I applaud you, for still speaking out on that topic. It must be frustrating to be confronted with people, having only gained knowledge from pop-sci yet doubting people, which actually have worked in that field.
> Actually, Infrared lasers only hurt eyes if you look directly into them.
Someone could mistake what you are saying, so let me state the following: there is no eye-safe wave length. The wave-length of the laser only decides which kind of injury it might inflict to your eye, when the energy density is high enough. Granted, for UV wavelengths a lower energy density is dangerous, but the difference between visible light and infra-red can be neglected. Which is comes similar to what you are saying next.
> Using a low-powered infrared laser pointed at a keyboard wouldn't be any different than using a red laser pointed at a keyboard except that the victim would see the dot.
Granted, a sufficiently low powered infra-red laser wouldn't cause any more harm than a visible laser (green or red). But, looking inadvertantly in the red laser triggers the eye reflex, something what infra-red light would not, as you don't perceive it. So, a NIR can be more dangerous. So a common 1mW visible light laser is class 2, while the 1mW infra-red is class 3, because you simply wouldn't notice, that your eye is blinded.
Actually the problem lies in another difference: Contrary to the default ext3 mode (data=ordered), the ext4 default behaviour allows reordering of the operation, resulting in a rename to be completed before a write, despite being issued in a different order. That leaves you with unwritten files after a crash, instead of just losing the last write.
> Every time the author wants to assure himself that data has been written to the disk, it calls fsync.
The problem is, the application developers are not complaining about the not having the strong requirement of having the data on the disc, but losing a weaker consistency, as Matthew Garret explained quite aptly.
> It is widely accepted that the United States is the oldest modern democracy still in existence, not the UK.
Because the UK isn't a modern democracy, but a hardly modern parliamentary constitutional monarchy and as such has been in existence before the Declaration of Independence.
The war has been fought, because the subjects in the colonies weren't granted the same rights and protections as the subjects in Great Britain, especially no representation in the House of Commons. That's why the slogan "No taxation without representation".
> The number of calls in the interface do matter because they increase complexity.
That is only true, if a similar functionality is provided and the function-calls are of similar complexity (e.g. number of parameters, complexity of arguments.
To my limited knowledge, over work has been done to extract more common functionality from file-systems. Should that be the the case, it would increase the number of function calls, but reduce the overall complexity.
> Exactly how many companies do you think had their share price rise on the news they sacrified some profits to do the moral thing?
Well, when it's in the news, it's advertisement and will very likely increased the overall profit. The real question is, how many companies have done the morale thing, without doing a cost/benefit analysis.
Why energy hungry industries argue for tax exemptions is, that they still need to compete with companies in countries, where energy is not taxed as heavily.
> They could make laws to make power-consumption more visible in advertizing.
My suggestion would be, that the total costs of a device for an average use over a fixed time (say 10 years) must be displayed including energy, water, expected repair- and replacement costs for an common average use. Preferably at the same font size as the nominal price.
>...and there's no real good reason for it other than sheer engineering laziness
There is a "good" reason: economics. Companies are quite capable of creating more environmentally sound devices. However, they cost more. People look more at the initial price of a product than the total costs (Extreme example: printers). Therefore, companies are only producing such products as a niche product with a hefty premium for the well-off Greens (Prius), or when they and their rivals are mandated by law to do so, thereby eliminating the price-disadvantage (CAT).
Keep in mind, that saving a dollar in producing a consumer product can easily translate to a million dollars in profit.
Buy, a router-HDD-WLAN combo for $180 top (can't get more expensive than the AirPort Extreme) or use a old notebook for that (which can also do audio and may cost nothing). Either one will consume about 20W (including additional HD for file-storage) instead of the 40W your computer is going to consume the least. The 40W does not account for an gaming capable graphic-cards or processor, in which case your computer easily consumes 100W-140W idle. Assuming, that the computer consumes 100W 8h per day and 25cents per kWh, it translates to $160 saving per year.
> Maybe if the US tax policy wasn't insanely out of line with the rest of the world, we wouldn't have this problem.
