typically loading 1-3MB of content and >500kB of advertising
I'm pretty sure that should be <500kB of advertising.
Yep... mea culpa. As soon as I saw it go up, I cringed and went wildly searching for the edit function. And the sentence before that should read: ".. took 10-30s to load 10-20MB...". Submit in haste, repent at leisure.
You, sir, are... ok, let's keep this marginally civil. The great bastion of capitalism, the good old United States of America, has higher costs than every country and worse average outcomes than most developed (and a few developing) countries. Look it up, the numbers all everywhere. Life expectancy, infant mortality, etc. I live in one of those "socialist" countries (Italy), and frankly dread their medical system (it appears medieval in many ways), but the results speak for themselves.
It's infuriating as an expat to try to get content in the language I want. Yes, there are solutions, but almost all are technically illegal one way or the other.
I have to admit, I just flew Milan to Heathrow to Denver, and back, and I don't think I looked out the windows once, other than while standing in line waiting for the bathroom. Granted, I was center section aisle, and I did enjoy gawking on a recent flight across Africa, but overall I'd happily trade windows for a GOOD set of cameras.
In other news, BA finally update the entertainment system on their transatlantics to something better than 480P. Which also helps!
I live on the west coast of Italy; they do ocean refilling all the time here, as there are very few lakes. Remember that these are seaplanes; some corrosion resistance is built into the design. Also, they don't really land so much as just skim the surface for a kilometer or so, still holding a pretty good speed. I believe some also carry tanks of concentrated retardant to mix with the water.
Once you've done this with it, though, you'll probably never see it back in commercial passenger use, anywhere. Dumping 48000kg while in the middle of a dive puts some serious stress on the airframe (YouTube, not for the faint of heart).
Never, use the "shortest distance" option unless you are driving a dirt bike and want an adventure. It will use ANY road that shortens the distance, no matter how crappy that road might be.
I loathe the oil industry in all its incarnations, but 65' (would that be 20 meters?) is VERY close to operational heavy machinery in a marine environment. And yes, with a decent lens you'll be reading the "Mom & BP" tattoos on the roughnecks.
If you don't know the field well enough to identify a good mentor in your area of interest, reading Uni web sites won't help.
Try science citation indices for your subject of interest; look for a prof at a teaching school who is well-cited and has frequent student co-authors. Avoid the guy at the giant research lab who only shares credit with other senior scientists or not at all. Student authors can usually be identified because they have few papers or no Ph.D.
Finally, if you can't identify a field of interest and good papers in that field, you're not ready to be so picky. Get a Masters degree at a good school, attend a conference or two and call back in a few years.
As an American doing tech research in Italy.. at a nominally English speaking institution, I'd answer:
Learn some language; it's fun, will stretch your brain, and be useful in the future.
If you're comfortable WAY outside your home environment, go for one of the Asian languages. Most Europeans will speak enough English to let you get by and phrasebook travel will cover you pretty fast. Knowing any of these is a route to a crazy (interesting and fairly lucrative) lifestyle.
If you're a conservative type, you'll never cut it in the local Asian economy anyhow, so you might as well stay on the tourist/expat track there. Learn a Romance language (French, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Latin, Romanian...); knowing any one is a quick gateway into the rest. You'll know all the verb conjugations, tenses, and such, along with a lot of the base words. I'd probably suggest Spanish for its utility in the Americas.
Russian, Arabic, etc. are similar to the various Asian languages, but you have to ask yourself if you really expect to work with any of these countries, or travel there enough to justify the time invested.
Note, I'm assuming that the practical engineering mind is asking if it is USEFUL to learn a language. Some nutc^H^H^H^H savants learn languages for fun. More power to them; especially if they can do so while getting an engineering degree.
In reply to other posters. German is useless; I speak it, but not nearly as well as 95% of Germans speak English. Germans KNOW noone speaks their language, they want to do business, therefor most speak English as a matter of course. Italian is also useless; noone but Italians speak it and they really aren't terribly interested in doing business with foreigners. Learn Spanish and you can pidgin your way into Italian in a month or two.
Open iTunes, open preferences, tell iTunes to rip into mp3, then select song(s), select "Convert to MP3". If you care enough. If you can't figure that out, buy CD's and rip them.
Why does Apple use AAC? I don't really care. DRM free means it can become anything it wants. This is good. I keep multiple copies and formats of my music just depending on which player/computer/phone I'm using them on. The server/backup keeps the original, best-quality format. It's really very easy.
