Instead of trying to estimate 12 inches, you should try something that's more of a fixed length, such a ruler or extendingb your arm. I bet your estimate of 12 inches is off.
In my experience when most people estimate 12 inches, they're usually somewhere in a range of 8-18 inches, which makes a big difference when talking about 1-inch quarter.
If I hold an American quarter 12 inches from my eye (using a ruler), the quarter is about 5 times larger then the moon in either case. It's much larger.
I tried this last week to prove it to some friends. The Moon will appear exactly the same size regardless of where it is in the sky. Try it tonight. Disbelieve the illusion!
Although, perhaps we should use something more objective, like a couple different coins.
If the moon really did look bigger in comparison to your thumb, it wouldn't really be an illusion or a perception problem. It would prove that something actually did increase the size of the moon's appearance.
Here's a simple test to convince most people that the moon is the same size near the horizon then it is in the middle of the sky.
When the moon rises, extend your arm all the way, hold your thumb next to the moon and take an approximate measurement of the moon against your thumbnail. You just need an approximation.
A few hours later, when the moon is higher in the sky, do the same thing.
This seems to be enough to convince most people that the moon is about the same size.
Of course, then you have to deal with the people who think that their thumb strinks as the night gets later, but I can't help you there.
However, passing a Constitutional Amendment isn't exactly 'simple'. There are 27 Amendments, but from 1989-1999 there were well over 100 attempts to Amend the consitution during each Congressional Session (Most were probably duplicate attempts I'm guessing).
Hey don't get me wrong. I think the Riders are stupid also. It's a sneaky way that both parties use to sneak crud past past the usual process, and should be outlawed.
Your arguement makes sense, but the points need to be debated a little more.
I don't really understand how Riders make it into bills, but from is that the Bill authors aren't required to allow Riders into the bill, they do it to gain support for the Bill. There's alot of stuff going on behind the scenes: "Look Senator X, I'll vote for your bill if you allow my rider".
It's not that simple unfortunately. A line-item veto did exist briefly during the Clinton Administration, but died upon it's first use.
President Clinton briefly had the power of the Line Item Veto between 1997 - 1998. It was Declared Unconstitutional in 1998, after President Clinton's first attempt to use the veto. If I remember right, Clinton knew that the Line-item veto wouldn't survive, and chose to use it in a mostly symbolic act.
The Courts said that this particular attempt at a line-item veto gave unprececented legislative power to the executive branch.
I like the idea of Jabber, and I've had a Jabber account for several years. Honestly I only know of one other person who uses it. I don't think I've ever had a conversation over Jabber.
You hit the nail on the head. He's looking for checkpoints.
However, even the CD-based distros are quickly moving targets. There are hundreds of packages, and a dozen different version of each package and thousands of possible varients. You can't really say "I run RHEL 4, version 5, patchlevel 3" because 4.5.3 can STILL be one of a hundred different combination of the packages. This applies even to the Core of the OS.
With Debian, you say something like "I run RHEL GNU/Linux Sarge, with Kernel version 2.8.x.y.z, Glibc version 1.2.3, GCC version 1.2.3, Coretools version 1.2.3". The package versions are precise, but the overall version of OS level is vague.
If you're running a production & staging environment, it's difficult to determine if each machine is running the exact, same OS. A signifigant number of bugs come from these differences between systems.
There should be some way to quickly determine the exact version of the base OS on a zillion machines without parsing the entire package list.
We do this in software development all the time, right? They are called Branches. When I say "Branch 2.1.1", everyone in the room knows exactly what I'm talking about because "Branch 2.1.1" is a very well defined product, and we know the exact version of every piece of software that goes in there, at least in theory.
I'd love the same ability for then I'm talking to other people on an IRC channel. Especially for sytems where the hardware is tightly controled, such as a Sun machine.
Iridium + Text messaging is the way to go. That way you can not only receive it anywhere, but you can take action.
Oooo I can see it now. Jack is out ona hike and the site goes down.
