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These are probably better than my explanation. A German space scientist, Karl Meinzer, designed this all in the 1970's and it's still being built into satellites.

• IPS AMSAT's own threaded interpretive language used in the integrated housekeeping unit (IHU) of the satellite
• Paper about Phase IIIB satellite, mentions how the IHU works with no RAM
• Experimental more modern controller

1. Bainbridge, the ironies of automation
2. Slashdot today on AIs that invent internal languages to communicate
3. Non-explanatory nature of sub-symbolic AI (pdf!)
4. Algorithmic states of exception, erosion of liberties

All these ideas have a frog-in-hot-water side, they are incremental, rather than being spectacular, like 'killer robots', but some of the consequences are just as dangerous. They are in two categories a) loss of control b) social cooling and non-democratic loss of liberty.

Esperanto's just Latin with the grammar taked out.

You're probably thinking of Giuseppe Peano's Latino sine flexione. That language replaces the inflection-driven grammar of Latin with a more syntax-based approach. Esperanto is some sort of agglutinative mutant Polish with pan-European vocabulary, as Justin B. Rye likes to point out throughout his Ranto.

As far i know, neither microsoft nor apple did actually stole code.

Microsoft stole VMS code to help make Windows NT. Perhaps more precisely, a VMS team headed by Dave Cutler stole the code from their employer, DEC, and took it with them to work for Microsoft where they developed NT.

DEC did not seem to mind very much though. By that time it seemed that their business model was to allow their staff to walk away with code and then settle for an out-of-court payment from the company it had gone to. That is what they did with Microsoft.

A DEC guy's account

If you ever came into contact with any of Gates' code, you would know he was a mediocre coder. .. ... he hired someone to copy Gary Kildall's CP/M and call it DOS

Microsoft bought DOS from Seattle Computer Products [SCP} and hired its author, Tim Paterson, to port it to the PC. No doubt they copied many ideas from CP/M but not code directly. SCP had written it for their own personal computer and called it QDOS as a joke - "Quick and Dirty Operating System". Microsoft dropped the "Q" and said the "D" stood for "Disk". Gates may have contributed some code. See here

Later MS did a similar trick with Windows NT (the basis XP and every Windows since). They hired a team from DEC who brought the source code of VMS with them and combined it with some bits of OS/2 to make NT. See here

Both SCP and DEC sucessfully got damages out of Microsoft later, although just drops in the ocean for Microsoft.

If you ever came into contact with any of Gates' code, you would know he was a mediocre coder. .. ... he hired someone to copy Gary Kildall's CP/M and call it DOS

Microsoft bought DOS from Seattle Computer Products [SCP} and hired its author, Tim Paterson, to port it to the PC. No doubt they copied many ideas from CP/M but not code directly. SCP had written it for their own personal computer and called it QDOS as a joke - "Quick and Dirty Operating System". Microsoft dropped the "Q" and said the "D" stood for "Disk". Gates may have contributed some code. See here

Later MS did a similar trick with Windows NT (the basis XP and every Windows since). They hired a team from DEC who brought the source code of VMS with them and combined it with some bits of OS/2 to make NT. See here

Both SCP and DEC sucessfully got damages out of Microsoft later, although just drops in the ocean for Microsoft.

Fellow linguist responding here. The reason why no IAL (international auxiliary language -- a language constructed to be as easy for someone to learn as a L2 [second language]) has caught on is because of social linguistics. Simple: There is not the prestige in speaking Esperanto that there is in speaking English. For a language to catch on has nothing to do with how hard it is to learn as a L2, and everything to do with the perceived value of learning the language.

