Slashdot Mirror
Domain: amazon.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to amazon.com.
Comments · 40,271
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Re:Is it a Node.js replacement?
Hearing a disturbance, the master programmer went into the novice's cubicle.
"Curse these personal computers!" cried the novice in anger, "To make them do anything I must use three or even four editing programs. Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files. This is truly intolerable!"
The master programmer stared at the novice. "And what would you do to remedy this state of affairs?" he asked.
The novice thought for a moment. "I will design a new editing program," he said, "a program that will replace all these others."
Suddenly the master struck the novice on the side of his head. It was not a heavy blow, but the novice was nonetheless surprised. "What did you do that for?" exclaimed the novice.
"I have no wish to learn another editing program," said the master.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
This lesson from The Zen of Programming is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago.
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Re:Looks an awful lot like the iPad mini
Except it doesn't run iOS, which means it's not an iPad mini. Someone who wants for a Playstation 4 for Christmas doesn't want an Xbox One.
Yes, but Christmas shopping implies that someone else is going to make that purchase for you, and iPad Minis are vastly overpriced.
If you were my relative, this is the tablet I'd get you. It's far cheaper than the iPad Mini. Its screen is almost one inch bigger than the iPad Mini. And its battery lasts a hell of a lot longer too.
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Re:Interesting. I'd think the opposite
Problem is both the above posters are ignorant. Modern publics are so illusioned they don't know which end is up.
Reasoning and the human brain doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Manufacturing consent
http://www.amazon.com/Manufact...
Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real news:
http://therealnews.com/t2/
http://www.amazon.com/Democrac...
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-G...
http://www.amazon.com/National...Look at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free trade?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
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Re:Interesting. I'd think the opposite
Problem is both the above posters are ignorant. Modern publics are so illusioned they don't know which end is up.
Reasoning and the human brain doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Manufacturing consent
http://www.amazon.com/Manufact...
Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real news:
http://therealnews.com/t2/
http://www.amazon.com/Democrac...
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-G...
http://www.amazon.com/National...Look at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free trade?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
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Re:Interesting. I'd think the opposite
Problem is both the above posters are ignorant. Modern publics are so illusioned they don't know which end is up.
Reasoning and the human brain doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Manufacturing consent
http://www.amazon.com/Manufact...
Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real news:
http://therealnews.com/t2/
http://www.amazon.com/Democrac...
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-G...
http://www.amazon.com/National...Look at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free trade?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
-
Re:Interesting. I'd think the opposite
Problem is both the above posters are ignorant. Modern publics are so illusioned they don't know which end is up.
Reasoning and the human brain doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Manufacturing consent
http://www.amazon.com/Manufact...
Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real news:
http://therealnews.com/t2/
http://www.amazon.com/Democrac...
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-G...
http://www.amazon.com/National...Look at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free trade?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
-
Re:Interesting. I'd think the opposite
Problem is both the above posters are ignorant. Modern publics are so illusioned they don't know which end is up.
Reasoning and the human brain doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Manufacturing consent
http://www.amazon.com/Manufact...
Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real news:
http://therealnews.com/t2/
http://www.amazon.com/Democrac...
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-G...
http://www.amazon.com/National...Look at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free trade?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
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Re:I never have understood
I never have understood the world's fetish with the US dollar. Every nation has a currency. The US economy is just as prone to stagnation, deficit, over, and under valuing as any other currency.
I'd like nothing better than to see the Rothschild's hold on international markets broken. If it takes China to do that, then all power to China in the endeavour.
You can thank Harry Dexter White for that. (And if you're American, you should thank him. Otherwise, maybe not.) See: The Battle of Bretton Woods. It really is pretty fascinating.
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Kohn is great; see also Meredith Small and others
"Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent"
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Babi...
"New parents are faced with innumerable decisions to make regarding the best way to care for their baby, and, naturally, they often turn for guidance to friends and family members who have already raised children. But as scientists are discovering, much of the trusted advice that has been passed down through generations needs to be carefully reexamined.
A thought-provoking combination of practical parenting information and scientific analysis, Our Babies, Ourselves is the first book to explore why we raise our children the way we do--and to suggest that we reconsider our culture's traditional views on parenting.
In this ground-breaking book, anthropologist Meredith Small reveals her remarkable findings in the new science of ethnopediatrics. Professor Small joins pediatricians, child-development researchers, and anthropologists across the country who are studying to what extent the way we parent our infants is based on biological needs and to what extent it is based on culture--and how sometimes what is culturally dictated may not be what's best for babies.
