Oh yes, you are right. Thanks. Long time since I got entangled in floating point arithmetic. I had also never heard of it being called numerical instability.
1. Diversionary tactics again. Profit/high-quality applications is irrelevant to the point of discussion. In the GGP post, you made it appear that the only way App store could be fair to developers is by closing down the App store altogether. I pointed out another way the App store could have maintained its fairness. End of story, unless... well I don't see how you can explain that omission. Maybe you will try.
2. For a substantial part of its lifetime, Symbian worked as a mobile OS company such that:- Nokia (48%) and many other mobile phone companies: Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Seimens etc. held most of its equity. Now Nokia is the major stakeholder (or it was going to be, not sure). So the job of Symbian during this period, can be said to be to do the bidding of Nokia and other mobile phone OS companies and help them increase their profits. As of FY 2008, Nokia alone had more profits (5.0 billion)* than the whole of Apple put together (4.83 billion)** . I say "whole of Apple" because iphone is just a small part of Apple's business, whereas Symbian phones is a major part of Nokia's. Add to it the possible increase in profits Symbian provided to its other (erstwhile) stakeholders and you can rest assured that iphone App Store cannot boast its superiority on the basis of profits in the least bit. Another of your lies exposed. How many more will you try?
What has scale got to do with it? You said Microsoft forced companies to "do things in the way Microsoft did". I asked for a clarification, because I missed the news when Microsoft forced a company to go into PC OEM business. You cannot clarify, because you had lied in the GGP post about Microsoft forcing companies in a way Apple didn't. End of story, unless you can clarify it now.
I never said anything about scale, character or "harm to society". What authority do I, or you have to decide the amount of "harm to society" anyway?
Do you know what Apple could have done to avoid any issues of power over developers, or treating developers unfairly? They could have not opened the App Store in the first place, and only made first-party apps for the iPhone
Do you know what else Apple could have done? They could have made it easy to get apps from places other than the Apple App Store. Like Symbian does. I guess Android too. Conveniently forgot about it, did you?
It's not like Apple is forcing companies to do things in the way Microsoft did
When did Microsoft force some companies to become PC OEMs?
Your solution for iphone developers to be not screwed by Apple is "other option than to develop for the iPhone". Similarly, a company had other options than becoming PC OEMs.
I know plenty of small developers that don't develop for the iPhone at all. They could develop for Android, for Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm or develop for desktop PCs and not mobile devices at all.
I know plenty of companies that are not PC OEMs at all. They could look for oil under sea, they could run a recreational resort, they could earn money by advocating for some company on Slashdot like you do for Apple.
Right. 80 is not such a hard requirement. It must be subjectively defined as per circumstances. Where I work, upto about 120 characters for java code is considered all right. But we discourage more than 80 characters for perl.
This doesn't take away from the fact that such limits/best practices/guidelines should be defined on a project wide basis rather than left to each individual developer.
Manufacturers will stop selling systems with wifi when people don't want systems with wifi enough to buy them
I think the GP's point was that wifi will be replaced by 3G because:
1. 3G networks are controlled by telcos. 2. Telcos will charge the customers for access to 3G network. 3. Telcos earn money if netbooks do not have wifi (wifi networks are typically end-user controlled, without giving extra money to telcos). 4. Telcos pressurize device manufacturers to not include wifi in devices. How? 4a. Subsidizing chosen devices (of course without wifi) by bundling with their 3G contract. 4b. Directly through agreements with device manufacturers. I guess this would border on illegal.
So consumers not wanting wifi is one reason why wifi might be phased out; but telcos not wanting wifi is another reason that you should not overlook.
Notice how newspapers break the content into columns, even if a single article covers 5 columns in page width? There is an optimal text width that helps people read best. 80 might be a number coming from punch card days, but it is still a good approximation of "ideal" column width as used by various publishing standards. It is, in fact, a bit more than ideal column width. I see 2 reasons for this:
1. Breaking simple text simply results in excessive hyphenation. Breaking code into multiple lines has higher impact because code has its own indentation too. 2. Indented code that starts at 20th column and ends in 80th column => total width is 60 columns which closer to the ideal columns width.
