The Indian Govt. should make it mandatory for all Govt. organisations to use only Open Source software. Will they do that? I doubt.
I hope they do, because every time I want to read something on an Indian Government website, I'm horrified in new ways. I thought I'd grown immune to the IE-only sites that the Indian Government seems to have a fetish for, but databases of election results in Access is an assault on good taste.
Nope, ALICE was written primarily to mimic real conversations, which means that the words and phrases it uses closely follows a Zipf law distribution from real human conversations. ELIZA was written purely to mimic a psychologist, and its model was therefore much simpler than ALICE - it would often just rephrase your stetement as a question and ask it back. A few keywords would trigger different questions (like "family" might trigger "Tell me about your mother"). Your parent was making a reference to ELIZA, not ALICE.
I was about to reply to you saying that this reminds me of a cat with buttered toast strapped on to it, when I saw that THREE OTHERS had already replied to you with the exact same thing! Is thinking like this some sort of Slashdotter hallmark?
someone was joking about using the simplex method to find the best seat in a theater to see Star Wars.
You and the person who made that comment are both confusing the simplex method in linear programming with the Nelder-Mead downhill simplex method in non-linear programming. Yes, I am an optimization geek.
The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive power.
-- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking"
Literacy in this context means literacy(1), not literacy(2). Being able to read street signs is all that's required for basic literacy. Of course, the definition of "basic literacy" doesn't include AOL-speak yet. Literacy in India usually means "able to sign one's name in at least one language" (basically if you don't need to use your thumbprint as identification, you're good to go).
This is almost like Gandhi's grand son discriminating against a british kid because he is poor,white and powerless.
Nope, that would be an African American preacher being bigoted against white people. This is more like Gandhi's descendants being bigoted against a completely different group, like Japanese saxophonists or Venezuelan college professors.
That said, the larger point you were making is well taken.
The density provides a good guess to the *average* composition, but not the heterogeneity of the projectile. This determines whether the particle is likely to burn up in the air (good) or melt and tumble (unpredictable trajectory - a simple orbital mechanics problem just became a hairy fluid mechanics problem) or hit the surface and if so, whether as one piece or a few large pieces or lots of small pieces.
Because the e-Scrabble URL is of no use to you, it should be transferred to Hasbro.
Is this lawyer telepathic or something? What if the site owner wants to change it to a website featuring French recipes for "eggs scrabblé" or "e-scrabble"?
The original article fares worse. Here's my peeve:
Crawford and Brewin, who are both engineers and have worked, respectively, for the Ministry of Defense and as an officer in the British Army, were also...
I know of a Department of Defense and I know of a Ministry of Defence, but what the hell is a "Ministry of Defense"?
Huh? The article summary was written pretty well I thought, with correct spelling and appropriate links for both background and current information. I mean, compare it with this article from earlier today that gives us gems like "at least one out of two of all the actual entrepreneurs", and which CmdrTaco initially declared to be "about the largest doners" and had to be corrected. (At least I'm glad that Taco didn't confuse a "d" with a "b").
So why exactly did you feel that this article submission needs to be "edited", and that too by a Slashdot editor of all people?
(Disclaimer: I'm not connected in any way with either the story submitter or the people who carried out the experiment).
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Minor addition - the first definition comes from the fact that an inch is defined to be 25.4 millimeters. The second definition arose from the older definition of an inch, which was (1/39.37) of a meter. This foot is now called a Survey Foot, and is still used by the USGS (and just about nobody else).
The discrepancy between the two feet is about 2 parts per million.
You could do that, but then you've got pressure as one of the fundamental units, and kilograms defined in terms of that.
Why? As your parent noted, the current definition for Kelvin is "1/273.16 of the absolute temperature at the triple point of water", and that does not run into any difficulty with pressure. We could redefine the kilogram to be "the mass of X cubic meters of water at its triple point". Measuring the pressure is irrelevant - just tweak the temperature and pressure until you see all three phases coexist, and measure out X cubic meters of that and call its mass "one kilogram".
I would however prefer a name other than the "kilogram" - it's very embarassing to have a "kilo" prefix in a base unit.
Slashdot Mirror
No, his blog's on LiveJournal, and they seem to be able to handle the Slashdotting without any trouble. So no, definitely not harmful.
I hope they do, because every time I want to read something on an Indian Government website, I'm horrified in new ways. I thought I'd grown immune to the IE-only sites that the Indian Government seems to have a fetish for, but databases of election results in Access is an assault on good taste.
Out of genuine curiosity, what kind of job is this? Are you a forest ranger?
