Unless you're claiming that Jacqui Smith (Home Secretary of the UK) is secretly from the south of the USA, I think you're going to have to provide a bit more evidence that Bush's beliefs are relevant. IMO it's actually a lot simpler: politicians want there to be a solution and so when someone says to them, "We can sell you a solution," they believe that it's genuine. The pressure of feeling a nation's eyes on you and of an opposition ready to accuse you of neglecting to care for the populus somehow buries the knowledge that salemen lie.
This tells us that the expected spacing is 730 thousand years with a standard deviation of 99 thousand years.
No it doesn't. The best estimate for the expecting spacing is 730 thousand years and the best estimate for the standard deviation is 99 thousand years, but given that we're working with a sample size of 2 you can't have any faith in the accuracy of those values.
If you want to quote a value as "the expected spacing" then it should be (730 plus/minus 99) thousand years. As for the rest of the post: you're assuming a normal distribution with no justification; and even if everything else could be justified, the probabilities you quote are bogus because you should be using probabilities conditional on the fact that it hasn't erupted in 640 thousand years. And there's no way you can possibly justify 5 sig. fig.
Probably because they're so hard to find. I'm currently looking for a trackball I can hold in my hand and use with either hand. There seem to be about three models in existence, and nowhere which sells them have them in stock.
mmogchart.com seems to get some figures from the companies directly (and others from anonymous sources inside the companies). Unfortunately for the purposes of this discussion it doesn't seem to have been updated for months.
Whereas Microsoft already had: that's the point. In this context anti-competitive doesn't mean "aiming for lock-in" but "exploiting overwhelming market dominance in one field to unfairly gain overwhelming market dominance in another". In a world where nearly everyone bought Windows, bundling a browser with it for "free" (i.e. not allowing the consumer to choose not to pay that portion) meant that even if the competitor's product were completely free it would still have to be considerably better and well marketed to gain mindshare. That's as competitive as putting me up against Usain Bolt in the 100m: no matter how arrogant I am, my best hope is for him to be struck by lightning.
Cambridge has an established exchange programme with MIT, so it might well be possible for someone studying at another university of similar stature to make private arrangements.
I think you're confusing Part II CS with the Diploma in Computer Science, which I believe has just been closed down. Part II CS is the third year of an* undergraduate course, although its difficulty level is about on a par with an M.Sc. in the US system.
* I would say "the CS undergraduate course" but the Tripos system doesn't exactly work like that.
Nothing in the english/spanish world has the same opportunities in CS as the US, with few exceptions.
Which leads into my question: where is he currently studying? If the answer is MIT then your exceptions, the big names in Europe, - Oxbridge; Imperial College, London; Complutense de Madrid - are options. If it's somewhere no-one outside his state has heard of, the suitable suggestions are considerably different.
So why demand (or allow) Greek word-forms for an English word?
There seems to be an implicit claim here that where a noun is loaned by another language only the singular is loaned. I suspect - although, alas, I can't find the resources to confirm or refute - that when octopus entered the English language the only people who used it would also have used octopodes as the plural. If this is the case then it's a strong argument for octopodes as a loan-word with equal standing.
Of course, English is as inconsistent in its handling of loan words as in everything else. I wouldn't dream of calling a lady's betrothed her fiancée, or of calling her his fiancé: but on the other hand, use of naïf in English is extremely pretentious.
I think I may have been too brief in my previous post. My issue here is that Fowler is effectively taking a prescriptivist standpoint: the majority usage is the only correct usage. I'm grudgingly able to accept that incorrect usages can become accepted (while reserving the right to differ on whether they are acceptable), but while a significant minority continue using the previously standard usage lexicographers should call it old-fashioned rather than unacceptable. (Before anyone points it out, yes I am being prescriptive myself, but on a smaller scale).
Part (most?) of the beauty of the English language comes from its rich variety: like Perl, there's more than one way to say it. Removing words from the dictionary because their popularity drops is understandable, especially when the dictionary has a restricted size, but calling them non-words is another matter entirely.
So, in summary, the ONLY acceptable plural is actually octopuses. Not to be pedantic or anything.
Clearly. If you were being pedantic you would have gone with the unacceptable octopodes.
I must say that I find it a bit disappointing that Fowler should call pedantry unacceptable. The message seems to be that majority vote determines truth.
an area where Linux competes on an equal footing with Windows products (netbooks)
I'm not sure it does, at least in the two countries (Spain and the UK) where I've been round shops looking at netbooks. With one exception (Tesco, the biggest UK supermarket chain) all of them had more Windows netbooks than Linux ones. Moreover, and curiously, there was very little overlap between the hardware specs of the Linux and Windows netbooks.
