Case in point: Microsoft is currently advertising Windows Server 2003 on our local TV (the ad is American, though).
The setup is that a besuited guy wanders in on a what is presumably the IT department. The IT department looks like the commercial director has taken the most boring people on the talent agency's books and told the costume and make up people "think bland". They are all dancing extremely awkwardly and drinking some unidentified liquid (the way these people are acting, it sure ain't alcohol) out of blue plastic cups.
The guy asks what's the party, at which point the head IT guy explains how they had magically consolidated the Active Directory groups from 70 to 4 thus allowing them to roll out new apps to the sales force in minutes (or some such hooey). The suit looks nonplussed, until Head IT Guy explains that this will save the company millions of dollars. The ad closes with the suit leading the IT department in a line dance, which they manage to make look just as awkward and dorky.
I realise the ad probably has to be designed to it can be shown everywhere from Salt Lake City to Singapore, but, jeez, if you want to make your brand cool try not to associate it with complete dorks...:)
Ever tried water skiing? Just as much sun, just as much fresh air, and probably more intense physical activity than surfing - and pretty well impossible without a motor.
So what's worse - dying of Alzheimer's in some rathole nursing home never having achieved anything, or going out young taking a calculated risk to get yourself (and eventually humanity at large) off this rock?
I hereby propose a new award be named in honor of the retiring Alston - "The Richard Alston Trophy for the most boneheaded government IT policy decision". Any suggestions for the trophy design?
Abusing these guys is not a good idea. Everybody should have the right to legal representation, even if they are scum, and harassing the people that make it possible would lead to the breakdown of the legal system.
Would it be fair if the record companies started organising hired goons to harass the EFF's lawyers?
Don't do this. Judges aren't supposed to decide things as to what's popular. They are supposed to interpret the law as they see it best.
Keep the pressure on your Congresscritters to make sure that the FTC fights this ruling, or comes up with a solution that doesn't conflict with the constitution and achieves the goal of ending unwanted telemarketing calls.
Ultimately, if it turns out that there is no constitutionally acceptable and effective solution, the next step is amending the constitution. Judging by the amount of angst telemarketing calls cause, it might just be possible to get an amendment up on this issue...
From all that I've read about the 959, it's apparently reasonably easy to drive at sane speeds, and if you up the ante a bit four-wheel-drive tends to tame the handling characteristics of cars quite nicely.
And frankly I'd expect Bill Gates in a 959 to be a hell of a lot safer than a random Hollywood actor in, say, a Dodge Viper with that rubber chassis it's lumbered with...
Given Teller's prominence as a scientist, you'd expect that his orbituary would say "he discovered the furble effect", or something like it. But in all the obits I've read all that it says is that he "headed Lawrence Livermore" and "advocated for" various things, giving the impression that Teller was perhaps an outstandingly successful science politician rather than an outstanding scientist.
...but you'd better not steal the groove - haven't you heard the recent song by Sophie Ellis Bextor, Murder on the Dancefloor"? Classic disco sound (gotta love those strings), and a hilarious videoclip about a dance contest. Straight out of 1978. And while you're at it, consider Jamiroquai's back catalogue for more recent disco stuff.
If you want retro scary, how about a double bill retro tour - Guns'n'Roses and New Kids on The Block;)
Jetpacks aren't going to work...
on
What's Always Next?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You simply can't carry enough chemical fuel to make a jetpack practical, no matter how hard you try.
Lifting surfaces of some kind are the only practical method of getting human-scale flight of a decent range - at least until we invent Mr. Fusion:)
Nobody has demonstrated a material that is remotely strong enough to build a space elevator with yet. Until I can hold a piece of it in my hand, let's not get too excited.
Telstra is a particularly earnings-focussed company and its entire management team would hapily screw their own and their customers' grandmothers if it involved making more money.
That being said, we can be glad that they are switching to Linux, because a) it demonstrates that there are sound economic reasons to make the switch (because there's no way in hell Telstra would do it for any other reason), b) they will either employ Linux hackers or pay desktop Linux companies to customise the solution for them, c) a very big company has decided to break the Office file format monopoly, and d) maybe they will be more inclined to support Linux for their customers now that they are running it en masse.
What kind of environmental vandal uses an incandescent bulb in a lava lamp? What right do you have to pollute the world by your wanton waste?
With compact flourescent bulbs, there is now absolutely no excuse to emit all that completely pointless waste heat to illuminate your lava lamp! The lamp will be cheaper to run, and the bulb will last longer too!