I think Esperanto was a good idea. It was developed before Chomsky linguistics, so it has a number of serious design flaws, and there have been a number of post-Esperanto and even post-Chomsky attempts to create a viable IAL, but they all suffer from not having Esperanto's novelty. There's a reason the Esperanto Wikipedia has more articles than the Wiki for any other constructed language. Esperanto has one positive trait that many pidgin languages do not have: It does not significantly alter when creolized (Linguistic term: creolization is when a constructed or pidgin language is learned by little children, who then alter the language when making it a native language)

As a former professional ESL teacher, I have seen people struggle with learning English. The immigrant family who is teaching my child a foreign language has a child who wishes to academically excel but is hampered because they were not exposed to more written English as a kid; we linguistics concentrate so much on spoken language that we often times forget the struggles of learning the written form of a language, a skill immigrants need.

Sure, English can be learned as easily as any other language by a child, but stating that fact ignores those put in the position of learning English as an adult, or those who did not learn written English as a small child. If the dominant language for international communication were an IAL (which would require giving said IAL a lot of prestige and linguistic capital, something that may be impossible to do), a lot of the struggles of immigrants and people trying to perform international business would be eliminated.

Obligatory link: Learn Not to Speak Esperanto

One of the more glaring problems with it is its use of Eastern European consonant values. A good constructed language should use only a few simple consonant and vowel sounds, such as in Spanish and Japanese.

Esperanto is plenty irregular according to Justin B. Rye's "Ranto".

Perl is Finish, Python is Esperanto

Your analogy is especially apt because just as Python isn't perfect, neither is Esperanto.

Not being a Heinlein guru -- any 'predictions' he made that failed?

Yes, and he wrote about them himself — explaining the topic of such predictions in general and his own failures (and successes) in particular. I can not find those works online now (they are copyrighted, no doubt, you have to buy the book), but here is a critique of him — and a critique of the critique.

You could do (a lot) worse, than reading all of the Heinlein you can get — both Fiction and otherwise...

Myself, I'd add the following prediction for posterity — 50 years later, you can say, you read it on /. first: Anything, that is theoretically possible today, will be be practically possible 50 years from now, unless it is found useless, declared illegal or competes with a government-sponsored alternative (the last two being sides of the same coin). .

And the other way around: whatever is not possible even in theory today (like faster-than-light movement or time-travel), will remain impossible in practice for the upcoming decades.

Null-terminated strings were considered superior to using a length because they allowed strings to be > 255 bytes long (using 16 bits for the length would allow longer counted strings, but at that time with 4K of memory nobody in their right mind would suggest wasting a byte like that!).

2 bytes? In 8 bit era, some considered even 0-termination to be a waste of precious limited space and used (char&0x80) as string termination test, which can be simply translated to "jump if negative" when treated as signed 8 bit.

Here's Sinclair BASIC, for example.

Null-terminated strings were considered superior to using a length because they allowed strings to be > 255 bytes long (using 16 bits for the length would allow longer counted strings, but at that time with 4K of memory nobody in their right mind would suggest wasting a byte like that!).

2 bytes? In 8 bit era, some considered even 0-termination to be a waste of precious limited space and used (char&0x80) as string termination test, which can be simply translated to "jump if negative" when treated as signed 8 bit.

Here's Sinclair BASIC, for example.

Not sure what a "memory stick" is (you mean a SIMM?) but I've used a 40GB HD along with numerous flash carts larger than 2GB with no problems. Are you sure you're using the "FORMAT/FS:FAT32" command and not just "FORMAT"?
Or else use fat32format.exe.

"Without a crankshaft there isn't any side load put on the cylinder either, so that experiences less friction too."

There are alternatives to cranks which don't produce sideloads on the piston/cylinder. The best also extract more 30% energy from the stroke as they're not subject to cosine rules.

Downside: hideous mechanical complexity. They've been tested and work, but they require the bottom end be a lot more complex than it is now.

http://www.shelleys.demon.co.u...
http://www.wisemanengine.com/a...
http://www.scalzoautomotiveres...

The simplest is simply a straight rod connected to the piston which attaches to the crank rod via a silder - these are commonly used in ships and large stationary engines, but they increase the height of the engine by _at least_ the length of the piston stroke and they don't give any mechanical advantage over a standard crankshaft setup.