Should an infant be encouraged to sleep alone? Is breast-feeding better than bottle-feeding, or is that just a myth of the nineties? How much time should pass before a mother picks up her crying infant? And how important is it really to a baby's development to talk and sing to him or her?
These are but a few of the important questions Small addresses, and the answers not only are surprising but may even change the way we raise our children."John Holt and Pat Farenga are worth reading too, about "unschooling" as essentially "give your kids all the freedom you can stand, especially in following their own educational interests".
http://www.johnholtgws.com/pat...Although, I personally feel the more extreme form of "radical unschooling" as some (not all) practice it is like the libertarianism of parenting, emphasizing freedom over all other virtues... Kids are indeed "learning all the time" but the quality of what they are learning can matter too. Also, "supernormal stimuli" of certain media and certain foods may need to be avoided or limited for health reasons because to help kids avoid or recover from "the pleasure trap".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...Also related on Myers-Briggs for both parent and child to look at various matchups:
http://www.motherstyles.com/And:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...That page talks a lot about Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive and Neglectful styles. But the page goes into more types than that (including "attachment" parenting which may be close to the human historical norm within hunter/gatherer tribes where it sounds like a crying baby was rare).
By the way, kids can be much more a discipline problem when fed junk, not fed enough fruits and vegetables, lacking in sunlight, lacking in good gut bacteria, lacking in exercise, overstressed by an early focus on academics instead of play, saturated by violent and sexualized media, and so on. See also:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/chil...
https://www.vitamindcouncil.or...
http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/0...
http://www.chrismercogliano.co... -
The Adventures of Snowden
Snowden movie... making news around Christmas time... This isn't a sequel to The Adventures of Snowden (1997), is it?
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Re:Ewww...train your cats...
Heck, training is even easier than that. Just install this in the kitchen:
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Re:Matches my experience
When you accuse Newton of being a crank, you should at least provide a citation.
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Re:And how many were terrorists? Oh, right, zero.
I forgot:
I don't open boxes like a crazy person and don't flash my knife around.Link to the knife - http://www.amazon.com/Spyderco...
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Re:from the what-until-they-get-a-load-of-this dep
Oxford commas are optional, and recommended when they improve clarity. In this case, the one after "eats" is enough. Besides, I was quoting the title of the well-known book.
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Re:Nothing can go Wrong Here
Because I present the fantasy of "Things Go As Planned"? Here's my suggestion. Take as much of this hardcore shit as you can and then start operating heavy machinery.
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Re:I don't even...
Playful parenting is a very good tool I've found. Your first goal should be to remove the negativity from the situation, eliminate the anger. Emotions shut down the thinking parts of the brain. When everybody involved is bubbling with emotions, you will never reach the thinking part of the child's brain. Your goal shouldn't be to train the child like a monkey, but to educate about how to independently mitigate negative emotions.
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Re:I don't even...
Alfie Kohn, in Unconditional Parenting, argues that focusing on behaviors is insufficient. You can teach a child that if he gets caught doing X, he'll get a spanking, consistently -- and he may avoid getting caught, yes, but this doesn't address the underlying intentions. Kohn isn't opposed to natural consequences (touch fire, get burned) but kids catch on when you punish coming-home-late with taking away desserts, or whatever. Yes, it's a consequence, but only by your decree, which breeds resentment. He describes this as "doing to" rather than "working with". He's a parent, I'm a parent, I watch plenty of other parents, and I see a tendency to treat the symptom rather than the cause, to punish kids for being inconvenient rather than teaching them to be consciously considerate. I see these kids get punished (and rewarded!) all the time, yet develop no empathy.
I catch flak from the older generation, that sees me as "giving in" to my child if I so much as ask her (let alone discuss!) what she wants or why she did what she did, or insist she get a turn instead of letting grown-ups drone on forever. I'm sure it looks like a lack of discipline, to their eyes. It's not what they were taught, no, but unlike their generation, I've felt no need for time-outs or spankings to make my child "behave". She's a high-energy child, not naturally "easy", but my goal isn't to have a picture-perfect, authority-revering doll. I want her to think and care about others, and she does. It all flows from there.
Someone, somewhere, might find the book interesting. I wouldn't suggest not reading it.
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I recently bought a book from Amazon...... that had too much use of the word "and," leading to an excessive amount of run-on sentences.
.
