New excuse for kids: the virus ate my homework!
So they did not back up properly, and they did not have adequate anti-virus protection. Methinks Ms Cowart is not the only one who might be fired.
Monumental cock-up indeed.
4248 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2007
We had a website for a conference we were organizing, when people mentioned they could not read certain bits. We checked and rechecked our HTML (which we had run through various validators etc). We then asked what browser they were using: answer IE6. I forget which W3C standard made IE6 bork, but we could not be arsed to change it.
We simply added a statement stating that our site was optimized for Firefox/Opera/Safari/IE7 and left it at that. As it was a conference for computer scientists, we assumed they would be able to install a decent browser.
If you can afford that kind of kit, fine! Still, seeing a supernova with my own eyes beats googling for images of it (making your own images is a thrill, I know).
Alternatively, you move to southern France, where skies are clearer and frost is rarer (a man can dream).
A good remark I heard on stargazerslounge.com:
"There are people whose sleeping patterns are profoundly disturbed by the positions of moon and planets. Such people are called astronomers."
LOL
Lovely reading from the ofcom PDF:
“Advertisements for personalised and live services that rely on belief in astrology,
horoscopes, tarot and derivative practices are acceptable only on channels that are
licensed for the purpose of the promotion of such services and are appropriately
labelled: both the advertisement and the product or service itself must state that the
product or service is for entertainment purposes only”.
As an astronomer, I thoroughly endorse the notion that astrology is suitable for entertainment purposes only. Astronomy is better entertainment still, in my opinion, but I understand that not everyone wants to freeze their nadgers off while looking through a telescope.
I got it with my 8" scope when it was at magnitude 11 (100x fainter than what the eye can see) and climbing, followed it through its maximum at mag 10 (visible in binoculars), and back down to just mag 13 (630 fainter than the naked eye kan see). It was amazing. The kids also had a peak and did their best to wake the neighbours with their shouts of "We've seen a supernova! We've seen a supernova! We've seen a supernova!"
Really neat to see such a bright one. It is odd to think all heavier atoms in your body were forged in the furnace of the core of a star, and that everyone is a supernova remnant.
Woz said: "let people wear what they like" he did not say: " everybody must wear T-shirts". If you feel good in a suit, wear it! If you don't, no worries. That is pretty much the attitude in our research school. I only wear a suit at BSc, MSc and PhD graduation ceremonies. Suits are to warm and stifling for me, others like them.
Authority is obtained through force of personality, prior achievements, and (most importantly!!) through the quality of arguments given, but not through suit and tie. Again, this is a research setting. Quite a few businesses work differently. They should make up their own minds whether an informal dress code would suit them.
Why does this remind me of the national philosophers' strike proposed by Vroomfondel and Majikthise. Deep Thought's answer is memorable:
"And, pray, who will that inconvenience?"
In this case the answer must be school kids and students who now have to look for original sources themselves (tip: try the library, you know, the place with all them books ;-) ).
A patent is not for any idea, it is for an invention of a (feature of a) product or a process to create a product. So at the time of its invention you can patent a camera and assorted printing kit both as products in their own right, and as a means to create a picture. The idea to create a picture in itself is not patentable (at that point in time). Pure, abstract ideas such as scientific theories or mathematical equations are not patentable.
A nice paper in IEEE Computer argued that as all software can be expressed in an expression in lambda calculus (would you not hate to do that for say an OS kernel), all software is just a collection of mathematical equations, and therefore not patentable.
You can see I have been talking to IP lawyer too much.
Mainly of the Acorn Atom and Electron, which were used throughout the 80s and well into the 90s in various labs here. Two key aspects were that you had the complete schematic, and that all external buses were buffered. It is quite hard to blow up buffered TTL buses, and believe me, various klutzes in the lab did their best.
The shipboard computer of Phobos-Grunt has the all new GPP feature (genuine people personality) and is offended about being given such a silly name, and is moping in orbit. Meanwhile the telemetry system is angry about what the mission control computer said about its software, and is no longer on speaking terms with mission control. Mission control is offended that Phobos-Grunt did want to talk to the Aussies, but not to mother Russia. None want to work before someone else has apologised.
The lesson we learn from this is that the last thing you want is computers with human-like intelligence.