There's also the scotch yoke, but it's not wonderful under high loads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

> I remember thinking "too little, too late" when IBM launched its x86 line (the IBM 5150 PC with 8088 CPU) in 1981.

Memories! I cut my programming teeth on an IBM 5120, entering Star Traders (like Starlanes only text-ier) and Star Trek from hobbyist coding books. The days!

Since I designed, wirewrapped, and programmed embedded 6502 and 8080 system in that era I am well prepared to assess your claims. In a nut shell you are an arrogant tard and the original poster is figuratively accurate inexact.

Your post is really bizarre.

THe 6502 was an amazing processor. the Apple II was also a 6502. Unlike it's near contemporaries, the 8086 and Z-80 (and 6800),

Ok, with you there.

Nearly every instruction took a microsecond. Thus while the clock rate was 1 Mhz, it was much faster than a 4 Mhz 8080 series chip since those could take multiple cycles to do one instruction.

Well, that's just a bunch of crap: http://www.obelisk.demon.co.uk/6502/reference.html (look at the "Cycles" column.)

What the original poster was likely saying, since it becomes clear later in the article, was that all the 6502 instructions were divided up into alternating cycles of memory fetches and internal calculations with an exact period of 1 microsecond for those. The 8080 series would use 1,2,3,4 and more with wait states cycles for an instruction with no regular pattern (in terms of future predictable times) of when the bus would be busy.

So you are wrong, have a reading comprehension problem, and are an ass about it.

Few memory chips (mainly static memory) could keep pace with that clock rate so the memory would inject wait states that further slowed the instruction time. The 6502's leisurley microsecond time was well matched to meory speeds.

The Wikipedia article on the 6502 indicates that DRAM access times were on the order of 250ns - 450ns. In particular, 250ns access times are well-matched to 4 MHz clock rates; do the math. At 1 MHz, 250ns DRAM has time to go make a sandwich before it needs to supply the next memory cells.

Sigh, again you have a reading comprehension problem. The original author was discussing static memory. Moreover, the cycle time for memory access always involves some overhead. The time when the CPU reads the data bus needs to occur after the bus has settled which is not at the start of the memories data valid period. But most of all 250ns memory was rare and expensive. Most computers in that time period did use wait states. Why do you think processors even allowed wait states?

Again you are being an ass about this as well.

On the 8080s using main memory you could often see gltiches on video displays that would happens when the video access was overridden by the CPU access at irregular clock cycles.

No. Then, as now, video display glitches were caused by updating video RAM directly outside of a VSync pulse. You could just as easily get video glitches on 6502s as on 808x machines.

that was an additional restriction on 8080 machines. But on 6502 machines one did not have to wait for the vertical sync to update the video memory. In fact that is EXACTLY what the original poster was pointing out, without trying to flaunt jargon like you.

This makes you look stupid now.

Which leads us to:

As a result most 8080 series based video systems used dedicated video card like a CGA or EGA. Hence we had all these ugly character based graphics with slow video access by I/O in the Intel computer world. In the 6502 world, we had main memory mapped graphics.

Patently false. Video memory on an 808x machine (even on CGA and EGA cards) was most certainly memory mapped.

yes it could be done. But then you had the problem of glitches or waiting for VSYNC (or if you liked to live dangerously, HSYNC). It wasn't pretty to build hardware or write code for. Your interaction with it didn't treat it like main memory but rather so

[Gates] didn't rob from anybody, He exchanged value for value.

He robbed me by making me pay for pre-loaded copy of Windows when I bought a PC, a copy I did not use. No "value-for-value" there.

The only transactions that are not a net win are when one is at the point of a gun. Bill Gates never pointed a gun at anyone.

You don't need a gun to force people to do things. Like "buy Windows or you can't have a PC"

If there was no value in Microsoft products then people wouldn't buy them.

