Almost all the programs crash on invalid input, even Firefox and OpenOffice. So, hate to say it, MSFT is right in claiming that it is better to crash than to give a command line shell. But so many of the MSFT buffer overrun problems start out as crashes and people keep probing and probing and bingo, it becomes a remote code execution flaw. I thing the Windows Meta File graphics handling bug was a low priority crash bug for a long time before it became a remote code execution vulnerability. So while porturing it as "not a bug", hope they quietly work in the background and fix the issue.
The whole idea of the scheme is to produce fuel. Methane is the fuel. And when it is burnt as fuel the carbon will end up in the atmosphere. But that carbon molecule was very same carbon molecule extracted by the plants from the atmosphere. So the whole scheme is carbon neutral. One way to harvest solar energy is to build solar cells and produce electricity. Another is to let the plants do the job of collecting the energy and concentrating it and then we harvest the plants and extract combustible products out of them.
I am not arguing that the research is worthless or that it might some day create Organic photocell. Infact I tried to make a joke about Organic Light Absorbing diodes yesterday in the LED thread and mangled it and got modded down as troll. It would be great if we could unlock the secret of photosynthesis and understand why its efficiency is so low ( less than 2%) so that we can develop more efficient organic cells. My only complaint was that, the summary is very misleading, talking about 100% efficiency.
But one thing we should also realize is that, nature has not produced a more efficient photosyntesis process. Plants do not use their energy for mobility. Just to grow. Growth is limited by other resources like minerals and water. So there might not be additional survival value in developing a more efficient photosynthesis process. But still we should be open to the possibility that 2% efficiency is probably the maximum for photosynthesis, using water+co2, producing C12H22O11 (sugar) and oxygen.
Not far at all. I too am stumping rooting for solar energy and transitioning the world eventually into using sustainable resources. The nature paper is a serious research piece, of interest to academia. Some reporter tried to play it up and ended up mangling it.
My dream is just humongous mechanized cow stomachs. Large digesters that take in basic plant bio mass, weeds, corn stalks and other basic plant material on one end, chop them up and grind them using steel blades, passing them on to chambers filled with bacteria derived and evolved through artificial selection to break down cellulose. The bacteria might come from termite stomachs too. They break down cellulose into methyl alcohol and/or methane. The gas/liquid with concentrated energy siphoned off and the other end you have just basic fertilizer that go back to the same fields. Harvest solar energy using plants and bacteria instead of physics and solar cells.
Cows are restricted in their diet because many plants have evolved poisons that will kill the cows.
But through artificial selection we should be able to breed bacteria that will survive such toxic plant input. And cows eat only what their teeth can grind. We are using steel teeth, so to speak.
If SCO folds can IBM sue anyone to get its legal fees back? The assets of SCO might be slim pickings but it still has a huge liability outstanding. If the judge rules dismisses the suit with prejudice (hope that is the right term, IANAL) and SCO folds, where can IBM go to get its legal costs repaid?
Some half witted reporter's failed attempt in dumbing down a routine research paper.
Yeah, sure the energy transfer efficiency is 100% for every photon that participates in the reaction. But of all the photons falling on the leaf, hardly 2% of them participate in reactions. Some gets reflected, some gets absorbed without any reaction. Even solar cells have better energy conversion efficiency than plants. Really. As for quantum effects, almost all the photo reactions are quantum mechanics. They have to be. The film camera emulsion has greater percentage of photons participating in reaction than chlorophyll.
There is not that much popular support for LTTE within TN. But most political parties claim they support it. That is why I said "notionally". Just last week the state government called for a general strike to protest something about Sri Lankan navy. And all the parties posture as the great defenders of the Sri Lankan Tamils.
Though I like what he says, I am not sure I understand it well. His figure three has comparison of prices quoted to customers for the open and closed sources. He shows constant price quoted, irrespective of the number of items sold for the closed source model. But we all know that it is not true. MSFT charges much much lower price/per unit sold to large customers. Infact "unlimited use licenses" sold to Dells and HPs mean that they pay a flat fee irrespective of the number of units sold.
MSFT also has very "innovative" pricing schemes. In one instance, paying a flat fee per every computer owned by the univ, whether or not it has Office installed, was cheaper than paying per copy of Office. Effect of such pricing is that, there is no incremental cost to a dept to run Office. To use any other software, the dept head has to budget for it and justify the cost to the bean counters.
