Really? Individual Russians can be very talented, and as engineers, scientists and mathematicians they have a lot to offer. But as a functioning society? A force to be reckoned with? Nyet.
And just having a look at the modding that's going on, at least one believer in the God that condemns babies to Hell because they died too quickly has mod points. I'm looking forward to metamodding tomorrow. Oh well, suffering is supposed to be good for the soul, or something like that.
Good stuff. Having had my NTFS partition crunched by a Linux installation in the past I am inclined to be cautious.
Why didn't you promote Knoppix? I realise it is not available off the shelf, but compared with Mandrake 9 it is focussed and has sensible defaults. When I get around to resizing my partition again I'll probably use Knoppix on my hard drive.
"Mandrake will non-destructively repartition any MS-Windows partition."
Oh ho. Not if you are using say NTFS.
" none of the modern laptops include real modems, only "win" modems which are proprietary and designed to work only with MS-Windows"
A meaningless technical quibble to the audience of that article. Their laptop has got a modem that configures and works automatically under Windows, but won't work without some hair pulling under Linux. If you don't see that as an issue, fine. I agree with the author, it is a show stopper for non geeks.
"My old RD400 was cool too, not only could you fit the chippie on the back, but she had to hang on, and it was really easy to ditch her if she started to get too whiney."
You sure she didn't jump off rather than listen to you?
Yeah, as if the history of the last 25 years demonstrates that anyone much pays attention to the Big 3.
I don't remember those big GM ads saying "Buy Japanese", or the Chrysler ad saying "VW makes a sensible small car" or the Ford ad that says "Hey those Ferraris are neat".
Oh, they are all cookies, I don't think I've had an exe/installed/ on my PC, whether virus or spyware, in two years, whether I've been using Moz or IE.
"I hear one of the common models of the learjet gets significantly better mileage flying upside down.
Story goes this was discovered by a three-man consulting firm of autopilot-programmers, who bought one that had had a fire wreck the cabin furnishings at scrap prices, had it redone by a van conversion outfit, and used it for recreational cross-country flying. Of course it costs a LOT to do that, and this was limiting their recreation. So they tried different things to reduce fuel consumption.
After discovering they saved about 10% flying upside down, they rehacked their autopilot to fly it that way if desired, and played cards sitting on the ceiling.
Well one day they were flying near a military base and NORAD got a bit concerned: Seems the radar signature of a lear flying upside-down wasn't in the database. Oops: UFO. Did the Soviets come up with something new ala the U2? Up go a couple fighters to check it out.
They look out the window and see a fighter pacing them. Fighter jock points up. ("Are you aware you're flying upside down?") They nod and point up, too. ("Yes, we are. This is intentional.") (Sometimes pilots get disoriented and fly upside down. This can lead to crashes if he doesn't get it figured out in time.)
So fighter pilot flips over so HE's upside-down, too, paces them a moment more, then flys away, still upside-down."
even with mozilla as my browser. Must be all those pr0n sites!
Admittedly, I'd say the average week's haul is only about 10, and I'm not convinced that Seek and Destroy's definition of spyware is altogether correct, some cookies are fine.
Full vehicle simulations (say using MSC ADAMS www.adams.com ) typically run at rather less than real time (say 10%) on a decent PC. GA lends itself to parallel evaluation of each solution, so each generation of say 1000 models could be run in say 20 minutes on 1000 cpus.
Alternatively, we have the option of running them on a Cray.
Alternatively #2 it would not be hard to reduce the run time for each model by cleaning it up manually, and running it in RAM. I'd guess it would be easy to achieve real time then.
That's generally true of any optimisation process. If it explores the solution space properly it will exploit weaknesses in the model. This is often rather useful as it tests your assumptions.
We run into the same thing when we do a trade-off analysis - if the result is counterintuitive it can be because people were interpreting a given factor in different ways, or the model is badly constructed.
While this can be irritating, it is at least educational.
OO spreadsheet has some good features, but is not in any way a viable alternative to Excel, for some users.
1) large (several thousand row,several dozen column) sheets run very slowly, to the point of freezing
2) Graph formatting is a mess
3) Needs more graph types, I seem to remember it doesn't even have scatter plots (xy)
4) Doesn't translate graphs properly from excel
5) Doesn't translate VBA
6) Save of large sheets is very slow
7) Becomes unstable with large sheets
I find it interesting that so much of OO vs Office is directed at comparison of word processors. Engineers use spreadsheets, not word processors, for mission critical stuff. I don't even have a word processor loaded on my computers at home, I write in a text editor (Crimson Editor for example), or a web browser, or, most likely, Mathcad. At work I write my reports in Mozilla, and post them direct to the intranet.
These are not American figures but I doubt they are much different over there. If we sell a car at the dealers for 30k then the factory will have paid about 15k for parts, and about 1k for assembly labor.
Development costs are about 1-2k, averaged over the entire build.