People can buy things because they are forced to (see above), or because they are ignorant. You should read this The Grantham Grocer Fallacy

Given that it's possible to build your own gps received from scratch anyway this seems little unnecessary. (See http://www.holmea.demon.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm for someone who did) Ok so it's not trivial but it's certainly possible.

You have to deal with different threading, file-system, audio, controller and networking APIs

Threading I'll give you, though C++11 is supposed to take a step toward fixing this. Audio and controller appear to be handled by SDL or Allegro. Networking is why Windows copied the BSD sockets API to make Winsock in the first place. As for file system, there are plenty of thin wrappers that run on Windows and expose rough equivalents of POSIX APIs such as opendir() and the like. Could you explain in more detail?

Difference is when a private company pulls a stunt like taking down its entire IT system, customers start to abandon it and head to a competitor. If they screw up badly enough, they go bankrupt and everyone who worked there is out of a job. That creates a huge incentive to do things in a manner least disruptive to their customers.

As capitalists always do, you assume that customers are well informed, and react to that information. However, customers are often (shall I even say usually) uninformed because they do not have the time or experience to research the field. Example : where I worked (private company). ordering stationery stuff was left to a woman who was paying 5x as much to Company A as she could have paid for the same stuff from Company B, so even though Company B was more "efficient" it did not get our custom, and our woman was not fired either . Another example :- Ryobi garden equipment (strimmers etc) is utter crap, but it still the best selling garden stuff in the UK because the people buying it are ignorant of the fact.

This is the Grantham Grocer Fallacy

Strange to see this comment on a techies' site because the "shift" you praise was away from technology, in which the UK had excelled since the industrial revolution, to "service" industries. Mrs T came from a tech background herself, but having changed careers she had it in for it. Knowing her, you can imagine her resentment and relish for revenge for having been the laboratory junior, making the tea etc.

She thought that Britons were cleverer than the rest of the world so Britain could make its living from purely cerebrial work, like finance, without getting its hands dirty. And of course, selling the "family silver" (the UK industries) and North Sea oil would keep the UK going, for some time anyway. This was before the internet allowed many service industries (apart from the most crappy things like washing up) to be outsourced, even more easily than manufacturing which has significant shipping costs.

The French, Germans and Italians, the most comparable nations, did not follow suit. My own industry - railway engineering - was decimated by Mrs T (she particularly hated railways) and the world-leading railway technology we had was largely picked up by those nations to supplement their own, and they now manufacture and sell the hardware to us.

It is a mystery to me what we live on now in the UK. Everyone I know is basically shifting paperwork around and is, metaphorically speaking, taking in each others' washing. The shit is starting to hit the fan now though.

Here is what I think of her free market theories The Grantham Grocer Fallacy. "The Grantham Grocer fallacy" because she thought it would work as it did among the Grocers of Grantham ( as her father was) during the 30's and 40's. I loathed the bitch, yet I am most definitely not a socialist. Views on her were binary - some loathed her while the others thought the light of the World shone out of her backside.

on a side note, i love this website:

http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/critdate.htm

it is a huge list of important dates relevant to computer programs, algorithms, and O/Ses.

http://www.djmorton.demon.co.uk/scouting/songs/embalming.htm

I think companies split up too readily as it is, in the UK at least. Like the railways, once responsible for everything within their fences, are now the supreme buck-passing artists. Train late? The train staff blame the signalling (different company), who blame the track maintenance teams (different company) who blame a sub-contractor (different company) who say they are only an administrating agency who blame their self-employed workers who blame thier suppliers who blame a delay on the railway ... and so on and so on.

Same with the electicity supply, water, road maintenance, builders, and, in my professional job, even "well known", "large" engineering companies which are actually conglomerates of sub-companies. It is often impossible with these these to find out just who you are dealing with, they are administrative mazes, deliberately so. Even the people "fronting" a company often genuinely do not know who is behind them, there are so many layers of buck-passing though mini-companies of pure middle-men, all taking a commission, that the buck stops nowhere.