Been there, done that, and am in fact doing it again (damned government lab won't allow Macs). Windows, in my experience, requires reinstallation every year or so if you're a (lazy) power-USER (not administrator). A drag, and a couple of days work lost by the time you get it back to optimal state. And their ease of use for quick, large scale data processing is a nightmare! The next time I get asked to put several hundred MB of data into Excel, I'll scream.
On the other hand, Linux boxes almost inevitably have some arcane failure mode involving hardware/drivers, only solvable by some googling and experience (e.g. livna repositories for nvidia drivers or the fact that the device manager modules for 64 bit kernel 2.6 are flakey which makes Logical Volume Management a nightmare). I've never done an install that didn't go wonky at some point in a STANDARD, point-and-drool, GUI installation. I've learned a LOT that way. Some of it even had wider utility.
Meanwhile, my G4 Powerbook chugs faithfully along... occasionally it throws a nice grayed-out kernel panic when I do something really stupid involving multiple bits of hardware, but otherwise, It Just Works. If you want to play in the free software world, you have apt/fink and, for the diehards, Linux PPC or boot camp.
Yes, I've been administrator of single-user and small (32P) clusters, hacked and rebuilt kernels just to get my mp3 player to sync, built systems and tested multiple distros on them, remastered Knoppix for fun... I've a masochistic streak (I post on slashdot). But the Mac does Well Enough. Sometimes I don't like things, but it does the same thing every time.
If you have used Windows 2000 until now, you have used it for several years now. It's not like your initial investment in the OS hasn't delivered it's return by now. If Solaris is so great, why not just switch to that then?
So... It still provides the correct functionality, works as well as it ever did, but since the manufacturer has decided it's dead and sabotages it, we all should immediately turn out our pockets? Gotta love the new economy!
Seriously, whatever happened to the concept of buying things and keeping them? Used to be you bought something, and, if you did minimal maintenance, it lasted for decades. Now we ASSUME everything has a 3 year lifespan?
I'll crawl back into my cave now... with my shiny new ipod shuffle to keep me company (never said I hadn't bought into it too!).
Only a tiny minority of Americans will ever use the fact of human evolution in their lifetimes.
But the vast majority will use an animal-tested product or medicine; a reasonable number will contract an animal-vectored disease. Our close physiological relationship to other animals allows us to model much of our medicine after them. Some of neurology was learned from squid, embryology from sea urchins... we're all connected, man!
Mind you, all arguments in support of evolution can be trumped with, "because god made it that way." God put the dinosaur fossils there, god gave us the appendix and the vestigial tail, etc. Funny how noone ever advocates that god wanted us to use those oversized, underutilized brains we have.
Indeed, the vast majority of the American public will never deal with science directly in their working lives. So what difference does it make what they believe?
Depends how you "deal" with science. with the possible exception of certain retro walking sticks, pretty much every product available today is a result of scientific inquiry. And knowing a minimal amount of science can greatly asist one in making informed choices about purchasing and life.
If this really bothers you, I'll take your apple stock.
For those determined to pillory Jobs for this, I might suggest reading this sfgate article which says, in part:
Some of the nettlesome stock options were given to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, but he voluntarily canceled those in 2003 before cashing them in.
After digging deeper, Apple uncovered enough new problems to prompt the company to hire an outside lawyer to take over the investigation and notify the Securities and Exchange Commission about its findings.
Valuation of stock options is and has been under a lot of debate recently. Apple looked over its books, discovered they had done something wrong according to current (and possibly past) accounting practices, and went to work to correct the problem.
Steve Jobs, who is richer than Croesus and really only bothers to count the number of digits on his bank statement, decided to dodge potential trouble more than TWO YEARS ago, which helps their position now.
Which part of this fits the "Steve Jobs is a greedy corporate raider" theory?
They screwed up. They admitted it. They'll take a hit. These aren't the droids you're looking for.
I've been brainwashed in california to use ddMMMyy (eg. 02Aug06) for all my dates. They do that in the international Pharmacuetical/BioTech industry to cut down on this exact confusion.
Which begs the question: is 02Aug06 the 2nd of August 2006 or the 6th of August 2002. Are my pills just expiring or 4 years out of date? Any possible format that leaves ambiguity WILL be misunderstood. Two digit years are an abomination!
And, to reply to a previous poster, do you alphabetize your dictionary by last letter of the word? yyyy-mm-dd is, by systems of ordering that have been around for millenia, the most logical.
