I wonder why... for expressing my wish that people currently having mod points mod the guy up, who patiently and at great length, using sound argumentation and keeping calm all the way, is defending the science and his colleague scientists against an unfounded, ignorant and rather troll-ish attack?
If that categorizes me as a "dufus", then I'm glad to be one.
Because of the financially position you put yourself in.
Just to remind everybody: this was said in a reply to a poster explaining that quitting the job is not that appealing option once you have a responsibility towards a child. The view of some people on the topic of having children really is unbelievable these days! Pitty your parents didn't take the same stance some - I guess - 13 or 14 years ago, when they decided to put themselves in a "financially position" you were referring to.
You do realize, however, that without that "Wookie", neither you nor your supervisor would have a job, don't you? You also realize that telling somebody that his/hers work "sucks", twice in a row, is exactly the reason why you QA/TQ/ISO9000PaperPushers types have such a low status among engineering departments?
Is this meant to be poking fun at conservative thinking, or are you being serious?
Just in case you are being serious, here's the explanation (I can't believe I'm actually writing this!): I don't have anything against either Rangers nor Sailors. I don't even see any logical path whatsoever from my comments to the conclusion you presented in your last sentence. What I meant is to stress out that having a message which can be read in too many different ways is NOT a smart thing to do. Even if the official explanation were correct (sailors coming up with the content of the banner), it was stupid from the White House not to point this out. The Texas Rangers part was only to make my point more obvious, i.e. had they came up with a message like that, I'm sure White House officials would say "wait a minute, we can't do that". The point is, they didn't have any objections to the "Mission Accomplished" idiocy. Blaming the sailors now actually shows their lack of respect to the crew of Lincoln.
Now, what if the sailors came up with the idea to print "Texas Rangers Are Filthy Cocksuckers", would the White House also print that? I guess not. Face it, even if the "explanation" of the banner is true, which I most seriously doubt, printing and presenting such a message in such a way would still be a bad idea.
You want a very large, professional, beautifully printed sign to thank the sailors, you go somewhere else.
Sure thing, I just knock on W's door and order one! Did you actually read your post before you pressed "submit"?
Check up on 5,206,951, 5,421,012 and 5,226,161
(links found in a news.com URL posted previously by another reader).
BTW: I just glanced over those patents, the mechanisms they describe are really nothing to write home about. They seem not to be *completely* trivial, but they definitely do count as examples of why software patents are evil.
Yes, but how many of those other vehicles land as airplanes (gliders, actually), with the capability of bringing down a huge payload? While the take-off is probably not really a point here (except maybe for some details regarding structural loads during a high acceleration vertical vs. low acceleration horizontal take-off), the landing sure is a biggie.
Regarding your second point: how many of those "concepts" are artistic visions with no chance in hell of ever becoming actually built, and how many depict actually planned vehicles?
Not to forget, that today's technology is WAY more advanced than what the world had back at the time Shuttle and Buran were built, allowing for a wider range of different implementable designs.
While I'm not arguing the one or the other theory (rip-off versus engineering necessity), the possibility that Russians came to extremely similar solution on their own can not be entirely dismissed solely on the fact that the "concept designs for future space vehicles" look different now.
1. I won't buy any hardware that hash such encumbrances, as an end-user.
Unfortunately, the great masses - that's where the money is - *will* buy just about anything, regardless of philosophical, ethical, or technological considerations you or I might have. Just think of XP (registration), GDI printers or WIN modems. They don't know better, and even if they did, they wouldn't care if they can save a buck or two.
I have a good friend who bought himself a Canon digital camera (Ixus something), which shipped with the most horrible piece of *&%$ software I ever saw. He actually managed to completely destroy his Win98 installation by using it (honestly!). Do you think that made him think about avoiding Canon products? [Hint: no, it didn't].
Regarding your sig: at the time being, it seems goatse.cx is not running on any server. It's been removed "due to lapsed registration or violation of policy".
I wonder what that guy might have come up with to finally break the policy... I guess I better never find out.
In deed. The movie and the book were created at the same time, influencing each other. "The Sentinel" was just the starting point.