All I know is this, MSFT is far more sophisticated in playing Corporate pricing games, budget games and such things than any simple model used for research purposes by Open Source advocates.
My most common grouse is that the key is Open Standards, not Open Source. If MSOffice and OS products conform to a open standard and anyone can develop applications that cleanly interoperate with them, the playing field will be level. There will be many vendors, some playing at the Open Sources and some in Free Software, some closed and for-profit players. Without leveling the playing field one can not see how Open Source is going to win. But what do I know.
If I am so smart why am I coding for a living instead of smooching with the bean counters in the country clubs?
The state adjacent to Sri Lanka in India is also populated by Tamils. The State government is very sympathetic to the Tigers in Sri Lanka. Most parties in that state notionally support the Sri Lankan Tamils, even the Congress party whose leader and ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by the Tigers. The current ruling party of that state was a pioneer in using Sattelite TV transmissions and owns many TV channels. When the TV was a Govt of India's monopoly (in the 1990s), that party used to make TV programes in Chennai, India, and send the tape to Phillipines and uplink from that country. That TV network, SunTV, and its sister channels are heavily infiltrated by the Tiger Cadres and sympathizers. I am very sure the hijack is done with active help and collusion of SunTV conglomerate insiders on the technical divistion.
It might not have been approved by the higher ups either in the family/party. India's Minister for Communication Kalanidhi Maran, is a nephew of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and their family owns the SunTV conglomerate. Tigers are to be feared, their pledge of alligiance to their leader Prabakaran supercedes any other consideration.
Trying hard to present NPoV without my biases. Hope I succeeded.
OK, Go ahead and practice the Golden Rule, I have no problems. Please do not insist that I practice the Golden Rule as well. In fact if you believe in the Golden Rule and you want me to practice the Golden Rule, you should practice the Golden Rule whether or not I practice it
Microsoft does not care for standards, nor does it want true interoperability or compatibility with any software not made in Redmond. As long as users are apathetic they will be under no pressure to change. Free markets will work only when a large portion of the users act rationally. Locking up all your data in a format and making all your processes depend on a single vendor's API are not very rational decisions. So, yes, MSFT will thumb its nose at any proposed standard. Muddy the issue by saying users should have "choice". Yeah, sure I want multiple choices in the kind of wall outlets I plug my appliances into. Round pin, flat pin, three pin, two pin polarized US style, UK style, Singapore style?
Pay some consultants to come up things like "Total Cost of Ownership" etc. But dont blame MSFT. Educate the users.
Game theory work by Axelrod, univ of Michigan dated around 1980 is the real fountainhead of this kind of analyses. Dawkings popularized it in the second edition of the book "The Selfish Gene" and brought it to the masses from academia. Sagan's piece in Parade Mag was dated around 1990s. This must be after me coming to US, because Parade Mag has no circulation outside US. I remember reading hawks and doves theory in New Scientist way back in 1986. Dawkins credits another researcher for anticipating the ideas brought out by Axelrod. Dont remember his name.
You are correct. Infact Sagan references Axelrod's paper and the prisoner's dilemma. I read this piece, in Parade Magazine, of all places. Dawkins added a whole chapter titled "Nice Guys Finish First" to his book "The Selfish Gene" in the second edition to explain Axelrod's work. This edition book too predates the Sagan piece. Axelrod's work is the fountainhead. Both Dawkins and Sagan explained it to the masses.
Carl Sagan [warning. PDF]did a piece on various "rules", like the Golden Rule, Silver Rule, Iron Rule, etc. Essentially showing that the Golden Rule, "Treat others like you would like them to treat you" is unworkable. It lacks a reward-punishment mechanism. Then the silver rule, "treat them like they treat you", is a very stable, good strategy. But it leads to endless feuds. A little, but not too much of, forgiving is needed. The Iron rule is be a jerk to every one. That is known to be very bad.
Sagan then defines, what he would call, "The Weasel Rule". Be nice to strong people and be a jerk to weak people. Google caved in easily to strong governments like China and is currently exposing the evil in Darfar. So looks like, Google's motto is "Follow the Weasel Rule" not "Do no evil".
