Slashdot Mirror
Domain: amazon.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to amazon.com.
Comments · 40,271
-
Re:We'll all be throttled
Someone who can afford to pay 4 dollars for a minute can easily burn that bandwidth each day.
For example see this : Amazon Unbox Movie Rentals
File Size 2.3 GB
Bitrate 2500 kbps
Aspect Ratio 2.35:1
Audio Channels 2
If I have the highest plan that my ISP offers me and I can afford to pay four dollars to rent a movie, why should my ISP restrict me from using my bandwith legally? They've set the prices and have a contract with me, they should fulfill their part of the deal without moaning. -
Violence leads to more violence.
"Are US soldiers shooting them, or are they getting killed by Muslims?"
Both.
Should the U.S. government be considered responsible only for the people it kills directly, or should it also be considered responsible for the violence that violence causes? I've read several books that have considered that fundamental issue.
When the U.S. government was violent in Cambodia during the Vietnam war, for example, how many people died as a result of U.S. government action? The answer is more than 2 million people, in Cambodia alone, because the U.S. government supported the rise of a very violent dictator.
The U.S. government supported Saddam Hussein, partly by selling him weapons. The weapons deliveries were still being made when the U.S. government declared its first war on Iraq.
When people try to calculate the total number the U.S. government killed, they arrive at figures like perhaps 3 million killed directly since the end of the 2nd world war, and perhaps 8 to 11 million total if the people killed by the destabilization the U.S. government caused are also included, not including the people killed in Iraq. Partly the killing happened as a result of the U.S. government invading or bombing 25 countries.
All or almost all of the U.S. government's killing appears to be motivated entirely by profit. Certainly Cambodians and Vietnamese could never have threatened anyone in the U.S.; they only made about $200 per year, and had no animosity toward anyone in the U.S., if they even knew the U.S. existed.
The problem is that most taxpayers, who pay for the violence, don't realize the underlying facts. Both attacks against the World Trade Center, for example, were motivated by the U.S. government's killing of Arabs and Muslims long before. But most U.S. taxpayers don't know about the earlier violence.
I am always against violence; nothing I say recommends or justifies violence; I think violence is caused by mental illness. The fact is, when one person or group acts out mental illness by being violent, there is a liklihood that some other person or group will feel encouraged to act out his or its mental illness.
The U.S. government has often used its "cooperation" with the governments of other countries to corrupt those governments. See, for example, Coups Arranged or Backed by the USA. Most or all of that corruption happened for profit, such as kickbacks of U.S. government foreign aid. When the governments of Israel or Pakistan buy weapons from U.S. manufacturers using money from "foreign aid", that is embezzlement of taxpayer money.
For one example of profiting from violence, read How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power or Bush-Nazi Link Confirmed: Documents in National Archives Prove George W. Bush's Grandfather Traded with Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor.
Apparently Slashdot editors agree with at least some of this, because now and for the last 2 months or more, this has been on the main Slashdot page, on the right, under Book Reviews: " The Creature from Jekyll Island is a compelling look at the history of the Federal Reserve system and asks if it's a system that has run it's course. (Michael J. Ross's review)"
"The Creature from Jekyll Island" discusses how the U.S. monetary system is manipulated by rich and powerful people for their own profit. It says that wars are started for profit.
The Cooperative Research History Commons is very valuable for those wanting to do their own research.
The poorly edited but very interesting free movie -
Re:Well duh
It's not hard to figure out why we haven't solved this problem. It costs MORE to fix it now than it does to wait. So just wait until it costs more to live with IPv4 than to migrate to new systems. Then EVERYONE will be working on a solution.
On the other hand, some people will wait until the last minute and then spend time and energy towards solutions that might have spent towards other things had a more gradual migration takes place.
In fact, the looming IPv4 address crunch reminds me a little bit of the Y2K issue. Maybe some journalists will start presenting it to the public as a countdown to doomsday? We could have manuals like Hyatt's old The Y2K Personal Survival Guide telling us how to stock up on food and generator fuel for when civilization ends due to the sudden lack of new IP addresses. There would be religious figures and conspiracy theorists claiming that the Antichrist/UN/black helicopters/NWO will take advance of the chaos surrounding the IPv4 address crunch to institute their reign of fear. It'll be like 1999 all over again.
-
Re:"At work"
There's another great book, Founders at Work, that covers entrepreneurs. What's striking to me is the difference between the relatively humble and down-to-earth programmers of the early personal computing era compared to the egos on display from the post-bubble entrepreneurial bubble. More here on that contrast. A few of the founders, like Joshua Schacter and James Hong, seem to be cut from the same mold as the Programmers at Work guys, but they're the stark exceptions.
-
Let's face it...
4e is coming whether we want it to or not. It seems like it is going to have some good and some bad changes. If you want to stick to 3.5 that's your choice, if you want to move to 4e good for you. I'll be sticking with 3.5 for at least another year or so. Wile I'll probably buy the core rules right when they come out, I will not buy anything else.