The general trend was that the Linux ones had 512MB of RAM and small SSDs whereas the Windows ones had 1GB of RAM and large magnetic drives. My best guess is that those were the tradeoffs they needed to put the price point in the desired range, but the upshot is that it's not exactly a level playing field, especially as most people won't understand the SSD/magnetic distinction* and will think that the Windows machines have strictly better hardware at the same price.
* I thought 160MB was a typo until it occurred to me that it might not be an SSD.
When I was young (16) and (more) foolish I was interested in the stock market and registered at the Motley Fool, which for some reason wanted my snail-mail address. Got some amusing snail-mail spam out of that, including one from a fund manager who offered to manage my investments before adding that he only bothered with accounts of £100k or more.
(1) That's because they recalled that a previous Democracy in Athens had killed one of mankind's greatest thinkers, Socrates, simply because they didn't like him. They did not want the right to life to be taken-away by a simple 50% +1 vote.
Surely the right to life is protected by your constitution, so it would take a 2/3 majority to remove it?
(2) It's no more fucked-up then how the European Union operates - ya know, a Union of States where States elect ministers to the Council, not the people. You need to understand history, because in 1786 we were not a single nation - we were 13 indepentent nations coming together as an EU-type organization. Hence an election organized by States, not people.
Political reality in the US has changed a bit in 222 years. The modern US is probably more comparable to the UK or Spain (and the general EU vision for its constitutent states) - a single state with provinces which have autonomy in certain areas - than to the EU.
(3) Hence we a Republic of 50 States, where LAW reigns and protects the individual, not a democracy where the majority squashes the individual underfoot.
Well, yes: there isn't a single true democracy in the world. The closest is probably Switzerland. I wish politicians would admit it and stop calling their countries democracies.
Slashdot Mirror
My Debian lenny laptop froze showing 00:59 (CET). Wouldn't respond to mouse, keyboard or ssh.
Unless you're claiming that Jacqui Smith (Home Secretary of the UK) is secretly from the south of the USA, I think you're going to have to provide a bit more evidence that Bush's beliefs are relevant. IMO it's actually a lot simpler: politicians want there to be a solution and so when someone says to them, "We can sell you a solution," they believe that it's genuine. The pressure of feeling a nation's eyes on you and of an opposition ready to accuse you of neglecting to care for the populus somehow buries the knowledge that salemen lie.
Certainly for flashblock it isn't true, because the site identifies your browser as being able to run flash.
They should have a link to the non-flash site anyway. Having browser support for flash != wanting to use it.
This tells us that the expected spacing is 730 thousand years with a standard deviation of 99 thousand years.
No it doesn't. The best estimate for the expecting spacing is 730 thousand years and the best estimate for the standard deviation is 99 thousand years, but given that we're working with a sample size of 2 you can't have any faith in the accuracy of those values.
If you want to quote a value as "the expected spacing" then it should be (730 plus/minus 99) thousand years. As for the rest of the post: you're assuming a normal distribution with no justification; and even if everything else could be justified, the probabilities you quote are bogus because you should be using probabilities conditional on the fact that it hasn't erupted in 640 thousand years. And there's no way you can possibly justify 5 sig. fig.
A sarcasm detector, that's a real useful invention.
Probably because they're so hard to find. I'm currently looking for a trackball I can hold in my hand and use with either hand. There seem to be about three models in existence, and nowhere which sells them have them in stock.
mmogchart.com seems to get some figures from the companies directly (and others from anonymous sources inside the companies). Unfortunately for the purposes of this discussion it doesn't seem to have been updated for months.
I'll set fire to CowboyNeal. That kills two birds with one stone: fuel and food.
Whereas Microsoft already had: that's the point. In this context anti-competitive doesn't mean "aiming for lock-in" but "exploiting overwhelming market dominance in one field to unfairly gain overwhelming market dominance in another". In a world where nearly everyone bought Windows, bundling a browser with it for "free" (i.e. not allowing the consumer to choose not to pay that portion) meant that even if the competitor's product were completely free it would still have to be considerably better and well marketed to gain mindshare. That's as competitive as putting me up against Usain Bolt in the 100m: no matter how arrogant I am, my best hope is for him to be struck by lightning.
If you think Newspeak is next generation then you must be at least 90. I'll get off your lawn now.
Cambridge has an established exchange programme with MIT, so it might well be possible for someone studying at another university of similar stature to make private arrangements.
I think you're confusing Part II CS with the Diploma in Computer Science, which I believe has just been closed down. Part II CS is the third year of an* undergraduate course, although its difficulty level is about on a par with an M.Sc. in the US system.