Bzzt, wrong. Antarctic ice cores show that CO2 levels are higher now than any time in the last 650Kyr, during which time a NUMBER of ice ages have taken place.
or something like that; this'll show up on a google search or possibly even man dd.
man dd
If you're paranoid do this N times. This takes a little while, which is why I like to have an old computer around to do it with. I'd guess shred does the same thing.
Lastly, what about this computer simulation? Is it available to the public? Is it open-sourced?
Briefly, and in most cases, yes; go to your local university, watch a few talks, and talk to the professors. Most climate and earth scientists would dearly LOVE to have a trained software engineer look over their code for free!
These guys, by and large, work in dingy buildings on ancient, poorly maintained equipment managed by an underpaid staff. There's not a lot of money in the business of trying to understand how we're affecting the planet... really!
Slashdot Mirror
typically loading 1-3MB of content and >500kB of advertising
I'm pretty sure that should be <500kB of advertising.
Yep... mea culpa. As soon as I saw it go up, I cringed and went wildly searching for the edit function. And the sentence before that should read: ".. took 10-30s to load 10-20MB ...". Submit in haste, repent at leisure.
You, sir, are... ok, let's keep this marginally civil. The great bastion of capitalism, the good old United States of America, has higher costs than every country and worse average outcomes than most developed (and a few developing) countries. Look it up, the numbers all everywhere. Life expectancy, infant mortality, etc. I live in one of those "socialist" countries (Italy), and frankly dread their medical system (it appears medieval in many ways), but the results speak for themselves.
Most users don't want to have to relearn how to do stuff just because some hipster decided their way was so much better.
It's just text, people. It doesn't need flying toasters or 3 dozen modes.
You're new here, aren't you?
Mod up!
It's infuriating as an expat to try to get content in the language I want. Yes, there are solutions, but almost all are technically illegal one way or the other.
There is no "earth" at the south pole. At either pole you'll be standing on about 10000' of water, whether in liquid or solid form.
I have to admit, I just flew Milan to Heathrow to Denver, and back, and I don't think I looked out the windows once, other than while standing in line waiting for the bathroom. Granted, I was center section aisle, and I did enjoy gawking on a recent flight across Africa, but overall I'd happily trade windows for a GOOD set of cameras.
In other news, BA finally update the entertainment system on their transatlantics to something better than 480P. Which also helps!
I live on the west coast of Italy; they do ocean refilling all the time here, as there are very few lakes. Remember that these are seaplanes; some corrosion resistance is built into the design. Also, they don't really land so much as just skim the surface for a kilometer or so, still holding a pretty good speed. I believe some also carry tanks of concentrated retardant to mix with the water.
Pretty much any cheap plane will work fine. I believe I recall a 74 being used a few years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_747_Supertanker), and C130s are very common in this service.
Once you've done this with it, though, you'll probably never see it back in commercial passenger use, anywhere. Dumping 48000kg while in the middle of a dive puts some serious stress on the airframe (YouTube, not for the faint of heart).
Never, use the "shortest distance" option unless you are driving a dirt bike and want an adventure. It will use ANY road that shortens the distance, no matter how crappy that road might be.
I see what you did there.
I loathe the oil industry in all its incarnations, but 65' (would that be 20 meters?) is VERY close to operational heavy machinery in a marine environment. And yes, with a decent lens you'll be reading the "Mom & BP" tattoos on the roughnecks.
These are not the droids you're looking for.
If you don't know the field well enough to identify a good mentor in your area of interest, reading Uni web sites won't help.
Try science citation indices for your subject of interest; look for a prof at a teaching school who is well-cited and has frequent student co-authors. Avoid the guy at the giant research lab who only shares credit with other senior scientists or not at all. Student authors can usually be identified because they have few papers or no Ph.D.
Finally, if you can't identify a field of interest and good papers in that field, you're not ready to be so picky. Get a Masters degree at a good school, attend a conference or two and call back in a few years.
A better solution, remove those pesky devices altogether, then you'd have NO security risk at all!!!
Note, I'm assuming that the practical engineering mind is asking if it is USEFUL to learn a language. Some nutc^H^H^H^H savants learn languages for fun. More power to them; especially if they can do so while getting an engineering degree.
In reply to other posters. German is useless; I speak it, but not nearly as well as 95% of Germans speak English. Germans KNOW noone speaks their language, they want to do business, therefor most speak English as a matter of course. Italian is also useless; noone but Italians speak it and they really aren't terribly interested in doing business with foreigners. Learn Spanish and you can pidgin your way into Italian in a month or two.
