Well it was obviously a piece of a biography of Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (sheesh!). You mean you couldn't read it?:-)
Probably this page would benefit from being re-scanned. Such a thing could be found out and corrected, if all those scanned books would be processed in some kind of Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders-like fashion. OCR is still a bit of an artform at the moment, as far as I'm aware.
I'm looking forward to PGDP (or anyone else really) coming up with a plan for social website which would compel people to correct the scanno's from digitizing their own cultural heritage. Seeing as PGDP has something like 26000 more or less active volunteers as of today, that seems to me a very successful application already of "scaling up". Maybe we can't do any better than this.
OK I get you now, I misread.
I also think that lowering our global CO2 production to levels at or below that of 1990 is a worthwile scientific experiment:-)
Lemme help you a bit with nr. 1.
CO2 absorbs strongly in the infrared part of the spectrum because of its 2 C=O bonds. (C=O asymmetric stretch at 2400 cm^-1). This *fact* was discovered by Svante Arrhenius more than 110 years ago (dunno if he knew it was because of the C=O double bonds though).
Simplest hypothesis would then be, because atmospheric CO2 absorbs IR light from our Sun (either directly or reflected back from the surface), it causes the planet to warm. More CO2 in the atmosphere warms the planet more. It's a "greenhouse gas" and according to that Wikipedia article at the moment I read it;-) CO2 causes between 9% and 26% to the greenhouse effect (compared to 36%-72% by water vapor for example).
Another hypothesis would be, yes atmospheric CO2 absorbs IR light from our Sun, but that is too simplistic, factor X (caused by/related to the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere) counteracts this effect and is also an equally strong or stronger "forcing" or effect, so therefore more CO2 = less warming.
IANAClimateScientist, so if you can name any such factors X, feel free to speak up and enlighten us.
The ice has stopped melting. You need to keep up with current events.
No, it hasn't. But if in the coming decade it will stop melting, I'm sure that will be spun by some media as "there is no global warming, the north pole is'nt even melting anymore!";-)
Mono is a cleanroom implementation of the CLR as specified by EMCA and.Net libraries, right? What exactly do you risk by using it?
From what I've learned (on Groklaw;-) ), cleanroom implementations help you indemnify your software against copyright violation allegiations.
Stallmann is here saying that there is a possibility that Mono violates Microsoft software patents, and that in that case, software *depending on* mono (i.e. written in C#) is at risk if mono ever has to be de-installed because of patent violation allegiations.
In fact, there's a famous other article by Stallmann about copyright, patents and trademarks, where he claims the use of the word "Intellectual Property" should be stopped, which directly addresses your confusion: I really, heartily, strongly recommend you to read it, it's mindblowingly easy to read and I found it very enlightening:
Did You Say âoeIntellectual Propertyâ? It's a Seductive Mirage
IANA(P)L and I don't actually know much about.NET or Microsoft software but his arguments make sense. Also bear in mind that the Microsoft-Novell software patent deal of 2006 (here, here, here), where Microsoft promises not to sue Novell's customers for a limited period of time, expires in 2011 or so. So maybe then Ballmer will divulge what he meant with his "235 software patents Linux infringes" (maybe it should have been 205 software patents;-) but it's very possible that Ballmer is completely truthful here). Then again 2011 is years away and maybe software patents won't exist anymore in the U.S.A because they wanted to harmonize with the rest of the world, which doesn't have them.
I would like it if in Debian-like linux distro's, mono can be easily uninstalled (which also un-installs all "dependent" packages (programs and libraries)). This means that if I've installed your apps, and if (for whatever reason) I decide to purge mono from my system, that I would have to give up using your apps, too.
So far, so good. My personal gripe is if important packages (Debian version of openoffice.org 3.1.0-5) that everyone uses are dependent on mono.
Do you happen to be one of the developers of openoffice.org?
On the bjorn.haxx.se site describing when packages go into testing, there seems to be somewhere a "Build-Depends:" of the openoffice.org package on mono, which is why openoffice 3.1 is currently not yet in Debian testing.
Before you flame me, I know that this doesn't mean that all openoffice.org programs actually depend on mono, it's probably only for cli-uno-bridge, but I would strongly prefer an openoffice.org NOT dependent on mono, and then if necessary, an openoffice.org-extras-mono package containing those parts dependent on mono.
I haven't yet had time to open a wishlist bug against openoffice.org. Sorry.
Whatever gave you the idea that that's necessary?
And btw why would it need to be a guy?
It's a bit like saying "science needs to have a guy at the head", or "religion needs to have a guy at the head" (ok.. coming from a catholic background that's a bit contentious I realize..)
