Just to be nice, imagine the person is from a country far far away, just got off the plane, and wants to rent a car.
That person probably drives a car with manual transmission and is a whole lot more comfortable with unfamiliar cars than most Americans. You think the brakes or the "pace of deceleration" when you let go of the accelerator are hard to get used to? Try getting used to a new clutch: if you don't use it right, the engine will stall.
I often wonder how a lot of Americans manage abroad: they can't seem to travel without renting a car (even when there's excellent public transport), and they never learned to handle a clutch and stick-shift, and it's very hard to rent a car with automatic transmission on other continents.
Well, there's been cases of repeated last names in science... I just never thought that a person both prominent and low-profile (who in here has studied information theory and text searching algorithms?) would appear on a popular site such as/.
Well, here's another reason he'd appear on Slashdot: he wrote TeX, which is even today the best free typesetting system. And it beats every commercial typesetting system for typesetting mathematics, which Microsoft, Adobe and others don't have a clue about after 20 years of research (indeed, most scientific publishers use TeX/LaTeX). You'll find it on your linux box: among other things, GNU TeXinfo uses it for printable manuals.
And yes, that's still the same Knuth -- he wrote TeX because he was unhappy with the publishers' typesetting of TAOCP.
I object to the on-call people being in movie theatres. Go see the frickin' movie on the night when you're NOT on-call.
I like the way some people assume doctors are not allowed to have a life. It's ok to call the doctor whenever you like, day or night, but it's not ok for the doctor to go out and watch a movie? The doctors I know leave their phone on vibrate, sit at the back of the theatre, go out to answer a call (more often it's an SMS which they can answer sitting where they are). Exactly what's wrong with that?
I'd consider that wasteful. I'd be happy to buy a monitor with say 10 dead pixels at halfprice or so.
Recently, here in India the LCD of my laptop (bought in the US) went bust. HP replaced it for about US$350 (it was out of warranty), and the replacement has a pixel that's permanently red. Initially I found that annoying but now I don't even notice it. Very possibly they knew it was defective and that's why it was relatively cheap: I believe replacing a laptop screen costs at least $1000 in the US (and this one is a very good 1400x1050 15.3" screen), and that's not counting labour, I remember being told (by CompUSA, I think) that it costs $200 just to get someone to open the laptop and look at it if it's out of warranty.
If I'm right and it was cheap for that reason, I don't see why they can't formalise the process and sell "defective" monitors cheap. There could be quite a demand.
How about reading peoples' posts before replying? I know people don't RTFA around here, but that post would have been on your screen as you typed your reply, and it's only a few lines long.
The product patent part of the ordinance was necessitated by India's WTO obligations: this needed to be done by Jan 1, 2005. It has nothing to do with sneaking something through past a disaster. The Indian press has been covering it for days before. As for the embedded-software bit: as far as I know that wasn't necessitated by the WTO obligations, but it was probably bundled here for convenience, not because they wanted to sneak it past anyone.
I saw this in the news last night and the death estimates where ludicrously low. This always seems to be the case for these types of events, while death estimates in Western countries always seem to start on the high side and trend down. I'm not sure why this should be.
Because these aren't estimates, but known deaths? No conspiracy here.
I am concerned about the US military base on Diego Garcia
Interesting. For me, and most people in the world, a US military base would be absolute bottom on any list of worries. Especially the one at Diego Garcia, given its history. It's been cleansed already of its rightful inhabitants by the leaders of the free world; it would be fitting if the military base got wiped out too.
Let me explain as clearly as I can. There is nothing God-given about Imperial units. They are a weird system cooked up by the British. The French came up with a much nicer system back in the 17th century or so. They had no earthly reason to make a metre equal to three yards: only the Brits used the yard. Unfortunately, the British colonies got the yard, foot, furlong, nail, and other long-forgotten units too. Canada got these units at the same time as the US did; India and Australia and other countries probably a bit later. They were solidly established in all these countries by the 20th century. What happened was that all these countries got sick of (a) needing a calculator (or slide rule or whatever) to do the most basic calculations, and (b) being unable to talk to the civilised world, so they voluntarily chucked out the imperial units and went metric. And of course the Brits aren't forcing anyone to change. Some Brits think the EU is forcing the Brits to change, but of course it just makes sense to change. To everyone except the Americans.
The difference is that no one is asking the other countries to change.