You are right. I'd like to add here that for a programmer to write such comments, he must be able think all the possible ways the thing can be done. Often, the only reason WHY a particular way is chosen is : that is the only one that occurs to the programer at the time and it seems good enough. The simplest way does not always occur to people first.
If dolphin communications have more complexity per unit time, that would mean that dolphins can possibly convey more information than humans, right? Why this reverse conclusion? Maybe I am missing something. Any link to the study?
It sure is an anecdote, but you didn't even have that. You had a completely unjustified statement of it being reasonable "to infer a high probability that their brain structure was effectively identical".
Active brain cells, you can figure if you use a bit of them, constitute:
That part of the brain which actively helps in increasing IQ (rather than that which maybe eats glucose but has zero/negative effect on IQ).
So a person with higher number of brain cells but lower IQ (with all the biases of IQ tests) has lower proportion of "active" brain cells. Please let me know what was so hard to figure about that, given the context of relation between size of brain and IQ.
In my family, we all are, of course, closely related. When we compare adult males, we have different heights and it is the length of legs that is most different. Rest of the body is very similar in length. By your reasoning, ratio of height/leg-length should be similar in a family?
Similarly, this hominid might have had the same or less number of "active" brain cells as an average human today, but a higher number of total brain cells. This is possible despite it being closely related to humans.
I remember that, but there might be preparation against that exopack coming off / malfunctioning / removed for adjustment. Before the exopack is replaced, during such period, the person can take a whiff of Pandoran air for which there might be partial protection.
Jake didn't turn deep blue/purple (cyanosis) after taking a few breaths of it
He was taken to tour Pandoras forests in his own (i.e. as a cripple) body too. He might be inoculated against whatever is in the air, or whatever is not in the air (if there is no oxygen). Possibly genetically treated, possibly chemically, maybe symbiotic microbes placed inside him to enable him to survive a whiff or two of pure Pandoras air. This is a much more technologically advanced age than today we are talking about.
There are some that aren't, but as far as I'm aware, the list of harmful compounds is much longer than the one of compounds that are harmless on skin contact.
Both the lists are so long (at the very least thousands of well-known chemicals in both) that it does not matter which is longer. One is longer than another (itself an unsubstantiated fact) is no reason to not include compounds as possible major component of atmosphere. Human body is itself primarily made up of compounds: organic, inorganic(salts, water etc), organometallic. When in solution, element ions do have an independent function but the ionic form cannot be said to be elemental.
However, if the Pandoran atmosphere contained a (strong) reducing agent, then any contact of it with human-breathable (i.e. oxygen-containing) atmosphere
There is no evidence that the Pandoran atmosphere contained any oxygen. Even if it does come in contact with oxygen at some point in time, oxygen doesn't react with all, even most reducing agents at room temperature. Any expectation of fireworks is misplaced.
The "no toxic or corrosive shit" observation rules out many compounds, or at least high concentrations of them
Where did you get the idea that compounds must be corrosive/toxic? The same observation also rules out many elemental gases, that doesn't mean you didn't "guess" other elemental gases in the Pandoran atmosphere. Why would many compounds being toxic/corrosive prevent other compound gases to be present in atmosphere?
Remember why the humans left Pandora eventually? It was because of the "might" of the things defending Pandora against humans. So, the movie re-inforces the doctrine - "might makes right".
Chimpanzees also never created and Aristotle, a Shakespeare, or a Bach. Hell, they never even produced a Jesus.
Maybe they produced something better than these which you don't know. Just like most chimpanzees don't know about your Aristotle, Shakespeare, Bach and Jesus.
The oxidising agent need not be in the air. Combustible material in a heated condition could release such an oxidising agent, which oxidises a strong reducing agent from the air. Somewhat reverse of what typically happens on earth: heat wood/gasoline/ => release hydrocarbon etc. gases => oxidised by oxygen in air.
In fact, both oxidising and reducing agent gases can get released from heating the same combustible substance, also resulting in similar fires.
