"[Michaelangelo's David] shows part of the human body which, practical though they may be, are EVIL!"
Sorry for sounding a bit offtopic, but the people that are upset about this to get a life. In a country where it's okay to fry mentally ill people to death, let any eejit carry a gun, consume a huge proportion of the world's resources and invade a country for dubious reasons, exposing a bit of human flesh is greeted with the sort of outrage that you'd think would be reserved for the end of the world.
Good point. You could say that knowledge is about to get a whole lot cheaper and thus a lot more widespread. It wasn't so long ago that you'd have to go to the library to see a decent encyclopedia. Now you just punch in www.wikipedia.org and you're in business.
Of course you could say that about the internet in general, but there's something fascinatingly concise about wikipedia. The collective seems to be a lot better at modifying and adding info, then trimming out the superfluous stuff so that the language gets more concise. It seems to do a much better job than other websites where info is provided by a closed group of people, like, say, www.howstufworks.com. the latter is a great site and has some great quality graphical explanations, but wikipedia has the edge in terms of sheer breadth.
That is such a good website, gets more informative every day. It's amazing how quickly it has become a useful source of info. I'd like to see them get their search engine fixed, but the google thing that they're using in the meantime works just fine.
When I first came across wikis I thought that they'd be prone to vandalism, but it seems to work well. Anybody know why this is? Does all the good info get backed up? Are there full-time people who patrol it for trolls?
The first thing that came to my mind was the game Lacrose. Reminds me of when I came to the states and discovered, to my horror, that the Americans have a slang word for vomitting that is the exact same as my national game. Hurling.
One book I really like is called The Silicon Valley Way by Elton B. Sherwin, Jr. Note that I do not like the title of this book, since I don't like the way things are generally done in Silicon Valley
I entirely agree. They sprawl everything out, build too many roads, and worst of all there are hardly any women in sight!
... the nefarious infiltration [puffs cigar] and undermining of our capitalist system by communists, [puffs cigar] and [puffs cigar], the international communist conspiracy, [puffs cigar] through the poisoning and unseen pollution [puffs cigar] of our precious bodily fluids.
Nuclear power is about releasing nuclear energy already stored in the atom. If the process of releasing that energy consumes less energy than is released, you have a viable nuclear reactor and the laws of thernodynamics are not broken. The AP wording, therefore, is correct.
It's an interesting point, and I hate to give you an RTFA, but the blimp in the experiment was only for testing the principle of an arial platform. In practice it will be heavier-than-air UAVs that will be used, and they are a more established technology than autonomous blimps.
A tethered airship is used at lower altitudes to test the principle of an arial platform. In practice it will be heavier-than-air unmanned planes that will fly at the higher altitudes above the weather.
What's it going to be next? Comments about airships bursting into flames?
I used to live in Manchester and had Sky digital. Every time it rained, i.e. frequently, there was a 50/50 chance that the digital TV signal would break up. It used to drive me frigging crazy. Kinda makes you wonder what's the point. All this money and hype going into this digital TV technology and they can't even transmit through a shower of rain.
Tried stargazing from a major city lately? The view is less than impressive. The magnificent sight of the Milky Way is sadly becoming a thing of the past for a growing part of the world's population. I housemate of mine once asked if I had ever been to the southern hemisphere and he remarked that the milky Way is the most amazing sight. I had to tell him that from the back of my parents' house in rural Ireland I used to stand and look at the thing every night.
I digress.
Light polution is a more pressing problem than the occasional airship getting in the way. At that altitude it's not going to block any more of the view than a commercial airliner, and there are 'swarms' of them in the sky.
As for orbiting satelites, they're a bit expensive to launch. And god forbid if anything goes wrong with them and they need to be maintained.
Isn't Forbes an SCO-sympathiser? If memory serves, SCO even linked to opinionated anti-open-source articles at forbes.com from the front page of their website. Kinda shows you how fucked-up that particular publication is.
Eats Shoots & Leaves is a hysterical read BTW. Doesn't seem to be available in the US yet, but here's the amazon page where you can order it from.
These successful missions may end up becoming fewer and further between in future, thanks to you-know-who.
CNN has an article about Bush's sudden fascination with the space program and it points out how he never once visited the NASA facilities in Houston while he was governor there. Also the convenient timing of his announcement that just happens to coincide with the Democrat front-runners ganging up on Howard Dean is mentioned.
One of the first casualties of the cuts that are necessary to make Bush's 'vision' a reality has been the Hubble, as reported in New Scientist.
See also some concise reporting from the Economist that takes a cold, unemotional look at the question of whether or not we actually need manned spaceflight at all. From that article:
[H]is grand announcement this week may not, in the end, amount to anything more than starry-eyed campaign rhetoric. Of course, only an incorrigible cynic could possibly conclude that Mr Bush knows this perfectly well--and intends simply to let the whole thing fade away after it has helped him get re-elected.
Excuse me for sounding like an 'incorrigible cynic,' but the guy doesn't exactly have a good record with telling the truth.
