I had one of those Symbolics machnes in my office for a while. Notice it has multiple windows and a three button mouse. At that time in the PC world people wre using the 286 and DOS. Microsoft might have had a product called "Windows" but if they did it had not yet caught on. The symbolics machine was great. I would not mind having a modernized version of one nw. Although I doubt they would sell to day. After all how many users today can use a keyboard, let a lone use Lisp.
It seems that no one here knows this, so I will point it out. If you work at JPL and you read your paycheck it does not come from NASA. It comes from Caltech. Caltech is a private university. They own JPL and contract JPL's services to NASA. JPL employees are not NASA employees even if they do mostly work on NASA projects under contract.
So there is good reason why a presedential order may not apply to someone who works for a private university
Question for a laywer in the crowd? How valid is a contract if you are forced to sign it under threat of being fired? I think this is the angle they are working on. They are trying to collect data to show that the contract was force on them, then even if they do sign the contract in invalid. That is the route I'd take. Make them go almost all the way through the motions of firing for cause, then final sign the paper then later try to get all 22,000 contract invalidated.
One more thing. Every week, everyone at JPL is remained of who they work for when they open their paychecks and read their emplyer's name, "Caltech". Yes, they are employees of a PRIVATE UNIVERSITY
"..Why do people apply for jobs at a organization, and yet have NO CLUE about who they are working for?.."
JPL is not NASA. Got that. If you work for JPL you are not a NASA emplyee.
The following is a quote from the JPL web site.
JPL is a NASA center staffed and managed for the government by a leading private university, Caltech -- and thus we are known as a federally funded research and development center. I believe that this marriage of the government and university worlds lends us a wonderful intellectual infusion to drive our exploration efforts. Caltech anchors us in the world of excellence and academic curiosity, while NASA gives us the opportunity to reach for the stars.
You would not want to change the orbit. The solar system is stable now meaningthat the orbit of one inner planet does not effect the orbit of the others (much) but if you were to move Venus outward that would have an effect on Earth's orbit. Possibly een making the system unstable. You would not really want a planey ejected into space away from the Sun or into the sun. In the eraly solar system this kind of thinnk happend, that and major collisions too. What we have left is just the bits that are stable.
You could in theory move Venus by sending many thousend of asteriods into orbits that would intersect venus and eventually interact with venus such that venus deflects them. When venus pushes an asteriod in one direction it "pushes itself" in the other direction. Over thousands of years one could move a planet this way. But again you would nt want to do this even if you could. many peoppe thing there is ONLY one stable configuration and that is what we have now.
So, what you are saying is that kids grow up to be like their parets. If the parents can read and write and actually read and write and have inteligent conversatins then the kids will too. But if the parents only word to their kids are "Shut up, I can't hear the TV with your babbling." the kids will become morons just like their parents.
Still, the number one predctor of how well a kid does in school is how wel the parent did in school.
Yes, for sure reading to the kids helps a lot. No doubts. But that requires a smart parent The stupid parents are to glued to the TV and "reality shows" and as much as they know reading to kids is good it is like eating right and exercise things they know are good but just to hard to do. In the end and on average, kids turn out much like their parents.
This is wrong. The speed of sound in space is actually very high. Much higher than here on earth. Because of the very low pressures there the amplitude of the sound waves are very low. So low you could never hear anything. But the speed is 100 or 1000 times faster. Space is a near perfect, not a perfect vacuum.
Think of it this way... There are objects as big a stars floating around why would yu not expect there is be also small thing floating around like gas molecules.
The root cause of this is grade school science. They teach "there is no air" and "you need air to make sound". This is good if you are in third grade because they can't understand "10E-12 g/cm^3"
"...doesn't this sound just a little bit like a dumb terminal in terms of computing?"
No. I'd call it "Smart Termional". A dumb terminal is simply a display device, smart terminal can run programs and interact with the user. It makes great sense to keep a word processing document on a server. It is small and only takes a few seconds to move the document to whatever "smart terminal" the user is logged into. If you have ever used one of those systems where your desktop follows your log in it is great. Log into in computer in the building and my desktop and all my data is right there where I left it. Wouldn't it be great if I could do that on any computer world wide? I can't do that with large data sets like the video I'm editing or even my iTunes library but smaller documents and email yes.