Unfortunately my setting of choice is Eberron (just ordered City of Stormreach too) and I won't see jack for this setting until who knows when in '09. I guess I can feel happy that I didn't sink a lot of money into source books... Maybe $150 to $200 for all the Eberron source books. I bought most of my collection from the Amazon.com market place for almost nothing due to having small remainder marks on the bottom of the spine. But, I feel slighted that I won't see anything other than a coffee table book (An Adventurer's Guide to Eberron) for what will probably be well over a year. -
Re:May be the best decision he ever made.
Perhaps push a not-ready-for-primetime, butt-ugly e-book reader in desperate need of some usability consulting. Oh, wait...
-
Reviews for Macbook air are strangely high
I notice on the Amazon listing for the Macbook Air that there are nothing but five-star reviews. Is it really that good, or are they just shills? It's a bit odd that a review never appeared here on Slashdot.
-
Sounds like Fire in the Valley
If you like reading about the earlier days of personal computing, I'd also recommend Fire in the Valley by Freiburger and Swine which has a ton of cool anecdotes and dramatic confrontations.
-
Re:That's fair
The closest thing I have ever come across as a meaningful definition of macro evolution as being distinct from any other (micro) evolution is: Change enough to cause non-interbreeding and thus a separate species dividing line.
Pretty much. Macro-evolution refers to the process after speciation; to quote Mayr, "A new species develops if a population which has become geographically isolated from its parental species acquires during this period of isolation characteristics which promote or guarantee reproductive isolation when the external barriers break down." (E. Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, ISBN 0-674-89665-3; p 442) I consider his "geographic isolation" criterion to merely be the most prevalent mechanism, and not a specific requirement. Thus, any time you have developments which will promote or guarantee reproductive isolation (IE, non-interbreeding), you can have speciation, and thus macroevolution.
There are several dozen instances of such recorded in the literature; I understand you can do it in the lab with fruit flies in only a couple years.
Scientifically there's no dispute any more.
There's some, but it's not so much whether as details of how. EG: while it's known that geographic isolation is generally believed the most common trigger for speciation, other possible mechanisms have been proposed. The relative frequency of the trigger types is pretty far up in the air. If people want to "teach the controversy" about the details of how, I could live with that. However, the "teach the controversy" crowd still thinks it applies to "whether", and it doesn't.
-
Re:Oh is that all
To a grand total of US$423.97
unless you want to burn more than one DVD. Seems a bit much.
For that much you could just go rebuy your movies in BluRay, then sell the HD-DVD versions to the schmuck who is still disillusioned.
Or for less you could go buy this Sharp BluRay player (one of Amazon's best sellers) and keep your HD-DVD player and movies, too. -
Creepy
Isn't there some principle in AI research that the more lifelike a thing is after a certain point, it no longer seems helpful and instead becomes disconcerting to the user? On the other hand, this isn't quite at the level of creepiness explored in Spielberg's film (sparked by Kubrick) Artificial Intelligence where the robot really does look and act like a real child.
-
Re:Colour Management"Without calibrated colours you can not do anything even if you had the best tools in the universe to alter your images."
Not true. Dan Margulis in Professional Photoshop shows how you can correct color in photos by using the color numbers you can get out of Photoshop. He's taught color blind people to correct color in photographs.
Personally, I often find it difficult to identify a color cast on even a calibrated monitor just by looking at it.
-
Breathing air and water
Without scientific proof (Please, show me how fish can grow lungs to breath only air, without compromising their current breathing system
Basically, it is all gas exchange across membranes. So a gill will absorb oxygen from air to some extent, and a lung will absorb oxygen from water to some extent. It is actually easier to get oxygen from air than water, because the concentration of oxygen is higher (you can breathe highly oxygenated liquids for a short time, although it is very tiring, and it is hard to get rid of the liquid so that you can breathe air again). While a land-dwelling animal has little need to maintain the ability to extract low levels of oxygen from water, it is easy to see how the ability to extract oxygen from air can be advantageous to some fish, such as those that might be caught in drying pools or in eutrophic waters where the oxygen has all been consumed. -
Is my documentation worthless?
I would hope that the AJAX version would allow one to continue to use the same documentation. When I had to start using Mathematica for my courses, I invested in Boccara's Essentials of Mathematica , but I would hope to see that superseded.
-
It's a DESIGN contest, remember
This incident should be deeply embarrassing for Virginia Tech, which actually does employ some reputable professors and produces some educated students. However, this nonsense comes from a student in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, where a grasp of physical reality is clearly not a graduation requirement.
As other posters have observed, the energy generated by a 25 kg mass descending two meters is several orders of magnitude away from the 50 Watt-hours or so needed to generate the claimed light output. A careful reading of the breathless Va Tech press release shows that it's mostly written in the future, a key hint that the device doesn't actually exist.
But that's not important in a DESIGN contest, where the objective is to imagine something that looks cool and makes an uninformed audience coo with delight. Considerations like "can is possibly work?", "can it be manufactured?", or "is its cost plausible?" are far distant from such endeavours.