Maybe I should start hitting the Amazon reviews and flagging all the books whose grammar usage I find confusing.Let's see, this book uses strange and confusing Capitalization, making it difficult to read. Maybe Amazon should suppress it as well.
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A book for you
You might want to read Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. It's a book about game design and, more importantly, teaching game design. There are several exercises along the book taking on different aspects of game design. It's not a book about game programming, though, it's a book about game design. In the first chapters of the book the authors warn about the dangers of mixing game design with game programming, it's easy getting lost in media production (programming and assets) instead of focusing on what's really important: designing a game that's fun to play. There are plenty of good advice in that book, you might want to read it and challenge your kid with the different exercises proposed in that book.
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Re:Just do it
While it's true, in some aspects, that there's not a formula to making games, that doesn't mean you can't systematize game design the same way that you can systematize software development even if there's not a formula to making software. In fact, there are several books in game design and a there's a whole area of study ("play theory" and "game studies"). A basic book about game design is The Ambiguity of Play and another take on the same issues (and some others) is Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals.
See, even if you don't have a formula you can find patterns and use design strategies that will guide you through the design process.
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Re: Math author dies rich...
it's garbage, trying to fill too many roles and full of bloat, though some of this is the publisher's fault.
either dumb it down some more, or use a better book like Apostol. either way, that goddam tome is an anachronistic brick. i fucking hated calculus in high school, yet wound up with a Ph.D. in applied math once i got real teachers and real books.
fuck hell, when did Apostol go up to $220? i thought it was ridiculously expensive when i bought it years ago...
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What about that stupid book is worth US$244?
I really fucking hate this about academia. It's absolutely shameless to charge college students $244 for a single dumb textbook. It's not even that good. It's just that when a department chooses to standardize on a textbook, the move has inertia and is basically impossible to reverse. Then, the publisher can charge something absurd, and everybody pays it, because it is a required text. It's so dirty, because it's profiteering from people who are often barely making ends meet, and typically buying the book with debt.
What really bothers me is that nobody seems willing to do anything about it. If a big, publicly funded university system set aside some money to create and regularly update their core STEM curriculum textbooks - let's start with Calculus, Physics, GenChem, GenBio - it would certainly cost less than the almost $1000 per student that the textbook purchases cost. These universities have Nobel Prize winners among their faculty, surely they have the in-house resources to create excellent textbooks and distribute them on some sort of open license like CC. Arranging sabbaticals for the authors might cost at most a million dollars, or roughly 4000 Stewart Calculus books. That might be about the number of Calc 1, Phys 1, GenChem and GenBio books that are sold on a single campus in a single year.
But this move would help everybody, not just within the entire UC system that funded the effort, but across the globe. And the costs of updating and embellishing future editions would be far less. I'm so mad that a large university system doesn't just make this happen. And yes, raise fucking tuition by $200 to pay for it, if you absolutely have to. In exchange for textbooks you can have for free (or for printing cost if you don't like digital), everybody will recognize that's a great deal. The courses can explicitly invite students to devise problems for future editions, or to suggest changes and clarifications. And it will bring prestige to the colleges and to the authors, which is worth something too.
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The Art of Game Design, Schell
For a holistic look at games, game mechanics, game development and the game industry, Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design is great. I wish I'd had a copy of this book when I was 11. The second edition just came out, so it's full of contemporary examples your son will probably recognize. As a companion piece, Brathwaite and Schreiber's Challenges for Game Designers would be a lot of fun to work through together - its board-game and card-game challenges are easy to start on at home, and are a great way to try out what professional designers go through when developing and evaluating mechanics.
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The Art of Game Design, Schell
For a holistic look at games, game mechanics, game development and the game industry, Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design is great. I wish I'd had a copy of this book when I was 11. The second edition just came out, so it's full of contemporary examples your son will probably recognize. As a companion piece, Brathwaite and Schreiber's Challenges for Game Designers would be a lot of fun to work through together - its board-game and card-game challenges are easy to start on at home, and are a great way to try out what professional designers go through when developing and evaluating mechanics.
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How about an armband phone case?
Have you considered an armband-style case for your phone? It straps the phone to your body pretty much as if it were a watch. You'd have to remember to take your phone out of your pocket and put it in the case when you suit up, but I assume you'd have the same problem remembering to remove a watch and put it back on over your suit.
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This reads like a hit piece
I would not call myself a fan of Meyer, and her use of her relationship with Page to screw over her contemporaries (read this book) has really left a bad taste in my mouth. However this article reads like a hit piece. It looks like some activist investors are trying to get her to do things she does not want to do (the article suggests returning the money back to shareholders and firing all the engineers). They are attacking her personally and that stinks.
