farmers investing in a biodiesel production facility, and using their own fuel to reduce operating costs rather than selling it as product.
According to an article I read on a Polish news site, a lot of European farmers are doing that already. They buy a special apparatus for a few thousand euros, and vegetable oil from Ukraine or China (cheaper than locally produced). One farmer claimed that this arrangement paid for itself after a year. The problem in Poland is that these operations are in a legal grey area right now, since nobody (including the government) is sure who's supposed to regulate these mini-refineries, or how, which makes a lot of people nervous about investing in something like that.
> Have you been to fark, or imdb, or any other forum? Slashdot has some idiots, for sure, but the users are certainly above average.
I second that. You don't really appreciate the intellectual level of/. until you hit some other forum. Hard to say why this is the way it is; could be the fact that the subject matter attracts educated people, but I think it's more due to the moderation system. It's got its problems, but I think it strikes a good balance between freedom of expression, and making it easy to punt the people who contribute nothing to the discussion.
Note to the kids thinking about getting a turntable: make sure that your tuner has a dedicated 'phono' input. Otherwise, you'll have to get a pre-amp, since the turntable produces a much weaker signal than most other components.
That's why I just ask them to hold on and then put the phone down and walk off. Sometimes it takes them 10 minutes to work out nobody's going to talk to them...
10 minutes? Shit, that's nothing. If you say something that makes them think you might buy, they'll stay on the line for much longer than that. My personal record is an hour and a half (I could have gone longer, but I needed the phone). A friend of mine claims seven hours.
You're mixing up two different types of error: a 404 and a non-existent domain name. A 404 is what happens when you make a request to a functioning web server for a non-existent page. In case of a 404, the error page is, in fact, generated by the server.
I was under the impression that Wired was relatively technical; perhaps I was wrong. (I've never actually read it, so I could well be)
In a nutshell: yes, you are wrong. And you haven't really missed much.
Wired occasionally has something worth reading, but most of it is just fluff and ads for expensive toys. I stopped taking it seriously years ago. Articles like this remind me why.
If it never worked in the "War on Drugs", what makes you think it will work in the "War on Piracy"?
Depends what you mean by 'worked'. If the goal of the War On Drugs was the elimination of certain recreational chemicals, then it has obviously failed. If the goal was to generate billions of $ in public funding for police forces and various auxiliary industries, and to give the police a pretext for going after people who otherwise aren't breaking any laws, then the war has been a resounding success.
What makes this system so great, however, is the incredible ease of implementation.
Implementation isn't the problem, it's the politicians. The two ruling parties will never willingly support a system that threatens their position; this is one thing they'll definitely agree on. Something like this would take tremendous pressure from below.
what on earth makes you think the political establishment will take the Pirate Party seriously?
What on earth makes you think they should give a fuck? If you stand around politely waiting for permission from the "political establishment", you'll never get anywhere.
Interesting. Does anybody have any details on this operation? This sounds like something I'd like to do, but the review is slashdotted and I can't find any useful information on the Ubuntu site.
I'm glad somebody else noticed that. I got about 40 pages into the "Code", then realized that I've already read this story before, only the last time it wasn't written by some Crichton-wanna-be hack. And then of course they had to get Ron Howard to direct...
Debating the pros and cons of Mach is a valid topic, but a phrase like this is so vague that it's meaningless.
it's going closed source
OK, that one's intelligible. But then we come across gems like this:
for instance they show that there are so many process/threads layers in OS X.
A small request for submitters: Take a minute to actually proof-read your summary. I'm not even talking about simple typos, or the correct use of "you're/your" - those look ugly, but most of the time people can still figure out what you meant. Just ask yourself: will these words make sense to a moderately intelligent English speaker who's not on a meth bender?
I think Burgess was too appalled by his own creation to follow it to its logical conclusion and chucked in a little gratuitous redemption.
I absolutely agree. Kubrick was right, Burgess was wrong, and it doesn't really matter that this is Burgess' story. The 21st chapter makes no sense given all the shit we've just seen in the previous 20. You don't just "grow out" of being a sadistic sociopath.
And let's also consider what would have happened after that: Alex is a convicted murderer with little education and no job experience. He'd have a lot of trouble fitting into the straight world, and he's also smart enough that he should have realized that right away. It's not even a question of choice; at this point in his life, the only ways that he can go is to either continue being a petty thug, or try to become a more sophisticated sort of thug.
What's interesting is that the original is a completely different poem. If I recall correctly, the assignment requires a six-line poem about "royalty, seduction, betrayal, incest, Negroes, music, and every word has to start with the letter 'c'". (I actually think doing something like this in English is harder, since Polish has no articles, and its grammar makes it easier to avoid using conjunctions and pronouns.) The meaning of the actual poem is irrelevant in this case; the point is to present a puzzle that can't POSSIBLY be solved, and then show the solution.
It's astounding how well Kandel translated the poetry, so it still rhymes, scans well, and makes perfect sense
Not to take away from Kandel's truly impressive work, but you're making it sound like he was the first guy in the world to successfully translate rhyming verse into another language. People have been working on these types of problems for thousands of years.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but you don't get a prize for it.
Would you rather get a prize, or get beer?
> Have you been to fark, or imdb, or any other forum? Slashdot has some idiots, for sure, but the users are certainly above average.