Rest of the world? The economical rest of the world is having the same problem. It isn't like they said, Tax Havens like Canada, France, UK, Germany or Japan.
Simple tragedy of the commons. Tax havens are small nations, which profit over-proportionally from shift of profit to their nations. A lower tax in small nations results in an increase in tax-income due to accounting of companies in larger economic nations. Hardly a sustainable approach for larger economies.
> Can you blame these companies for getting away?
Well, those companies make profits in nations, which provide them infrastructure, educated people as working force and affluent people as customers. Then they transfer the profits to a different nation due to lower taxes, thereby reducing their contribution to the same society, which provided for their profits. I'd say that is hardly laudable.
Why? Because there is a list of on wikipedia of rougly 50 scientists, which disagree? Because 20 scientific organisations (which include the medical and microbiological societies), do not clearly state, there is human induced global warming?
May I refer to your source, where the latest survey reveal a roughly 3/4-majority among geophysics and meteorologists in agreement with human-induced greenhouse warming in the US (a nation rather sceptical of climate change), which is consistent with a previous survey in publications, which resulted in 3/4 papers either explicitly refering to human-induced climate change or implying it and not a single scientific publication arguing in favour of a non-human induced global climate change.
> It only makes them trespassers if they are asked to leave and they don't.
No. Trespassing is intentionally entering someone's property without a lawful excuse, such as an invitation. If you are asked to leave and don't obey, you cannot claim to have entered the grounds unintentionally any more. Similar if there is a fence or visible signs (Like "Do not enter", or "No Weapons"): You may still try to feign ignorance, but then it is up to the judge to decide on the plausibility of that.
From Wikipedia:
The maxim "cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad infernos" (whoever owns the land owns it all the way to the heavens and to hell) is said to apply, however that has been limited by practical considerations.
Copyright, not patent. Also was it the exclusive copyright?
If I am not mistaken, at my university, they get the right to copy my works done for the universtity (papers, reports, thesis, a.s.o ), but I still retain my copyright as the author. Patents are a different matter: They only get it, when I choose to apply for the patent through the university. Then they take care of the legal and commercial matters and I get a share of the profit (IRC, 30 percent).
In contrast to electrical cars? Which have full torque at 0 rpms and can therefor easily do 0 - 60 mph under 5s. Not only the Tesla, but also the electric Mini Cooper, or the butt ugly Tango.
> Half the fun of that is the smell and sounds of a rumbling engine and well tuned exhaust
Now we get the point: It's a sentimental thing. Hard to argue against feelings.
> With this ruling, what they're saying now is that this hypothetical person would walk, because the DNA sample would not be in the database.
Yes, the same way his DNA wouldn't be in the database, when he hadn't have been arrested for a crime he didn't commited in the first place. Or the same way, this hypothetical person walks free, because not all persons are DNA sampled from birth, or have to wear a GPS tagged collar the whole day around.
The point is, a person being arrested, but not convicted, is not guilty. The same way everyone else is.
I may be mistaken, but I think I've heard a similar line from Rick Berman.
> The series has become a tired ass glorified fan flick from insiders.
On the contrary. Star Trek I to VI were at least glorified fan flicks from insiders, from then on they tried to appeal to a more general public: Now they even lost that bit of appeal.
On that note: Guess, who was responsible for those films.
> Fresh blood and a new outlook sounds good to me.
The other dvcs Mercurial: Tortoise, Eclipse, Netbeans I don't see, why the workflow has to become more complicated for server-side things like Jira and Confluence: you simply create a automatic server-side conversion from your central dvcs repository to a svn repository for those tools are done with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I applaud you, for still speaking out on that topic. It must be frustrating to be confronted with people, having only gained knowledge from pop-sci yet doubting people, which actually have worked in that field.
> It's the height of arrogance!
And what would you call judging experts on a matter at hand based on cursory knowledge of a matter?
s/eye reflex/blink reflex/g
> Actually, Infrared lasers only hurt eyes if you look directly into them.
