No encyclopedia published after ~1900 is usefull for research, unfortunately.
Not pleased with the kids writing for wikipedia? think about the disposable and unmotivated editors for Britannica or Larouse who get paid by the character [slight exageration... as far as I heard, they get only "evaluated" by the number of characters they write] while waiting for a better job opportunity to show up.
encyclopedias are no longer about education/research, but about filling office shelves with decorative leatherbound 1000 years guaranteed wasted paper.
What makes most articles from Wikipedia worth the time checking them are the references and the links at the bottom.
Does this happen to you ?... never happened to me after I was done with the "hello world"s. There is always a team lead to persuade that your solution might be better, a client/suit to negociate features with, a team mate to coordinate with... not to mention office politics etc. I think the argument that women are more social so they could not, by their nature, be interested in IT does not stand.
From another perspective: why should women be necesarily interested in IT ? So what if there are very few women in this line of work ? Does it mean that there should be no smart analytical women in other lines of work? Or it means that there is more glory in "computing" than in "accounting" or "housewifing" ? Does it matter what you do more than how you do it?
The basis of how computers work is boolean logic. Its maths.
... are you sure ? I always thought that computers dealt with binary numbers, and "boolean logic" has to do with "true/false", which is the same since the Ionian immigrants to Athens invented rhetorics... in my time they used the study of Latin to teach "logic, attention to detail etc." (need a write only language? no need for [insert the programming dialiect you hate most], try Latin, and you will learn a lot about logic, attention to detail etc. ); it's true that now I wish they would have used a programming language, but at that time not so many schools could afford mainfraime access
wouldn't it be much easier and efficient to have well indexed archives documenting what is buried there and how long will it be dangerous? It's not like we expect the civilization to collapse... in 50 years the radioactive waste dumps might be mined for... radioactive material.
yes... and mirrors should be banned, too, or at least labeled "18+"
women should be forbidden, or at least locked up until they reach 50... to be on the safe side, lets make that 105
Italian TV channels should be banned too, together with "wildlife" shows dealing with anything but unicelular organisms; also ban flowers (you know what flowers are, don't you?), pointy objects, hollow objects, tools to sharpen things or bore into things, pre-1900 pictures or sculptures with no urns in it, post-1900 pictures and sculptures (just to make sure, you never know what that black square is standing for), the letters i, o, l, j, t, q, and Y, the digits 1, 7 and 0, and also the noun "digit" should be replaced with a more decent combination of letters
or better just provide free medical treatment to the guys and gals that get the jitters by looking at pretty rudimentary 3D models that resemble the human body only for those that haven't taken a shower in their life...
Because a "National ID Card" would make it VERY easy to track everything you do.
More likely to make it VERY easy to track everything that was done using the data on it. If swipping the card would be the only way to check somebody's identity, then it's going to be abused instantly...
1.... so, those guys told him to go... and read the fine manual, and he went to the press and started complainig to the press that Linux users are snobs etc.... who's the "jackass" here ?
2. "This particular Windows user was a newbie to Linux but had been in the I.T. industry for years."... so he could not use google ? When the lugs had about five members he would have got the long answer, probably one that would have satisfied him... now there are hundres of people asking every f***** day "how do I start web services in Linux" instead of reading one of the f***** thousands of books, articles, old posts etc. that tell them how to start web services in Linux.
3. No, if you are a Linux newbie it does not mean that you are special and have the right to harass me every God's day asking questions that are answered on every billboard, mailing list archive and WC wall...
4. When I was a noob I bought the "unix for dummies" book. And read it... but I had not been in the IT industry for years at that moment... I did not think that being called a dummy was an insult.
Re:No, just naives ... Re:Neanderthals?
on
Stone Age Dentists
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· Score: 1
>> If flint is not convincing, then what is the explanation for the holes in the teeth? Horn? Teeth?
cavities... depending on the acidity of the soil, the "rotting dental tissue" could have rotten away...
Re:No, just naives ... Re:Neanderthals?
on
Stone Age Dentists
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· Score: 1
I agree about the anesthetics...
There are two issues here: one is "were the ancients capable of ingenious use of simple materials?", and I would say that they were: some Roman roads and some Greek or Roman waterworks are used even now, without much repair, high grade steel is not neccesary for dental work and copper will do etc. The other issue is: "are we missinterpreting the significance of their technological skills?": even if the people of Babilon used, well, voltaic cells to gold plate their jewels, they did not discover electricity... they just discovered a method for gold plating cheaper metals.