We'd typically invoice the dealer for 21k
He pays car tax and so on, that's about 20% of the sticker price, ie 6k. We also pay for some marketing.
Cars have got somewhat more expensive to build, simply because catalysts, engine management computers and airbags cost a lot, and general spec levels have increased. Your 1980s high volume derivative would not have had a/c, auto, power seats, power glass, CD player, airbags, ABS, as STANDARD. It would have had 14 inch tires, not 16s. It would have had 120 hp, not 200 (not that, that cost much). In the last 13 years the car I work on has increased in weight by 15%, that weight costs money.
You did the hard bit, got the easy bit wrong. One mol of iron is.12 lbs, so with 3000 lbs of steel you'd get 3000/.12, 24000 mols of iron.
(Oh the big deal is that a mol is around 6*10^23 atoms or molecules)
Howvere I would point out that iron is probably only about half of the weight in a car. (it says 55% here http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?layout=article &articleid=CA151549&cfd=1)
Most of the other atoms are lighter, so this (10^28) is an underestimate of the number of assembly ops required.
On the other hand the grey goo enthusiasts would have you believe that the assembly process will be massively parallel.
" Its been a year and we still have to explain every little detail about what we do."
Sounds like she doesn't trust you.
"Not a single person on her team respects her in the least. We all go out to lunch and everyone blatantly makes fun of her."
And that sounds like part of the reason why.
Managers are there to be used, by you. They represent you to the rest of the company. If you and your lunch time buddies can't figure out how to improve things then you deserve everything you get.
Well done. It is amazing how many technical people think their boss needs to be a technical expert. As your list demonstrates, he/she/it does not have to be able to do your or my job at all.
The way I usually say it is that my manager is my interface to the rest of the company, who gets me the resources I need to do my job while moderating the demands on my time.
Slashdot Mirror
"Russians are a force to reckon with."
Really? Individual Russians can be very talented, and as engineers, scientists and mathematicians they have a lot to offer. But as a functioning society? A force to be reckoned with? Nyet.
Anything important is text, so just use a text editor as your browser.
And just having a look at the modding that's going on, at least one believer in the God that condemns babies to Hell because they died too quickly has mod points. I'm looking forward to metamodding tomorrow. Oh well, suffering is supposed to be good for the soul, or something like that.
OK, that seems authoritative, I'll give it another go.
Mind you, as Mandy Rice Davies said, "they would say that, wouldn't they?"
Ah, it'd be the "without data loss" bit that got me.
I resized my NTFS partition when installing Mandrake, but disabled my NT4 installation in doing so.
OK, so it was only one hour of trauma, but who needs it?
Good stuff. Having had my NTFS partition crunched by a Linux installation in the past I am inclined to be cautious.
Why didn't you promote Knoppix? I realise it is not available off the shelf, but compared with Mandrake 9 it is focussed and has sensible defaults. When I get around to resizing my partition again I'll probably use Knoppix on my hard drive.
By repartitioning he probably meant, "and leave you with an undamaged fully functional Windows insallation afterwards".
Even a 10% failure rate would be too high. I see no sign that NTFS repartitioning has achieved that level of reliability.
"Mandrake will non-destructively repartition any MS-Windows partition."
Oh ho. Not if you are using say NTFS.
" none of the modern laptops include real modems, only "win" modems which are proprietary and designed to work only with MS-Windows"
A meaningless technical quibble to the audience of that article. Their laptop has got a modem that configures and works automatically under Windows, but won't work without some hair pulling under Linux. If you don't see that as an issue, fine. I agree with the author, it is a show stopper for non geeks.
Yes, matlab is the biz for big datasets, but of course it is a bit expensive.
Has anyone had any luck with SciLab? it is cross platform, open source (I think) and free.
I have downloaded it and had a look at the demos, but not used it for anything.
"My old RD400 was cool too, not only could you fit the chippie on the back, but she had to hang on, and it was really easy to ditch her if she started to get too whiney."
You sure she didn't jump off rather than listen to you?
Yeah, as if the history of the last 25 years demonstrates that anyone much pays attention to the Big 3.
I don't remember those big GM ads saying "Buy Japanese", or the Chrysler ad saying "VW makes a sensible small car" or the Ford ad that says "Hey those Ferraris are neat".
Obviously I have forgotten them.
Oh no it isn't. Check out gravitational anomalies, caused by large lumps of dense stuff near the Earth's surface.
Oh, they are all cookies, I don't think I've had an exe /installed/ on my PC, whether virus or spyware, in two years, whether I've been using Moz or IE.
"I hear one of the common models of the learjet gets significantly better mileage flying upside down.
Story goes this was discovered by a three-man consulting firm of autopilot-programmers, who bought one that had had a fire wreck the cabin furnishings at scrap prices, had it redone by a van conversion outfit, and used it for recreational cross-country flying. Of course it costs a LOT to do that, and this was limiting their recreation. So they tried different things to reduce fuel consumption.
After discovering they saved about 10% flying upside down, they rehacked their autopilot to fly it that way if desired, and played cards sitting on the ceiling.