Someone could mistake what you are saying, so let me state the following: there is no eye-safe wave length.
The wave-length of the laser only decides which kind of injury it might inflict to your eye, when the energy density is high enough. Granted, for UV wavelengths a lower energy density is dangerous, but the difference between visible light and infra-red can be neglected. Which is comes similar to what you are saying next.
> Using a low-powered infrared laser pointed at a keyboard wouldn't be any different than using a red laser pointed at a keyboard except that the victim would see the dot.
Granted, a sufficiently low powered infra-red laser wouldn't cause any more harm than a visible laser (green or red).
But, looking inadvertantly in the red laser triggers the eye reflex, something what infra-red light would not, as you don't perceive it. So, a NIR can be more dangerous.
So a common 1mW visible light laser is class 2, while the 1mW infra-red is class 3, because you simply wouldn't notice, that your eye is blinded.
> The difference is how long they wait.
Actually the problem lies in another difference: Contrary to the default ext3 mode (data=ordered), the ext4 default behaviour allows reordering of the operation, resulting in a rename to be completed before a write, despite being issued in a different order. That leaves you with unwritten files after a crash, instead of just losing the last write.
It is not about losing data of the write due, it is about losing data already written, by completing the operations in a different order as issued.
> Every time the author wants to assure himself that data has been written to the disk, it calls fsync.
The problem is, the application developers are not complaining about the not having the strong requirement of having the data on the disc, but losing a weaker consistency, as Matthew Garret explained quite aptly.
> It is widely accepted that the United States is the oldest modern democracy still in existence, not the UK.
Because the UK isn't a modern democracy, but a hardly modern parliamentary constitutional monarchy and as such has been in existence before the Declaration of Independence.
The war has been fought, because the subjects in the colonies weren't granted the same rights and protections as the subjects in Great Britain, especially no representation in the House of Commons. That's why the slogan "No taxation without representation".
> The number of calls in the interface do matter because they increase complexity.
That is only true, if a similar functionality is provided and the function-calls are of similar complexity (e.g. number of parameters, complexity of arguments.
To my limited knowledge, over work has been done to extract more common functionality from file-systems. Should that be the the case, it would increase the number of function calls, but reduce the overall complexity.
> Exactly how many companies do you think had their share price rise on the news they sacrified some profits to do the moral thing?
Well, when it's in the news, it's advertisement and will very likely increased the overall profit.
The real question is, how many companies have done the morale thing, without doing a cost/benefit analysis.
> The eastern Europeans stormed their capitals in 1990-91
Hardly an argument in favour of the 2nd amendment, as they overthrow their dictatorships without yielding any weapons (in 1989, btw).
Why energy hungry industries argue for tax exemptions is, that they still need to compete with companies in countries, where energy is not taxed as heavily.
> They could make laws to make power-consumption more visible in advertizing.
My suggestion would be, that the total costs of a device for an average use over a fixed time (say 10 years) must be displayed including energy, water, expected repair- and replacement costs for an common average use. Preferably at the same font size as the nominal price.
> ...and there's no real good reason for it other than sheer engineering laziness
There is a "good" reason: economics. Companies are quite capable of creating more environmentally sound devices. However, they cost more. People look more at the initial price of a product than the total costs (Extreme example: printers).
Therefore, companies are only producing such products as a niche product with a hefty premium for the well-off Greens (Prius), or when they and their rivals are mandated by law to do so, thereby eliminating the price-disadvantage (CAT).
Keep in mind, that saving a dollar in producing a consumer product can easily translate to a million dollars in profit.
Buy, a router-HDD-WLAN combo for $180 top (can't get more expensive than the AirPort Extreme) or use a old notebook for that (which can also do audio and may cost nothing). Either one will consume about 20W (including additional HD for file-storage) instead of the 40W your computer is going to consume the least. The 40W does not account for an gaming capable graphic-cards or processor, in which case your computer easily consumes 100W-140W idle.
Assuming, that the computer consumes 100W 8h per day and 25cents per kWh, it translates to $160 saving per year.