I've seen Stallmann once and he is NOT my messiah or "guy at the head" as you put it, however I think the man thinks deeply about things from an original point of view, and this makes his opinions valuable to me, regardless of whether I think they always make sense or are practical/feasible.
I like your example.
Now let's pick your baker up and move him to Haiti (cruel, but luckily it's only a thought experiment). Would you really advise him to buy a second charcoal oven?
Although the passive house approach is more expensive than standard construction, in countries where the concept is most widespread â" such as Germany and Austria â" prices are coming down as technologies and building techniques become more common.
I read the Californian government was in some financial trouble now, but using a 100 tonne meteorite to generate cheaper alternative energy.. wow.. that sounds desperate..
We've been putting off nuclear energy for thirty years now.
You talk about thirty years as if it's a long time--it's really, really not, if we talk about nuclear energy.
Let's find out the real cost of decommissioning a nuclear plant in 2046 and then discuss whether they are actually economically feasible.
On reading this page, I'd like to offer the suggestion (it's probably not good enough to count as proof) that the spreadsheet formula part of ODF v1.2, OpenFormula, which is work-in-progress at OASIS, was started in 2006 and already quite "fleshed out" in june 2008.
Looking a bit closer, there's a significant burst of work in november 2007 (230 pages). Presumably enough to start working, at least. And then in june 2008 there were a lot of revisions one after the other. The last version in june 2008, pre-draft 9, was 435 pages; nothing to be sneezed at!
Finally, annotated pre-draft 11 from december 2008 has 436 pages. A quick document comparison showed that the first change is in the page describing the "large" group of functions, of which several were added. I couldn't find any changes in the "small" or "medium" groups of functions, whereas I think "medium" is important for spreadsheet implementers because an annotation comment (OpenDocument-formula-20081221.odt (ODF), on p.29 describes "medium" as
Rationale: This is the set of functions that are "widely implemented" by desktop spreadsheet applications. This was originally computed by starting with the small group, and adding functions that were implemented by at least 4 of the following applications: Excel 2003, Gnumeric, Lotus 1-2-3 v9, OpenOffice.org 2, and QuattroPro 12. Some effort was made to identify translations (e.g., where the same function has a different name). Per December 2006 discussion the following were moved from âoeLargeâ to âoeMediumâ: ACOT, ACOTH, COT, COTH (since other trig functions were in medium, it was inconsistent to keep these in âoeLargeâ).
Then from december 2008 to now, most changes I looked at were improved comments for the test case scenarios.
What I'm getting at is that, had Microsoft wanted to implement ODF 1.2, they could have already made experimental MS Office code last year, gradually adapting it with the further amendments and changes in the OpenFormula spec. This wouldn't have interfered with their stated target, ODF v1.1 compliance (because ODF 1.1 doesn't specify the formulas, except for their general syntax).
And *THEN* they could say, while delivering Office 2007 SP2, that it is only guaranteed compliant with ODF v1.1.
They could make the last modifications while the ODF committee draft's changes are implemented circa end 2009, so they can sell it as "now also ODF 1.2 compliant" Office 2007 SP3 in 2010.
I'm not saying Y2K and global warming aren't real, I'm saying it's still important to separate the facts from the half-truths and outright lies that alarmists spread for their own gain.
Uhuh. Agreed.. but they are both real, you know.
Any amount of saying "it's a conspiracy of alarmists" doesn't make the absorption spectrum of CO2 go away. Do you know what I think we should do with all that CO2? Sequester the excess in people and send it off to the stars by space elevator:-) (I'm in a weird mood today).
About Y2K:
I don't know about your
cause elevators to catastrophically fail
, but I know for a fact that at least one company would have had great trouble shipping elevator spare parts if the company I worked for then hadn't helped them with their Y2K problem:-)
There was *SO MUCH* extra work we had to do.. but we managed it, and thanks to that.. it was business as usual and people just forgot.
Hopefully in 500 years our descendants can say the same about the greenhouse effect problem.
IANACS, but I read the reason that the destruction and (after the Montreal Protocol) current rebuilding of the ozone layer is so fast, is because not much of the CFC's were needed to alter it: radiation split a halogen atom off of them, forming free radicals, and these reacted with the O3 forming oxygen and the same free radical again, ready to do the same reaction again
(linky).
The greenhouse effect of CO2, on the other hand, is related to how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere (I think the bulk of the effect is due to how CO2 strongly absorbs infrared light, as discovered in 1896.
So, the effect of the CO2 is not as strong and you need more of it (which we do in fact).