For fun, let's look at some of the other entries. First place goes to the Ener-Jar. It's an undeniably cute (but clearly not manufacturable) gadget that—get this—measures AC power consumption. Wow. What a groundbreaking idea. Too bad the people who make the Kill-A-Watt have been making something like it—but a lot more useful—for a decade or so. But the EnerJar is a DIY project, so that makes it a cute design winner.
Or this novelty, the Bambus. It's a USB memory stick that's recyclable because, err, it's made of bamboo. I suppose this isn't a bad idea (and it "will age in a nice way and will therefore become more likable over time"), but saving the earth by encasing USB devices in bamboo seems like a pretty slow payoff. Maybe this bamboo cellphone has more appeal.
I think my favorite is the digital tattoo interface. I'm not sure what this implanted device has to do with saving energy, except that it incorporates a "blood-powered fuel cell". The girl "demonstrating" it doesn't look too happy; maybe she's having second thoughts about bio-compatible materials.
We shouldn't be too hard on these ideas—some of them might actually be practical, although they mostly seem to recycle well-understood ambient energy notions in applications that suffer from an orders-of-magnitude mismatch between production and consumption. There are some good industrial designers, who do understand physics and engineering, and maybe one of these kids will grow up to be one.
-
Brilliant analysis of brilliant analysis
While most commentaries on brilliant analysis are not brilliant, a few are.
Edward Tufte's analysis of Dr. Feynman's brilliant analysis is brilliant, warranting a full chapter in Visual Explanations. What makes it special is that it is not "hey, yeah, that's a good idea, I'm smart too" but instead a study of why Dr. Feynman's analysis is brilliant. -
Surely You're Joking
Offtopic, but I highly recommend Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, the autobiography he narrated on his deathbed. It's got some great stories in it, like when he surreptitiously went around picking locks at Los Alamos or his personal recollections of the Trinity nuclear tests.
-
New ideas?I went and read the various descriptions in the article, and it seems to me that about half of these ideas are not new at all, but have simply been re-labeled. Here's my brief reaction to a few of them. . .
Surprise Modeling: "To monitor surprises effectively, says Horvitz, the machine has to have both knowledge--a good cognitive model of what humans find surprising--and foresight: some way to predict a surprising event in time for the user to do something about it." You mean like weather forecasting? Isn't most, if not all scientific pursuit dedicated to the understanding of natural systems so that we can know what to expect where once we were attributing events to Zeus and such?
Connectonomics: "Lichtman is a neuroscientist, and the image is the first comprehensive wiring diagram of part of the mammalian nervous system. The lines denote axons, the long, hairlike extensions of nerve cells that transmit signals from one neuron to the next; the leaves are synapses, the connections that the axons make with other neurons or muscle cells. The diagram is the fruit of an emerging field called "connectomics," which attempts to physically map the tangle of neural circuits that collect, process, and archive information in the nervous system." --Well that's very nice, but perhaps he ought to examine the role DC currents play in cellular and nervous system activity. Broken bones don't knit back together through the application of electricity for no reason. What else does low-current DC electricity do in the human body? Actually, quite a lot; a fair bit is known about this subject, but that information seems to elude the Dr. Lichtmans of the world. --And why shouldn't it, what with such massive interest in the development of the following technological bonanzas. . .
Wireless Power: "Having difficulty imagining a vast infrastructure of wires extending into every city, building, and room, Tesla figured that wireless was the way to go. He drew up plans for a tower, about 57 meters tall, that he claimed would transmit power to points kilometers away, and even started to build one on Long Island. Though his team did some tests, funding ran out before the tower was completed. The promise of airborne power faded rapidly as the industrial world proved willing to wire up." --Yup. Tesla. And all this time I was thankful he never achieved his goal in this regard. Cell phones are bad enough as it is, which is why I expect out of all these 'emerging' technologies, that this one will be unstoppable.
Reality Mining: "Researchers have been mining data from the physical world for years, says Alex Kass, a researcher who leads reality-mining projects at Accenture, a consulting and technology services firm. Sensors in manufacturing plants tell operators when equipment is faulty, and cameras on highways monitor traffic flow. But now, he says, "reality mining is getting personal."" What? So the massive profit growth of the whole Air Miles thing has up until now been sold simply as a way to keep track of how much milk is left in stock at the local 7/11? Gosh. Who knew?
Other people have commented on the bio-fuels thing, and the fact that we've had Java and Flash for some time now, and anyway I have to leave the house in a few minutes. So enjoy the future. Ciao.
-FL -
Re:yet again the religous twats get too much say
Unsupported, eh? You're an idiot. These are very, very well-known.
If you don't believe it, do some research. A quick google search reveals these links to be informative:
http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Other-Essays-Freethought-Library/dp/0879758333
http://web.archive.org/web/20000520040242/http://www.wels.net/sab/text/qa/qa15.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20021019195356/http://www.worldmissions.org/Clipper/Holidays/EasterAndAsherah.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jckr1.htm -
Re:Mod parent of parent up, Truth
The autism-vaccine link has been thoroughly disproven many times now.