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Re:it can be air filled
The NPC is a science fiction story that takes place in the atmosphere of Venus (disclaimer, I wrote it). I tried to present a realistic view of how an actual colony might function there.
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That was the last straw...I've had it..
I'm going to lose my shit if you damned CS majors don't stop trying to correlate local weather to the frigging climate! It's a fucking non-linear system. Small scale does not equate to large scale behavior, in space or time.
Will you *please* go read up on chaos theory? At least smoke some weed and read 'Chaos' by James Gleik, try to see some pictures. Read A First Course in Turbulence by Tennekes and Lumley. I mean, shit, chaos theory has been around for longer than most of you have been alive. Read a goddamned book once in a while. The dead tree kind of book.
Maybe I need some weed.
The universe is filled with non-linear chaotic systems. Earth's climate is part of one. Deal with it!
Yep...I do need some weed. -
Re:Amazon is run by Nazis
AFAIK Hitler never sold something cheap on the internet, then canceled the deal...
No, but he sold the idea of moving east to some people, then switched the deal, AND he did so using IBM machines. OK, not an exact analogy but comes somewhat close.
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Re:Sometimes sellers do truly ask for 1 cent
I find this to be really irritating when sellers on eBay do it... but Amazon actually fix shipping prices for Marketplace. For instance, shipping on books/CDs/DVDs/games is $3.99. (Full list.) For sellers on Amazon Marketplace, a price of 1c means "we would've sold this to you cheaper, but Amazon won't let us."
What they ought to do is to just merge the shipping price in with the product price. Combined shipping would make that impossible (since the price would depend on what other items you have in your basket), but Amazon don't even allow that, so adding a book to your basket is going to increase the total shipping cost by $3.99. It makes no sense as a separate figure.
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Confuzzling!
So, the cheapest TV stick imaginable has a Cortex A9 processor, so reading about the A9 processor in development by Apple is something that doesn't inspire much in the way of excitement up front for me. But it looks like Apple's A5 is more / less the Cortex A9 with some tweaks, so now we literally have two similar products with the same name that are generations apart.
I know of their technical strength in the low-power scene, and the MIPS/Watt race, ARM still leads by a mile, but ARM could also really stand to have some standards for naming the variants in a semi-consistent way so that the merely technically proficient have a chance of keeping up. And, (dare I say it?) this is what trademarks are for and why they exist.
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Re:Wasn't there a book about this?
The example I use is Butterflies, which change from a crawling creature to one that flies, mid life.
Except we have a pretty good idea of how it happens.
Do you believe in eggs? That is, do you believe in organisms--including insects--that reproduce by laying eggs? And do you believe that those eggs don't have shells?
If so, can you imagine a mutation that makes an egg very slightly motile? The outer layers of such eggs is typically some kind of protein. Suppose that there is a mutation such that after the egg has grown to a certain size there is a biochemical response that causes the protein coat to contract when exposed to light. Lots of biochemicals react to light, and some of them change shape or react with other molecules under the exposure to light in ways that cause them to change shape. It just has be a tiny bit.
Now you have an "egg" that in its later stages of development moves away from light. Such an egg might plausibly be more likely to survive than one that stays put. So over time, the eggs of such insects that are very slightly motile come to predominate. There is no way around that if the mutation is heritable, so unless you don't believe in DNA--and chemistry--you have to accept that that happens. You could also deny the laws of probability, in which case I have a lottery ticket to sell you.
Now iterate this process over a few million generations. Can you see how you might go from a flying insect that lays eggs to a flying insect that lays slightly motile eggs to a flying insect that has a motile larval stage?
What we can or cannot imagine is irrelevant to what does or does not exist, so I'm not arguing here that "evolution is imaginable and therefore true", but merely trying to extend your imagination to the point where you are motivated to look more deeply into the subject.
My own belief is that evolution by variation and natural selection is not just plausible, but mathematically necessary: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-...
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Re:Not that surprising thanks to CALEA
"The problem is it will be abused. It will be used for things beyond the scope they claimed it will be."
And that's intentional. Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Science on reasoning, reason doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real news:
http://www.amazon.com/Democrac...
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-G...
http://www.amazon.com/National...Look at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
-
Re:Not that surprising thanks to CALEA
"The problem is it will be abused. It will be used for things beyond the scope they claimed it will be."