Please. Other countries have already changed. India, Australia, Canada, whoever was afflicted by the imperial units (for colonial reasons) dumped them ages ago. The Brits themselves are in the process of dumping them.
The biggest problem with the metric system for Americans is that we already have the concepts ingrained. We know what 60mph is, but what is 100 km/h?
Roughly 60 mph? You think other countries didn't have the concepts ingrained? Just ingrain new concepts. I grew up in India with metric; my parents grew up with imperial but switched easily enough. The guy says the same of his Canadian mother on his webpage. Unfortunately I (like many in India) have ingrained imperial for body height and body temperature (but not weight -- I only understand kilograms there), but I'm comfortable with metric for those too.
I honesty can't stand to even deal with someone who uses shorthand such as "u" or "ur". I think that one of the causes of this is poor typing skills.
I think the bigger cause is sms: typing on a 9 key keypad really is hard. But then these people forget how to spell the word in the first place and such spellings bleed into formal letters.
When I mentioned that to a non-geek the answer was "yes, I don't understand all these abbreviations like BTW, IMO,...) which took me aback: I'd taken those totally for granted and they don't bother me at all (I use them a lot myself, though I still wouldn't use them in a formal context.) So I wonder whether it isn't hypocritical to accept BTW etc and not accept u or ur.
I think you mean "incomprehensibility". Something illegible is something that can't be read (smudged, bad handwriting, whatever), not something that can't be understood.
Somewhat offtopic, but a book I was looking at recently (Introduction to automata theory... by Hopcroft et al) says in the first chapter, "If you studied plane geometry in high school any time before the 1990's, you most likely had to do some detailed 'deductive proofs'... In the USA of the 1990s it became popular to teach proof as a matter of personal feelings about the statement."
Is this really true? It ties in with what you say -- if the message is right the details don't matter -- except that while badly-framed arguments are an annoyance in language, they're completely fatal in mathematics.
However, I admit that the single-posting link doesn't have an obvious way to get back to the thread. One way, of course, is to search for the text in the posting...
The president (ceo?) of UC turned up in India immediately after the incident. He said that he was horrified and the company would do everything it could to make things better.
Yeah, you suppose he'd have stayed home and said "shit happens"? They're a corporation, not a Soviet-style government monopoly. They had hell to face from a PR point of view and had to do anything they could to save face -- in theory, anyway -- in the event though, they didn't do very much.
Slashdot Mirror
That person probably drives a car with manual transmission and is a whole lot more comfortable with unfamiliar cars than most Americans. You think the brakes or the "pace of deceleration" when you let go of the accelerator are hard to get used to? Try getting used to a new clutch: if you don't use it right, the engine will stall.
I often wonder how a lot of Americans manage abroad: they can't seem to travel without renting a car (even when there's excellent public transport), and they never learned to handle a clutch and stick-shift, and it's very hard to rent a car with automatic transmission on other continents.
Douglas Hofstadter describes how a computer program by David Cope generates fake "Chopin" and "Bach" good enough to fool music students.
Well, here's another reason he'd appear on Slashdot: he wrote TeX, which is even today the best free typesetting system. And it beats every commercial typesetting system for typesetting mathematics, which Microsoft, Adobe and others don't have a clue about after 20 years of research (indeed, most scientific publishers use TeX/LaTeX). You'll find it on your linux box: among other things, GNU TeXinfo uses it for printable manuals.
And yes, that's still the same Knuth -- he wrote TeX because he was unhappy with the publishers' typesetting of TAOCP.
I like the way some people assume doctors are not allowed to have a life. It's ok to call the doctor whenever you like, day or night, but it's not ok for the doctor to go out and watch a movie? The doctors I know leave their phone on vibrate, sit at the back of the theatre, go out to answer a call (more often it's an SMS which they can answer sitting where they are). Exactly what's wrong with that?
I'd consider that wasteful. I'd be happy to buy a monitor with say 10 dead pixels at halfprice or so.
Recently, here in India the LCD of my laptop (bought in the US) went bust. HP replaced it for about US$350 (it was out of warranty), and the replacement has a pixel that's permanently red. Initially I found that annoying but now I don't even notice it. Very possibly they knew it was defective and that's why it was relatively cheap: I believe replacing a laptop screen costs at least $1000 in the US (and this one is a very good 1400x1050 15.3" screen), and that's not counting labour, I remember being told (by CompUSA, I think) that it costs $200 just to get someone to open the laptop and look at it if it's out of warranty.