"I think this thing could be huge to professional sports."
Good idea. But combine this with computer controlled feedback. Write a realtime golf swig analysis program that can produce a sound where the pitch varies depending on the amount of error in the swing. If you legs move wrong you hear one sound if the shoulders aren't right you hear aanother. Pracic untill you can make the noises go away. Could work for quite a few sports. Gymnastics, baseball,....
My guess is that you've never been on a sailboat. You'd run the kite up a mast with a halyard. That would get it 60 or 80 feet up in the air and from there the wind would take it. I had a )aprox.) 1,000 square foot spinaker on my boat. You'd be serprized at the power in could generate even in a light breeze. I had some strong 5/8 inch diameter lines on it that would stretch with ever little gust of wind.
So if you could just get the first 1,000 square fiit 60 feetin the airyou would then have a huge force available to pul up the rest of the system. The trick here is automating the system. I don't know how that could be done
"If you're going to cram it full of advertising, why aren't you giving it to me for FREE?"
Because the cable companies have already proved that the ideots will pay for cable AND watch ads. Remember what cable was new? The idea was that if you paid for the content you got it ad free. Then they found out people did not care about ads. People are adicted to TV and will do ANYTHING to get it, watch ads, pay $100 a month anything...
My Mac can run Aperture, and Final Cut Pro. No matter what I do to my Windows or Linux systems they will never run those applications.
Applications are the ONLY reason to run an OS.
Look at what apps you need to run then pick an OS. If you mostly use a computer as a video game console then you need Windows. If you are developing software or running a server then Linux or Solaris is good. If you are creating what we call "Digital Content" go get a Mac.
"Yes, technically it is 'used' by everyone, so everyone should pay for it. But in reality only the scientists have any direct access to it, and we have to hope what they are doing is worthwhile. Instead of funding the telescope, how about we fund the scientists that are doing things we want done, and THEY use their funding to rent the 'scope, funding it via projects that people find worthwhile."
That Is kind of how it is done. But you can not fund a facility 100% off the programs that use it. There are certain fixed costs and if they can know with certainty a budget they can actually lower those fixed costs. As a very mundain example if you run a university and you know you will be needed 6,000 rolls of toilet paper per year and you know you can pay for it you can order at great discount. But with only project to project rentals you end up buying toilet paper at 4X the cost one package at a time at the local market. This is just a silly example but in general, long term funding allows you to plan things like maintainance in a way that is cost effective.
Most facities like this get some longer term funding to pay for "infrastructure" and them on top of this the users do pay for time. But what is being cut here is the "infrastructure".
Not the most imformative review
on
Head First SQL
·
· Score: 1
I wonder if this book covers what's really importent. How to design systems that use databases. I've seen way to many system designs where the DBMS is grossly abused. For example to self-educated programer did not know about "joins" so he searches one table, holds the value in a variable andthen looks it up in a related table. Of corce he also does not think about locks, deadlocaks and transactions. You be surprized to see how common this is. I've seen tables design be people who must have never read about "normalization".
What I wonder what I see a review done by some one who knows nothing of the subject is if the reviewer knows what he does not know. Would be know that a book as just teaching surface level syntax and avoiding the more importent issues?
If you have a $500 budget then find an old PC. It does not need to be a high end PC an old !.0 Ghz box will do fine. Next buy two 500Gb drives. This should cost you about $250. Install Linux. OK that's it. Total price $250. If you need to spend the whole $500 then buy two more drives. Do NOT waste your money on any kind of "raid controler" we will do this in software. If you have tw drive mirror them, if you have four drives use RAID5
Linux on a 1Gh PC will out perform any of the home NAS boxes
If this were for a business and you ave a LOT more data I'd suggest going with Solaris rather then Linux. But for a new user Linux is easier to set up. Both are free.
Apple would have to come out with an iPod touch or iPhone with a larger screen. This is rumored to be in the works. So hardware wise Apple could compete but not on content. The idea that Google has all these clasic texts does not matter much. People don't read those BY DEFINITION they read "best sellers" and this is what Amazon has. Googel has ten bazillion "non-sellers" that people don't read.
If Apple wanted this market they could do it but they'd have to get contet from the publishers just like Amazon did. And what's to stop Anazon from getting Google's ten bazillion "non-sellers". Google offers this to anyone who wants it, you, me or Apple.