It has not been disproven. Studies have been done that show an epidemiologic link. Other studies have been done that claim there is no link whatsoever. The authors of the latter studies were often found to have close links with the pharmaceutical industry. The statistics employed in these "nothing to see here, please move a long" studies are often highly questionable.
As to David Ayoub, as opposed to what you suggest, he is a qualified and well-informed MD. If you doubt that, read this paper http://www.jpands.org/vol11no2/ayoub.pdf he co-authored. People without qualifications do not get published in medical journals.
I suggest you inform yourself better. A good place to start with plenty of source references is the following book http://astore.amazon.com/medical-bookstore-20/detail/1881217302. Moreover, I would refrain, in the future, from claiming that medical studies can "prove" anything. You can show correlations and do statistics that offer relative certainty as to causation. But that is a far cry from proof given the complexity of biology.
-
Re:Professional Tools
Remember kids, professional tools take up lots of storage space.
Well, once upon a time the GNU tools used to be installed more often from disks or tapes you bought from FSF than downloaded, because of what at the time were large file sizes. And the printed Emacs manual is a 600-page behemoth. So, it's not as if the Free Software movement has always remained free from claims of heftiness or outright bloat.
-
Rockefellers
-
GURPS 4th Edition
Check out the core rules for free: GURPS Lite
The Basic Set books are only available in print, but you can pick up cheaply on Amazon.com:
GURPS Basic Set: Characters
GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns
The rest you can buy DRM-free PDFs from Warehouse 23: GURPS 4th Edition
The rules are easy to learn, and you'll get amazing value out of each book. (I've got plenty of old GURPS 2nd and 3rd edition books that are *still* valuable references to this day!)
------
Oh wait, this article was about D&D? What's D&D? -
GURPS 4th Edition
Check out the core rules for free: GURPS Lite
The Basic Set books are only available in print, but you can pick up cheaply on Amazon.com:
GURPS Basic Set: Characters
GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns
The rest you can buy DRM-free PDFs from Warehouse 23: GURPS 4th Edition
The rules are easy to learn, and you'll get amazing value out of each book. (I've got plenty of old GURPS 2nd and 3rd edition books that are *still* valuable references to this day!)
------
Oh wait, this article was about D&D? What's D&D? -
Re:sweet
Current cosmology seems to be like a house of cards, a religion pretending to be science, built on some unproven and perhaps unprovable fundamental assumptions (beliefs).
What is this now? Current cosmology (e.g. big bang theory) is arguably one of the most observationally validated theories in the history of science. I recommend reading an easy primer like Simon Singhs Big Bang to get yourself started.Unless I just fed the troll, that is.
-
A reading list
-
A reading list
-
well, um..So what would be the average of both noble philanthropist and devious scammer? I'd say: Human Being.
There is a great book by a primatologist named Franz De Waal ("Our Inner Ape"), and the book largely deals with this subject, by speaking at lengths to the behaviors of various primates. The conclusion is, of course, that humans are not innately good or evil-- we have the capacity for both compassion and uncaring selfishness. -
Re:Hire someone
I agree that The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird is a good general web design book for just this type of issue: a developer moonlighting in the realm of design. Because I have been interested in exactly the same thing lately - the visual design of computer based information - I stumbled upon a book about typography at my local library that I would also highly recommend: The Non-Designers Type Book by Robin Williams. My library had the 1st edition which was written in 1998, but all of the principles are still so true today. Another thing that Jason's book (mentioned earlier in my post) recommends is looking into sIFR which is a flash-based open source technology that allows you to use better fonts on your website. I have been using it on my site for about a week and I think it does look a lot better, but it can slow a site down. These things should get you started on the road to better design in your websites. Another great resource is a href="http://websitesthatsuck.com">websitesthatsuck.com. The guy that runs that site has also written some books on the topic of good web design, and I highly recommend that you read the books - the books are a lot better than the website, for some strange reason.
-
Re:Hire someone
I agree that The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird is a good general web design book for just this type of issue: a developer moonlighting in the realm of design. Because I have been interested in exactly the same thing lately - the visual design of computer based information - I stumbled upon a book about typography at my local library that I would also highly recommend: The Non-Designers Type Book by Robin Williams. My library had the 1st edition which was written in 1998, but all of the principles are still so true today. Another thing that Jason's book (mentioned earlier in my post) recommends is looking into sIFR which is a flash-based open source technology that allows you to use better fonts on your website. I have been using it on my site for about a week and I think it does look a lot better, but it can slow a site down. These things should get you started on the road to better design in your websites. Another great resource is a href="http://websitesthatsuck.com">websitesthatsuck.com. The guy that runs that site has also written some books on the topic of good web design, and I highly recommend that you read the books - the books are a lot better than the website, for some strange reason.
-
Re:You forgot something...
> Increased CO2 encourages the growth of marine algae and it's entire food chain.
> the rest sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is sequestered...all by itself!