People who get confused by conversion factors should not be allowed anywhere near weapons grade Pu.
Nope, ALICE was written primarily to mimic real conversations, which means that the words and phrases it uses closely follows a Zipf law distribution from real human conversations. ELIZA was written purely to mimic a psychologist, and its model was therefore much simpler than ALICE - it would often just rephrase your stetement as a question and ask it back. A few keywords would trigger different questions (like "family" might trigger "Tell me about your mother"). Your parent was making a reference to ELIZA, not ALICE.
That's not how one does private key encryption.
I was about to reply to you saying that this reminds me of a cat with buttered toast strapped on to it, when I saw that THREE OTHERS had already replied to you with the exact same thing! Is thinking like this some sort of Slashdotter hallmark?
You and the person who made that comment are both confusing the simplex method in linear programming with the Nelder-Mead downhill simplex method in non-linear programming. Yes, I am an optimization geek.
Only on Slashdot would that statement be qualified by "I heard that". :-P
+1, Vile Pun.
No no, what he actually said was "The power of g++ compiles you!".
The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be
general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that
any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby
not to be a science. He would cite as examples Military Science, Library
Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer
Science. Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its
predictive power.
-- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking"
Frank Harary's home page.
Literacy in this context means literacy(1), not literacy(2). Being able to read street signs is all that's required for basic literacy. Of course, the definition of "basic literacy" doesn't include AOL-speak yet. Literacy in India usually means "able to sign one's name in at least one language" (basically if you don't need to use your thumbprint as identification, you're good to go).
Nope, that would be an African American preacher being bigoted against white people. This is more like Gandhi's descendants being bigoted against a completely different group, like Japanese saxophonists or Venezuelan college professors.
That said, the larger point you were making is well taken.
The density provides a good guess to the *average* composition, but not the heterogeneity of the projectile. This determines whether the particle is likely to burn up in the air (good) or melt and tumble (unpredictable trajectory - a simple orbital mechanics problem just became a hairy fluid mechanics problem) or hit the surface and if so, whether as one piece or a few large pieces or lots of small pieces.
Pan southwest from the SR71s and you'll see a couple of YF22A Raptors.
Is this lawyer telepathic or something? What if the site owner wants to change it to a website featuring French recipes for "eggs scrabblé" or "e-scrabble"?
Umm...
* Laura Branigan
* William Shatner
* Leonard Nimoy
* Giorgio Moroder
* Olivia Newton-John
FYI, Leonard Nimoy singing "Bilbo Baggins" can be found here.
And people bought William Shatner's songs? Does anyone recall him singing "Rocketman" and "Tambourine Man"?
"Hey MISter TAMbouRINE man
Play me a...SONG!"
Here we observe a new twist to the Star Trek vs Star Wars fight. Which of these is the cooler punishment?
1. Collect underpants.
2. Put George Lucas in a straitjacket and throw him off the Brooklyn Bridge with a lead weight in his backpack.
3. Profit!
or
1. Collect underpants.
2. Fire Rick Berman from a cannon.
3. Profit!
Choices, choices...
Crawford and Brewin, who are both engineers and have worked, respectively, for the Ministry of Defense and as an officer in the British Army, were also...
I know of a Department of Defense and I know of a Ministry of Defence, but what the hell is a "Ministry of Defense"?
So why exactly did you feel that this article submission needs to be "edited", and that too by a Slashdot editor of all people?
(Disclaimer: I'm not connected in any way with either the story submitter or the people who carried out the experiment).
Good Lord! This proposal makes as much sense as the 20th century physics warnings:
foot was (1200/3937) m.
Minor addition - the first definition comes from the fact that an inch is defined to be 25.4 millimeters. The second definition arose from the older definition of an inch, which was (1/39.37) of a meter. This foot is now called a Survey Foot, and is still used by the USGS (and just about nobody else).
The discrepancy between the two feet is about 2 parts per million.
Ah, that's how you interpreted it is it? I myself was wondering what the Association of Tennis Professionals had to do with the defining the kilogram.
Why? As your parent noted, the current definition for Kelvin is "1/273.16 of the absolute temperature at the triple point of water", and that does not run into any difficulty with pressure. We could redefine the kilogram to be "the mass of X cubic meters of water at its triple point". Measuring the pressure is irrelevant - just tweak the temperature and pressure until you see all three phases coexist, and measure out X cubic meters of that and call its mass "one kilogram".
I would however prefer a name other than the "kilogram" - it's very embarassing to have a "kilo" prefix in a base unit.