I still can't believe that stone tools could be used for drilling in live teeth... if there is a stone that could be polished into a thin enough point, I don't know about it... flint is the only solution I know (some mesolithic and neolithic flint tools were very sofisticated), but flint would not work for drilling....
Flint flakes... because of this it has a good cutting edge that leaves a clean cut that heals easily, but for drilling it's totaly inapropriate. In UK it was used in surgery until the XXth century (there were a couple of workshops that made flint blades for scalpels), but if you attempt to drill (not to cut) something with a flint point you'll see that the edge will be distroyed fast.
My gues is this:
1. Archaeologist needes funds.
2. Archaeologist looks around and sees lots of pointy objects.
3. Archaeologist looks at his work table and sees tooth with hole in it.
4. Archaeologist sees the light.
5. Press sees the light.
6. Pakistani authorities see the light, too, since it's nice to have something to show to those arogant Westerners.
7. Archaeologist gets the funds.
8./. crowd sees many colored lights and keeps talking about them (it's sunday, the real engineers are resting, and the real archaeologists did not recover after the saturday... party).
9. Dentists have a good time and promise themselves to read/. more often, since it's fun to know that people think that the drilling does the job, not the filling applied on a clean tooth.
Remember the stone dildo BBC wrote about some time ago ? Imagine how much attention would have been received by an article with the title "A tool for resharpening flint blades was discovered in almost perfect condition"... then you'll see why the article was about the "stone dildo".
What we need to do now, is to try to form a type of government that doesn't include ANY sort of religious speech or mannerisms, but in lieu of those missing religious statements, includes scientific proof to back up what we do know
That was tried, too... it was called socialism: being "scientific" was the greatest appeal socialism had at the end of XIXth century and the beginning of XXth century.
Unfortunately, 60 years were needed to acknowledge that the various socialist experiments failed...
kernel size of 1.5MB, 5MB if you want the TCP/IP stack.
... and what did they put in that kernel ??? or it's about the complete sources, not the compiled binary ? I managed to get usefull 2.4 kernels at about 400KB...
I think the only realy educational software is M-Windows... it teaches you character, the value of restraint and patience, even the value of money (from time to time, depending on the availability of your comp.-wizz. friends to do free work)... not to speak about the "Programs" menu, which is an excelent example of memory training software.
It won't be cheaper... rents are not everything, and utilities could cost more; besides that, you will have to ferry the external tank and the shuttle back and forth across across the world... and also watch the local governments just in case they decide to use the shuttle schematics to improve their ICMB programs...
Actually, the $100 computer would be utterly useless to the millions of poor people -- if it every appeared, which I doubt.
I think the "100$ computer" would be very usefull to most of the rich people, not only to the poor... it is supposed to be water/shock/dust resistant, long battery life, light, rechargeable by hand etc. I will buy one if it's going to be available under 500 USD...
... and concerning the "poor" people... this is not for the poor people, but for the governments in not so rich countries to buy and give to school children, whether they are poor or not. I think I remember Negroponte talked about China, Brasil etc., not about Somalia or Cote d'Ivoire... this is not about charity (the 100$ will be payed for by the taxes taken from the "poor"), but about designing and mass producing a cheap and usefull computer instead of designing electronic substitutes for heavy gold chains, the way most of the laptops on the marked are built now.
I really doubt that... if something can be done, and there is a trace of hope it might pay off, somebody will try it... For an example, check the SpaceRef article where they say something about what motivated Elon Musk to get into rocket building...
Want more incentives ? Drop the lame "Outer Space" treaty and set up a system for allowing enterprising people stake claims on useful resources they discover in the "Outer Space" as long as they prove they can and want to exploit them, or set prizes for discovering exploitable resources out there... sooner rather than later some insane billionare will start putting money into space exploration, and he might just get lucky, the same way Christopher Columbus got lucky.
US got the space program running because they got scared by Sputnik... if the entrepreneus get some guarantees that they could make money in space (and not the only certainty they have now, which is that if anybody is stupid enough to risk their money and acctualy finds something valuable, the UN freeloaders will gang them instantly), you'll see the IRS forking money to NASA in order to be able to send tax inspectors to LEO...
In the past, great exploration programs were based on some need or desire. The New World was discovered (for the last time) by someone who wanted to get to the resources of the Far East.