However, what I think is not really taken into account much yet is possible positive and negative feedback effects that might become more noticeable at higher CO2 concentrations.
Freeman Dyson mentioned a negative feedback effect: that trees would be happy to absorb more CO2 (esp. his idea of genetically engineered CO2 eating trees). This might be a good mitigating idea, especially combined with "bio-charring" them to put a bit of the sequestered carbon in the ground, out of the biological cycle.
<speculative_rant>
What worries me more is *positive* feedback effects. When the arctic cap melts, the sea underneath is probably darker than the white ice we have currently, so the albedo of the planet might change a little bit and reflect less of the sunlight. When or maybe if the methane clathrates at some places of the seabottom burp up and the Siberian permafrost melts, large amounts of methane get in the atmosphere, and they'd either add to the greenhouse effect (stronger than an equivalent amount of CO2) or if there's enough methane maybe they'd even burn, warming the tundra up even more (and who knows how long it takes to put that out, if a large area is on fire fueled by deposits of long-frozen rotten stuff; e.g. coal mine fires can last long)
</speculative_rant>
Could you tell us something about this? I haven't kept up-to-date with the field for ages.
Once long ago I spoke with a guy who was pondering whether not just the spiketrains had to be modeled, but also regional variations in neurotransmitter concentrations, which would then presumably have some kind of general effect on the neurons in that area (fatigue? lack of ATP? dunno..).
It seems plausible to me that "getting tired" is an important function of a brain.
I'm wondering if a patent can become so diluted that it is unenforceable. FAT is ubiquitous. It is used just about everywhere in every industry in innumerable devices. If Microsoft were to fight to enforce their patent they'd essentially be taking on the entire IT space. I doubt the courts would allow that to happen.
IIRC, that's exactly what happened to GIF: After it was well established and used, Unisys decided to see dollar signs.
Or would you have the U.S. government splurge on another round of coupons for converter boxes that can do Theora and Vorbis?
That's one option. The other is to apply the concept of eminent domain to those patents and buy them from Dolby and the MPEG-LA. Then MPEG-2 becomes patent-free in the USA and anyone can implement it. The creators get paid a lump sum and the USA gets an open standard for digital video.
Since the US government is the entity that backed the artificial monopoly of software patents in the first place, maybe they can do this much easier by just declaring that software patents don't exist anymore. Problem solved.
Slashdot Mirror
Well it was obviously a piece of a biography of Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (sheesh!). You mean you couldn't read it? :-)
Probably this page would benefit from being re-scanned. Such a thing could be found out and corrected, if all those scanned books would be processed in some kind of Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders-like fashion. OCR is still a bit of an artform at the moment, as far as I'm aware.
I'm looking forward to PGDP (or anyone else really) coming up with a plan for social website which would compel people to correct the scanno's from digitizing their own cultural heritage. Seeing as PGDP has something like 26000 more or less active volunteers as of today, that seems to me a very successful application already of "scaling up". Maybe we can't do any better than this.
Several of the PGDP projects of maths books are meant to be marked up with LaTeX, e.g. this one in round F1:
Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées (1838) (ed. Joseph Liouville) (warning, PGDP membership required)
Now this is probably not a really suitable example for school use, but e.g. a book like Elementary Algebra for Schools, by H.S. Hall and S.R. Knight (1885) (warning, PGDP membership required) sounds about right.
That book has already been checked and formatted but needs to be checked again and post-processed, afterwards it's public domain for anyone (including California schools) to download. In a few years time at most.
This page (public) might be helpful if you want to help out making (old) public domain maths texts available as LaTeX e-books: PGDP LaTeX resources, especially Distributed Proofreaders LaTeX formatting manual
Like SCO (previously Caldera) vs Autozone.
Oh wait..
2004 to 2010. Well, only one more year to go.
OK I get you now, I misread. :-)
I also think that lowering our global CO2 production to levels at or below that of 1990 is a worthwile scientific experiment
Lemme help you a bit with nr. 1. ;-) CO2 causes between 9% and 26% to the greenhouse effect (compared to 36%-72% by water vapor for example).
CO2 absorbs strongly in the infrared part of the spectrum because of its 2 C=O bonds. (C=O asymmetric stretch at 2400 cm^-1). This *fact* was discovered by Svante Arrhenius more than 110 years ago (dunno if he knew it was because of the C=O double bonds though).