I wish they would spend time creating Organic Light Absorbing Diodes that will convert light into electricity. When they got that into solar panels then we can tell the pesky little middle eastern nation to go drink their oil.
Gates would go to orbit only if Steve Jobs goes there first. He would not understand why Steve went, but just to be sure he has would not be blind sided like he was with iPod, he would go there.
Credit goes to Scott Adams. I dont have the strip saved. The pointy haired boss yells at Dilbert for surfing the net at work. Dilbert says it was his lunch time and points out that his surfing does not cost the company anything. Boss says, "But you used company provided electricity!". Dilbert says, "I faxed myself some electricity from home". Dont know how many know Dilbert strips to this level of detail.
Most people just dont care. People carry frequent shopper cards for their regular grocery store. Tagged to a real name, not some pseudo handle, tagged to a real address. And they fill their prescriptions there too. All for what? 25cents off a loaf of bread. Even on line people just dont seem to care. The kind of information people post in Facebook and other places, the amount of information they reveal in their blog, using real name that any prospective employer can search for...
They (my nephews and nieces) look at me as though I am an brontosauraus wearing Sanjaya's fauxhawk when I talk to them about the dangers of "overexposure" (both literally and figuratively) in the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Almost all the programs crash on invalid input, even Firefox and OpenOffice. So, hate to say it, MSFT is right in claiming that it is better to crash than to give a command line shell. But so many of the MSFT buffer overrun problems start out as crashes and people keep probing and probing and bingo, it becomes a remote code execution flaw. I thing the Windows Meta File graphics handling bug was a low priority crash bug for a long time before it became a remote code execution vulnerability. So while porturing it as "not a bug", hope they quietly work in the background and fix the issue.
But one thing we should also realize is that, nature has not produced a more efficient photosyntesis process. Plants do not use their energy for mobility. Just to grow. Growth is limited by other resources like minerals and water. So there might not be additional survival value in developing a more efficient photosynthesis process. But still we should be open to the possibility that 2% efficiency is probably the maximum for photosynthesis, using water+co2, producing C12H22O11 (sugar) and oxygen.
My dream is just humongous mechanized cow stomachs. Large digesters that take in basic plant bio mass, weeds, corn stalks and other basic plant material on one end, chop them up and grind them using steel blades, passing them on to chambers filled with bacteria derived and evolved through artificial selection to break down cellulose. The bacteria might come from termite stomachs too. They break down cellulose into methyl alcohol and/or methane. The gas/liquid with concentrated energy siphoned off and the other end you have just basic fertilizer that go back to the same fields. Harvest solar energy using plants and bacteria instead of physics and solar cells.
Cows are restricted in their diet because many plants have evolved poisons that will kill the cows. But through artificial selection we should be able to breed bacteria that will survive such toxic plant input. And cows eat only what their teeth can grind. We are using steel teeth, so to speak.
If SCO folds can IBM sue anyone to get its legal fees back? The assets of SCO might be slim pickings but it still has a huge liability outstanding. If the judge rules dismisses the suit with prejudice (hope that is the right term, IANAL) and SCO folds, where can IBM go to get its legal costs repaid?
Urgent message to Uncle Bill and Uncle Steve, Please stop throwing chairs and throw some money for us. Yours SCO
Yeah, sure the energy transfer efficiency is 100% for every photon that participates in the reaction. But of all the photons falling on the leaf, hardly 2% of them participate in reactions. Some gets reflected, some gets absorbed without any reaction. Even solar cells have better energy conversion efficiency than plants. Really. As for quantum effects, almost all the photo reactions are quantum mechanics. They have to be. The film camera emulsion has greater percentage of photons participating in reaction than chlorophyll.
There is not that much popular support for LTTE within TN. But most political parties claim they support it. That is why I said "notionally". Just last week the state government called for a general strike to protest something about Sri Lankan navy. And all the parties posture as the great defenders of the Sri Lankan Tamils.
I did mention it, but I confused Dhayanidhi with Kalanidhi. Thanks for the correction.
MSFT also has very "innovative" pricing schemes. In one instance, paying a flat fee per every computer owned by the univ, whether or not it has Office installed, was cheaper than paying per copy of Office. Effect of such pricing is that, there is no incremental cost to a dept to run Office. To use any other software, the dept head has to budget for it and justify the cost to the bean counters.