And that's intentional. Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Science on reasoning, reason doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real news:
http://www.amazon.com/Democrac...
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-G...
http://www.amazon.com/National...Look at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
-
Re:Not that surprising thanks to CALEA
"The problem is it will be abused. It will be used for things beyond the scope they claimed it will be."
And that's intentional. Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Science on reasoning, reason doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real news:
http://www.amazon.com/Democrac...
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-G...
http://www.amazon.com/National...Look at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
-
Re:Not that surprising thanks to CALEA
"The problem is it will be abused. It will be used for things beyond the scope they claimed it will be."
And that's intentional. Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Science on reasoning, reason doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The real news:
http://www.amazon.com/Democrac...
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-G...
http://www.amazon.com/National...Look at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
-
Absurd
As anyone knows, Google receives several federal subpoenas, and it attempts to cooperate with as many as possible. It has to as a public, U.S. based entity. It seems ludicrous that Schmidt would make this claim, but unless someone has gone through this system like I have (read my story here The Market is not Random), I guess they wouldn't know everything the governments are capable of doing.
Careful, Mr. Schmidt.
-
Re:you can have my classic when you pry it from et
This radio is much better.
-
Re:Not convincing at all
-
Re:Car Jukebox....
> Bluetooth works but it sucks for music quality and you only have rudimentary controls on the head unit.
I've seen bluetooth interfaces that support what looks like the full iPod interface (playlist selection, listing tracks within playlist). There are also bluetooth profiles that allow an iPod to just send an AAC stream to the head unit for decoding. So I think both of those concerns are mostly solved unless you need lossless quality audio.
There's actually a gizmo that almost provides a bluetooth-to-iPod interface with full playlist selection support and whatnot, and supposedly it uses one of the higher quality audio profiles
-
Re:Fucking Hell, Harper needs to go!
"We do not have a shortage of CS workers in this country, we have a surplus, and with some provinces having over 10% unemployment rates Harper is seemingly doing everything he can to keep Canadians out of Canadian jobs."
If you think anyone of the parties in government gives a damn about you then you need to learn about the myth of "balance" in capitalist societies
http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Overthrowing governments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/War-Rack...
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." [p. 10]
"War is a racket.
The 9 trillion dollar bank bailout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Libor scandal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Rule of law is impossible under capitalism, since the kings of business (he who has the gold makes the rules) get to do whatever they want and the public gets fucked.
So if you want to fight corruption "the traditional way" (electoral politics), you're dead in the water because most people aren't going to give up their deeply felt emotions and aren't very bright. This way of doing things is limited because of the limits of history and the amount of energy it takes to transform the minds of a large population and the fact that the media is co-opted. There are things that can be done but you'd have to be really committed and not a change the world 'faker' like most people are (aka they don't want to risk anything).
You need to know that most people who are voting in electoral politics don't live in reality (that's a sizeable chunk, many millions of people, totally oblivious). The real news is the cure for that. Hang out in places where smart people exist, avoid traditional media mostly and always keep them at arms length.
-
Re: Just in time.
Get the HGST "NAS" SATA drives, if you don't need SAS - they are much better than the standard SATA drives, meant for real storage duties - pretty much what nerds need for home. Great ZFS performance. Three year warranty is good enough.
-
Re:you can have my classic when you pry it from et
Hell, I still have a little portable AM/FM radio for when I walk the dog and want to listen to the Blackhawks or Bulls game.
The Sangean DT-200X is a sweet pocket radio. 19 presets, physical buttons that can be operated without lookig, and it can pull broadcasts out of the ether with no net.
-
Re:The battle of extremes.
Corporate greed vs individual entitlement. Both extremes are wrong and harmful
You're a moron if you believe this...
The myth of "balance" in capitalist societies:
http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Overthrowing governments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/War-Rack...
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." [p. 10]
"War is a racket.
The 9 trillion dollar bank bailout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Libor scandal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Rule of law is impossible under capitalism, since the kings of business (he who has the gold makes the rules) get to do whatever they want and the public gets fucked.
So if you want to fight corruption "the traditional way" (electoral politics), you're dead in the water because most people aren't going to give up their deeply felt emotions and aren't very bright. This way of doing things is limited because of the limits of history and the amount of energy it takes to transform the minds of a large population and the fact that the media is co-opted. There are things that can be done but you'd have to be really committed and not a change the world 'faker' like most people are (aka they don't want to risk anything).