* I would say "the CS undergraduate course" but the Tripos system doesn't exactly work like that.
Nothing in the english/spanish world has the same opportunities in CS as the US, with few exceptions.
Which leads into my question: where is he currently studying? If the answer is MIT then your exceptions, the big names in Europe, - Oxbridge; Imperial College, London; Complutense de Madrid - are options. If it's somewhere no-one outside his state has heard of, the suitable suggestions are considerably different.
Linus was Finnish
Was? Did I miss the obituary?
So why demand (or allow) Greek word-forms for an English word?
There seems to be an implicit claim here that where a noun is loaned by another language only the singular is loaned. I suspect - although, alas, I can't find the resources to confirm or refute - that when octopus entered the English language the only people who used it would also have used octopodes as the plural. If this is the case then it's a strong argument for octopodes as a loan-word with equal standing.
Of course, English is as inconsistent in its handling of loan words as in everything else. I wouldn't dream of calling a lady's betrothed her fiancée, or of calling her his fiancé: but on the other hand, use of naïf in English is extremely pretentious.
I think I may have been too brief in my previous post. My issue here is that Fowler is effectively taking a prescriptivist standpoint: the majority usage is the only correct usage. I'm grudgingly able to accept that incorrect usages can become accepted (while reserving the right to differ on whether they are acceptable), but while a significant minority continue using the previously standard usage lexicographers should call it old-fashioned rather than unacceptable. (Before anyone points it out, yes I am being prescriptive myself, but on a smaller scale).
Part (most?) of the beauty of the English language comes from its rich variety: like Perl, there's more than one way to say it. Removing words from the dictionary because their popularity drops is understandable, especially when the dictionary has a restricted size, but calling them non-words is another matter entirely.
I can't believe I never thought of that! BRB.
There's one major caveat to BASS, which is that it requires two mouse buttons. I tried playing it on my PDA and became very frustrated very quickly.
So, in summary, the ONLY acceptable plural is actually octopuses . Not to be pedantic or anything.
Clearly. If you were being pedantic you would have gone with the unacceptable octopodes.
I must say that I find it a bit disappointing that Fowler should call pedantry unacceptable. The message seems to be that majority vote determines truth.
Louisianan?
How often do you need to do unsigned integer division? I've been programming for 20 years without once wanting it.
an area where Linux competes on an equal footing with Windows products (netbooks)
I'm not sure it does, at least in the two countries (Spain and the UK) where I've been round shops looking at netbooks. With one exception (Tesco, the biggest UK supermarket chain) all of them had more Windows netbooks than Linux ones. Moreover, and curiously, there was very little overlap between the hardware specs of the Linux and Windows netbooks.
The general trend was that the Linux ones had 512MB of RAM and small SSDs whereas the Windows ones had 1GB of RAM and large magnetic drives. My best guess is that those were the tradeoffs they needed to put the price point in the desired range, but the upshot is that it's not exactly a level playing field, especially as most people won't understand the SSD/magnetic distinction* and will think that the Windows machines have strictly better hardware at the same price.
* I thought 160MB was a typo until it occurred to me that it might not be an SSD.
When I was young (16) and (more) foolish I was interested in the stock market and registered at the Motley Fool, which for some reason wanted my snail-mail address. Got some amusing snail-mail spam out of that, including one from a fund manager who offered to manage my investments before adding that he only bothered with accounts of £100k or more.
(1) That's because they recalled that a previous Democracy in Athens had killed one of mankind's greatest thinkers, Socrates, simply because they didn't like him. They did not want the right to life to be taken-away by a simple 50% +1 vote.
Surely the right to life is protected by your constitution, so it would take a 2/3 majority to remove it?
(2) It's no more fucked-up then how the European Union operates - ya know, a Union of States where States elect ministers to the Council, not the people. You need to understand history, because in 1786 we were not a single nation - we were 13 indepentent nations coming together as an EU-type organization. Hence an election organized by States, not people.
Political reality in the US has changed a bit in 222 years. The modern US is probably more comparable to the UK or Spain (and the general EU vision for its constitutent states) - a single state with provinces which have autonomy in certain areas - than to the EU.
(3) Hence we a Republic of 50 States, where LAW reigns and protects the individual, not a democracy where the majority squashes the individual underfoot.
Well, yes: there isn't a single true democracy in the world. The closest is probably Switzerland. I wish politicians would admit it and stop calling their countries democracies.
I'm British and I didn't get it. If you want to see something actually funny by the same guy, check out Extras.
Like a captain casualty but with slightly fancier stuff on his shoulders.