As I understand it, Stallman's writings really only hinted at the "bazaar model" that Linus and friends actually realized and used, and that ESR described in "Cathedral and the Bazaar".
Collaboration on GNU projects, at least until that point in time, was considerably more regimented. Later, projects like egcs/gcc have moved to a more open model of the type pioneered by the Linux kernel.
None of this is to criticize RMS. RMS's contributions were very important. But Linus did stumble on to something else that was new.
And Linus Torvalds's name will be in every 1st grade computer textbook along with Babbage, Turing, Von Neumann....
Linus Torvalds is a great programmer, but his place in history is totally different to those guys. Babbage, Turing, and Von Neumann developed the idea of the universal, general-purpose computer, figured out what it could (and couldn't) do, and in Von Neumann's case described the general architecture of how to build one. Linus led a team that did a modern reimplementation of a 20-year-old (at the time) operating system, using techniques that were already in the published literature.
Linus's real contribution was that he found a way to build an operating system at a lower development cost and equivalent quality to other products. In that, you might compare him to Henry Ford, who pioneered the mass production of automobiles.
The bad part for the democrats is that anyone who comes out antiwar is a sitting duck in the event of another terrorist attack or some discovery of a huge chemical/biological weapons cache in Iraq.
In the event of another terrorist attack, the Iraq war will be revealed for what it is - a complete irrelevance to the real battle of wiping out the few thousand or so nutters that comprise Al-Queda and friends. In any case, terrorist attacks *have* continued. Al-Queda (or its local franchisee Jamar Islamaiya) bombed an international hotel in Jakarta, and was planning an attack on a major Asian political summit in Thailand (which Shrub was to attend) when one of the major perpetrators was arrested.
Or am I overestimating the political sophistication of the Joe Sixpack, who simply equates one raghead with another? We've seen that in Australia with the MS Tampa incident, where much of the population seemed to confuse the Taliban with people who, at worst, were trying to get to Australia to get jobs and make money and at least some of which were actually fleeing the friggin' Taliban.
You can run Scheme scripts that drive the GnuCash engine from the command line already.
It wasn't well-documented, but it worked OK (that may have changed since I ceased actively contributing to the project, BTW). If it's still imperfectly documented, that might be a more manageable task for you.
De Beers is 45% owned by Anglo American plc
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Doing a bit of digging, it appears the most accessible bit of De Beers ownership is the 45% stake owned by Anglo American, a UK-listed mining giant. According to their latest annual report, diamonds have been very profitable for them over the last year, going from 20% of profits to 29% of profits.
I wonder whether some options trading to take advantage of a (hopefully) impending crash in the diamond market is appropriate here. I suppose it'll take a few years, which AFAICT is beyond the horizon of most options trading, isn't it?
I was a GnuCash developer a couple of years ago, I haven't contributed since then. Given the call to arms, I may go back and help if I get the time (thesis...)
Now to your question. The front end and backend are severable. The architecture is not ideal, by any means, but it is quite feasible to add a different frontend - in the past, there was a Motif frontend, for instance.
The problem is that the GnuCash GUI is an inherently complex beast, so writing a new frontend is a very substantial task. As I have said, as GnuCash runs fine on any desktop provided you've got the right libraries installed, the core developers decided that working on new stuff was far more important than duplicating the interface.
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The setup is that a besuited guy wanders in on a what is presumably the IT department. The IT department looks like the commercial director has taken the most boring people on the talent agency's books and told the costume and make up people "think bland". They are all dancing extremely awkwardly and drinking some unidentified liquid (the way these people are acting, it sure ain't alcohol) out of blue plastic cups.
The guy asks what's the party, at which point the head IT guy explains how they had magically consolidated the Active Directory groups from 70 to 4 thus allowing them to roll out new apps to the sales force in minutes (or some such hooey). The suit looks nonplussed, until Head IT Guy explains that this will save the company millions of dollars. The ad closes with the suit leading the IT department in a line dance, which they manage to make look just as awkward and dorky.
I realise the ad probably has to be designed to it can be shown everywhere from Salt Lake City to Singapore, but, jeez, if you want to make your brand cool try not to associate it with complete dorks... :)
Ever tried water skiing? Just as much sun, just as much fresh air, and probably more intense physical activity than surfing - and pretty well impossible without a motor.
So what's worse - dying of Alzheimer's in some rathole nursing home never having achieved anything, or going out young taking a calculated risk to get yourself (and eventually humanity at large) off this rock?
I hereby propose a new award be named in honor of the retiring Alston - "The Richard Alston Trophy for the most boneheaded government IT policy decision". Any suggestions for the trophy design?