*beep* *beep*
Boss via text messaging: "Jack, the site is down." Jack via text messaging: "WTF!" Boss: "Can you help out?" Jack: "kybord no good 4 typng! LOLz. cya l8r"
Well, websites around that time were similar to Gopher, they mostly text & hyperlinks. But they had colored text! So, Lynx wasn't too far off:)
Inline images weren't common at all. "10K for an image? Are you crazy? That's bigger then the whole page!" It took two minutes to download my professors homepage, and half the time was spent downloading an image of his grinning face:)
Gopher was better organized then the web, as you always had an nice neat list of hyperlinks, instead of hyperlinks scattered throughout the page.
People who live in a Hurricane region probably don't rely solely on these email warnings.
Usually these email alert systems are tied into other region-wide alert systems. The messages are also distributed through the Weather radio stations, the emergency radio stations, via an automated phone system, fax alerts, the Emergency Broadcast System, etc.
FEMA was working on such systems before they got wrapped into the Department of Homeland Security. These days, I think there is a fair amount of funding for these emergency broadcasting systems.
In California, the State put up a bunch of information signs over major freeways which are used broadcast new Amber Alerts & road condition alerts.
1-2 months ago, San Francisco received a large grant from the DHS, and built dozens of emergency speakers all over the city. It's partially based on the old WWII & cold war emergency siren system.
I am pretty sure that Florida & the neighborhing states are working on large system to help deal with floods & hurricanes.
I use Scan USA and a few other systems for alerts in California. The system itself connects to a couple of the region-wide emergency information networks such as the Amber Alert system, and can sent out information to a variety of sources such as SMS devices, etc. It's still in the early stages.
I do not see them being useful or reliable in a severe emergency like an earthquake, but they may be useful for Amber Alerts, a chemical leak from one of the oil refineries or weather alerts. I also worry if I'll see a message from Big Brother to keep an eye open for "Felon Guy Montag spotted at Spruce and Main streets", but that's another discussion.
Yahoo sometimes marks these messages as Spam, even if the sender is in my addressbook.
I have a couple theories why these messages are marked as Spam:
1. People may sign up with these alert systems and then forget they are on the mailinglists, and mark the email as spam. No surprise here, it happens all the time.
2. Many of these email alert systems don't contain useful content in the email. Instead, they ask you to click on a link to visit a website with more information. See this example from ScanUSA:
Subject: New Alert
SCAN, the Secure Cops Alert Network, has broadcast an alert:
Date Issued: 01.03.2005 12:01:21 PT
Alert Type: OTHER ALERT
Alert Priority: INFORMATIONAL
In a quick glance, many people may mistake this for Spam because they do not contain much of useful information, which makes it more likely that they will mark the alert as Spam. I get "Stock Alert" spam all the time.
It seems like the email itself should contain the actual Alert, with a hyperlink to the website with more information.
If the emergency email is sent to 50,000 people and everyone clicked at on the link at the same time, the site may die at the same moment when the Alert should be promote as heavily as possible.
When the site comes back up later on, the Alert may have been resolved.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm skeptical.
Instead of trying to estimate 12 inches, you should try something that's more of a fixed length, such a ruler or extendingb your arm. I bet your estimate of 12 inches is off.
In my experience when most people estimate 12 inches, they're usually somewhere in a range of 8-18 inches, which makes a big difference when talking about 1-inch quarter.
If I hold an American quarter 12 inches from my eye (using a ruler), the quarter is about 5 times larger then the moon in either case. It's much larger.
Hrm... I'll have to try again (I was way far north last week).
Crazy. Madness.
it will appear several thumbs wide.
No it won't. You're crazy! Madness!
I tried this last week to prove it to some friends. The Moon will appear exactly the same size regardless of where it is in the sky. Try it tonight. Disbelieve the illusion!
Although, perhaps we should use something more objective, like a couple different coins.
If the moon really did look bigger in comparison to your thumb, it wouldn't really be an illusion or a perception problem. It would prove that something actually did increase the size of the moon's appearance.
But it ain't so!
Here's a simple test to convince most people that the moon is the same size near the horizon then it is in the middle of the sky.
When the moon rises, extend your arm all the way, hold your thumb next to the moon and take an approximate measurement of the moon against your thumbnail. You just need an approximation.
A few hours later, when the moon is higher in the sky, do the same thing.
This seems to be enough to convince most people that the moon is about the same size.