If I'm right and it was cheap for that reason, I don't see why they can't formalise the process and sell "defective" monitors cheap. There could be quite a demand.
Like Ryanair, you mean? One of the more profitable airlines in existence.
Why do I get the feeling you don't have a clue about how airlines work, what the costs are, where the revenues come from?
Canada and cricket? Yes, they have a team (so does the USA), but the Canadians I know had no clue about it.
How about reading peoples' posts before replying? I know people don't RTFA around here, but that post would have been on your screen as you typed your reply, and it's only a few lines long.
The product patent part of the ordinance was necessitated by India's WTO obligations: this needed to be done by Jan 1, 2005. It has nothing to do with sneaking something through past a disaster. The Indian press has been covering it for days before. As for the embedded-software bit: as far as I know that wasn't necessitated by the WTO obligations, but it was probably bundled here for convenience, not because they wanted to sneak it past anyone.
Because these aren't estimates, but known deaths? No conspiracy here.
Interesting. For me, and most people in the world, a US military base would be absolute bottom on any list of worries. Especially the one at Diego Garcia, given its history. It's been cleansed already of its rightful inhabitants by the leaders of the free world; it would be fitting if the military base got wiped out too.
Which, of course, merits the death penalty. I suspect even Bush would call you cold-hearted.
Colombo wasn't unaffected.
Let me explain as clearly as I can. There is nothing God-given about Imperial units. They are a weird system cooked up by the British. The French came up with a much nicer system back in the 17th century or so. They had no earthly reason to make a metre equal to three yards: only the Brits used the yard. Unfortunately, the British colonies got the yard, foot, furlong, nail, and other long-forgotten units too. Canada got these units at the same time as the US did; India and Australia and other countries probably a bit later. They were solidly established in all these countries by the 20th century. What happened was that all these countries got sick of (a) needing a calculator (or slide rule or whatever) to do the most basic calculations, and (b) being unable to talk to the civilised world, so they voluntarily chucked out the imperial units and went metric. And of course the Brits aren't forcing anyone to change. Some Brits think the EU is forcing the Brits to change, but of course it just makes sense to change. To everyone except the Americans.
Please. Other countries have already changed. India, Australia, Canada, whoever was afflicted by the imperial units (for colonial reasons) dumped them ages ago. The Brits themselves are in the process of dumping them.
Roughly 60 mph? You think other countries didn't have the concepts ingrained? Just ingrain new concepts. I grew up in India with metric; my parents grew up with imperial but switched easily enough. The guy says the same of his Canadian mother on his webpage. Unfortunately I (like many in India) have ingrained imperial for body height and body temperature (but not weight -- I only understand kilograms there), but I'm comfortable with metric for those too.
Yes, of course it runs on athlons.
So am I the only one who wasn't confused? Or is everyone else here a Florida voter?
Hint: read the damn instructions, don't just look at the numbers. And yes it does work with firefox on linux, doesn't work with konq 3.3.1.
More about the second author of that paper (scroll down to "Hetherington and Willard article)
I think the bigger cause is sms: typing on a 9 key keypad really is hard. But then these people forget how to spell the word in the first place and such spellings bleed into formal letters.
When I mentioned that to a non-geek the answer was "yes, I don't understand all these abbreviations like BTW, IMO, ...) which took me aback: I'd taken those totally for granted and they don't bother me at all (I use them a lot myself, though I still wouldn't use them in a formal context.) So I wonder whether it isn't hypocritical to accept BTW etc and not accept u or ur.
I think you mean "incomprehensibility". Something illegible is something that can't be read (smudged, bad handwriting, whatever), not something that can't be understood.
--Vocabulary nazi
Is this really true? It ties in with what you say -- if the message is right the details don't matter -- except that while badly-framed arguments are an annoyance in language, they're completely fatal in mathematics.
No, they haven't (to take a random example).
However, I admit that the single-posting link doesn't have an obvious way to get back to the thread. One way, of course, is to search for the text in the posting...
Yeah, you suppose he'd have stayed home and said "shit happens"? They're a corporation, not a Soviet-style government monopoly. They had hell to face from a PR point of view and had to do anything they could to save face -- in theory, anyway -- in the event though, they didn't do very much.
Links?
which reminds me ... not every distro in the world is Red Hat.
My Debian box also has BSD mail (mailx). Writing a GPL version seems pretty pointless to me.