If I were to guess, then the atmospheric composition of Pandora is 50% N2, 30% O2 and 19% CO2, and 1% other stuff. I might be wrong about the ratio of nitrogen to oxygen, since I believe the higher CO2 content leads to higher oxygen requirements to support combustion.
Major components of atmosphere are not necessarily elemental molecules. They could be compounds too. I suspect your guess is too much tainted by presumption of similarity with earth's, and a lack of imagination. Not that I have any evidence to the contrary:)
1. The atmosphere isn't overly toxic or caustic, since humans "only" need a breathing mask and not full body protection equipment. Also, humans can take a few breaths of the stuff and be just fine if they're brought back to a breathable atmosphere, which rules out really toxic shit like carbon monoxide or hydrogen cyanide.
Right.
The Na'Vi have red blood, so their respiration is probably based on oxygen. Also, fire is possible on Pandora, which also indicates that the atmosphere contains significant amounts of oxygen.
Was their blood shown? Haemoglobin is not the only red thing in the world, is it?
Anyway, fire does not prove any oxygen at all. Any reaction so exothermic that it radiates visible light in significant intensity will be seen as something like fire. If the reaction involves gases and temperature attained is within an order of magnitude of most earth fires, it will be practically visually indistinguishable from earth fire. Even if somewhat earth like chemistry is assumed and the "fire" is oxidation of something, there are too many oxidising agents to count. It might even be flourine - occurs to me more easily because it is Oxygen's neighbour in the periodic table.
Carbon dioxide isn't an inert gas for the human body. It's a crucial element in blood acidity regulation
Right, I'd forgotten about that.
Well, it's improbable, but not impossible by our current knowledge. If the humans had FTL space ships, now that's something I'd file under "impossible". Then again, the whole symmetry thing evolved independently several times on Earth, as far as I know. And a "double" symmetry is probably the easiest to come up with while still gaining whatever evolutionary advantage symmetric shapes bring.
Yeah, I never said it is impossible. Just gives me an indigestion. If humanoid form is the only form you can imagine with a double symmetry, your imagination is seriously limited. Symmetry thing evolved independently, but how many times did it produce humanoid shapes? As compared to the total number of differently symmetrical shapes. Even among now-extinct species.
Since you refuse to refute "force wins", let me try to prove it.
Definition of force: whatever helps you in winning. So it axiomatically follows that "force wins".
Only thing left is to justify the choice of the above definition, given the common usage of the word. Justification follows:
1. In war, it is customary to exercise deception / propaganda / putting up an act. Sun Tzu in fact said that deception is the most important ability in a general, sure to guarantee an eventual victory. Wars so won are also considered to be won through "force", so it is certain that the word "force" doesn't just mean physical force (akin to the one that is measured in newtons) but intelligence is also a part of it.
2. Peaceful victories: Gandhi got some laws passed from the mighty British government (actually parliament) without directly hurting anyone physically. Such victories are also considered to be won through "force of character".
Let me know when you find force to not win.
True, but irrelevant, as Cameron-land != life..... Would be nice to live in movie-land...
Read the subject of the article on which you are commenting. Must be nice to live in a land where topic of discussion does not have to be followed oneself, but comments of others can be said to be irrelevant. Congrats.
I got the impression that their atmosphere is very different, because humans had to hide behind the transparent mask to breathe properly. Simply high amount of CO2 cannot do that. Even on earth, we have 70-75% inert gas (for our breathing purpose) and we breathe quite fine. Was it mentioned that atmosphere is similar to earth's?
I agree with your statement about seeing electromagnetic radiation because we see best in the wavelength range in which solar radiation filtered by atmosphere reaches best on earth's surface.
But about audio frequencies, even if the atmosphere is similar, it can carry various frequencies. Humans hear well in only a particular frequency range. Even different organisms on earth do not hear/emit sound in the same frequency range: elephants, dogs, bats, snakes all have vastly different audio frequency sensing ability despite living in the same atmosphere.