Of course, then you have to deal with the people who think that their thumb strinks as the night gets later, but I can't help you there.
You're right, an Amendment would do it.
However, passing a Constitutional Amendment isn't exactly 'simple'. There are 27 Amendments, but from 1989-1999 there were well over 100 attempts to Amend the consitution during each Congressional Session (Most were probably duplicate attempts I'm guessing).
Hey don't get me wrong. I think the Riders are stupid also.
It's a sneaky way that both parties use to sneak crud past past the usual process, and should be outlawed.
Your arguement makes sense, but the points need to be debated a little more.
I don't really understand how Riders make it into bills, but from is that the Bill authors aren't required to allow Riders into the bill, they do it to gain support for the Bill. There's alot of stuff going on behind the scenes: "Look Senator X, I'll vote for your bill if you allow my rider".
It's not that simple unfortunately. A line-item veto did exist briefly during the Clinton Administration, but died upon it's first use.
President Clinton briefly had the power of the Line Item Veto between 1997 - 1998. It was Declared Unconstitutional in 1998, after President Clinton's first attempt to use the veto. If I remember right, Clinton knew that the Line-item veto wouldn't survive, and chose to use it in a mostly symbolic act.
The Courts said that this particular attempt at a line-item veto gave unprececented legislative power to the executive branch.
I like the idea of Jabber, and I've had a Jabber account for several years. Honestly I only know of one other person who uses it. I don't think I've ever had a conversation over Jabber.
Although on the other hand, many geeks use AIM as their primary IM client. It's not really any more or less geeky then Yahoo IM or MSN Messenger.
Some people use gAIM or Trillian, but they still use the AIM protocol.
You hit the nail on the head. He's looking for checkpoints.
However, even the CD-based distros are quickly moving targets. There are hundreds of packages, and a dozen different version of each package and thousands of possible varients. You can't really say "I run RHEL 4, version 5, patchlevel 3" because 4.5.3 can STILL be one of a hundred different combination of the packages. This applies even to the Core of the OS.
With Debian, you say something like "I run RHEL GNU/Linux Sarge, with Kernel version 2.8.x.y.z, Glibc version 1.2.3, GCC version 1.2.3, Coretools version 1.2.3". The package versions are precise, but the overall version of OS level is vague.
If you're running a production & staging environment, it's difficult to determine if each machine is running the exact, same OS. A signifigant number of bugs come from these differences between systems.
There should be some way to quickly determine the exact version of the base OS on a zillion machines without parsing the entire package list.
We do this in software development all the time, right? They are called Branches. When I say "Branch 2.1.1", everyone in the room knows exactly what I'm talking about because "Branch 2.1.1" is a very well defined product, and we know the exact version of every piece of software that goes in there, at least in theory.
I'd love the same ability for then I'm talking to other people on an IRC channel. Especially for sytems where the hardware is tightly controled, such as a Sun machine.
Crazy man. Your bird wasn't killed by Teflon, it was killed by Dihydrogen Monoxide. Clearly, that stuff should be banned!
For giggles, check out the https keyword:
https//example.com
"Timmy, why did you force daddy's new screwdriver into the DVD player"
"Because it's shiny"
As the father of a 1 year old, I can't find out what the modern equivilant of a PB&J-sandwich-in-the-VCR is.
Oh you're just bitter, because when we took that university class together in 1993 you bet $500 in Apple stock + splits + dividends!
:)
Now pay up!
Oh this is so exciting.
...
Over the years, I've made a ton of bets with Mac fans who swore up and down that Apple would never, ever switch to Intel processors.
I am now owed several kegs of beer and some free fancy dinners. A couple people owe me a million bucks.
Business strategy:
1. Make wagers with Apple people.
2.
3. Profit! Steve Jobs will make the announcement for you.
Iridium + Text messaging is the way to go. That way you can not only receive it anywhere, but you can take action.
Oooo I can see it now. Jack is out ona hike and the site goes down.
*beep* *beep*
Boss via text messaging: "Jack, the site is down."
Jack via text messaging: "WTF!"
Boss: "Can you help out?"
