Somebody still needs to explain to me why Sun's NeWS failed to beat out X. They both came out about the same time and NeWS was SO slick. It had bouncing Bezier spline demos when X still had trouble pushing pixels around. Brian Reid made sure every Dec ever shiped with a graphics controlled had Display Postsctipt - that still didn't help. All the problems with HTML today would have gone away if we'd stayed on the NeWS/PS path. Ironically it was Reid's PhD thesis (Scribe) that begat SGML which begat HTML despite the fact the Reid brothers had a big hand in early Postscript. Brian wrote the firmware for the first LaserWriter and typeset the red, blue and green PS books. Glen Reid wrote the green book. They were marked up in Scribe and typeset with postscipt on a linotronic. I love Postscript. But then I like Forth, too.
Aren't I'm just a fountain of useless trivia today?
"although it didn't gain a wide following until the early 1990s, with Windows 3.x. In terms of the code"
3.0 was unusable. When 3.1 came out I saw people playing solitaire in lots of places, and this was before 1990. Course, this was in California, ymmv someplace else.
Linux wouldn't even compile without errors in 1990; when it did it was a big deal. Unix hobbyists (and stallman) all used suns until BSDi came out; linux was still not really for prime time (ie, running an isp with one) from what I saw till about 93 or 94 at the earliest and even that's a but of a stretch. By then Windows had spread like the virus it is.
"On the whole, from a code perspective, Windows and Linux are roughly similar in age"
Not from what I saw. There were California computer companies that went under because they didn't do windows in the 80s and linux took almost a decade to enter the mainstream. Just check usenet postings to see what people were doing with them back then. That's "google groups" for you young 'uns.
Stallman had been making noise and writing code just about forever. Nobody used much of it though till Linux was widely deployed. I think I ran some of Stallmans code on an Amiga in the 88-90 timeframe, but not much. Hell, there was "open source" AT&T unix code back then too - getopt - that I also ran on an Amiga. I used it for some postscript printer utility when it was pointed out by some guy at Cern that my homebrew version of same kept crashing their Suns.
Do you have any idea the fear invoked when you pick up your UUCP mail on your toy Amiga and some guy from Cern says you crashed his Sun?
It does sort of beg the question, if the crime was "unauthorized use" then who would have had to "authorize" it? The store owner? Did said store owner really want to have a potential customer busted for this? Why didn't the store owner say "he's authorized"?
Sounds to me like the store owner called the cops and is now playing dumb.
There are sometimes more than one way to spell Arab surnames. For example "El Ashi" could be "Elashi".
In the case of "Hasan Elahi" that's close enough to "Hassan Elashi" that it's probably "close enough for government work". I'd be willing to bet this is the source of his trouble.
In the early 80s Bayan, Ghassan and Hassan Elashi had a little company that made computers for the royal Suadi family. My boss was Jewish and he and I were the only white guys there; we did all the software. All the Elashi's are in jail now on what appears to me to be trumped up charges. Trivia: the Elashis paid for the only decent UUCP node in LA at the time; they held the.IQ tld for a while Bayan called Jon Postel one day and Jon just gave it to him by virtue of an Arabic accent. Bayan told me while giggling he was holding it hostage from the Iraqi government. I still have a watch Bayan gave me that I posted about in alt.horlology in 1988.
Let me be less subtle. We ran their computers and were nosy. If they're terrorists then I'm Stephen fucking Hawking.
I don't think I've ever seen the terms "Asterisk" and "easy to use" in the same sentance before. Ok maybe hat should be "easy to set up" it is actully easy to use ONCE it's set up and configured. It's undoubtedly the best product of its kind but... oh. My. God.
Course, I've never set up a Notel PBX. No dount it's even harder and less capable.
Ectuall the US gets most of its oil from Canada. Alberta to be specific. Americans running Albertan companies to be specific. Albertans and the rest of Canadians pay more for oil and gas you do.
OPEC raises the price, Alberta goes "Oh, cool" and raies the price as well. Within the day the price down the road at the Eldorado General Store has gone up.
Big oil does not like ethanol. Expect a bumpy ride.