This love affair with small companies in the UK was boosted by Mrs Thatcher, who's attitudes were rooted in her father's small-town grocer's shop. The fallacy of applying this attitude to the economy as a whole is described here :-

www.nuke.demon.co.uk/grantham_grocer

That's a quote from a Monty Python comedy, in case someone doesn't realize that.

Aha, just found the link I was looking for: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

Aha, just found the link I was looking for: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

If you are in marketing, it is you who is the leach. I pay for my internet access and dont want you riding on my bandwidth.

I remember when most "sites" were bulletin boards and they were not that bad for the time. There were mostly free apart from the phone call, for which I still pay the equivalent today. There were plenty of them on many topics, without adverts, and they mostly kept relevant to the topic.

I have several web sites which are free, have no adverts, and anyone is welcome to visit. I pay for the hosting which is actually quite cheap. Here is one. As it happens it is about Mrs Thatcher who also believed that nothing could or should exist unless it was commercialised.

I have no objection to web sites which are meant as advertising, such as when I want a new camera I go to camera shop web sites to see what they have got. The internet will always exist for such sites.

The free market only works if customers aren't stupid.

Indeed. Assuming that customers are informed and clever is part of the Grantham Grocer Fallacy

The fact remains that he did die conveniently in a plane crash just after failing to come to terms with MS.

Not true.

On July 8, 1994, Kildall fell at a Monterey, California, biker bar and hit his head. The exact circumstances of the injury remain unclear; however, he had suffered problems with alcoholism in his later years. Various sources have claimed he fell from a chair, fell down steps, or was assaulted because he walked in to the Franklin Street Bar & Grill wearing Harley-Davidson leathers. He checked in and out of the hospital twice, and died three days later at the Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula. The coroner's report identified the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head. There was also evidence that he had experienced a heart attack, but an autopsy did not conclusively determine the cause of death.

Gary Kildall

Concurrent CP/M 3.1 and later, and single-user CP/M-86 with BDOS 3.3 and later (including DOS Plus), allow CP/M programs to access DOS-formatted discs via conventional BDOS calls, emulating (as far as possible) the behaviour of a normal CP/M filesystem. The behaviour is probably a good starting point for anyone writing a CP/M emulator which uses a hierarchical or non-CP/M filesystem.

The FAT filesystem in 16-bit CP/M-86

To me this says that the original or "normal" CP/M file system was not FAT.

"Brought peace!"

...wait. Shit.

Yep, and that would be redundant.

Very adept combination of the first cause ploy with the argument by semantical gymnastics, 125 Pope-Points(TM) for you. (Some restrictions may apply. Epic poetry not included. Not valid in Delaware or Guam.)

From the The Principia Discordia:

A PRIMER FOR ERISIAN EVANGELISTS
by Lord Omar

The SOCRATIC APPROACH is most successful when confronting the ignorant. The "socratic approach" is what you call starting an argument by asking questions. You approach the innocent and simply ask "Did you know that God's name is ERIS, and that He is a girl?"
If he should answer "Yes." then he probably is a fellow Erisian and so you can forget it.
If he says "No." then quickly proceed to: THE BLIND ASSERTION and say "Well, He Is a girl, and His name is ERIS!" Shrewedly observe if the subject is convinced.
If he is, swear him into the Legion of Dynamic Discord before he changes his mind.
If he does not appear convinced, then proceed to: THE FAITH BIT "But you must have Faith! All is lost without Faith! I sure feel sorry for you if you don't have Faith." And then add: THE ARGUMENT BY FEAR and in an ominous voice ask "Do you know what happens to those who deny Goddess?"
If he hesitates, don't tell him that he will surely be reincarnated as a precious Mao Button and distributed to the poor in the Region of Thud (which would be a mean thing to say), just shake your head sadly and, while wiping a tear from your eye, go to: THE FIRST CLAUSE PLOY wherein you point to all of the discord and confusion in the world and exclaim "Well who the hell do you think did all of this, wise guy?"
If he says, "Nobody, just impersonal forces." then quickly respond with: THE ARGUMENT BY SEMANTICAL GYMNASTICS and say that he is absolutely right, and that those impersonal forces are female and that Her name is ERIS.
If he, wonder of wonders, still remains obstinate, then finally resort to: THE FIGURATIVE SYMBOLISM DODGE and confide that sophisticated people like himself recognize that Eris is a Figurative Symbol for an Ineffable Metaphysical Reality and that The Erisian Movement is really more like a poem than like a science and that he is liable to be turned into a Precious Mao Button and Distributed to The Poor in The Region of Thud if he does not get hip.
Then put him on your mailing list.