The problem for Apple and Amazon is that the technology is not really there yet. The e-paper screens are to slow the LCD screens are not as good a paper yet.
Did you read it? "alien" in this context does NOT mean it came from some other place. It simply means it does not share any common ancestor with us. Even if you only read the summary you can see they are looking for "alien" life that arose hear on Earth.
Finding it means that life arose here twice (at least) and would a be revolutionary discovery. If life is common in the universe and likely to arise on any Earth-like planet then why would it not arise twice on any Earth-like planet? Or three times or 100? Science is about asking questions and this is a good question, good because it is both interesting and (maybe) possible to answer by direct observation.
This is almost a text book example of the scientific method isn't it? Some one has a theory "Life is very likely to arise on any Earth-like planet." You can test this and prove it right or wrong by observation. All you need are a large number of earth-like planets you lok at each one and see if there is life. OK darn we can't test this theory. So we have a usles untestable theory. Oe so we thought for for year it was untestable.
What they are saying here, is that if life is likely then maybe here on Earth it started, was wiped out, started again, wiped out again and then we are the product of the 3rd or 100th try. Each of the others being wiped out by some natural disaster like a comet impact or whatever. So here finally is a way to test the theory that life is "likely" if we can show that it happen not once but many times on Earth then it was not a one in a trillion chance but a certainty. To prove this they only need to find one microbe that is not decedent from the same common ancestor is we are. The microbe does not even have to be living. A fossil would be as good if it could be shown not to share an common ancestor with us.
The odd thing is that there could be 100's of these right in plain sight and we'd never know it and even if we did find it how can we be sure.
"I didn't know you could buy off such a major official for only $5500. "Oh, sure, I'll risk public shame and losing all my influence in exchange for a week's pay.""
Yes $5500 was small but bribes are typically once per transaction. You say "Thankyou for signing this paper. Here is a small gift." and likely he approves several deals a month and gets $5K each time. A bribe racket is an ongoing business deal not a one time deal. So $5K is reasonable.
In short a week's pay is not much but a week's pay four or more times a month year after year adds up.
"Completely agree. The Windows-world is full of users who would just pirate any commercial software they need (no matter what purpose)."
You have to figure that Adobe, Microsoft and other know this and not only let it happen but in a way encourage it. Yes they try and gt you to pay but not to hard. They walk a thin line so as to get those who can pay to do so but let those other off.
If they really wanted to enforce their copyright they could publish the software on CD-R media where every disc is unique and they could track each copy. Or maybe if CD-R is to expensive the install process could "watermark" the software. Lot od nearly fool proof ways.
Look at China. Mot software there is pirated but they know very little money is lost as most simply can't pay. What they want is market share and "lock in". They get that by allowing all those pirated copies.
If you are microsoft and want to maximize profit, the best way to to make everyone who has the ability pay and let the rest have free copies. So yes they are quite happy about pirates although they can't admit to it
even if you're not directly using them, and not even aware, this makes all your custom app code AGPL too?
No. Read the GPL. The the perl Modual is seporatly distributed (or could be) and it is a different product then no, you are just a user of the Perl Modual and your work is not what they call a "derived work" based on the Perl modual.
The key is that the PM is not part of your product. It is something the user goes and gets and puts on his machine himself or maybe it came with his operating system.
The phone company pretty much has to track your phone 24x7. How else do they know how to route incoming phone calls. They have to know which cell tower you are nearest and they have to keep the information in a central place so they can quickly look it up when you get a call.
I know they keep this information too. I lost my cell phone once and called Verison to ask them the last few locations they had. They were able to answer to within a few miles. Enough that I could figure out which place a left my phone.
If you do not want to be tracked then do not cary a radio transmitter around with you all day.
"What he saves on his electricity bill, he will have to spend on his heating bill."
True only if ALL of the following is also true and all true at the same time:
1) His house uses electric heating or something else that
costs even more. 2) The heater is actually running.
So there is very little change of saving on heating cost unless you happen to be running electric heat.