Wha actually makes more sense is biodiesel from soybeans.
Yes. 80% of americans diets is corn, wheat and rice. Corn contains none of the essential amino acid lycine and the rampant rise in cory syrup use is responsible for malnutrition in kids in America, even in the affluent bay area.
For the past couple of years there's been a corn surplus; farmers have been severely pissed off about the low prices they've been getting. One frind of mine who farms poined out there's more money in hauling garbage per ton than selling corn per ton.
The difference is 1) most north american oil comes from canada 2) the distancs involved are different. the average commute in north america is a journey so long you'd be passing through five european countries. you euros can ride bikes, we routinely have 100 mile commutes one way.
A T1 is 1.54 mbps and very low latency. The latency is to some more important than the bandwidth. In Europe there are no T1s, they're E1's and they're 2.0 mbps.
"Even if the cardholder refuses to show ID, the card must still be accepted or else the merchant is in violation of their agreement and therefore subject to termination and blacklisting."
Hotels, at least here in Toronto, seem to be the universal exception to this. Pay cash and no ID. Use a CC - ID required.
"The IPCC conservative estimate is a sea level rise of an extra 0.5 to 1m rise by the end of the century."
The IPCC uses a model. But in the real world... If the earth gets warmer wouldn't more water from the seas be lost by evaporation and redeposited on the poles as snow. I read that soemwhere.
Do we really expect the poles to never change, ever? Does tha make sense?
"Located in a fenced off section of Stanford's 1,189-acre Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, the novel experiment was designed to simulate environmental conditions that climate experts predict may exist 100 years from now: a doubling of atmospheric CO2; a temperature rise of 2 degrees Fahrenheit; a 50 percent increase in precipitation; and increased nitrogen deposition -- largely a byproduct of fossil fuel burning."
Their plants were potassium and phosphorous deficient. N-P-K must be increaed proportionatly.
Commercial greenhouses of both aquatic and terrestrial palnts routinely use added CO2 and additonal NPK to increase plant mass more quickly, year in year out. Increase only N and CO2 and you'll get the results Stanford got.
Food crops are typically fertilized. Farmer Joe will have to add less N and more P and K. Which is good because N is expensive. If P and K are added in this scenario then with increased CO2 you will get increased growth and the plants will consume more carbon.
Plants in the wild will act per the Stanford study. But food crops as I said are almost always fertilized.
TFA isn't exactly compelling. There's a CBC documenary on youtube called "Doomsday Called off" (video link to part 1 of 5. All 5 parts are about an hour in total) that raises some good points and it seems to me TFA is dong not a whole lot more than rebutting just this show. It's worth a look.
I'd like to address one point in TFA about Co2 and plant growth. The article concerning Co2 and its potential for increasing plant growth says basically "it happens for a while then levels off". Which is not true.
Plants, given CO2 grow much faster and grow bigger. Terrestrial plants will use more water and fertilizer (and will put more water vapour and O2 into the atmosphere) with increased CO2 and will do so forever. This does not in any sense "level off". Ever. No competant plant biologist would ever say this.
I don't know enough about the other 25 "myths" dispelled, but this one, that I know somethgn about reeks of marketing not actual science. And is just wrong.
You can google the effect of CO2 on plamt growth and see for yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody still needs to explain to me why Sun's NeWS failed to beat out X. They both came out about the same time and NeWS was SO slick. It had bouncing Bezier spline demos when X still had trouble pushing pixels around. Brian Reid made sure every Dec ever shiped with a graphics controlled had Display Postsctipt - that still didn't help. All the problems with HTML today would have gone away if we'd stayed on the NeWS/PS path. Ironically it was Reid's PhD thesis (Scribe) that begat SGML which begat HTML despite the fact the Reid brothers had a big hand in early Postscript. Brian wrote the firmware for the first LaserWriter and typeset the red, blue and green PS books. Glen Reid wrote the green book. They were marked up in Scribe and typeset with postscipt on a linotronic. I love Postscript. But then I like Forth, too.
Aren't I'm just a fountain of useless trivia today?
"So what you're saying is, 2009 will be the year of the Linux Desktop?"