Actually no, it doesn't. Nitrogen supply is the limiting factor for marine culture growth. CO2 is not very important by comparison. Most algae growth, and, of course, the rest of the food chain, occurs in places where deep ocean water is forced to the surface, or where the outflow from rivers brings in nitrogen from land. You could take advantage of this to fight global warming by building lots of OTECs. Read more about this plan in The Millenial Progect by Marshall Savage.
> I freely admit that I have not run the numbers.
Well, when you do, you'll find out that the problems you imagine are not as serious as you think
> I can run some numbers for other disasters if you like but my point still stands.
Why don't you try that and when you come up with a realistic catastrophe, I'll be happy to show you why you're wrong
> People form large governments BECAUSE they provide services small ones can't
Uh, no. First of all, people don't form governments. Ambitious power-hungry bastards form governments
> Your scenario is all well and good until two planetoids decide they want to kill off a third and take the resources.
This happens just as easily on Earth, so at worst, you are no worse off. However, conquest is again only possible by government. If there was no government, there'd be no wars, only local aggression. In a free market economy you don't need to conquer anyone; you can just buy what you need.
> But some where along the line their ancestors got extra power and then shut down the competition.
Yes, I admit I do not have a foolproof solution on how to prevent formation of government. When I find one, I'll let you know
> Central planning CAN work, it just only works for simply and not particularly industrial economies.
You really need to read the book. It goes into great detail, explaining exactly why socialism in any form can not work. I really don't want to retype the whole thing.
> The AMA and FDA: How to put this...you are a fool.
Good! We're down to name calling. That means you are really paying attention now
> This may sound elitist but not everyone can be a doctor. It takes high intelligence (about
> top 1/3 of the population) and a special mentality. It takes 8-12 YEARS of training, the
> first 4 costing $150K and the last 4-8 you get paid as much as a waiter.
Not to insult your high intelligence, but this is bullshit. Yes, you might need a eight years of training to be a neurosurgeon. You don't need any training to sit in the office and diagnose strep throat, indigestion, the flu, acid re -
Re:"never"
For 300 years the British had a global array of colonies, supported by their navies... then the modern area began, and the ruthless taxation and primitive conditions were no longer enough to keep some of those colonies from revolting, and changing the global sphere of power.
The impression I took away from Fromkin was that, among other things, the French and British were too culturally exhausted after WWI to do much beyond bumble the handoff. A quibble.instead of water cooled reactors...
My efforts to go to Nuclear Power School in the Navy failed in amusing ways, so I'll take your word for it.successful split in the civil war
If the South could have jumped forward about three decades for a peek at Mahan's "Influence of Seapower...", but we'll leave that to Harry Turtledove.i expect the future to be bleak, and revert to a world where the 'rich' live off the backs of the 'poor' in the third world nations. as such, technology that exists today may well be lost, due to the insanely high cost.
Is that a bug or a feature? I've got Amish across the river. Transitioning back to simple farming is one way to escape the MicroSoft monopoly.
Seriously, I just don't share much of the dystopian view. The single-world government is kind of a bother, but eschatology never held my attention long after I realized Hal Lindsay was farce. -
Re:Dear Prince
The same is true of ABBA, but even more so.
Hey, many of ABBA's songs are listened to by the younger folk. Just not in the same old style.. More metal like.
One band even had the cash to make a music video of their tribute version of Summernight City. -
[OT] Re:sweet
The most charitable interpretation of of your comment that I can stomach is that you mean "root language" in a non-standard way. Anything else would be wholly ignorant of basic historical and linguistic facts.
Where I come from (i.e., in linguistics), English is regularly referred to as a Germanic language. In English literature courses, professors in the know will tell you that, while most of our long words come from Latin through French, the short words and the structure are derived from German. There are divergences - e.g., in German one can say Einen Brief schreibt er seiner Mutter but not the word-for-word English version A letter writes he his mother - but they're accounted for and often accompanied by complementary changes elsewhere in the language. The very history of the development of the English language and people points to the influence of German (despite what this guy apparently thinks).
To me, all of this says "root language." Mere temporal separation isn't enough to remove that relation, as you seem to suggest. Beyond that, I have no clue what you seem to mean by the same phrase, so I won't hazard a guess. -
Amazon's Top Seller List says Linux doing well.
Updated hourly. The Nokia 800 and the Asus eee have both been in the Top 10 for computers for months.
-
Re:Not so Rare Earth
This documentary was no doubt based on the book Rare Earth ( http://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387987010 ). To summarize:
The authors hypothesize that life is common in the universe, but that multi-cellular life is rare. One may be familiar with the Drake Equation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation ) but Rare Earth puts some meaning behind the variables in that equation. We're all familiar with habitable zones around stars, parts where the temperature is just right for liquid water. Rare Earth suggests there may be a habitable zone around galaxies... too close in and the interstellar radiation is too high to support multicellular life. Too far away and you don't have the heavier elements that come from 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation stars because the density of stars is too low for that to happen.
Part of the reason why they believe complex life is rare but simple life may be "common" is the history of life on this planet. Single celled life formed just a few million years after the planet cooled enough to support life, but it was several billion years after that before multicellular life arose.