> Note that while the API download and simulator are free â" deploying to a real iPhone or iTouch is not, even if it is your own.
Not necessarily true. There are ways to circument the code-signing.
> Maybe if the US tax policy wasn't insanely out of line with the rest of the world, we wouldn't have this problem.
Rest of the world? The economical rest of the world is having the same problem. It isn't like they said, Tax Havens like Canada, France, UK, Germany or Japan.
Simple tragedy of the commons. Tax havens are small nations, which profit over-proportionally from shift of profit to their nations. A lower tax in small nations results in an increase in tax-income due to accounting of companies in larger economic nations. Hardly a sustainable approach for larger economies.
> Can you blame these companies for getting away?
Well, those companies make profits in nations, which provide them infrastructure, educated people as working force and affluent people as customers. Then they transfer the profits to a different nation due to lower taxes, thereby reducing their contribution to the same society, which provided for their profits.
I'd say that is hardly laudable.
Sorry, I stand corrected.
> There is no consensus: just plain wrong
Why? Because there is a list of on wikipedia of rougly 50 scientists, which disagree? Because 20 scientific organisations (which include the medical and microbiological societies), do not clearly state, there is human induced global warming?
May I refer to your source, where the latest survey reveal a roughly 3/4-majority among geophysics and meteorologists in agreement with human-induced greenhouse warming in the US (a nation rather sceptical of climate change), which is consistent with a previous survey in publications, which resulted in 3/4 papers either explicitly refering to human-induced climate change or implying it and not a single scientific publication arguing in favour of a non-human induced global climate change.
> It only makes them trespassers if they are asked to leave and they don't.
No. Trespassing is intentionally entering someone's property without a lawful excuse, such as an invitation. If you are asked to leave and don't obey, you cannot claim to have entered the grounds unintentionally any more. Similar if there is a fence or visible signs (Like "Do not enter", or "No Weapons"): You may still try to feign ignorance, but then it is up to the judge to decide on the plausibility of that.
From Wikipedia:
Copyright, not patent. Also was it the exclusive copyright?
If I am not mistaken, at my university, they get the right to copy my works done for the universtity (papers, reports, thesis, a.s.o ), but I still retain my copyright as the author.
Patents are a different matter: They only get it, when I choose to apply for the patent through the university. Then they take care of the legal and commercial matters and I get a share of the profit (IRC, 30 percent).
> Yeah...but, they're fun to drive.
In contrast to electrical cars? Which have full torque at 0 rpms and can therefor easily do 0 - 60 mph under 5s.
Not only the Tesla, but also the electric Mini Cooper, or the butt ugly Tango.
> Half the fun of that is the smell and sounds of a rumbling engine and well tuned exhaust
Now we get the point: It's a sentimental thing. Hard to argue against feelings.
> With this ruling, what they're saying now is that this hypothetical person would walk, because the DNA sample would not be in the database.
Yes, the same way his DNA wouldn't be in the database, when he hadn't have been arrested for a crime he didn't commited in the first place.
Or the same way, this hypothetical person walks free, because not all persons are DNA sampled from birth, or have to wear a GPS tagged collar the whole day around.
The point is, a person being arrested, but not convicted, is not guilty. The same way everyone else is.
>> 'Never really been a huge Star Trek fan.'
I may be mistaken, but I think I've heard a similar line from Rick Berman.
> The series has become a tired ass glorified fan flick from insiders.
On the contrary. Star Trek I to VI were at least glorified fan flicks from insiders, from then on they tried to appeal to a more general public: Now they even lost that bit of appeal.
On that note: Guess, who was responsible for those films.
> Fresh blood and a new outlook sounds good to me.
That is something I can perfectly agree on.
Use the GPS and accelerometer for tracing the trajectory of a rocket.
The other dvcs Mercurial: Tortoise, Eclipse, Netbeans
I don't see, why the workflow has to become more complicated for server-side things like Jira and Confluence: you simply create a automatic server-side conversion from your central dvcs repository to a svn repository for those tools are done with it.