Simplest hypothesis would then be, because atmospheric CO2 absorbs IR light from our Sun (either directly or reflected back from the surface), it causes the planet to warm. More CO2 in the atmosphere warms the planet more. It's a "greenhouse gas" and according to that Wikipedia article at the moment I read it
Another hypothesis would be, yes atmospheric CO2 absorbs IR light from our Sun, but that is too simplistic, factor X (caused by/related to the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere) counteracts this effect and is also an equally strong or stronger "forcing" or effect, so therefore more CO2 = less warming.
IANAClimateScientist, so if you can name any such factors X, feel free to speak up and enlighten us.
The ice has stopped melting. You need to keep up with current events.
No, it hasn't. But if in the coming decade it will stop melting, I'm sure that will be spun by some media as "there is no global warming, the north pole is'nt even melting anymore!" ;-)
From what I've learned (on Groklaw ;-) ), cleanroom implementations help you indemnify your software against copyright violation allegiations.
.NET or Microsoft software but his arguments make sense. Also bear in mind that the Microsoft-Novell software patent deal of 2006 (here, here, here), where Microsoft promises not to sue Novell's customers for a limited period of time, expires in 2011 or so. So maybe then Ballmer will divulge what he meant with his "235 software patents Linux infringes" (maybe it should have been 205 software patents ;-) but it's very possible that Ballmer is completely truthful here). Then again 2011 is years away and maybe software patents won't exist anymore in the U.S.A because they wanted to harmonize with the rest of the world, which doesn't have them.
Stallmann is here saying that there is a possibility that Mono violates Microsoft software patents, and that in that case, software *depending on* mono (i.e. written in C#) is at risk if mono ever has to be de-installed because of patent violation allegiations.
In fact, there's a famous other article by Stallmann about copyright, patents and trademarks, where he claims the use of the word "Intellectual Property" should be stopped, which directly addresses your confusion: I really, heartily, strongly recommend you to read it, it's mindblowingly easy to read and I found it very enlightening:
Did You Say âoeIntellectual Propertyâ? It's a Seductive Mirage
IANA(P)L and I don't actually know much about
This is for Debian, maybe not for Ubuntu: bjorn.haxx.se/debian reports when packages can go into "testing".
openoffice.org 3.1.0-5
I would like it if in Debian-like linux distro's, mono can be easily uninstalled (which also un-installs all "dependent" packages (programs and libraries)). This means that if I've installed your apps, and if (for whatever reason) I decide to purge mono from my system, that I would have to give up using your apps, too.
So far, so good. My personal gripe is if important packages (Debian version of openoffice.org 3.1.0-5) that everyone uses are dependent on mono.
Do you happen to be one of the developers of openoffice.org?
On the bjorn.haxx.se site describing when packages go into testing, there seems to be somewhere a "Build-Depends:" of the openoffice.org package on mono, which is why openoffice 3.1 is currently not yet in Debian testing.
Before you flame me, I know that this doesn't mean that all openoffice.org programs actually depend on mono, it's probably only for cli-uno-bridge, but I would strongly prefer an openoffice.org NOT dependent on mono, and then if necessary, an openoffice.org-extras-mono package containing those parts dependent on mono.
I haven't yet had time to open a wishlist bug against openoffice.org. Sorry.
Whatever gave you the idea that that's necessary?
And btw why would it need to be a guy?
It's a bit like saying "science needs to have a guy at the head", or "religion needs to have a guy at the head" (ok.. coming from a catholic background that's a bit contentious I realize..)
I've seen Stallmann once and he is NOT my messiah or "guy at the head" as you put it, however I think the man thinks deeply about things from an original point of view, and this makes his opinions valuable to me, regardless of whether I think they always make sense or are practical/feasible.
I like your example.
Now let's pick your baker up and move him to Haiti (cruel, but luckily it's only a thought experiment). Would you really advise him to buy a second charcoal oven?
8.4 cents is more than 3 cents so his statement was perfectly truthful :-)
Lemme give the de.wikipedia article then, just to get the Slashdotters practicing their German language skills
Passivhaus (in German)
An evaluation report mentioning some of the disadvantages(pdf, English)
The glossy advertisement folder (English)
I read the Californian government was in some financial trouble now, but using a 100 tonne meteorite to generate cheaper alternative energy.. wow.. that sounds desperate..
You talk about thirty years as if it's a long time--it's really, really not, if we talk about nuclear energy.
Let's find out the real cost of decommissioning a nuclear plant in 2046 and then discuss whether they are actually economically feasible.
Looking a bit closer, there's a significant burst of work in november 2007 (230 pages). Presumably enough to start working, at least. And then in june 2008 there were a lot of revisions one after the other. The last version in june 2008, pre-draft 9, was 435 pages; nothing to be sneezed at!