A short story about a future trade in cloned Celebrity Meat:
http://www.omegacom.demon.co.uk/meat.htm

Like a lot of cleaners, I started out in public health, running DNA analyses in a forensic laboratory. That was ten years ago, when the meat trade was at its height. We were processing ten thousand samples a day. Most were fakes. 'Princess Di' for instance, was originally a basal cell cancer excised from a fifty-eight-year-old Albanian woman, but it didn't stop the meatleggers moving twenty tonnes of product. Then fans started doing their own DNA analyses, and growing their own supplies. Once someone has started a cloned cell line, anyone with an incubator, access to a few common biochemicals, and basic knowledge about cell culture can keep it going indefinitely. By the time I joined one of the vat-busting teams, most of the meat we were chasing was one hundred per cent genuine cloned celebrity. As soon as anyone managed to get a viable scrap of tissue, that was it. The meat was out there. The only way to stop it was to bust the places where it was grown.

You forgot the link for Esperanto.

It has been available for Linux since 2008. 02-Aug-2008 Work in progress port of Sun's DTrace system for Linux. It is actively maintained. http://www.crisp.demon.co.uk/tools.html I don't see anything new to the table outside of keyboard, mouse, and framebuffer recording. I'm not sure a lot of Linux users would find that an attractive addition.

Built-in instruments can track

        User events, such as keyboard keys pressed and mouse moves and clicks with exact time.
        CPU activity of processes and threads.
        Memory allocation and release, garbage collection and memory leaks.
        File reads, writes, locks.
        Network activity and traffic.
        Graphics and inner workings of OpenGL.

Why a video when a series of photos would be more interesting and take less time and be more informative than ~7 minutes?

Not very impressive because he just took something apart and repackaged it. Had this guy created the actual circuitboard, coded Space Invaders (or downloaded the original code and implemented it) and set up the tiny cabinet to work like the original (i.e. two buttons to move right and left instead of a joystick) then it would've been interesting to see.

Plus it's been done before. Anyone can acquire a better version than this guy's here for just $25 saving you the hassle which ends up being more expensive.

Oh look, it's only been ten years and someone has reinvented Hypermatter. Almost looks as good as the original.

Some resources in the 'Starter' section of this page: http://www.gigaflop.demon.co.uk/links/education.htm

Actually USB mass storage can support >512 byte sectors easily

E.g.

http://forums.storagereview.com/index.php/topic/28840-so-i-bought-the-new-3tb-goflex-desk/

This actually presents a 4096 byte physical sector size to the OS. Handily this means that MBR partitioning will still work with it - that has a limit of 2^32 sectors but with a 4K sector size that is 16TB..

Windows is fine with >512 byte sectors at least post boot but I don't think it's possible to use them over ATA on any current OS. I.e. there are Advanced Format drives with 4K sectors but currently they all emulate 512 byte sectors over ATA. Probably moving to 4K native sector size on ATA is going to take some time since that requires changes to the ATA spec, drives, Bios and OS boot code.

Since the USB mass storage driver has supported >512 byte sectors for ages because CDs and DVD Roms have 2K byte sectors it's actually easier to get >2TB drives working over USB.

The reason I know about this stuff? I wrote this free tool

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/guiformat.htm

It so happens that it works fine with the 3tb Goflex USB drive because it has a 4K physical sector size. FAT32 has the same limit 2^32 sector limit as MBR.