In the summer the oposite of what you say is true. If he is running AC his savings are doubles because not only soes he save the wated energy he also does not have to run the AC to remove the wate heat
Slashdot Mirror
I had one of those Symbolics machnes in my office for a while. Notice it has multiple windows and a three button mouse. At that time in the PC world people wre using the 286 and DOS. Microsoft might have had a product called "Windows" but if they did it had not yet caught on. The symbolics machine was great. I would not mind having a modernized version of one nw. Although I doubt they would sell to day. After all how many users today can use a keyboard, let a lone use Lisp.
IBM can sue, sure. Who's going to show up in court? The lawyers from a Chinese company?
IBM is suing an American company. The batteries are being sold from the US. Made in China yes but sold from a US address.
It seems that no one here knows this, so I will point it out. If you work at JPL and you read your paycheck it does not come from NASA. It comes from Caltech. Caltech is a private university. They own JPL and contract JPL's services to NASA. JPL employees are not NASA employees even if they do mostly work on NASA projects under contract.
So there is good reason why a presedential order may not apply to someone who works for a private university
Question for a laywer in the crowd? How valid is a contract if you are forced to sign it under threat of being fired? I think this is the angle they are working on. They are trying to collect data to show that the contract was force on them, then even if they do sign the contract in invalid. That is the route I'd take. Make them go almost all the way through the motions of firing for cause, then final sign the paper then later try to get all 22,000 contract invalidated.
One more thing. Every week, everyone at JPL is remained of who they work for when they open their paychecks and read their emplyer's name, "Caltech". Yes, they are employees of a PRIVATE UNIVERSITY
"..Why do people apply for jobs at a organization, and yet have NO CLUE about who they are working for?.."
JPL is not NASA. Got that. If you work for JPL you are not a NASA emplyee.
The following is a quote from the JPL web site.
JPL is a NASA center staffed and managed for the government by a leading private university, Caltech -- and thus we are known as a federally funded research and development center. I believe that this marriage of the government and university worlds lends us a wonderful intellectual infusion to drive our exploration efforts. Caltech anchors us in the world of excellence and academic curiosity, while NASA gives us the opportunity to reach for the stars.
You would not want to change the orbit. The solar system is stable now meaningthat the orbit of one inner planet does not effect the orbit of the others (much) but if you were to move Venus outward that would have an effect on Earth's orbit. Possibly een making the system unstable. You would not really want a planey ejected into space away from the Sun or into the sun. In the eraly solar system this kind of thinnk happend, that and major collisions too. What we have left is just the bits that are stable.
You could in theory move Venus by sending many thousend of asteriods into orbits that would intersect venus and eventually interact with venus such that venus deflects them. When venus pushes an asteriod in one direction it "pushes itself" in the other direction. Over thousands of years one could move a planet this way. But again you would nt want to do this even if you could. many peoppe thing there is ONLY one stable configuration and that is what we have now.
So, what you are saying is that kids grow up to be like their parets. If the parents can read and write and actually read and write and have inteligent conversatins then the kids will too. But if the parents only word to their kids are "Shut up, I can't hear the TV with your babbling." the kids will become morons just like their parents.
Still, the number one predctor of how well a kid does in school is how wel the parent did in school.
Yes, for sure reading to the kids helps a lot. No doubts. But that requires a smart parent The stupid parents are to glued to the TV and "reality shows" and as much as they know reading to kids is good it is like eating right and exercise things they know are good but just to hard to do. In the end and on average, kids turn out much like their parents.
".. because the speed of sound in space is zero"
This is wrong. The speed of sound in space is actually very high. Much higher than here on earth. Because of the very low pressures there the amplitude of the sound waves are very low. So low you could never hear anything. But the speed is 100 or 1000 times faster. Space is a near perfect, not a perfect vacuum.
Think of it this way... There are objects as big a stars floating around why would yu not expect there is be also small thing floating around like gas molecules.
The root cause of this is grade school science. They teach "there is no air" and "you need air to make sound". This is good if you are in third grade because they can't understand "10E-12 g/cm^3"
"...doesn't this sound just a little bit like a dumb terminal in terms of computing?"
No. I'd call it "Smart Termional". A dumb terminal is simply a display device, smart terminal can run programs and interact with the user. It makes great sense to keep a word processing document on a server. It is small and only takes a few seconds to move the document to whatever "smart terminal" the user is logged into. If you have ever used one of those systems where your desktop follows your log in it is great. Log into in computer in the building and my desktop and all my data is right there where I left it. Wouldn't it be great if I could do that on any computer world wide? I can't do that with large data sets like the video I'm editing or even my iTunes library but smaller documents and email yes.