Rare Earth points to our moon as possibly being a rare but necessary component of the rise of multicellular life on this planet. It stabilizes our poles, apparently planets w/o a heavy moon wobble so much that over a million years or so the poles flip, preventing long term stable climate in any single region.
Additionally Rare Earth also points out that Jupiter protects our Earth from too frequent comet/asteroid collisions. Given the large number of Jupiter sized planets we're finding I personally do not think that a Jupiter per solar system may be that rare an event after all, but it's in the book.
In short... rocks and water may be enough for single celled life, but you also need low radiation and a long-term stable climate. -
Re:10 Years and still waiting
Do you maintain a website? XML has been a godsend for those who want to maintain web and print output side by side. By keeping your data in an XML format, you can use simple XSL stylesheets to generate multiple types of output. See e.g. O'Reilly's XSLT Cookbook for dozens of very real-world examples (it's probably in your library).
That's just one example of how XML technology has made coding easier. Others I'm sure will point out others.
If you aren't a developer, then I'm not sure XML was supposed to directly revolutionize your end-user experience.
-
Re:But do we want them?
> Where can I read the details of the design?
On Google, of course, you silly rabbit. A simple search shows many examples like this one. I have also read a book about one, called Rendezvous With Rama by Clarke. -
Re:Torrent sites should be able to defend themselv
Ah, but if you start down that path, then you'll end up arresting people who write books on, say, how to rob a bank. Or how to build a nuclear bomb. Or how to [insert whatever activity you don't like]. And you're well on your way to book burnings and fascism. Thank God for the First Amendment.
-
Re:Torrent sites should be able to defend themselv
Ah, but if you start down that path, then you'll end up arresting people who write books on, say, how to rob a bank. Or how to build a nuclear bomb. Or how to [insert whatever activity you don't like]. And you're well on your way to book burnings and fascism. Thank God for the First Amendment.
-
Re:Duh.Uhhh...they already do this. Here's the first one that came up on Amazon, but they have more and less expensive of boxed Linux available at just about any computer-related retail store.
Of all the methods of getting people to adopt Linux, I just don't think "it needs to cost more" is one of them.
-
Re:Duh.According to economics, there is more demand if you lower your price. According to economics, price does not affect demand, only quantity demanded. I've been saying for a long time that someone should package a Linux distro in a box, and sell it for $100 They do sell packaged versions of Linux distros, and have for quite awhile. Just because you can download it for free doesn't mean they don't also want to make a little profit. In the end it doesn't matter, because the "Average Joe" doesn't buy an OS unless it comes with a computer.
-
Re:Fie on Rush
Rush Limbaugh is a habitual lier.
please bring concrete examples.
That's easy enough. People write books about his lies. Amongst them:
- The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error : Over 100 Outrageously False and Foolish Statements from America's Most Powerful Radio and TV
- The Great Limbaugh Con: And Other Right-Wing Assaults on Common Sense
- Logic and Mr. Limbaugh: A Dittohead's Guide To Fallacious Reading
- And, of course, Al Frankin's Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.
Or, read any of Rush's own books -- but you'll have to do all the fact checking yourself. But you may be able to pick out plenty without doing a lot of research, such as when he says in See, I Told You So that "There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived." (There are fewer than 2 million Americans claiming native ancestry now, but there were between 5 million and 15 million Native Americans in 1492. Or, sticking to the same theme from the same book, Rush said "There are more acres of forestland in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492." In fact, there is a quarter billion fewer acres of forest. But those aren't honest mistakes. Those are lies.
Still need evidence that he is a liar? How about Rush saying that he's glad the mid-term elections are over so that he doesn't have to lie for the Republicans anymore? "There have been a bunch of things going on in Congress. Some of this legislation coming out of there that I have just cringed at. And it has been difficult coming in here trying to make the case for it when the people who supposedly in favor of it can't even make the case themselves."
I have no doubt that if HE had Parkinson's, HE would play up the severity of his symptoms.
you have not brought any evidence to support this claim.
Really? The only claim there is that "I have no doubt
The guy who championed family values has been married and divorced three times.
and what exactly is wrong with divorce? family values isn't about sticking together no matter how much you totally can't stand each other. if you would have said he cheated on his wives that would be a different matter.
Well, he met his last wife via Compuserve in 1990. In 1992 she divorced her then husband. She married Rush in 1994. In 2000, she bought a house of her own. In 2004 they were divorced. He has been married a total of 16 years to three wives and spent more than seven of those years separate from his wife. Rush told the Palm Beach Post that "Marriage is about raising children. That's the purpose of the institution." He has no children. He has no interest in making a successful marriage. He has said, "If you want a successful marriage, let your husband do what he wants to do." And that makes him a complete hypocrite.
Why not try to understand reality according to what it is, rather than according to how you would like it to be?
A good question for Rush.
the best way to get rid of racism is to stop using racist term like "African American" or "white".
-
Re:Fie on Rush
Rush Limbaugh is a habitual lier.
please bring concrete examples.