All I know is this, MSFT is far more sophisticated in playing Corporate pricing games, budget games and such things than any simple model used for research purposes by Open Source advocates.
My most common grouse is that the key is Open Standards, not Open Source. If MSOffice and OS products conform to a open standard and anyone can develop applications that cleanly interoperate with them, the playing field will be level. There will be many vendors, some playing at the Open Sources and some in Free Software, some closed and for-profit players. Without leveling the playing field one can not see how Open Source is going to win. But what do I know.
If I am so smart why am I coding for a living instead of smooching with the bean counters in the country clubs?
It might not have been approved by the higher ups either in the family/party. India's Minister for Communication Kalanidhi Maran, is a nephew of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and their family owns the SunTV conglomerate. Tigers are to be feared, their pledge of alligiance to their leader Prabakaran supercedes any other consideration.
Trying hard to present NPoV without my biases. Hope I succeeded.
OK, Go ahead and practice the Golden Rule, I have no problems. Please do not insist that I practice the Golden Rule as well. In fact if you believe in the Golden Rule and you want me to practice the Golden Rule, you should practice the Golden Rule whether or not I practice it
Microsoft does not care for standards, nor does it want true interoperability or compatibility with any software not made in Redmond. As long as users are apathetic they will be under no pressure to change. Free markets will work only when a large portion of the users act rationally. Locking up all your data in a format and making all your processes depend on a single vendor's API are not very rational decisions. So, yes, MSFT will thumb its nose at any proposed standard. Muddy the issue by saying users should have "choice". Yeah, sure I want multiple choices in the kind of wall outlets I plug my appliances into. Round pin, flat pin, three pin, two pin polarized US style, UK style, Singapore style? Pay some consultants to come up things like "Total Cost of Ownership" etc. But dont blame MSFT. Educate the users.
Game theory work by Axelrod, univ of Michigan dated around 1980 is the real fountainhead of this kind of analyses. Dawkings popularized it in the second edition of the book "The Selfish Gene" and brought it to the masses from academia. Sagan's piece in Parade Mag was dated around 1990s. This must be after me coming to US, because Parade Mag has no circulation outside US. I remember reading hawks and doves theory in New Scientist way back in 1986. Dawkins credits another researcher for anticipating the ideas brought out by Axelrod. Dont remember his name.
You are correct. Infact Sagan references Axelrod's paper and the prisoner's dilemma. I read this piece, in Parade Magazine, of all places. Dawkins added a whole chapter titled "Nice Guys Finish First" to his book "The Selfish Gene" in the second edition to explain Axelrod's work. This edition book too predates the Sagan piece. Axelrod's work is the fountainhead. Both Dawkins and Sagan explained it to the masses.
Sagan then defines, what he would call, "The Weasel Rule". Be nice to strong people and be a jerk to weak people. Google caved in easily to strong governments like China and is currently exposing the evil in Darfar. So looks like, Google's motto is "Follow the Weasel Rule" not "Do no evil".
Hats off. You got it. Next time I will try to be even more obscure and indirect, like the code I write. ;-)
I wish they would spend time creating Organic Light Absorbing Diodes that will convert light into electricity. When they got that into solar panels then we can tell the pesky little middle eastern nation to go drink their oil.
Get your liquid cooled super computers here .
Gates would go to orbit only if Steve Jobs goes there first. He would not understand why Steve went, but just to be sure he has would not be blind sided like he was with iPod, he would go there.
Credit goes to Scott Adams. I dont have the strip saved. The pointy haired boss yells at Dilbert for surfing the net at work. Dilbert says it was his lunch time and points out that his surfing does not cost the company anything. Boss says, "But you used company provided electricity!". Dilbert says, "I faxed myself some electricity from home". Dont know how many know Dilbert strips to this level of detail.
Flying whales? Aren't they supposed to be kind of floating like blimps?
She should have faxed some electricity before going to work.
What is google trying to do? Develop tools to help automate captcha circumventing bots?
They (my nephews and nieces) look at me as though I am an brontosauraus wearing Sanjaya's fauxhawk when I talk to them about the dangers of "overexposure" (both literally and figuratively) in the internet.