Re:Canada - Land of Restricted Speech
on
Canadian Privacy Act
·
· Score: 2, Flamebait
The Charter mandates equal rights for women. The US Constitution still doesn't, after a generation of wrangling. Pry that beam out of your own eye before pointing out the mote in ours.
Well, the King James version of the Bible (aka the "Authorized Version") has long been regarded as some of the best literature, even the best poetry, ever written in English. It was produced by a committee of 47 theologians; no one dedicated person produced it, or even edited the other contributors' work. I won't speak for the value of the ideas presented (most dubious, some repugnant, quite a few mutually contradictory) but the style, organization, and impact are hard to deny. The document's users regard it as brilliantly successful. Would that count?
Iceland is the world's oldest continuous, documented democracy, by far. The Thing was established in 930 AD. Yes, that's a three-digit date. Switzerland has had democratic government for nearly that long, and several First Nations have unbroken democratic traditions much older yet, though of course they have limited sovereignty.
It gets even trickier. If we call 'larger bodies' orbiting the sun 'planets' then the Moon qualifies just as well as Pluto.
The Moon's orbit remains concave toward the Sun at all points. At no point does the Earth pull the Moon away from the Sun and toward itself. The force of gravity between Sun and Moon always exceeds that between the Earth and Moon.
We would probably do better to consider Terra-Luna a double planet, with the orbit of the less massive component, Luna, strongly perturbed by the more massive component, Terra. (Terra's orbit gets perturbed by the Moon, too, but less noticeably.)
From our point of view, the Moon's orbit appears tightly wrapped around the Earth. From a point of view high above the ecliptic, we would see the Earth and the Moon orbit the sun at about 150 million km. The Moon would seem to wobble in and out, by a measly 0.4 million km, as it first trailed the Earth, then passed it on the outside, then crossed in front, then dropped back on the inside. That wobble proceeds so slowly and gently, however, taking fully 1/13th of an orbit, that you'd never see the Moon's path kink into a loop. It would remain a smooth curve around the Sun. Ergo, the Moon doesn't orbit the Earth, but the Sun.
Apple sells exactly that. Their 23" Cinema Display has a viewable area 19.5" wide by 12.2" high, (16 x 10) at about 100 dpi. Reviewers claim it shows very little colour distortion with changing viewing angle, and a pixel response rate high enough to show DVD video and 3D games without blurring. Nice device. Of course it costs $3500, but hey, you get what you pay for.
Two full-length 64-bit, 66MHz PCI slots
(lower slot filled with PCI graphics card in standard configurations);
supports 3.3V 32-bit or 64-bit PCI cards running at 33MHz or 66MHz
One half-length 32-bit PCI/AGP combo slot with one of the following:
-- Secondary Gigabit Ethernet card in standard configurations
-- AGP 4X graphics card (build-to-order option)
Sounds like a real AGP slot to me. I can't see them hobbling the Xserve with some sort of complicated fake-AGP-over-PCI, when they already design all their other motherboards with video on AGP. Why go to the extra trouble?
Huge sucker marks may imply correspondingly huge squid--but not necessarily. A juvenile whale could tangle with a giant squid, picking up scars, say, 15 cm across. As the whale grew, its sucker marks could grow to 40 or 50 cm, exaggerating the size of the squid that made them. Has anyone found fresh sucker marks 45 cm across?
DataDesk Technologies make a keyboard with keys in straight lines. They also make the more distant keys larger, so they're easier to hit. Check out the 'SmartBoard' at http://www.datadesktech.com/products.htm
Check out Jef Raskin's website for what he describes as the 'Piper Cub Offense', arguing that GPS-guided drones make missile defense systems obsolete, indeed nonsensical.
Check out Jef Raskin's website for what he describes as the 'Piper Cub Offense', arguing that GPS-guided drones make missile defense systems obsolete, indeed nonsensical.
http://www.jefraskin.com/forjef/jefweb-compiled/un published/piper_cub_offense.html
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The Charter mandates equal rights for women. The US Constitution still doesn't, after a generation of wrangling. Pry that beam out of your own eye before pointing out the mote in ours.