Finally, annotated pre-draft 11 from december 2008 has 436 pages. A quick document comparison showed that the first change is in the page describing the "large" group of functions, of which several were added. I couldn't find any changes in the "small" or "medium" groups of functions, whereas I think "medium" is important for spreadsheet implementers because an annotation comment (OpenDocument-formula-20081221.odt (ODF), on p.29 describes "medium" as
Then from december 2008 to now, most changes I looked at were improved comments for the test case scenarios.
What I'm getting at is that, had Microsoft wanted to implement ODF 1.2, they could have already made experimental MS Office code last year, gradually adapting it with the further amendments and changes in the OpenFormula spec. This wouldn't have interfered with their stated target, ODF v1.1 compliance (because ODF 1.1 doesn't specify the formulas, except for their general syntax).
And *THEN* they could say, while delivering Office 2007 SP2, that it is only guaranteed compliant with ODF v1.1.
They could make the last modifications while the ODF committee draft's changes are implemented circa end 2009, so they can sell it as "now also ODF 1.2 compliant" Office 2007 SP3 in 2010.
Uhuh. Agreed.. but they are both real, you know. :-) (I'm in a weird mood today).
Any amount of saying "it's a conspiracy of alarmists" doesn't make the absorption spectrum of CO2 go away. Do you know what I think we should do with all that CO2? Sequester the excess in people and send it off to the stars by space elevator
About Y2K:
I don't know about your
cause elevators to catastrophically fail
, but I know for a fact that at least one company would have had great trouble shipping elevator spare parts if the company I worked for then hadn't helped them with their Y2K problem :-)
There was *SO MUCH* extra work we had to do.. but we managed it, and thanks to that.. it was business as usual and people just forgot.
Hopefully in 500 years our descendants can say the same about the greenhouse effect problem.
IANACS, but I read the reason that the destruction and (after the Montreal Protocol) current rebuilding of the ozone layer is so fast, is because not much of the CFC's were needed to alter it: radiation split a halogen atom off of them, forming free radicals, and these reacted with the O3 forming oxygen and the same free radical again, ready to do the same reaction again (linky).
The greenhouse effect of CO2, on the other hand, is related to how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere (I think the bulk of the effect is due to how CO2 strongly absorbs infrared light, as discovered in 1896. So, the effect of the CO2 is not as strong and you need more of it (which we do in fact).
However, what I think is not really taken into account much yet is possible positive and negative feedback effects that might become more noticeable at higher CO2 concentrations.
Freeman Dyson mentioned a negative feedback effect: that trees would be happy to absorb more CO2 (esp. his idea of genetically engineered CO2 eating trees). This might be a good mitigating idea, especially combined with "bio-charring" them to put a bit of the sequestered carbon in the ground, out of the biological cycle.
<speculative_rant>
What worries me more is *positive* feedback effects. When the arctic cap melts, the sea underneath is probably darker than the white ice we have currently, so the albedo of the planet might change a little bit and reflect less of the sunlight. When or maybe if the methane clathrates at some places of the seabottom burp up and the Siberian permafrost melts, large amounts of methane get in the atmosphere, and they'd either add to the greenhouse effect (stronger than an equivalent amount of CO2) or if there's enough methane maybe they'd even burn, warming the tundra up even more (and who knows how long it takes to put that out, if a large area is on fire fueled by deposits of long-frozen rotten stuff; e.g. coal mine fires can last long)
</speculative_rant>
Could you tell us something about this? I haven't kept up-to-date with the field for ages.
Once long ago I spoke with a guy who was pondering whether not just the spiketrains had to be modeled, but also regional variations in neurotransmitter concentrations, which would then presumably have some kind of general effect on the neurons in that area (fatigue? lack of ATP? dunno..). It seems plausible to me that "getting tired" is an important function of a brain.
IIRC, that's exactly what happened to GIF: After it was well established and used, Unisys decided to see dollar signs.
Since the US government is the entity that backed the artificial monopoly of software patents in the first place, maybe they can do this much easier by just declaring that software patents don't exist anymore. Problem solved.
Anyway, besides the necessary <sarcasm> tags, you forgot the informative link:
Cryptographic weakness on Debian systems
I think it was fixed 2 years ago, BTW. But feel free to verify it--you have the source.
Was this all on the same hardware?
Consider trying memtest86+.
except for not being able to find the root partition, that could mean a problem with grub or lilo after a kernel or initramfs upgrade.
Here's the original text.
But there's another post here which mentions its origins in the Fermi Paradox, so maybe it's from Enrico Fermi, originally.
I don't have any information either way.