The movie went to Jupiter for the simple reason of the artistic team not being able to create the satisfying model of Saturn and its' rings. For that reason, Kubrick decided to move the plot into Jovian world. If you are a 2001 fan, I recommend Clarke's "The Lost Worlds of 2001". Kind of like "The Making Of" for both the book as well as the movie.
I'll never forgive Clarke for writing 3001 (which is, IMO, by far the worst of the series), or - even more - for giving his blessings to the 2010 movie (which is a horrible, cliche ridden trash).
Oh, come on - that's not fair! The only vehicle capable of carrying more than 3 people into space is the Space Shuttle. No vehicle so far was ever capable of carrying more than 7. What did you expect? These people are designing and building a first-of-a kind vehicle by only using their own money (as in "not tax-payer's money"). If they succeed, the funding for a larger scale vehicle will come along. It'll take quite some time before you can buy a ticket on a "USS Voyager" class ship.
Give credit where credit is due, instead of whining.
Ummm... there is no "launchpad" for SpaceShipOne. It's launched mid-air, by being disconnected from the carrier airplane (White Knight) in flight. Besides, there is also no launch escape system for Space Shuttle, or even commercial airplanes either, so I don't quite get your point.
First of all, I know some very intelligent people who don't know anything about the technology behind e-Mail communication. For them, there is no reason why e-Mail communication would not be private. I would not call these people idiots. Uninformed, yes. Maybe even ignorant with respect to technology. But they are no idiots.
Second, and more important: I *hope* you do see a difference between a possibility that a bored postman reads your postcard (knowingly breaking the law) and a systematic, computer aided parsing and categorisation of every single mail one might send or receive for commercial purposes.
It's not (only) about the privacy of the user who receives a mail at his GMail account, it's also the privacy of other people that is compromised, who are on the sending side of the communication chain. You should not forget that not everybody has the time and/or interest to read/. or other similar information sources; most of the users (both on the receiving as well as on the sending side) will not even be aware of the fact that they give up parts of their privacy by using the GMail service.
Why in the world was this modded Flamebait??? The man says the truth, regardless of whether you like what he's saying or not. Keep "Flamebait" mod for real flamebaits.
Sure, but if my aunt were to be a person to scan and publish/sell the private information she receives from me, I'd never write to her anything I'd like to remain between the two of us. Some of the information I only give to people I trust, as opposed to publishing it on the net and/or selling to the government.
Of course there is a technical possibility for everyone to read (unencrypted) mails. However, in some parts of the world it's exactly as illegal as reading somebodies snail mail "just because you can" (laws of European Union, for example, do not make any difference between snail mail and e-Mail with regard to the protection of privacy). It is a matter of trust between the communication service provider and the communication paticipants that the service provider is going to abide by the law. If they don't, and you manage to prove it, you can sue them over it (and you'll win). Google, on the other hand, is the first to openly say "Hey, we'll read your mails, and we'll sell what we learn from it to whomever it may interest".
Now, how many "normal users" are even going to know what GMail does with their mails? They'll hear there is 1GB of free space for their mails, and they'll use it without reading the fine print.
If that is true, than the AMDs' performance rating is fair.
P4@3.2GHz runs at 6.6% higher frequency than a P4@3GHz. If you considder that performance doesn't scale linearly with the frequency, a performance gain could be somewhere about 4% (I don't have any benchmarks handy).
AthlonXP 3200+ suggests being equal or slightly better than a P4@3.2GHz. If it performs some 4% better than a P4@3GHz, they didn't lie.
Actually, I doubt they did so well... especially the later Athlons are known to have somewhat misleading performance ratings.
The biggest problem with C++ is that it doesn't allow you to define your own infix operators and specify their precedence and associativity, for the cases where none of the built-in ones really make sense.
Exactly. And that's where the fun (missuse) starts. Taking "*" in one class for dot product and in another for cross product (within the same programm, written by the same author) is only the beginning.:-)
Ooops - I stand corrected. I forgot about F90 (blush).
However, this doesn't change much. Fortran users care much more about parallelizing irregular applications, advanced data distribution strategies and compatibility with old software than operator overloading. Operator overloading is a syntactic sugar.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder why... for expressing my wish that people currently having mod points mod the guy up, who patiently and at great length, using sound argumentation and keeping calm all the way, is defending the science and his colleague scientists against an unfounded, ignorant and rather troll-ish attack?