The year of the Linux desktop is a year away from whenever you ask.
This has more to do with the deals that are in place now with software and hardware vendors more than any technical or political issue.
If Microsoft switched to Linux to replace Vista it would happen nearly overnight.
"although it didn't gain a wide following until the early 1990s, with Windows 3.x. In terms of the code"
3.0 was unusable. When 3.1 came out I saw people playing solitaire in lots of places, and this was before 1990. Course, this was in California, ymmv someplace else.
Linux wouldn't even compile without errors in 1990; when it did it was a big deal. Unix hobbyists (and stallman) all used suns until BSDi came out; linux was still not really for prime time (ie, running an isp with one) from what I saw till about 93 or 94 at the earliest and even that's a but of a stretch. By then Windows had spread like the virus it is.
"On the whole, from a code perspective, Windows and Linux are roughly similar in age"
Not from what I saw. There were California computer companies that went under because they didn't do windows in the 80s and linux took almost a decade to enter the mainstream. Just check usenet postings to see what people were doing with them back then. That's "google groups" for you young 'uns.
Stallman had been making noise and writing code just about forever. Nobody used much of it though till Linux was widely deployed. I think I ran some of Stallmans code on an Amiga in the 88-90 timeframe, but not much. Hell, there was "open source" AT&T unix code back then too - getopt - that I also ran on an Amiga. I used it for some postscript printer utility when it was pointed out by some guy at Cern that my homebrew version of same kept crashing their Suns.
Do you have any idea the fear invoked when you pick up your UUCP mail on your toy Amiga and some guy from Cern says you crashed his Sun?
I'm aware of the difference. The point is they're typographically similar.
"Microsoft as a brand has been around since `81, Linux has been around since `92. Windows"
Ironically, Microsofts Unix ("Xenix") predates windows and was the first x86 unix port.
I've used unix continuously since 1976. First at Waterloo on a PDP 11/45 then Xenix, then SunOS, then BSDI, then (and now) FreeBSD.
It does sort of beg the question, if the crime was "unauthorized use" then who would have had to "authorize" it? The store owner? Did said store owner really want to have a potential customer busted for this? Why didn't the store owner say "he's authorized"?
Sounds to me like the store owner called the cops and is now playing dumb.
There are sometimes more than one way to spell Arab surnames. For example "El Ashi" could be "Elashi".
.IQ tld for a while Bayan called Jon Postel one day and Jon just gave it to him by virtue of an Arabic accent. Bayan told me while giggling he was holding it hostage from the Iraqi government. I still have a watch Bayan gave me that I posted about in alt.horlology in 1988.
In the case of "Hasan Elahi" that's close enough to "Hassan Elashi" that it's probably "close enough for government work". I'd be willing to bet this is the source of his trouble.
In the early 80s Bayan, Ghassan and Hassan Elashi had a little company that made computers for the royal Suadi family. My boss was Jewish and he and I were the only white guys there; we did all the software. All the Elashi's are in jail now on what appears to me to be trumped up charges. Trivia: the Elashis paid for the only decent UUCP node in LA at the time; they held the
Let me be less subtle. We ran their computers and were nosy. If they're terrorists then I'm Stephen fucking Hawking.
I don't think I've ever seen the terms "Asterisk" and "easy to use" in the same sentance before. Ok maybe hat should be "easy to set up" it is actully easy to use ONCE it's set up and configured. It's undoubtedly the best product of its kind but... oh. My. God.
Course, I've never set up a Notel PBX. No dount it's even harder and less capable.
Ectuall the US gets most of its oil from Canada. Alberta to be specific. Americans running Albertan companies to be specific. Albertans and the rest of Canadians pay more for oil and gas you do.
OPEC raises the price, Alberta goes "Oh, cool" and raies the price as well. Within the day the price down the road at the Eldorado General Store has gone up.
Big oil does not like ethanol. Expect a bumpy ride.
Wha actually makes more sense is biodiesel from soybeans.
Yes. 80% of americans diets is corn, wheat and rice. Corn contains none of the essential amino acid lycine and the rampant rise in cory syrup use is responsible for malnutrition in kids in America, even in the affluent bay area.
