"Perhaps we should rate God's Units against my criteria above."
Planck units would be based on fundamental physics. One thing that you would have to do to make them usable would be to create names for human sized multiples that would be usable in the daily world. One scientist has made an attempt to do that.
An example: the fundamental Planck length is 1.616*10^-35m. Clearly this is too small for use. But if we multiply by 10^35, we get a unit that is 1.616m, which is about 64in. or the height of the average woman or about the length of an adults walking stride. Even better a thousand of those units is 1616m which is just 7m more than an American mile of 1609m, less than a half percent off. We could call it a mile.
Bell Labs has at least two Nobel prizes (Transistor and Cosmic Background Radiation) to its credit, together with tremendous advances in theoretical (Information Theory) and practical (UNIX and C) computer science. Micro$oft is not in the same league, heck, it's not even on the same continent.
Another comparable is IBM. Yes they were the monopolist villains of their time. But, they also invented things such as RISC and Relational Databases.
Micro$oft is spending a fortune and coming up with scraps and baubles. My feeling as a stockholder is that they should cut the research budget and raise the dividend.
you will be vindicated. I have stuck with Office 97, because I have never thought that any of the "improvements" that M$ has made in newer versions of Office were worth the price of a new program. It is now too old to be affected by the latest virus. Lord, this is sweet.
"it looks like a square 265 miles on a side in the American southwest would do it."
Like 2/3rds of Arizona. Just wait until the eco-freaks figure out what covering that much desert would do the blind desert pup fish. There is no way they would let you cover 70,000 square miles of desert with mirrors.
"If oh-so-wonderful France can run 70% of its energy off nuclear power, then why can't the US?"
Because even on/., where the folks are supposed to have some technical sophistication, they say things like: "It looks like a frightening idea, don't you think?"
The antidote to fear is knowledge. If you don't know, don't spread fear, seek knowledge.
The phrase PowerPoint attack causes me to think of a semi darkened room of people attending a business meeting. They have passed out on the seminar table, but they aren't dead, they are anesthetized.
It's voluntary. HOAs are established on a community by community basis. If you don't want to be subject to an HOA, don't buy a house in a development with an HOA. They are widespread, but not universal. If you are not sure whether a house is under an HOA, ask your lawyer or real estate agent, and get a no HOA clause in your purchase agreement.
When it locks up and the only way to free it is to hit the power switch, that is a crash. An OS should not let an application gone bad paralyze the system.
"Microsoft revealed that its R&D budget for fiscal 2007, which ends mid-2007, would rise to $6.2bn."
They will be employing an enormous number of computer scientists, which should cheer up students in that field. OTOH, does M$ have anything to show for the expenditure? I haven't heard of it. The stockholders (and I am one) are getting restless.
Several commenters have mentioned the pyramids of Egypt and the fact that they were looted in antiquity. The material deposited in Yucca mountain will not contain much gold, but it will be valuable to our descendants, who will see it as a cheap source of easily reprocessed nuclear fuel. They will remove it from Yucca mountain and use it within a few centuries.
In ten thousand years, people who find signs warning of radioactive material will be disappointed to discover that salvors had beaten them to the site millennia before.
Slashdot Mirror
Planck units would be based on fundamental physics. One thing that you would have to do to make them usable would be to create names for human sized multiples that would be usable in the daily world. One scientist has made an attempt to do that.
An example: the fundamental Planck length is 1.616*10^-35m. Clearly this is too small for use. But if we multiply by 10^35, we get a unit that is 1.616m, which is about 64in. or the height of the average woman or about the length of an adults walking stride. Even better a thousand of those units is 1616m which is just 7m more than an American mile of 1609m, less than a half percent off. We could call it a mile.
Bell Labs has at least two Nobel prizes (Transistor and Cosmic Background Radiation) to its credit, together with tremendous advances in theoretical (Information Theory) and practical (UNIX and C) computer science. Micro$oft is not in the same league, heck, it's not even on the same continent.