That's easy enough. People write books about his lies. Amongst them:
- The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error : Over 100 Outrageously False and Foolish Statements from America's Most Powerful Radio and TV
- The Great Limbaugh Con: And Other Right-Wing Assaults on Common Sense
- Logic and Mr. Limbaugh: A Dittohead's Guide To Fallacious Reading
- And, of course, Al Frankin's Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.
Or, read any of Rush's own books -- but you'll have to do all the fact checking yourself. But you may be able to pick out plenty without doing a lot of research, such as when he says in See, I Told You So that "There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived." (There are fewer than 2 million Americans claiming native ancestry now, but there were between 5 million and 15 million Native Americans in 1492. Or, sticking to the same theme from the same book, Rush said "There are more acres of forestland in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492." In fact, there is a quarter billion fewer acres of forest. But those aren't honest mistakes. Those are lies.
Still need evidence that he is a liar? How about Rush saying that he's glad the mid-term elections are over so that he doesn't have to lie for the Republicans anymore? "There have been a bunch of things going on in Congress. Some of this legislation coming out of there that I have just cringed at. And it has been difficult coming in here trying to make the case for it when the people who supposedly in favor of it can't even make the case themselves."
I have no doubt that if HE had Parkinson's, HE would play up the severity of his symptoms.
you have not brought any evidence to support this claim.
Really? The only claim there is that "I have no doubt
The guy who championed family values has been married and divorced three times.
and what exactly is wrong with divorce? family values isn't about sticking together no matter how much you totally can't stand each other. if you would have said he cheated on his wives that would be a different matter.
Well, he met his last wife via Compuserve in 1990. In 1992 she divorced her then husband. She married Rush in 1994. In 2000, she bought a house of her own. In 2004 they were divorced. He has been married a total of 16 years to three wives and spent more than seven of those years separate from his wife. Rush told the Palm Beach Post that "Marriage is about raising children. That's the purpose of the institution." He has no children. He has no interest in making a successful marriage. He has said, "If you want a successful marriage, let your husband do what he wants to do." And that makes him a complete hypocrite.
Why not try to understand reality according to what it is, rather than according to how you would like it to be?
A good question for Rush.
the best way to get rid of racism is to stop using racist term like "African American" or "white".
-
Re:Fie on Rush
Rush Limbaugh is a habitual lier.
please bring concrete examples.
That's easy enough. People write books about his lies. Amongst them:
- The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error : Over 100 Outrageously False and Foolish Statements from America's Most Powerful Radio and TV
- The Great Limbaugh Con: And Other Right-Wing Assaults on Common Sense
- Logic and Mr. Limbaugh: A Dittohead's Guide To Fallacious Reading
- And, of course, Al Frankin's Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.
Or, read any of Rush's own books -- but you'll have to do all the fact checking yourself. But you may be able to pick out plenty without doing a lot of research, such as when he says in See, I Told You So that "There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived." (There are fewer than 2 million Americans claiming native ancestry now, but there were between 5 million and 15 million Native Americans in 1492. Or, sticking to the same theme from the same book, Rush said "There are more acres of forestland in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492." In fact, there is a quarter billion fewer acres of forest. But those aren't honest mistakes. Those are lies.
Still need evidence that he is a liar? How about Rush saying that he's glad the mid-term elections are over so that he doesn't have to lie for the Republicans anymore? "There have been a bunch of things going on in Congress. Some of this legislation coming out of there that I have just cringed at. And it has been difficult coming in here trying to make the case for it when the people who supposedly in favor of it can't even make the case themselves."
I have no doubt that if HE had Parkinson's, HE would play up the severity of his symptoms.
you have not brought any evidence to support this claim.
Really? The only claim there is that "I have no doubt
The guy who championed family values has been married and divorced three times.
and what exactly is wrong with divorce? family values isn't about sticking together no matter how much you totally can't stand each other. if you would have said he cheated on his wives that would be a different matter.
Well, he met his last wife via Compuserve in 1990. In 1992 she divorced her then husband. She married Rush in 1994. In 2000, she bought a house of her own. In 2004 they were divorced. He has been married a total of 16 years to three wives and spent more than seven of those years separate from his wife. Rush told the Palm Beach Post that "Marriage is about raising children. That's the purpose of the institution." He has no children. He has no interest in making a successful marriage. He has said, "If you want a successful marriage, let your husband do what he wants to do." And that makes him a complete hypocrite.
Why not try to understand reality according to what it is, rather than according to how you would like it to be?
A good question for Rush.
the best way to get rid of racism is to stop using racist term like "African American" or "white".
-
Re:Fie on Rush
Rush Limbaugh is a habitual lier.
please bring concrete examples.
That's easy enough. People write books about his lies. Amongst them:
- The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error : Over 100 Outrageously False and Foolish Statements from America's Most Powerful Radio and TV
- The Great Limbaugh Con: And Other Right-Wing Assaults on Common Sense
- Logic and Mr. Limbaugh: A Dittohead's Guide To Fallacious Reading
- And, of course, Al Frankin's Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.