Why does Apple use AAC? I don't really care. DRM free means it can become anything it wants. This is good. I keep multiple copies and formats of my music just depending on which player/computer/phone I'm using them on. The server/backup keeps the original, best-quality format. It's really very easy.
It Just Works.
Been there, done that, and am in fact doing it again (damned government lab won't allow Macs). Windows, in my experience, requires reinstallation every year or so if you're a (lazy) power-USER (not administrator). A drag, and a couple of days work lost by the time you get it back to optimal state. And their ease of use for quick, large scale data processing is a nightmare! The next time I get asked to put several hundred MB of data into Excel, I'll scream.
On the other hand, Linux boxes almost inevitably have some arcane failure mode involving hardware/drivers, only solvable by some googling and experience (e.g. livna repositories for nvidia drivers or the fact that the device manager modules for 64 bit kernel 2.6 are flakey which makes Logical Volume Management a nightmare). I've never done an install that didn't go wonky at some point in a STANDARD, point-and-drool, GUI installation. I've learned a LOT that way. Some of it even had wider utility.
Meanwhile, my G4 Powerbook chugs faithfully along... occasionally it throws a nice grayed-out kernel panic when I do something really stupid involving multiple bits of hardware, but otherwise, It Just Works. If you want to play in the free software world, you have apt/fink and, for the diehards, Linux PPC or boot camp.
Yes, I've been administrator of single-user and small (32P) clusters, hacked and rebuilt kernels just to get my mp3 player to sync, built systems and tested multiple distros on them, remastered Knoppix for fun... I've a masochistic streak (I post on slashdot). But the Mac does Well Enough. Sometimes I don't like things, but it does the same thing every time.
And yes, it's shiney.
So... It still provides the correct functionality, works as well as it ever did, but since the manufacturer has decided it's dead and sabotages it, we all should immediately turn out our pockets? Gotta love the new economy!
Seriously, whatever happened to the concept of buying things and keeping them? Used to be you bought something, and, if you did minimal maintenance, it lasted for decades. Now we ASSUME everything has a 3 year lifespan?
I'll crawl back into my cave now... with my shiny new ipod shuffle to keep me company (never said I hadn't bought into it too!).
But the vast majority will use an animal-tested product or medicine; a reasonable number will contract an animal-vectored disease. Our close physiological relationship to other animals allows us to model much of our medicine after them. Some of neurology was learned from squid, embryology from sea urchins... we're all connected, man!
Mind you, all arguments in support of evolution can be trumped with, "because god made it that way." God put the dinosaur fossils there, god gave us the appendix and the vestigial tail, etc. Funny how noone ever advocates that god wanted us to use those oversized, underutilized brains we have.
Depends how you "deal" with science. with the possible exception of certain retro walking sticks, pretty much every product available today is a result of scientific inquiry. And knowing a minimal amount of science can greatly asist one in making informed choices about purchasing and life.
If this really bothers you, I'll take your apple stock.
For those determined to pillory Jobs for this, I might suggest reading this sfgate article which says, in part:
Valuation of stock options is and has been under a lot of debate recently. Apple looked over its books, discovered they had done something wrong according to current (and possibly past) accounting practices, and went to work to correct the problem.
Steve Jobs, who is richer than Croesus and really only bothers to count the number of digits on his bank statement, decided to dodge potential trouble more than TWO YEARS ago, which helps their position now.
Which part of this fits the "Steve Jobs is a greedy corporate raider" theory?
They screwed up. They admitted it. They'll take a hit. These aren't the droids you're looking for.
I've been brainwashed in california to use ddMMMyy (eg. 02Aug06) for all my dates. They do that in the international Pharmacuetical/BioTech industry to cut down on this exact confusion.
Which begs the question: is 02Aug06 the 2nd of August 2006 or the 6th of August 2002. Are my pills just expiring or 4 years out of date? Any possible format that leaves ambiguity WILL be misunderstood. Two digit years are an abomination!
And, to reply to a previous poster, do you alphabetize your dictionary by last letter of the word? yyyy-mm-dd is, by systems of ordering that have been around for millenia, the most logical.
Bzzt, wrong. Antarctic ice cores show that CO2 levels are higher now than any time in the last 650Kyr, during which time a NUMBER of ice ages have taken place.
Briefly, and in most cases, yes; go to your local university, watch a few talks, and talk to the professors. Most climate and earth scientists would dearly LOVE to have a trained software engineer look over their code for free!
These guys, by and large, work in dingy buildings on ancient, poorly maintained equipment managed by an underpaid staff. There's not a lot of money in the business of trying to understand how we're affecting the planet... really!