Another comparable is IBM. Yes they were the monopolist villains of their time. But, they also invented things such as RISC and Relational Databases.
Micro$oft is spending a fortune and coming up with scraps and baubles. My feeling as a stockholder is that they should cut the research budget and raise the dividend.
you will be vindicated. I have stuck with Office 97, because I have never thought that any of the "improvements" that M$ has made in newer versions of Office were worth the price of a new program. It is now too old to be affected by the latest virus. Lord, this is sweet.
"it looks like a square 265 miles on a side in the American southwest would do it."
Like 2/3rds of Arizona. Just wait until the eco-freaks figure out what covering that much desert would do the blind desert pup fish. There is no way they would let you cover 70,000 square miles of desert with mirrors.
Win2K and Office 97. We will outlast those b@$t@rd$
Office 97 and Windows 2000. WFM!
If you are paying a mere $100/hr you are getting very cheap legal services. In NYC, most partners in large firms charge >$500/hr.
"If oh-so-wonderful France can run 70% of its energy off nuclear power, then why can't the US?"
/., where the folks are supposed to have some technical sophistication, they say things like: "It looks like a frightening idea, don't you think?"
Because even on
The antidote to fear is knowledge. If you don't know, don't spread fear, seek knowledge.
The phrase PowerPoint attack causes me to think of a semi darkened room of people attending a business meeting. They have passed out on the seminar table, but they aren't dead, they are anesthetized.
It's voluntary. HOAs are established on a community by community basis. If you don't want to be subject to an HOA, don't buy a house in a development with an HOA. They are widespread, but not universal. If you are not sure whether a house is under an HOA, ask your lawyer or real estate agent, and get a no HOA clause in your purchase agreement.
Obsessing about this kind of trivia makes it very hard to finsih projects. 3 years between point releases? No problem.
Yes. And it doesn't have activation.
When it locks up and the only way to free it is to hit the power switch, that is a crash. An OS should not let an application gone bad paralyze the system.
"Hell, I haven't had XP or 2000 crash in years."
You must never run any programs. Adobe Reader 7, Canon Printer Drivers and Mozilla crash my W2K-SP4 box (1GB of RAM) almost every day.
Yumpin' Yimminy, I know the Yudge, I'll get him out.
===============
Groan.
Dream on X-Box Boy. The one in front is Lisa Randall. She is a Physics Professor at Harvard.
The other one is Mrs. Hawking.
Besides, everybody knows it should be spelled "Micro$oft":-)
They really are bad. Aren't they?
"Microsoft revealed that its R&D budget for fiscal 2007, which ends mid-2007, would rise to $6.2bn."
They will be employing an enormous number of computer scientists, which should cheer up students in that field. OTOH, does M$ have anything to show for the expenditure? I haven't heard of it. The stockholders (and I am one) are getting restless.
Come on Monkey-boy. Show us the money.
So, I guess I will be using my copy of Office 97 for a while longer.
Several commenters have mentioned the pyramids of Egypt and the fact that they were looted in antiquity. The material deposited in Yucca mountain will not contain much gold, but it will be valuable to our descendants, who will see it as a cheap source of easily reprocessed nuclear fuel. They will remove it from Yucca mountain and use it within a few centuries.
In ten thousand years, people who find signs warning of radioactive material will be disappointed to discover that salvors had beaten them to the site millennia before.
"The N93, costing $660, will supposedly fill all of your needs for electronic equipment on the go."
Let's see:
simple -- no
cheap -- no
long battery life -- no
Sorry. Looks like it will fufill none of my needs.
Amen, Brother. Amen.
"why he thinks people should address Linux distribution as GNU/Linux"
Get over it. Get on with your life. Nobody but your mama cares, and she could be jiving you too!
Q: Why would Micro$oft say something like that?
A: Because they are about to release a new OS that will "solve" the problem.
Nah, they wouldn't do something like that.
I assume that this means that the next announcemt from Micro$oft will be that Windows Vista will not ship until 3Q 2009