I digress.
That paper has long held an anti-manned-spaceflight view, which I would say is a bit short-sighted in view of the vulnerability of Earth to catastrophic bombardments from above.
Yeah, but I'd imagine that you'd need a pretty robust and scalable RDBMS for healthcare. Is there an open source RDBMS that is up to the same kind of hammering that Oracle can take? It's been a while since I did any work with the likes of PostgresSQL and mySQL so I'll welcome any update on the situation there....
Slashdot Mirror
There's nothing wrong with AppleScript!
I can think of a better word than 'editorial.'
"[Michaelangelo's David] shows part of the human body which, practical though they may be, are EVIL!"
Sorry for sounding a bit offtopic, but the people that are upset about this to get a life. In a country where it's okay to fry mentally ill people to death, let any eejit carry a gun, consume a huge proportion of the world's resources and invade a country for dubious reasons, exposing a bit of human flesh is greeted with the sort of outrage that you'd think would be reserved for the end of the world.Of course you could say that about the internet in general, but there's something fascinatingly concise about wikipedia. The collective seems to be a lot better at modifying and adding info, then trimming out the superfluous stuff so that the language gets more concise. It seems to do a much better job than other websites where info is provided by a closed group of people, like, say, www.howstufworks.com. the latter is a great site and has some great quality graphical explanations, but wikipedia has the edge in terms of sheer breadth.
That is such a good website, gets more informative every day. It's amazing how quickly it has become a useful source of info. I'd like to see them get their search engine fixed, but the google thing that they're using in the meantime works just fine.
When I first came across wikis I thought that they'd be prone to vandalism, but it seems to work well. Anybody know why this is? Does all the good info get backed up? Are there full-time people who patrol it for trolls?
The first thing that came to my mind was the game Lacrose. Reminds me of when I came to the states and discovered, to my horror, that the Americans have a slang word for vomitting that is the exact same as my national game. Hurling.
You know the Toyota MR2? They had to rename it in France IIRC. Apparently 'emerdeux' translates as 'shitty.'
He's not an M$ employee.
Tom-ate-o / Tom-ah-to.
What's the difference?
... the nefarious infiltration [puffs cigar] and undermining of our capitalist system by communists, [puffs cigar] and [puffs cigar], the international communist conspiracy, [puffs cigar] through the poisoning and unseen pollution [puffs cigar] of our precious bodily fluids.
All this talk about finding helium on the moon. Now if they found dilithium crystals, that'd be something!
Nuclear power is about releasing nuclear energy already stored in the atom. If the process of releasing that energy consumes less energy than is released, you have a viable nuclear reactor and the laws of thernodynamics are not broken. The AP wording, therefore, is correct.
It's an interesting point, and I hate to give you an RTFA, but the blimp in the experiment was only for testing the principle of an arial platform. In practice it will be heavier-than-air UAVs that will be used, and they are a more established technology than autonomous blimps.
What's it going to be next? Comments about airships bursting into flames?
Yeah. Those airships will never work. Hell they'll even be talking about using them to provide arial camera shots of football games next. Hang on...
I used to live in Manchester and had Sky digital. Every time it rained, i.e. frequently, there was a 50/50 chance that the digital TV signal would break up. It used to drive me frigging crazy. Kinda makes you wonder what's the point. All this money and hype going into this digital TV technology and they can't even transmit through a shower of rain.
I digress.
Light polution is a more pressing problem than the occasional airship getting in the way. At that altitude it's not going to block any more of the view than a commercial airliner, and there are 'swarms' of them in the sky.
As for orbiting satelites, they're a bit expensive to launch. And god forbid if anything goes wrong with them and they need to be maintained.
I say send the blackguards to Gitmo Bay. Then there'll be no need for any evidence.
Eats Shoots & Leaves is a hysterical read BTW. Doesn't seem to be available in the US yet, but here's the amazon page where you can order it from.
CNN has an article about Bush's sudden fascination with the space program and it points out how he never once visited the NASA facilities in Houston while he was governor there. Also the convenient timing of his announcement that just happens to coincide with the Democrat front-runners ganging up on Howard Dean is mentioned.
One of the first casualties of the cuts that are necessary to make Bush's 'vision' a reality has been the Hubble, as reported in New Scientist.
See also some concise reporting from the Economist that takes a cold, unemotional look at the question of whether or not we actually need manned spaceflight at all. From that article:
Excuse me for sounding like an 'incorrigible cynic,' but the guy doesn't exactly have a good record with telling the truth.I digress.
That paper has long held an anti-manned-spaceflight view, which I would say is a bit short-sighted in view of the vulnerability of Earth to catastrophic bombardments from above.
Yeah, but I'd imagine that you'd need a pretty robust and scalable RDBMS for healthcare. Is there an open source RDBMS that is up to the same kind of hammering that Oracle can take? It's been a while since I did any work with the likes of PostgresSQL and mySQL so I'll welcome any update on the situation there....