Quite right...
The point here is that as long as space development continues to wallow along with out goals, it'll continue to be a toy program.
I guess "space development" can be a goal in itself, as long as there are reasonable excuses for doing this, such as "space science", "(sub)orbital tourism" etc. that would keep one's heirs from declaring him/her mentally unfit.
Watch out... you might just teach them that "pwning" is fair game with you...
When I was a kid (a long, long time ago), my father thought that computers were just game machines and refused to buy one even if before 1989 microcomputers were quite afordable this part of the world, but last year, when I bought him a PC, I was shocked when he was really upset/dissapointed when he discovered that I did not install games, and for almost a day did not speak with me... so I left him only with word processing and spreadsheets for a couple of month...
there is a reason for this... just think what will happen to your life if the team lead will decide he is most productive between 11AM and 8 PM, and you'll have to sincronize with him.
remote work ? been there, done that, and it's nice dream... but as far as giving/receiving feedback from your team, office work is better: think chasing your team mate in order to find out wtf that code he wrote that piece of uncommented code, whille he is trying to calm the tantrums of his cildren.
I understand that I am as you say, but you did not answer my question...
I said was that we have to choose (and NASA too) : either we do small time science with the limited means we have now, or we choose to invest in developing our means of investigation (with the help of any private investor that can be persuaded he can make some money, now or later, by developing better launch systems) and delay a little the science part (if astrobiology, astrophisics or other astro* are more scientific than material science, for ex.).
first I thank you for pointing out my scientific illiteracy... I need this excuse. If I were scientifically literate I would not be allowed to make gross mistakes.
There is an AGREEMENT GOVERNING THE ACTIVITIES OF STATES ON THE MOON AND OTHER CELESTIAL BODIES (1979) which, while not forbidding them explicitly, makes commercial investments in the exploitation of resources on the Moon and other celestial bodies except Earth practically impossible. Check Article 5, par. 1 (then think if you would invest into prospecting), and Article 11 (and tell me if you would invest into developing resources there). So, you are right again... nothing legal forbids commercial exploitation... but nothing guarantees that you will be able to keep what you built there... Incentives to go find something exploitable: yeah... from everybody according to their ability, to everybody according to their needs...
The rovers are used to discover new geologic information about Mars, and bump into anything of interest that we weren't currently aware of that we may want to check out in a future Mars mission. Building of the rovers,and putting them on Mars were amazing feats... but the return is infinitely small... The same is valid for the Huygens mission. Exploring a few hundred meters with very limited tools is what I call a waste of money. Getting a few foggy pictures of clouds and some white and black matter... that's quite dissapointing, considering the costs. Would be better to use such money as are available to develop cheaper means to get to space... let the grand projects of discovering E.T. for later, since with the gear that is out there right now you can't do it.
It is currently way too costly for any company to attempt in one fiscal quarter.... so , how much has Sony spent to develop PS3 ?... over how many years ?... so the fiscal quarter argument really does not stand up. If only there were the certainty of having control over the resources discovered out there, I guess you could find companies willing to take the risk... oh, gosh... there are such companies, aiming at suborbital tourism, satelite launch etc.... and doing long term investments...
there would be certain missions with requirements beyond what the market could offer. NASA (if it still exists) would end up building customized vehicles for that purpose.... so you want to tell me that NASA (or ESA, or other state agencies) should continue to do what they do now ? Wasting money on trying to find out if the universe is 13 or 14 billion years old instead of motivating the private rocket builders to use their own brains and risk their own money in order to develop technologies that would bring the good news about the age of the universe sooner that the current practices allow us to hope ?
Hubble will be programmed to fall to Earth if its not salvageable. So what if it will be programmed to plunge in the atmosphere and burn ? Most of the costs came not from building the telescope, but from putting it into orbit and keeping it there. Why not let it fall, and spending those money on developing better rockets ? The astronomers will find interesting things to do even without Hubble until the next telescope is in place. As to pointing Hubble towards objects in the solar system... can it focus so close ? I heard it cannot...
Nuclear decay does not magically provide the energy or propulsion to open warp holes to zip probes all over the universe. it can not ?... I am so d
No, not really... it's only supposed to contribute... you read too much Asimov and Niven... you should try some Crichton some time...
Most sails are silver because reflected light provides twice the momentum as absorbed light. I can't remember what the proportion is, but both effects are significant.
