothing dangerous. Just an isomer of common ice. Ice-9."
I think I may be even more out on a limb -- I'm not sure there was a one-off "Creation" of any type. I think the logical requirement for such a thing is undermined by an anthropomorphic bias, i.e. because we were born, everything has to have been born. The Big Bang, followed by the Heat Death of the Universe, seems like it could have been a cyclical phenomenon (being of a scientific bend, I'm happy to entertain any sort of refutation short of biblical authority-quoting). Local Big Bangs everywhere. The macro Universe, always was.
Of course, our Bronze Age fore bearers had everything right because a bush burned at them :-)
(Smiley inserted to counter Poe's Law reference)
Terry Pratchett wrote a brilliant send-up of this, one of his early books -- "Strata". Hilarious. I've been on the lookout for news of a pocket watch in a coal seam ever since.
The Antikythera mechanism comes close ;-)
Sometimes a white trailer is the right tool for the job. I've worked with civil engineers for years, and the ones I've worked with were pretty full-on professional. If a job needs a white trailer, that's what they trot out. If the job needs a million dollar visitor centre, then that goes into the spec.
It's probably worth mentioning that there's GPS, and then there's GPS. The sort that we are used to ("In 400 metres, exit ramp, on left, to Proposed Western Freeway"*) depends entirely on trig between orbiting satellites, another more sophisticated type augments that with intertial guidance systems. If you can read the RF from the satellites, you can use the former - and that depends on a combination of antenna design and how much (generally metal) is in the way that might soak up the radio frequency energy before it gets to the box. To a point, you can make up a lot of signal strength with a higher-spec antenna.
The latter type of (what's erroneously, but conveniently called GPS), the inertial guidance system, measures and sums accelerations and gives you a vector -- sort of like summing the movements of a small mass in an enclosed box over time. These can use accelerometers and gyroscopes to add up quite small movements and tell a computer in summary that it's gone this far, in this direction, over this interval of time. If it sounds complex, you're right -- but the technology has been available since the advent of the ICBM.
The Wikipedia entry on the subject is really quite good -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_guidance_system -- worth reading (warning, there is a lure and fascination in these things, especially when you get to laser gyroscopes...)
And as much as I like my little Garman Nuvi (*yes, it really did give me that direction once) it wouldn't be the GPS of choice for locating a major piece of underground tunnelling kit.
I forecast a rise in secret reading sessions -- word passed among friends, person to person, with ... Where the Wild Things Are read to a carefully-selected band of Reading Rebels. In secret.
Shhh!!!
In Australia (Victoria, at least) there's a hard and fast metric for DUI: it's .05% BAC. Over it, you're jobbed. Makes for some interesting news articles, where people are named and their BAC published. Some folks are stopped so far over the limit you wonder how they got into the car in the first place. If you're a touch under the limit, they wave you off and say "be careful, ok?"
... pigs ... United Police States of Amerika...
Dude -- a kind word from an old hippy...
People give more credence to arguments from folk who use fair and unbalanced language. By using the above language you are getting your opinion across, but at the cost of your point. Maybe you're ok with that, but for the rest of us it just identifies you as another sheep.
Friend of mine from a police family says "If you get ticketed by someone with a hand-held radar gun, ask them for a reading on a stationary object."
Precision, of course, isn't quite the same as accuracy.
The women select -- I wouldn't buy into any argument that didn't include them.
Besides, you can't blame humans for Smith's eugenics program - it was those pesky Arisians.
Imagine a company using, say, YouTube to post their internal instructional videos. Great idea!
Then, a competitor starts using your instructional videos too. I guess that's cool, it's the Internet, sharing is good etc. (mild frown)
Another competitor thinks they could get a touch more mind share if you didn't look that good online, and issues a bogus DMCA take-down on your site. All gone. Fire the IT guy responsible for security!
Oh, hang on, we did...
Scientists use imagination, engineers use creativity.
Scientists find out stuff, engineers figure out stuff.
SCO vs. IBM et.al. I see as a sort of infinitely recyclable training ground for the legal profession. The suit can be seen as similar to those burnt-out aircraft fuselages you see at some airports - the ones used by firemen to train their staff.
Nobody expects the aircraft to ever get into the air again.
This is really going to piss off the Silurians.
Punish them where we can. Does anybody on this list still buy Sony products?
We may not be able to kill them as a species, but a few choice boycotts and outings might help to keep the wasps down a bit.
This is not a new topic of conversation. Early SF pioneer George O. Smith in the "Venus Equilateral" series, last book I think, had to deal with the problem of people and the value of the "original copy" vs. the duplicate. It was effectively the original idea that progressed into Star Trek transporter technology.