The one thing desktop users will notice is that 2.6 makes for a noticeably snappier, more responsive desktop.
Would it be fair if the record companies started organising hired goons to harass the EFF's lawyers?
Keep the pressure on your Congresscritters to make sure that the FTC fights this ruling, or comes up with a solution that doesn't conflict with the constitution and achieves the goal of ending unwanted telemarketing calls.
Ultimately, if it turns out that there is no constitutionally acceptable and effective solution, the next step is amending the constitution. Judging by the amount of angst telemarketing calls cause, it might just be possible to get an amendment up on this issue...
Haven't had a chance to read it yet...
We already have a national do-not-call list, and it works a treat. The only unsolicited calls I now get are pollsters, and them rarely.
Well, as we all know, free software is communism and we can't have any of that...
And frankly I'd expect Bill Gates in a 959 to be a hell of a lot safer than a random Hollywood actor in, say, a Dodge Viper with that rubber chassis it's lumbered with...
Is this accurate or not?
If you want retro scary, how about a double bill retro tour - Guns'n'Roses and New Kids on The Block ;)
Lifting surfaces of some kind are the only practical method of getting human-scale flight of a decent range - at least until we invent Mr. Fusion :)
That's way beyond what I thought the state of the art was. Do you have a reference for that figure?
Oh, and your defence concerns are bunk.
That being said, we can be glad that they are switching to Linux, because a) it demonstrates that there are sound economic reasons to make the switch (because there's no way in hell Telstra would do it for any other reason), b) they will either employ Linux hackers or pay desktop Linux companies to customise the solution for them, c) a very big company has decided to break the Office file format monopoly, and d) maybe they will be more inclined to support Linux for their customers now that they are running it en masse.
With compact flourescent bulbs, there is now absolutely no excuse to emit all that completely pointless waste heat to illuminate your lava lamp! The lamp will be cheaper to run, and the bulb will last longer too!
Just such an American thing to do...
Collaboration on GNU projects, at least until that point in time, was considerably more regimented. Later, projects like egcs/gcc have moved to a more open model of the type pioneered by the Linux kernel.
None of this is to criticize RMS. RMS's contributions were very important. But Linus did stumble on to something else that was new.
Linus Torvalds is a great programmer, but his place in history is totally different to those guys. Babbage, Turing, and Von Neumann developed the idea of the universal, general-purpose computer, figured out what it could (and couldn't) do, and in Von Neumann's case described the general architecture of how to build one. Linus led a team that did a modern reimplementation of a 20-year-old (at the time) operating system, using techniques that were already in the published literature.
Linus's real contribution was that he found a way to build an operating system at a lower development cost and equivalent quality to other products. In that, you might compare him to Henry Ford, who pioneered the mass production of automobiles.
Brute forcing to get a proof is better than no proof at all, but brute forcing a special case is even more acceptable.
In the event of another terrorist attack, the Iraq war will be revealed for what it is - a complete irrelevance to the real battle of wiping out the few thousand or so nutters that comprise Al-Queda and friends. In any case, terrorist attacks *have* continued. Al-Queda (or its local franchisee Jamar Islamaiya) bombed an international hotel in Jakarta, and was planning an attack on a major Asian political summit in Thailand (which Shrub was to attend) when one of the major perpetrators was arrested.
Or am I overestimating the political sophistication of the Joe Sixpack, who simply equates one raghead with another? We've seen that in Australia with the MS Tampa incident, where much of the population seemed to confuse the Taliban with people who, at worst, were trying to get to Australia to get jobs and make money and at least some of which were actually fleeing the friggin' Taliban.
It wasn't well-documented, but it worked OK (that may have changed since I ceased actively contributing to the project, BTW). If it's still imperfectly documented, that might be a more manageable task for you.
I wonder whether some options trading to take advantage of a (hopefully) impending crash in the diamond market is appropriate here. I suppose it'll take a few years, which AFAICT is beyond the horizon of most options trading, isn't it?
I was a GnuCash developer a couple of years ago, I haven't contributed since then. Given the call to arms, I may go back and help if I get the time (thesis...)
Now to your question. The front end and backend are severable. The architecture is not ideal, by any means, but it is quite feasible to add a different frontend - in the past, there was a Motif frontend, for instance.
The problem is that the GnuCash GUI is an inherently complex beast, so writing a new frontend is a very substantial task. As I have said, as GnuCash runs fine on any desktop provided you've got the right libraries installed, the core developers decided that working on new stuff was far more important than duplicating the interface.