So you can have 16TB FAT32 volumes to share your AVI files between your PC, Mac, Linux box and games console/media player. 16TB is a lot of movies, maybe even all of them.

Now some might say that it's insane to use such an old format. That's sort of true but FAT32 is good because it's so widely implemented. It's hard to imagine anything else being supported across such a wide range of devices. Also if all you're doing is streaming AVI files FAT32 is actually good enough - because it is so simple it is trivial to implement it and get stability and performance very close to the raw performance of the device. More modern file systems are not like that.

About 10 seconds on Google will show you that they are in BMWs

Dearest AC,

I've been looking for several minutes and still haven't found anything.

This link indicates that some BMWs have a device called a hydraulic accumulator which is pressurized and used for braking purposes, but does not indicate that mine does.

I'm very interested in this yet-unseen part on my car.

I'd rather recommend Kubuntu 10.04 (Long term release). I admit that it didn't work flawlessly out of the box. Also Canonical offers desktop support for 88.42£/year. And once your kids grow up they'll be able to fix your computer for free anyway ;)

> When was the last time our government, did something to help people? I can't think of anything, really.

Oblg. http://www.epicure.demon.co.uk/whattheromans.html

All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and public order... what have the Government done for us?

There is much evidence that contradicts such a belief.

If you actually care, you have more than the necessary resources to look it up yourself. Mine it is not to convince someone against their will that a cherished belief is wrong.

So which is it? Are you going to factually challenge someone's belief or backpedal from a badly played bluff because you simply don't have the cards?

I responded to you because I had just got done complaining about how much argument is taking place on this subject without a single mention of evidence. And then I happen upon you, who not only talks of evidence but suggests that there is an abundance of it, in favor of censorship — which is the windmill I happen to be tilting at today.

I mean I don't know anything about porn — I'd be lucky if I could perform a Google search on the topic without somehow lousing it up — but I strongly resist censorship. Especially when the folks doing the censoring cannot produce empirical data about what ill is being resolved by slicing up other people's access to empirical data and replacing it with falsehood.

I mean, no matter how many citations we might potentially find suggesting there is no causal link to harm, how can I find the studies you specifically claim to have that there is? Your claim is fantastic. On par with claiming to have proof of evidence of God. So imagine my disappointment when I learn you were just making it up as you went.

As to the Ad Hominem (please look that up too), If it's any help, I am sorry for suggesting you don't know the meaning of the word "poison". That was very passive-aggressive of me. I should have just flat out said it instead.

It's just that I have high expectations for people who spam promo codes, trying to make a buck convincing people that coconut oil can cure hypothyroidism. You've got to at least demonstrate knowledge of the basics, or you'll be taken about as seriously as Sarah Palin when somebody calls Bullshit on you.

Exactly: Babies are stupid.

Not at all surprising--there have been conclusive studies done in the past on just how stupid babies are.

This is why ray tracer demos love showing off spheres made of millions of polygons and so on. It is cheap to do. However turns out polygons aren't the only thing that matters for graphics.

The spheres would most likely be represented as an equation, not a soup of polygons. It's much more efficient (not to mention a whole lot easier) to raytrace. It's also infinitely precise, which is actually why a lot of people are more interested in raytracing than approximating things with polygons.

For instance, it's a heck of a lot easier to render isosurfaces in a raytracer than turning them into a big polygon soup and rasterizing that.

How about this:

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

Although I personally have some objections (website not mine) to Esperanto in particular, that's a bad analogy. Logo is not used by everyone because it's not powerful enough for professionals. Simplified speaking languages, however, are every bit as powerful as "real" languages. The main reason people use English et al, as the guy who wrote the above linked page put it, "it has an extensive Installed User Base, and can thus afford to ignore criticism in exactly the same manner as Fahrenheit thermometers, QWERTY keyboards, and certain software packages, which can all rely on conformism, short-termism, and sheer laziness for their continued survival."