"I think this thing could be huge to professional sports." Good idea. But combine this with computer controlled feedback. Write a realtime golf swig analysis program that can produce a sound where the pitch varies depending on the amount of error in the swing. If you legs move wrong you hear one sound if the shoulders aren't right you hear aanother. Pracic untill you can make the noises go away. Could work for quite a few sports. Gymnastics, baseball,....
"How do you let the kite take to the sky?"
My guess is that you've never been on a sailboat. You'd run the kite up a mast with a halyard. That would get it 60 or 80 feet up in the air and from there the wind would take it. I had a )aprox.) 1,000 square foot spinaker on my boat. You'd be serprized at the power in could generate even in a light breeze. I had some strong 5/8 inch diameter lines on it that would stretch with ever little gust of wind.
So if you could just get the first 1,000 square fiit 60 feetin the airyou would then have a huge force available to pul up the rest of the system. The trick here is automating the system. I don't know how that could be done
"If you're going to cram it full of advertising, why aren't you giving it to me for FREE?"
Because the cable companies have already proved that the ideots will pay for cable AND watch ads. Remember what cable was new? The idea was that if you paid for the content you got it ad free. Then they found out people did not care about ads. People are adicted to TV and will do ANYTHING to get it, watch ads, pay $100 a month anything...
My Mac can run Aperture, and Final Cut Pro. No matter what I do to my Windows or Linux systems they will never run those applications.
Applications are the ONLY reason to run an OS.
Look at what apps you need to run then pick an OS. If you mostly use a computer as a video game console then you need Windows. If you are developing software or running a server then Linux or Solaris is good. If you are creating what we call "Digital Content" go get a Mac.
"Yes, technically it is 'used' by everyone, so everyone should pay for it. But in reality only the scientists have any direct access to it, and we have to hope what they are doing is worthwhile.
Instead of funding the telescope, how about we fund the scientists that are doing things we want done, and THEY use their funding to rent the 'scope, funding it via projects that people find worthwhile."
That Is kind of how it is done. But you can not fund a facility 100% off the programs that use it. There are certain fixed costs and if they can know with certainty a budget they can actually lower those fixed costs. As a very mundain example if you run a university and you know you will be needed 6,000 rolls of toilet paper per year and you know you can pay for it you can order at great discount. But with only project to project rentals you end up buying toilet paper at 4X the cost one package at a time at the local market. This is just a silly example but in general, long term funding allows you to plan things like maintainance in a way that is cost effective.
Most facities like this get some longer term funding to pay for "infrastructure" and them on top of this the users do pay for time. But what is being cut here is the "infrastructure".
I wonder if this book covers what's really importent. How to design systems that use databases. I've seen way to many system designs where the DBMS is grossly abused. For example to self-educated programer did not know about "joins" so he searches one table, holds the value in a variable andthen looks it up in a related table. Of corce he also does not think about locks, deadlocaks and transactions. You be surprized to see how common this is. I've seen tables design be people who must have never read about "normalization".
What I wonder what I see a review done by some one who knows nothing of the subject is if the reviewer knows what he does not know. Would be know that a book as just teaching surface level syntax and avoiding the more importent issues?
If you have a $500 budget then find an old PC. It does not need to be a high end PC an old !.0 Ghz box will do fine. Next buy two 500Gb drives. This should cost you about $250. Install Linux. OK that's it. Total price $250. If you need to spend the whole $500 then buy two more drives. Do NOT waste your money on any kind of "raid controler" we will do this in software. If you have tw drive mirror them, if you have four drives use RAID5
Linux on a 1Gh PC will out perform any of the home NAS boxes
If this were for a business and you ave a LOT more data I'd suggest going with Solaris rather then Linux. But for a new user Linux is easier to set up. Both are free.
Apple would have to come out with an iPod touch or iPhone with a larger screen. This is rumored to be in the works. So hardware wise Apple could compete but not on content. The idea that Google has all these clasic texts does not matter much. People don't read those BY DEFINITION they read "best sellers" and this is what Amazon has. Googel has ten bazillion "non-sellers" that people don't read.