If that categorizes me as a "dufus", then I'm glad to be one.
Oh, how sweeet... a trolling little AC calling me dufus on /. :))))
Because of the financially position you put yourself in.
Just to remind everybody: this was said in a reply to a poster explaining that quitting the job is not that appealing option once you have a responsibility towards a child. The view of some people on the topic of having children really is unbelievable these days! Pitty your parents didn't take the same stance some - I guess - 13 or 14 years ago, when they decided to put themselves in a "financially position" you were referring to.
Sad... one would think that kind of thinking would belong to the dark past, at least among the better educated parts of the population. :-(
You do realize, however, that without that "Wookie", neither you nor your supervisor would have a job, don't you? You also realize that telling somebody that his/hers work "sucks", twice in a row, is exactly the reason why you QA/TQ/ISO9000PaperPushers types have such a low status among engineering departments?
You really make me sick.
Gosh, where are the mod points when one needs them??? MOD PARENT UP!
Is this meant to be poking fun at conservative thinking, or are you being serious?
Just in case you are being serious, here's the explanation (I can't believe I'm actually writing this!): I don't have anything against either Rangers nor Sailors. I don't even see any logical path whatsoever from my comments to the conclusion you presented in your last sentence. What I meant is to stress out that having a message which can be read in too many different ways is NOT a smart thing to do. Even if the official explanation were correct (sailors coming up with the content of the banner), it was stupid from the White House not to point this out. The Texas Rangers part was only to make my point more obvious, i.e. had they came up with a message like that, I'm sure White House officials would say "wait a minute, we can't do that". The point is, they didn't have any objections to the "Mission Accomplished" idiocy. Blaming the sailors now actually shows their lack of respect to the crew of Lincoln.
Is it now all cleared up?
Now, what if the sailors came up with the idea to print "Texas Rangers Are Filthy Cocksuckers", would the White House also print that? I guess not. Face it, even if the "explanation" of the banner is true, which I most seriously doubt, printing and presenting such a message in such a way would still be a bad idea.
You want a very large, professional, beautifully printed sign to thank the sailors, you go somewhere else.
Sure thing, I just knock on W's door and order one! Did you actually read your post before you pressed "submit"?
Check up on 5,206,951, 5,421,012 and 5,226,161 (links found in a news.com URL posted previously by another reader).
BTW: I just glanced over those patents, the mechanisms they describe are really nothing to write home about. They seem not to be *completely* trivial, but they definitely do count as examples of why software patents are evil.
Yes, but how many of those other vehicles land as airplanes (gliders, actually), with the capability of bringing down a huge payload? While the take-off is probably not really a point here (except maybe for some details regarding structural loads during a high acceleration vertical vs. low acceleration horizontal take-off), the landing sure is a biggie.
Regarding your second point: how many of those "concepts" are artistic visions with no chance in hell of ever becoming actually built, and how many depict actually planned vehicles?
Not to forget, that today's technology is WAY more advanced than what the world had back at the time Shuttle and Buran were built, allowing for a wider range of different implementable designs.
While I'm not arguing the one or the other theory (rip-off versus engineering necessity), the possibility that Russians came to extremely similar solution on their own can not be entirely dismissed solely on the fact that the "concept designs for future space vehicles" look different now.
I'm sorry to hear that. :-(
I was talking about the wealthier parts of the world only, which are the main market for the technology.
1. I won't buy any hardware that hash such encumbrances, as an end-user.
Unfortunately, the great masses - that's where the money is - *will* buy just about anything, regardless of philosophical, ethical, or technological considerations you or I might have. Just think of XP (registration), GDI printers or WIN modems. They don't know better, and even if they did, they wouldn't care if they can save a buck or two.
I have a good friend who bought himself a Canon digital camera (Ixus something), which shipped with the most horrible piece of *&%$ software I ever saw. He actually managed to completely destroy his Win98 installation by using it (honestly!). Do you think that made him think about avoiding Canon products? [Hint: no, it didn't].
Regarding your sig: at the time being, it seems goatse.cx is not running on any server. It's been removed "due to lapsed registration or violation of policy".