Well, the King James version of the Bible (aka the "Authorized Version") has long been regarded as some of the best literature, even the best poetry, ever written in English. It was produced by a committee of 47 theologians; no one dedicated person produced it, or even edited the other contributors' work. I won't speak for the value of the ideas presented (most dubious, some repugnant, quite a few mutually contradictory) but the style, organization, and impact are hard to deny. The document's users regard it as brilliantly successful. Would that count?
Iceland is the world's oldest continuous, documented democracy, by far. The Thing was established in 930 AD. Yes, that's a three-digit date. Switzerland has had democratic government for nearly that long, and several First Nations have unbroken democratic traditions much older yet, though of course they have limited sovereignty.
It gets even trickier. If we call 'larger bodies' orbiting the sun 'planets' then the Moon qualifies just as well as Pluto.
The Moon's orbit remains concave toward the Sun at all points. At no point does the Earth pull the Moon away from the Sun and toward itself. The force of gravity between Sun and Moon always exceeds that between the Earth and Moon.
We would probably do better to consider Terra-Luna a double planet, with the orbit of the less massive component, Luna, strongly perturbed by the more massive component, Terra. (Terra's orbit gets perturbed by the Moon, too, but less noticeably.)
From our point of view, the Moon's orbit appears tightly wrapped around the Earth. From a point of view high above the ecliptic, we would see the Earth and the Moon orbit the sun at about 150 million km. The Moon would seem to wobble in and out, by a measly 0.4 million km, as it first trailed the Earth, then passed it on the outside, then crossed in front, then dropped back on the inside. That wobble proceeds so slowly and gently, however, taking fully 1/13th of an orbit, that you'd never see the Moon's path kink into a loop. It would remain a smooth curve around the Sun. Ergo, the Moon doesn't orbit the Earth, but the Sun.
If a little math doesn't scare you, check out this more detailed explanation.
I didn't work this out myself, by the way. Asimov wrote about it, a good twenty-odd years ago. I forget where I read his essay.
Apple sells exactly that. Their 23" Cinema Display has a viewable area 19.5" wide by 12.2" high, (16 x 10) at about 100 dpi. Reviewers claim it shows very little colour distortion with changing viewing angle, and a pixel response rate high enough to show DVD video and 3D games without blurring. Nice device. Of course it costs $3500, but hey, you get what you pay for.
Apple's tech-specs page for the Xserve lists, under I/O:
Two full-length 64-bit, 66MHz PCI slots
(lower slot filled with PCI graphics card in standard configurations);
supports 3.3V 32-bit or 64-bit PCI cards running at 33MHz or 66MHz
One half-length 32-bit PCI/AGP combo slot with one of the following:
-- Secondary Gigabit Ethernet card in standard configurations
-- AGP 4X graphics card (build-to-order option)
Sounds like a real AGP slot to me. I can't see them hobbling the Xserve with some sort of complicated fake-AGP-over-PCI, when they already design all their other motherboards with video on AGP. Why go to the extra trouble?
Huge sucker marks may imply correspondingly huge squid--but not necessarily. A juvenile whale could tangle with a giant squid, picking up scars, say, 15 cm across. As the whale grew, its sucker marks could grow to 40 or 50 cm, exaggerating the size of the squid that made them. Has anyone found fresh sucker marks 45 cm across?
DataDesk Technologies make a keyboard with keys in straight lines. They also make the more distant keys larger, so they're easier to hit. Check out the 'SmartBoard' at http://www.datadesktech.com/products.htm
http://www.jefraskin.com/forjef/jefweb-compiled/un published/piper_cub_offense.html
Check out Jef Raskin's website for what he describes as the 'Piper Cub Offense', arguing that GPS-guided drones make missile defense systems obsolete, indeed nonsensical. http://www.jefraskin.com/forjef/jefweb-compiled/un published/piper_cub_offense.html