If Apple wanted this market they could do it but they'd have to get contet from the publishers just like Amazon did. And what's to stop Anazon from getting Google's ten bazillion "non-sellers". Google offers this to anyone who wants it, you, me or Apple.
The problem for Apple and Amazon is that the technology is not really there yet. The e-paper screens are to slow the LCD screens are not as good a paper yet.
Did you read it? "alien" in this context does NOT mean it came from some other place. It simply means it does not share any common ancestor with us. Even if you only read the summary you can see they are looking for "alien" life that arose hear on Earth.
Finding it means that life arose here twice (at least) and would a be revolutionary discovery. If life is common in the universe and likely to arise on any Earth-like planet then why would it not arise twice on any Earth-like planet? Or three times or 100? Science is about asking questions and this is a good question, good because it is both interesting and (maybe) possible to answer by direct observation.
This is almost a text book example of the scientific method isn't it? Some one has a theory "Life is very likely to arise on any Earth-like planet." You can test this and prove it right or wrong by observation. All you need are a large number of earth-like planets you lok at each one and see if there is life. OK darn we can't test this theory. So we have a usles untestable theory. Oe so we thought for for year it was untestable.
What they are saying here, is that if life is likely then maybe here on Earth it started, was wiped out, started again, wiped out again and then we are the product of the 3rd or 100th try. Each of the others being wiped out by some natural disaster like a comet impact or whatever. So here finally is a way to test the theory that life is "likely" if we can show that it happen not once but many times on Earth then it was not a one in a trillion chance but a certainty.
To prove this they only need to find one microbe that is not decedent from the same common ancestor is we are. The microbe does not even have to be living. A fossil would be as good if it could be shown not to share an common ancestor with us.
The odd thing is that there could be 100's of these right in plain sight and we'd never know it and even if we did find it how can we be sure.
"I didn't know you could buy off such a major official for only $5500. "Oh, sure, I'll risk public shame and losing all my influence in exchange for a week's pay.""
Yes $5500 was small but bribes are typically once per transaction. You say "Thankyou for signing this paper. Here is a small gift." and likely he approves several deals a month and gets $5K each time. A bribe racket is an ongoing business deal not a one time deal. So $5K is reasonable.
In short a week's pay is not much but a week's pay four or more times a month year after year adds up.
"Completely agree. The Windows-world is full of users who would just pirate any commercial software they need (no matter what purpose)."
You have to figure that Adobe, Microsoft and other know this and not only let it happen but in a way encourage it. Yes they try and gt you to pay but not to hard. They walk a thin line so as to get those who can pay to do so but let those other off.
If they really wanted to enforce their copyright they could publish the software on CD-R media where every disc is unique and they could track each copy. Or maybe if CD-R is to expensive the install process could "watermark" the software. Lot od nearly fool proof ways.
Look at China. Mot software there is pirated but they know very little money is lost as most simply can't pay. What they want is market share and "lock in". They get that by allowing all those pirated copies.
If you are microsoft and want to maximize profit, the best way to to make everyone who has the ability pay and let the rest have free copies. So yes they are quite happy about pirates although they can't admit to it
even if you're not directly using them, and not even aware, this makes all your custom app code AGPL too?
No. Read the GPL. The the perl Modual is seporatly distributed (or could be) and it is a different product then no, you are just a user of the Perl Modual and your work is not what they call a "derived work" based on the Perl modual.
The key is that the PM is not part of your product. It is something the user goes and gets and puts on his machine himself or maybe it came with his operating system.
The phone company pretty much has to track your phone 24x7. How else do they know how to route incoming phone calls. They have to know which cell tower you are nearest and they have to keep the information in a central place so they can quickly look it up when you get a call.
I know they keep this information too. I lost my cell phone once and called Verison to ask them the last few locations they had. They were able to answer to within a few miles. Enough that I could figure out which place a left my phone.
If you do not want to be tracked then do not cary a radio transmitter around with you all day.
"What he saves on his electricity bill, he will have to spend on his heating bill."
True only if ALL of the following is also true and all true at the same time:
1) His house uses electric heating or something else that
costs even more.
2) The heater is actually running.
So there is very little change of saving on heating cost
unless you happen to be running electric heat.
In the summer the oposite of what you say is true. If he is
running AC his savings are doubles because not only soes he
save the wated energy he also does not have to run the AC to
remove the wate heat