I wonder what that guy might have come up with to finally break the policy... I guess I better never find out.
In deed. The movie and the book were created at the same time, influencing each other. "The Sentinel" was just the starting point.
The movie went to Jupiter for the simple reason of the artistic team not being able to create the satisfying model of Saturn and its' rings. For that reason, Kubrick decided to move the plot into Jovian world. If you are a 2001 fan, I recommend Clarke's "The Lost Worlds of 2001". Kind of like "The Making Of" for both the book as well as the movie.
I'll never forgive Clarke for writing 3001 (which is, IMO, by far the worst of the series), or - even more - for giving his blessings to the 2010 movie (which is a horrible, cliche ridden trash).
Oh, come on - that's not fair! The only vehicle capable of carrying more than 3 people into space is the Space Shuttle. No vehicle so far was ever capable of carrying more than 7. What did you expect? These people are designing and building a first-of-a kind vehicle by only using their own money (as in "not tax-payer's money"). If they succeed, the funding for a larger scale vehicle will come along. It'll take quite some time before you can buy a ticket on a "USS Voyager" class ship.
Give credit where credit is due, instead of whining.
Ummm... there is no "launchpad" for SpaceShipOne. It's launched mid-air, by being disconnected from the carrier airplane (White Knight) in flight. Besides, there is also no launch escape system for Space Shuttle, or even commercial airplanes either, so I don't quite get your point.
Funny... it renders just fine in my Konqueror (3.2.0)
First of all, I know some very intelligent people who don't know anything about the technology behind e-Mail communication. For them, there is no reason why e-Mail communication would not be private. I would not call these people idiots. Uninformed, yes. Maybe even ignorant with respect to technology. But they are no idiots.
Second, and more important: I *hope* you do see a difference between a possibility that a bored postman reads your postcard (knowingly breaking the law) and a systematic, computer aided parsing and categorisation of every single mail one might send or receive for commercial purposes.
It's not (only) about the privacy of the user who receives a mail at his GMail account, it's also the privacy of other people that is compromised, who are on the sending side of the communication chain. You should not forget that not everybody has the time and/or interest to read /. or other similar information sources; most of the users (both on the receiving as well as on the sending side) will not even be aware of the fact that they give up parts of their privacy by using the GMail service.
Why in the world was this modded Flamebait??? The man says the truth, regardless of whether you like what he's saying or not. Keep "Flamebait" mod for real flamebaits.
Sure, but if my aunt were to be a person to scan and publish/sell the private information she receives from me, I'd never write to her anything I'd like to remain between the two of us. Some of the information I only give to people I trust, as opposed to publishing it on the net and/or selling to the government.
Of course there is a technical possibility for everyone to read (unencrypted) mails. However, in some parts of the world it's exactly as illegal as reading somebodies snail mail "just because you can" (laws of European Union, for example, do not make any difference between snail mail and e-Mail with regard to the protection of privacy). It is a matter of trust between the communication service provider and the communication paticipants that the service provider is going to abide by the law. If they don't, and you manage to prove it, you can sue them over it (and you'll win). Google, on the other hand, is the first to openly say "Hey, we'll read your mails, and we'll sell what we learn from it to whomever it may interest".
Now, how many "normal users" are even going to know what GMail does with their mails? They'll hear there is 1GB of free space for their mails, and they'll use it without reading the fine print.
If that is true, than the AMDs' performance rating is fair.
P4@3.2GHz runs at 6.6% higher frequency than a P4@3GHz. If you considder that performance doesn't scale linearly with the frequency, a performance gain could be somewhere about 4% (I don't have any benchmarks handy).
AthlonXP 3200+ suggests being equal or slightly better than a P4@3.2GHz. If it performs some 4% better than a P4@3GHz, they didn't lie.
Actually, I doubt they did so well... especially the later Athlons are known to have somewhat misleading performance ratings.
Ooops - I stand corrected. I forgot about F90 (blush).
However, this doesn't change much. Fortran users care much more about parallelizing irregular applications, advanced data distribution strategies and compatibility with old software than operator overloading. Operator overloading is a syntactic sugar.
Shudder... I would have loughed, if I hadn't actually *seen* a guy doing exactly that!