Posts by tapanit

Re: Ahhhh shoot!

'A falling bullet from a "miss" will only reach its terminal velocity on the way down. It's weight is small. So it would be comparable to a hailstone.'

Umm, no. Unless shot straight up, the bullet also has *horizontal* velocity, and that's what'll do the damage. There are well-documented cases of bullets shot randomly in the air causing damage, even killing people.

Re: Bigger jumps in Version numbers @druck

While ancient Romans didn't use P as a numeral, some medieval texts do - but its value is 400, not a million. So XP would be 390.

:-)

"the stated point of (some of the) middle-east-based terror groups is to cause more and more disruption in the west to normal functions such as air travel, not by actually disrupting them themselves, but by vaguely implying they PLAN to disrupt them and have the response (from TSA et. al) disrupt them much more."

Indeed. If TSA were judged by the actual impact of their activities, they should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting terrorists.

Looking at the specs, it almost certainly will run Linux (and they sell it without OS, too).

I'm not going to splunk 1k£ to test it, however.

Re: 486?

486 is still supported, judging by comments in the changelog. There are some sort-of-486-like processors that are no longer supported, however:

"Note that the 386 is no longer supported, this includes AMD/Cyrix/Intel 386DX/DXL/SL/SLC/SX, Cyrix/TI 486DLC/DLC2, UMC 486SX-S and the NexGen Nx586."

Re: Forever is a long time

Actually dinosaurs lasted over 160 million years and dominated the Earth for some 135 million.

Anyway, yes, Earth will survive any climate change until Sun gobbles it up, but whether the human species will is another matter.

Re: If Linus doesn't like KDE4's "configurability" that much ...

The article is somewhat misleading: Linus explicitly said he likes KDEs configurability:

"But ah, the ability to configure things". All in all, given Linus' style it's all but high praise to KDE.

Re: Tape?

In some countries it's perfectly legal to record a conversation you're part of, even without other parties knowing about it. In Finland, for example, where it was actually confirmed by the (Finnish) Supreme Court some years back. And yes, obviously such a recording would be usable as evidence.

Re: every patent invalidated is a victory for us all

Algorithms are indeed often really hard to create. The hard part is usually mathematics. Which isn't patentable either, as you probably know, and for a good reason.

That something is hard to do and should be rewarded doesn't mean patents are a good way of doing so. (Quite a lot of seriously hard mathematics has been created without patents.)

Re: Curious to think...

"the human animal seems to be the only species hell bent on screwing itself into the ground over this contentious & self imposed issue, whilst all other existing flora & fauna on this planet will [...] simply adapt"

Well, yes, but "simply adapting" will often mean going extinct. :-)

Of course, that is the way of evolution: as the environment changes, some species will survive while others won't, and there's little doubt that nature as a whole will cope. But from a narrow human viewpoint, it is of some interest if the human species is among the survivors.

Re: Re: Re: I don't get it...

"I am of the understanding that in UK courts people can be compelled to answer questions by a judge."

I'm quite certain you're wrong, when it come to the accused. The principle against self-incrimination is rather strongly entrenched in various international legal treaties, notably in the European Convention on Human Rights, which I believe is binding in the UK.

Now *witnesses*, i.e., people who are not being accused themselves, can be compelled to speak, but that's not at issue here.

I recall somebody *did* succeed in selling fridges to inuits long ago - to keep food from freezing... don't even need electricity! Nowadays they're of course likely to have electricity and use fridges to keep beer cold in summer, like everybody else.

Death penalty

One somewhat counter-intuitive effect of death penalty (and to a lesser degree, harsher punishments in general) is that it reduces the likelyhood of getting caught and convicted, and (even more surprisingly) increases false convictions. So while DP obviously reduces recidivism in those convicted and executed, it might have the opposite effect in total.

O, P, Q ...

"As to what animal is picked that starts with a "P" for 12.04...who knows?"

Lots of those to choose from (I doubt they have the chuzpah to go for Perky Penguin though), but the next one will be harder... Querulous Quail? Quotidian Quetzal? Queamish Queenfish? Queer Quillback? Quirky Quillfish? Can't think of any more... except Qagga, but an extinct animal would be a bit, err, ominous.

Maybe they'll jump Q and go straight to R (Racy Rat?).

rsync & versions

While rsync by itself doesn't keep multiple versions of files, it makes it easy enough, and a number of tools built on it do it automatically. A few have already been mentioned, others include rsnapshot (which needs very little besides rsync itself and perl, but requires editing configuration files manually) and backuppc (which provides web interface).