Or, read any of Rush's own books -- but you'll have to do all the fact checking yourself. But you may be able to pick out plenty without doing a lot of research, such as when he says in See, I Told You So that "There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived." (There are fewer than 2 million Americans claiming native ancestry now, but there were between 5 million and 15 million Native Americans in 1492. Or, sticking to the same theme from the same book, Rush said "There are more acres of forestland in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492." In fact, there is a quarter billion fewer acres of forest. But those aren't honest mistakes. Those are lies.
Still need evidence that he is a liar? How about Rush saying that he's glad the mid-term elections are over so that he doesn't have to lie for the Republicans anymore? "There have been a bunch of things going on in Congress. Some of this legislation coming out of there that I have just cringed at. And it has been difficult coming in here trying to make the case for it when the people who supposedly in favor of it can't even make the case themselves."
I have no doubt that if HE had Parkinson's, HE would play up the severity of his symptoms.
you have not brought any evidence to support this claim.
Really? The only claim there is that "I have no doubt
The guy who championed family values has been married and divorced three times.
and what exactly is wrong with divorce? family values isn't about sticking together no matter how much you totally can't stand each other. if you would have said he cheated on his wives that would be a different matter.
Well, he met his last wife via Compuserve in 1990. In 1992 she divorced her then husband. She married Rush in 1994. In 2000, she bought a house of her own. In 2004 they were divorced. He has been married a total of 16 years to three wives and spent more than seven of those years separate from his wife. Rush told the Palm Beach Post that "Marriage is about raising children. That's the purpose of the institution." He has no children. He has no interest in making a successful marriage. He has said, "If you want a successful marriage, let your husband do what he wants to do." And that makes him a complete hypocrite.
Why not try to understand reality according to what it is, rather than according to how you would like it to be?
A good question for Rush.
the best way to get rid of racism is to stop using racist term like "African American" or "white".
-
Re:Sometimes math is created through the arts
For an interesting take on mathematical analysis of music, you could try The Topos of Music. It sets out to apply deep modern mathematics to issues of musical composition. Starting with a base in category theory and topos theory (hence the title), it can then spiral down to using differential geometry and algebraic geometry. Personally I don't know enough music theory to know if it really stacks up, but it is certainly mathematically very interesting (and goes well beyond the basic mathematical dabbling of some approaches to bringing math into music that I've seen).
-
Roman Verostko
Roman Verostko and others have been doing something he calls algorithmic art for awhile. E.g., put a paintbrush in a pen plotter and then write an algorithm to paint on canvas. Although sometimes I feel like artists like Verostko (who call themselves algorists) are tremendously arrogant sometimes (which I suppose makes them like many other artists), a lot of their stuff seems really beautiful to me. In particular, Verostko's pseudo-calligraphy is just mesmerizing to me-- it looks sort of like a written language, but it's not.
And of course, you can't forget the grandmaster of algorithmic art: Bach. Bach was a master of counterpoint, and the mathematical beauty of some of his works (e.g., The Art of Fugue) is readily apparent. If he indeed did not generate his works in an algorithmic way, well, that's surprising to me. Listen to Glenn Could play Bach, Partitas 1,2, and 3 being my favorite... -
Sometimes math is created through the arts
When it comes to the relationship between mathematics and the arts, my favourite example is the music of Per Norgard. In 1959 Norgard discovered a way of serializing melody that resulted in endless self-similarity, a type of fractal. He termed it the infinity series, and though the two-tone infinity series had already been discovered by mathematicians, the application of the principle to chromatic and diatonic scales resulted in a series no mathematician had discovered before. The infinity series is a fascinating concept, and in Norgard's works like the Symphony No. 3 it proves immensely beautiful.
Other composers have, of course, made use of mathematical processes. The golden section is often heard in Bartók, for example, though who knows if it was done consciously.
-
Re:the general rule...
I want to expand on the AC answer 2posts up.
If this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Codependent-No-More-Controlling-Yourself/dp/0894864025
"Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie" were required reading for American teenagers ages 15-20, a large number of social ills in American culture would be solved.
I say: when you see somebody unknowingly driving toward a cliff, then make sure you don't fall off the cliff too. Period.
But, if someone is heading for a cliff and asks you, "Hey, how do I avoid that cliff?" THAT is when you step in; show them how to turn their life in a different direction, but not before.
"Helping" people is a dicey business. Don't do it. Don't focus on it. Helping is most often indicative of poor self esteem issues in the person offering help, feeling a need to be valued for reasons they need to fix in other ways. And in others, those who seek out "helper" type people are on the opposite end of the spectrum, typically with self-inflicted incompetence and crippling reliance on others for support. Beattie's book describes these unhealthy and far-too-common patterns quite well.
"Assist"ing people is completely different. Volunteering, also different. When you assist someone who is ALREADY SELF MOTIVATED to help themselves, you do them a great service. When you volunteer, and participate in organizations doing good works, usually you are going good things. But individuals, getting up in each others' shit to "help" them is usually not helpful at all, which is why the original question poster is so confused.
The real answer to the posted