Well one day they were flying near a military base and NORAD got a bit concerned: Seems the radar signature of a lear flying upside-down wasn't in the database. Oops: UFO. Did the Soviets come up with something new ala the U2? Up go a couple fighters to check it out.
They look out the window and see a fighter pacing them. Fighter jock points up. ("Are you aware you're flying upside down?") They nod and point up, too. ("Yes, we are. This is intentional.") (Sometimes pilots get disoriented and fly upside down. This can lead to crashes if he doesn't get it figured out in time.)
So fighter pilot flips over so HE's upside-down, too, paces them a moment more, then flys away, still upside-down."
Nice story, where on earth did you get it from?
How do you define the centre of the earth, given that it is not a regular solid?
Would you not be better off using the local gravitational field to define the relevant plane?
Nits? We pick 'em.
even with mozilla as my browser. Must be all those pr0n sites!
Admittedly, I'd say the average week's haul is only about 10, and I'm not convinced that Seek and Destroy's definition of spyware is altogether correct, some cookies are fine.
Full vehicle simulations (say using MSC ADAMS www.adams.com ) typically run at rather less than real time (say 10%) on a decent PC. GA lends itself to parallel evaluation of each solution, so each generation of say 1000 models could be run in say 20 minutes on 1000 cpus.
Alternatively, we have the option of running them on a Cray.
Alternatively #2 it would not be hard to reduce the run time for each model by cleaning it up manually, and running it in RAM. I'd guess it would be easy to achieve real time then.
That's generally true of any optimisation process. If it explores the solution space properly it will exploit weaknesses in the model. This is often rather useful as it tests your assumptions.
We run into the same thing when we do a trade-off analysis - if the result is counterintuitive it can be because people were interpreting a given factor in different ways, or the model is badly constructed.
While this can be irritating, it is at least educational.
This is not flamebait.
The shift schedule for automatic transmissions can be optimised for the urban cycle fuel economy measurement.
I have a genetic simulator for precisely that function.
Oh, you won't be getting 55 mpg from your PoS car any time soon, mass is the problem.
OO spreadsheet has some good features, but is not in any way a viable alternative to Excel, for some users.
1) large (several thousand row,several dozen column) sheets run very slowly, to the point of freezing
2) Graph formatting is a mess
3) Needs more graph types, I seem to remember it doesn't even have scatter plots (xy)
4) Doesn't translate graphs properly from excel
5) Doesn't translate VBA
6) Save of large sheets is very slow
7) Becomes unstable with large sheets
I find it interesting that so much of OO vs Office is directed at comparison of word processors. Engineers use spreadsheets, not word processors, for mission critical stuff. I don't even have a word processor loaded on my computers at home, I write in a text editor (Crimson Editor for example), or a web browser, or, most likely, Mathcad. At work I write my reports in Mozilla, and post them direct to the intranet.
These are not American figures but I doubt they are much different over there. If we sell a car at the dealers for 30k then the factory will have paid about 15k for parts, and about 1k for assembly labor.
Development costs are about 1-2k, averaged over the entire build.
We'd typically invoice the dealer for 21k
He pays car tax and so on, that's about 20% of the sticker price, ie 6k. We also pay for some marketing.
Cars have got somewhat more expensive to build, simply because catalysts, engine management computers and airbags cost a lot, and general spec levels have increased. Your 1980s high volume derivative would not have had a/c, auto, power seats, power glass, CD player, airbags, ABS, as STANDARD. It would have had 14 inch tires, not 16s. It would have had 120 hp, not 200 (not that, that cost much). In the last 13 years the car I work on has increased in weight by 15%, that weight costs money.
Are there vegetables in space?
Most hydrocarbons are in space.
You did the hard bit, got the easy bit wrong. One mol of iron is .12 lbs, so with 3000 lbs of steel you'd get 3000/.12, 24000 mols of iron.
e &articleid=CA151549&cfd=1)
(Oh the big deal is that a mol is around 6*10^23 atoms or molecules)
Howvere I would point out that iron is probably only about half of the weight in a car. (it says 55% here http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?layout=articl
Most of the other atoms are lighter, so this (10^28) is an underestimate of the number of assembly ops required.
On the other hand the grey goo enthusiasts would have you believe that the assembly process will be massively parallel.
" Its been a year and we still have to explain every little detail about what we do."
Sounds like she doesn't trust you.
"Not a single person on her team respects her in the least. We all go out to lunch and everyone blatantly makes fun of her."
And that sounds like part of the reason why.
Managers are there to be used, by you. They represent you to the rest of the company. If you and your lunch time buddies can't figure out how to improve things then you deserve everything you get.
Well done. It is amazing how many technical people think their boss needs to be a technical expert. As your list demonstrates, he/she/it does not have to be able to do your or my job at all.
The way I usually say it is that my manager is my interface to the rest of the company, who gets me the resources I need to do my job while moderating the demands on my time.