Slashdot Mirror
No encyclopedia published after ~1900 is usefull for research, unfortunately.
... as far as I heard, they get only "evaluated" by the number of characters they write] while waiting for a better job opportunity to show up.
Not pleased with the kids writing for wikipedia? think about the disposable and unmotivated editors for Britannica or Larouse who get paid by the character [slight exageration
encyclopedias are no longer about education/research, but about filling office shelves with decorative leatherbound 1000 years guaranteed wasted paper.
What makes most articles from Wikipedia worth the time checking them are the references and the links at the bottom.
Does this happen to you ? ... never happened to me after I was done with the "hello world"s. There is always a team lead to persuade that your solution might be better, a client/suit to negociate features with, a team mate to coordinate with ... not to mention office politics etc. I think the argument that women are more social so they could not, by their nature, be interested in IT does not stand.
From another perspective: why should women be necesarily interested in IT ? So what if there are very few women in this line of work ? Does it mean that there should be no smart analytical women in other lines of work? Or it means that there is more glory in "computing" than in "accounting" or "housewifing" ? Does it matter what you do more than how you do it?
wouldn't it be much easier and efficient to have well indexed archives documenting what is buried there and how long will it be dangerous? It's not like we expect the civilization to collapse ... in 50 years the radioactive waste dumps might be mined for ... radioactive material.
yes ... and mirrors should be banned, too, or at least labeled "18+"
... to be on the safe side, lets make that 105
...
women should be forbidden, or at least locked up until they reach 50
Italian TV channels should be banned too, together with "wildlife" shows dealing with anything but unicelular organisms; also ban flowers (you know what flowers are, don't you?), pointy objects, hollow objects, tools to sharpen things or bore into things, pre-1900 pictures or sculptures with no urns in it, post-1900 pictures and sculptures (just to make sure, you never know what that black square is standing for), the letters i, o, l, j, t, q, and Y, the digits 1, 7 and 0, and also the noun "digit" should be replaced with a more decent combination of letters
or better just provide free medical treatment to the guys and gals that get the jitters by looking at pretty rudimentary 3D models that resemble the human body only for those that haven't taken a shower in their life
More likely to make it VERY easy to track everything that was done using the data on it. If swipping the card would be the only way to check somebody's identity, then it's going to be abused instantly ...
1. ... so, those guys told him to go ... and read the fine manual, and he went to the press and started complainig to the press that Linux users are snobs etc. ... who's the "jackass" here ?
... so he could not use google ? When the lugs had about five members he would have got the long answer, probably one that would have satisfied him ... now there are hundres of people asking every f***** day "how do I start web services in Linux" instead of reading one of the f***** thousands of books, articles, old posts etc. that tell them how to start web services in Linux.
...
... but I had not been in the IT industry for years at that moment ... I did not think that being called a dummy was an insult.
2. "This particular Windows user was a newbie to Linux but had been in the I.T. industry for years."
3. No, if you are a Linux newbie it does not mean that you are special and have the right to harass me every God's day asking questions that are answered on every billboard, mailing list archive and WC wall
4. When I was a noob I bought the "unix for dummies" book. And read it
>> If flint is not convincing, then what is the explanation for the holes in the teeth? Horn? Teeth?
... depending on the acidity of the soil, the "rotting dental tissue" could have rotten away ...
cavities
I agree about the anesthetics ...
... they just discovered a method for gold plating cheaper metals.
... if there is a stone that could be polished into a thin enough point, I don't know about it ... flint is the only solution I know (some mesolithic and neolithic flint tools were very sofisticated), but flint would not work for drilling. ...
There are two issues here: one is "were the ancients capable of ingenious use of simple materials?", and I would say that they were: some Roman roads and some Greek or Roman waterworks are used even now, without much repair, high grade steel is not neccesary for dental work and copper will do etc. The other issue is: "are we missinterpreting the significance of their technological skills?": even if the people of Babilon used, well, voltaic cells to gold plate their jewels, they did not discover electricity
I still can't believe that stone tools could be used for drilling in live teeth
He would have had lots of problems using flint.
... because of this it has a good cutting edge that leaves a clean cut that heals easily, but for drilling it's totaly inapropriate. In UK it was used in surgery until the XXth century (there were a couple of workshops that made flint blades for scalpels), but if you attempt to drill (not to cut) something with a flint point you'll see that the edge will be distroyed fast.