/. until you hit some other forum. Hard to say why this is the way it is; could be the fact that the subject matter attracts educated people, but I think it's more due to the moderation system. It's got its problems, but I think it strikes a good balance between freedom of expression, and making it easy to punt the people who contribute nothing to the discussion.
I second that. You don't really appreciate the intellectual level of
Yeah, it's been a few years since I went turntable shopping. Back then, they generally didn't have a built-in preamp (or USB, for that matter).
Note to the kids thinking about getting a turntable: make sure that your tuner has a dedicated 'phono' input. Otherwise, you'll have to get a pre-amp, since the turntable produces a much weaker signal than most other components.
That's why I just ask them to hold on and then put the phone down and walk off. Sometimes it takes them 10 minutes to work out nobody's going to talk to them...
10 minutes? Shit, that's nothing. If you say something that makes them think you might buy, they'll stay on the line for much longer than that. My personal record is an hour and a half (I could have gone longer, but I needed the phone). A friend of mine claims seven hours.
You're mixing up two different types of error: a 404 and a non-existent domain name. A 404 is what happens when you make a request to a functioning web server for a non-existent page. In case of a 404, the error page is, in fact, generated by the server.
A few years ago, they would have called it "iDNS". This too shall pass.
In a nutshell: yes, you are wrong. And you haven't really missed much.
Wired occasionally has something worth reading, but most of it is just fluff and ads for expensive toys. I stopped taking it seriously years ago. Articles like this remind me why.
what kind of retarded terrorist uses a chat room
The kind who thinks that Manhattan's below sea level?
If it never worked in the "War on Drugs", what makes you think it will work in the "War on Piracy"?
Depends what you mean by 'worked'. If the goal of the War On Drugs was the elimination of certain recreational chemicals, then it has obviously failed. If the goal was to generate billions of $ in public funding for police forces and various auxiliary industries, and to give the police a pretext for going after people who otherwise aren't breaking any laws, then the war has been a resounding success.
What makes this system so great, however, is the incredible ease of implementation.
Implementation isn't the problem, it's the politicians. The two ruling parties will never willingly support a system that threatens their position; this is one thing they'll definitely agree on. Something like this would take tremendous pressure from below.
what on earth makes you think the political establishment will take the Pirate Party seriously?
What on earth makes you think they should give a fuck? If you stand around politely waiting for permission from the "political establishment", you'll never get anywhere.
You know, analogies are like ex-girlfriends...
You mean like baseball?
Interesting. Does anybody have any details on this operation? This sounds like something I'd like to do, but the review is slashdotted and I can't find any useful information on the Ubuntu site.
What, so they're re-filming it, this time with a better story???
No, not the whole thing. They'll just send it to their friends in Bombay, who'll replace the boring bits with musical numbers.
I'm glad somebody else noticed that. I got about 40 pages into the "Code", then realized that I've already read this story before, only the last time it wasn't written by some Crichton-wanna-be hack. And then of course they had to get Ron Howard to direct...
Nope, it's still gibberish.
whether it's why it's slow
Well... why is it slow?
Mach/micro-kernel makes it bad
Debating the pros and cons of Mach is a valid topic, but a phrase like this is so vague that it's meaningless.
it's going closed source
OK, that one's intelligible. But then we come across gems like this:
for instance they show that there are so many process/threads layers in OS X.
A small request for submitters: Take a minute to actually proof-read your summary. I'm not even talking about simple typos, or the correct use of "you're/your" - those look ugly, but most of the time people can still figure out what you meant. Just ask yourself: will these words make sense to a moderately intelligent English speaker who's not on a meth bender?
"Arsenol" sounds like a hydroxyl compound containing arsenic. I wouldn't want to solve problems with that either.
The fools! Arsenol doesn't solve problems... it only leads to more arsenol!
I think Burgess was too appalled by his own creation to follow it to its logical conclusion and chucked in a little gratuitous redemption.
I absolutely agree. Kubrick was right, Burgess was wrong, and it doesn't really matter that this is Burgess' story. The 21st chapter makes no sense given all the shit we've just seen in the previous 20. You don't just "grow out" of being a sadistic sociopath.
And let's also consider what would have happened after that: Alex is a convicted murderer with little education and no job experience. He'd have a lot of trouble fitting into the straight world, and he's also smart enough that he should have realized that right away. It's not even a question of choice; at this point in his life, the only ways that he can go is to either continue being a petty thug, or try to become a more sophisticated sort of thug.
Here's the full Polish text of the story. The poem in question is about halfway though, and begins with "Cyprian".
What's interesting is that the original is a completely different poem. If I recall correctly, the assignment requires a six-line poem about "royalty, seduction, betrayal, incest, Negroes, music, and every word has to start with the letter 'c'". (I actually think doing something like this in English is harder, since Polish has no articles, and its grammar makes it easier to avoid using conjunctions and pronouns.) The meaning of the actual poem is irrelevant in this case; the point is to present a puzzle that can't POSSIBLY be solved, and then show the solution.
It's astounding how well Kandel translated the poetry, so it still rhymes, scans well, and makes perfect sense
Not to take away from Kandel's truly impressive work, but you're making it sound like he was the first guy in the world to successfully translate rhyming verse into another language. People have been working on these types of problems for thousands of years.