You need to know that most people who are voting in electoral politics don't live in reality (that's a sizeable chunk, many millions of people, totally oblivious). The real news is the cure for that. Hang out in places where smart people exist, avoid traditional media mostly and always keep them at arms length.
-
Re:There is no vaccine for the worst diseases
I can't hear myself think for all the
All my kids a fully vaccinated, but I smell something fishy about the industry.
http://www.amazon.com/Dissolvi... -
Why does the DRM even exist?
I mean, I understand the PHB/corporate group think that thinks this useful, but why, when I can get a perfectly good non-DRM official Keurig from amazon for less than I would pay for a Keurig 2.0? And no, it is not some discontinued model, it is the #1 best seller on Amazon.
-
Re:Someone has
Considering the impact on the environment of pods that just ends up in the garbage there's now two reasons not to buy them.
OK, the coffee they make isn't bad, but what's wrong with an ordinary espresso machine?
(1) A Keurig doesn't make espresso -- its pressure is nowhere high enough. (2) Cost: if you really want espresso worth making at home, you're going to pay a LOT more than it costs for a Keurig. (Well, in the short-term anyway; if you keep buying the K-cups, maybe not.)
Anyhow, I would never have bought one of these things myself, but I was given one by a family member something like 6 or 7 years ago. She had used it, but had some trouble with hard water clogging things up, and eventually she got Keurig to send a replacement. But they requested that she remove the insert that allowed you to actually use K-cups, rather than sending the whole thing back.
The flaw in that scheme was that Keurig makes a different sort of permanent plastic "cup" that could be refilled with coffee grounds, allowing you to brew whatever kind of coffee you wanted. But in order to use it -- guess what? -- you needed to remove the insert.
Anyhow, after they had already sent the replacement, it too malfunctioned briefly, and this family member tried cleaning the old one -- and now it worked! (But obviously they didn't have the "DRM" insert to actually use K-cups with it, so they could only brew with actual coffee grounds.) Later they got the new one working again, so now they just had a spare sitting around... which was given to me.
It still works, 7 years later. I've never bought a single proprietary K-cup or even any off-brand ones. I've only ever used it to brew whatever coffee I grind at home.
I would sometimes use it for a fast cup of coffee, but eventually I grew tired of the inferior flavor and went back to a french press.
Point is -- at least with older models, you could brew with your own coffee grounds if you removed the insert and bought the special reusable thing for the grounds (which maybe cost $10 -- an amount you'd save even after a couple boxes of K-cups).
In that case, the environmental impact is really quite minimal and probably better than some other traditional home-brewing methods, since you only heat up enough water for a single serving at a time, rather than people who tend to make a pot of coffee in their drip coffee pot and then never finish the pot or let it sit on the burner keeping warm for hours.
-
Re:Depends
Now if I had 1920x1400 that would rock.
Then why don't you have it? A monitor of that resolution costs about $200, or you can get a refurb for about $100.
My monitor is 3840x2160, and cost $499, which is peanuts compared to the productivity increase.
Using crappy tools is not rational.
-
Widescreen monitors are a scourge
I have a suspicion that they were pushed by the industry as they'd be cheaper to make.
Early TVs were 4:3 ratio because theaters were 4:3 ratio. Theaters became 16:9 ratio to try to fight back against the scourge of VHS home-viewership. Later TVs were 16:9 because later theaters were 16:9. Monitors followed TV ratios because they are the same screens, but with more simplified inputs (no built-in antennae for example).
16:9 has a benefit for the majority of the population who have 2 working eyes. Our field of view is wider than it is tall. There are many scenarios where a desktop monitor or even a 80 diagonal inch TV against the wall is insufficient, but there are many more scenarios where the 16:9 ratio is either sufficient itself or a sufficient baseline to combine with other screens of the same resolution to achieve a useful result. Here's a stand to hold six.
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Re:Why only to police?
I think the Swiss stayed neutral by keeping everyone's money for them and allowing them to make secretive transactions for arms, oil, and to hide fortunes amassed by individuals in times of war (the spoils of war). Without banks like these, you can't wage wars effectively so the banking states/havens are always safe and secure.
Germany intended to invade Switzerland and continuously updated their plans for doing so during World War 2 but the task was made difficult by the Swiss defensive posture which included large militia, dug in regular army, mining of the bridges and tunnels (especially the tunnels which carried traffic between Germany and Italy), and standing orders not to obey surrender commands from the government in the event of capture. All of these things together made Switzerland too expensive to invade before the war ended.