/. crowd sees many colored lights and keeps talking about them (it's sunday, the real engineers are resting, and the real archaeologists did not recover after the saturday ... party). /. more often, since it's fun to know that people think that the drilling does the job, not the filling applied on a clean tooth.
... then you'll see why the article was about the "stone dildo".
Flint flakes
My gues is this:
1. Archaeologist needes funds.
2. Archaeologist looks around and sees lots of pointy objects.
3. Archaeologist looks at his work table and sees tooth with hole in it.
4. Archaeologist sees the light.
5. Press sees the light.
6. Pakistani authorities see the light, too, since it's nice to have something to show to those arogant Westerners.
7. Archaeologist gets the funds.
8.
9. Dentists have a good time and promise themselves to read
Remember the stone dildo BBC wrote about some time ago ? Imagine how much attention would have been received by an article with the title "A tool for resharpening flint blades was discovered in almost perfect condition"
That was tried, too ... it was called socialism: being "scientific" was the greatest appeal socialism had at the end of XIXth century and the beginning of XXth century.
Unfortunately, 60 years were needed to acknowledge that the various socialist experiments failed ...
Apple and MS fanboys getting at each other's throats ? ... good ... now let's get back to that slapd.conf ... where was I ...
I think the only realy educational software is M-Windows ... it teaches you character, the value of restraint and patience, even the value of money (from time to time, depending on the availability of your comp.-wizz. friends to do free work) ... not to speak about the "Programs" menu, which is an excelent example of memory training software.
It won't be cheaper ... rents are not everything, and utilities could cost more; besides that, you will have to ferry the external tank and the shuttle back and forth across across the world ... and also watch the local governments just in case they decide to use the shuttle schematics to improve their ICMB programs ...
I think the "100$ computer" would be very usefull to most of the rich people, not only to the poor ... it is supposed to be water/shock/dust resistant, long battery life, light, rechargeable by hand etc. I will buy one if it's going to be available under 500 USD ...
I really doubt that ... if something can be done, and there is a trace of hope it might pay off, somebody will try it ... For an example, check the SpaceRef article where they say something about what motivated Elon Musk to get into rocket building ...
Want more incentives ? Drop the lame "Outer Space" treaty and set up a system for allowing enterprising people stake claims on useful resources they discover in the "Outer Space" as long as they prove they can and want to exploit them, or set prizes for discovering exploitable resources out there ... sooner rather than later some insane billionare will start putting money into space exploration, and he might just get lucky, the same way Christopher Columbus got lucky.
US got the space program running because they got scared by Sputnik ... if the entrepreneus get some guarantees that they could make money in space (and not the only certainty they have now, which is that if anybody is stupid enough to risk their money and acctualy finds something valuable, the UN freeloaders will gang them instantly), you'll see the IRS forking money to NASA in order to be able to send tax inspectors to LEO ...
Quite rightWatch out ... you might just teach them that "pwning" is fair game with you ...
... so I left him only with word processing and spreadsheets for a couple of month ...
When I was a kid (a long, long time ago), my father thought that computers were just game machines and refused to buy one even if before 1989 microcomputers were quite afordable this part of the world, but last year, when I bought him a PC, I was shocked when he was really upset/dissapointed when he discovered that I did not install games, and for almost a day did not speak with me
s/that code he wrote that piece of uncommented code/that piece of undocumented code he wrote is doing/
there is a reason for this ... just think what will happen to your life if the team lead will decide he is most productive between 11AM and 8 PM, and you'll have to sincronize with him.
... but as far as giving/receiving feedback from your team, office work is better: think chasing your team mate in order to find out wtf that code he wrote that piece of uncommented code, whille he is trying to calm the tantrums of his cildren.
remote work ? been there, done that, and it's nice dream
hm ... I guess I deserve this answer ... :)
I understand that I am as you say, but you did not answer my question ...
I said was that we have to choose (and NASA too) : either we do small time science with the limited means we have now, or we choose to invest in developing our means of investigation (with the help of any private investor that can be persuaded he can make some money, now or later, by developing better launch systems) and delay a little the science part (if astrobiology, astrophisics or other astro* are more scientific than material science, for ex.).
OK ... let's see ...
first I thank you for pointing out my scientific illiteracy ... I need this excuse. If I were scientifically literate I would not be allowed to make gross mistakes.
No, not really
Do you mean that this was extensivly tested ?