Jack: "kybord no good 4 typng! LOLz. cya l8r"
Well, websites around that time were similar to Gopher, they mostly text & hyperlinks. But they had colored text! So, Lynx wasn't too far off :)
:)
Inline images weren't common at all. "10K for an image? Are you crazy? That's bigger then the whole page!" It took two minutes to download my professors homepage, and half the time was spent downloading an image of his grinning face
Gopher was better organized then the web, as you always had an nice neat list of hyperlinks, instead of hyperlinks scattered throughout the page.
They have never helped the authorities save a person.
g eServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=991/
I'm no Amber Alert cheerleader, but Amber Alerts have helped to save people.
Here are some success stories:
http://www.amberalert.gov/toolkit_stories.html/
http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/Pa
More can be found with a Google search of "Amber Alert" success.
Sorry... I meant to say that the '2.x betas are available as binaries'.
I'm also primarily a Windows user (learning Linux on the side. I'll switch when I'm ready) and the 2.x betas are not provided as binaries.
The 2.x binaries are available as binaries. I've been using them on various Windows machines for several months.
http://download.openoffice.org/680/index.html/
They are a great way to port a word doc to PDF or readable-HTML. I can use OOo to fix broken Word Documents when Word itself cannot read the document.
People who live in a Hurricane region probably don't rely solely on these email warnings.
Usually these email alert systems are tied into other region-wide alert systems. The messages are also distributed through the Weather radio stations, the emergency radio stations, via an automated phone system, fax alerts, the Emergency Broadcast System, etc.
FEMA was working on such systems before they got wrapped into the Department of Homeland Security. These days, I think there is a fair amount of funding for these emergency broadcasting systems.
In California, the State put up a bunch of information signs over major freeways which are used broadcast new Amber Alerts & road condition alerts.
1-2 months ago, San Francisco received a large grant from the DHS, and built dozens of emergency speakers all over the city. It's partially based on the old WWII & cold war emergency siren system.
I am pretty sure that Florida & the neighborhing states are working on large system to help deal with floods & hurricanes.
I use Scan USA and a few other systems for alerts in California. The system itself connects to a couple of the region-wide emergency information networks such as the Amber Alert system, and can sent out information to a variety of sources such as SMS devices, etc. It's still in the early stages.
I do not see them being useful or reliable in a severe emergency like an earthquake, but they may be useful for Amber Alerts, a chemical leak from one of the oil refineries or weather alerts. I also worry if I'll see a message from Big Brother to keep an eye open for "Felon Guy Montag spotted at Spruce and Main streets", but that's another discussion.
Yahoo sometimes marks these messages as Spam, even if the sender is in my addressbook.
I have a couple theories why these messages are marked as Spam:
1. People may sign up with these alert systems and then forget they are on the mailinglists, and mark the email as spam. No surprise here, it happens all the time.
2. Many of these email alert systems don't contain useful content in the email. Instead, they ask you to click on a link to visit a website with more information. See this example from ScanUSA:
Subject: New Alert
SCAN, the Secure Cops Alert Network, has broadcast an alert:
Date Issued: 01.03.2005 12:01:21 PT
Alert Type: OTHER ALERT
Alert Priority: INFORMATIONAL
Click on this link to view the entire alert:
http://www.scanusa.com/viewalert.php?something
That's it. The "Alert" is pretty vague.
In a quick glance, many people may mistake this for Spam because they do not contain much of useful information, which makes it more likely that they will mark the alert as Spam. I get "Stock Alert" spam all the time.
It seems like the email itself should contain the actual Alert, with a hyperlink to the website with more information.
If the emergency email is sent to 50,000 people and everyone clicked at on the link at the same time, the site may die at the same moment when the Alert should be promote as heavily as possible.
When the site comes back up later on, the Alert may have been resolved.
Bah, Apple.
:)
Microsoft borrowed the "is dying" part from FreeBSD, just like the Windows network stack!
*ducks*
The BIG difference between Libranet & Ubuntu.
Libranet ships with vi(m), while Ubuntu ships with Emacs.
The only truely secure computer is one which is switched off and disconnected from the network.
And smashed with a sledgehammer.
And set on fire, to the temperature of 600F, which should be sufficient to destroy the magnetic bits in the hard drive.
And then nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.