For the past couple of years there's been a corn surplus; farmers have been severely pissed off about the low prices they've been getting. One frind of mine who farms poined out there's more money in hauling garbage per ton than selling corn per ton.
[quote]and illegal[/quote]
Sorry I was busy smoking a joint and downloading a movie. What did you say?
The difference is 1) most north american oil comes from canada 2) the distancs involved are different. the average commute in north america is a journey so long you'd be passing through five european countries. you euros can ride bikes, we routinely have 100 mile commutes one way.
"My expirey-sense is tingling!"
Why that's really exemplatory.
A T1 is 1.54 mbps and very low latency. The latency is to some more important than the bandwidth. In Europe there are no T1s, they're E1's and they're 2.0 mbps.
"Even if the cardholder refuses to show ID, the card must still be accepted or else the merchant is in violation of their agreement and therefore subject to termination and blacklisting."
Hotels, at least here in Toronto, seem to be the universal exception to this. Pay cash and no ID. Use a CC - ID required.
"I mean, if a B-Movie can cash in that amount, what would a good movie get?"
One tenth of that. Remember if you're of average intelligence or taste half the world is dumber and has less taste than you.
Why there? Did you want to run an MLM?
Google or archive.org come to mind as a more senseible choice.
"The IPCC conservative estimate is a sea level rise of an extra 0.5 to 1m rise by the end of the century."
The IPCC uses a model. But in the real world... If the earth gets warmer wouldn't more water from the seas be lost by evaporation and redeposited on the poles as snow. I read that soemwhere.
Do we really expect the poles to never change, ever? Does tha make sense?
Stanford sez:
"Located in a fenced off section of Stanford's 1,189-acre Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, the novel experiment was designed to simulate environmental conditions that climate experts predict may exist 100 years from now: a doubling of atmospheric CO2; a temperature rise of 2 degrees Fahrenheit; a 50 percent increase in precipitation; and increased nitrogen deposition -- largely a byproduct of fossil fuel burning."
Their plants were potassium and phosphorous deficient. N-P-K must be increaed proportionatly.
Commercial greenhouses of both aquatic and terrestrial palnts routinely use added CO2 and additonal NPK to increase plant mass more quickly, year in year out. Increase only N and CO2 and you'll get the results Stanford got.
Food crops are typically fertilized. Farmer Joe will have to add less N and more P and K. Which is good because N is expensive. If P and K are added in this scenario then with increased CO2 you will get increased growth and the plants will consume more carbon.
Plants in the wild will act per the Stanford study. But food crops as I said are almost always fertilized.
TFA isn't exactly compelling. There's a CBC documenary on youtube called "Doomsday Called off" (video link to part 1 of 5. All 5 parts are about an hour in total) that raises some good points and it seems to me TFA is dong not a whole lot more than rebutting just this show. It's worth a look.
I'd like to address one point in TFA about Co2 and plant growth. The article concerning Co2 and its potential for increasing plant growth says basically "it happens for a while then levels off". Which is not true.
Plants, given CO2 grow much faster and grow bigger. Terrestrial plants will use more water and fertilizer (and will put more water vapour and O2 into the atmosphere) with increased CO2 and will do so forever. This does not in any sense "level off". Ever. No competant plant biologist would ever say this.
I don't know enough about the other 25 "myths" dispelled, but this one, that I know somethgn about reeks of marketing not actual science. And is just wrong.
You can google the effect of CO2 on plamt growth and see for yourself.
"Oh you don't? They why do you begrudge Ebay charging what they're worth?"
Ah.
What something is "worth" is what somebody is willing to pay. No more, no less.
Absent some meaningfull competition, you're paying what ebay demands, not what it's worth.
It's an important point. One thing you see over and over again is "why can't I get flash to work with {firefox on windows | Linux}.
With youtube, flash not working utterly seamlessly is a deal breaker.
"elecommuting does not work for programmers in any sort of team environment"
That's ok, programming doesn't work in a team environment either.
All hail Bols Ewhac and Dpaint III while visions of juggled unicycles waft through our minds.
M$ is like a good drug: it makes you lose all touch with reality.