But having said all that, still the amount of similarity with an independently evolved species is too uncanny for me to digest. 2 eyes, 2 ears, a nose with 2 nostrills, 2 arms with hand like endings, a navel, 2 legs, tendency to hide one's groin, hair like thing on head and rest of the body relatively hairless? Doesn't seem to be realistic.
In fact, it is miraculous (almost impossibly so) that they still look so much like humans, can hear/see similar audio/electromagnetic frequencies and myriad other similarities to humans.
But yeah, from the story writer's point of view, it was necessary as its audience is human and it can only relate to human-like things.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yes, you are right. Thanks. Long time since I got entangled in floating point arithmetic. I had also never heard of it being called numerical instability.
1. Diversionary tactics again. Profit/high-quality applications is irrelevant to the point of discussion. In the GGP post, you made it appear that the only way App store could be fair to developers is by closing down the App store altogether. I pointed out another way the App store could have maintained its fairness. End of story, unless ... well I don't see how you can explain that omission. Maybe you will try.
2. For a substantial part of its lifetime, Symbian worked as a mobile OS company such that :- Nokia (48%) and many other mobile phone companies: Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Seimens etc. held most of its equity. Now Nokia is the major stakeholder (or it was going to be, not sure). So the job of Symbian during this period, can be said to be to do the bidding of Nokia and other mobile phone OS companies and help them increase their profits. As of FY 2008, Nokia alone had more profits (5.0 billion)* than the whole of Apple put together (4.83 billion)** . I say "whole of Apple" because iphone is just a small part of Apple's business, whereas Symbian phones is a major part of Nokia's. Add to it the possible increase in profits Symbian provided to its other (erstwhile) stakeholders and you can rest assured that iphone App Store cannot boast its superiority on the basis of profits in the least bit. Another of your lies exposed. How many more will you try?
*: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia
**: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.
What has scale got to do with it? You said Microsoft forced companies to "do things in the way Microsoft did". I asked for a clarification, because I missed the news when Microsoft forced a company to go into PC OEM business. You cannot clarify, because you had lied in the GGP post about Microsoft forcing companies in a way Apple didn't. End of story, unless you can clarify it now.
I never said anything about scale, character or "harm to society". What authority do I, or you have to decide the amount of "harm to society" anyway?
Do you know what Apple could have done to avoid any issues of power over developers, or treating developers unfairly? They could have not opened the App Store in the first place, and only made first-party apps for the iPhone
Do you know what else Apple could have done? They could have made it easy to get apps from places other than the Apple App Store. Like Symbian does. I guess Android too. Conveniently forgot about it, did you?
It's not like Apple is forcing companies to do things in the way Microsoft did
When did Microsoft force some companies to become PC OEMs?
Your solution for iphone developers to be not screwed by Apple is "other option than to develop for the iPhone". Similarly, a company had other options than becoming PC OEMs.
I know plenty of small developers that don't develop for the iPhone at all. They could develop for Android, for Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm or develop for desktop PCs and not mobile devices at all.
I know plenty of companies that are not PC OEMs at all. They could look for oil under sea, they could run a recreational resort, they could earn money by advocating for some company on Slashdot like you do for Apple.
Right. 80 is not such a hard requirement. It must be subjectively defined as per circumstances. Where I work, upto about 120 characters for java code is considered all right. But we discourage more than 80 characters for perl.
This doesn't take away from the fact that such limits/best practices/guidelines should be defined on a project wide basis rather than left to each individual developer.
What do you mean by numerically stable? If some code is algebraically equivalent to another code, both would produce the same result always, right?
While I agree with you for the most part,
Manufacturers will stop selling systems with wifi when people don't want systems with wifi enough to buy them
I think the GP's point was that wifi will be replaced by 3G because:
1. 3G networks are controlled by telcos.
2. Telcos will charge the customers for access to 3G network.
3. Telcos earn money if netbooks do not have wifi (wifi networks are typically end-user controlled, without giving extra money to telcos).
4. Telcos pressurize device manufacturers to not include wifi in devices. How?
4a. Subsidizing chosen devices (of course without wifi) by bundling with their 3G contract.
4b. Directly through agreements with device manufacturers. I guess this would border on illegal.
So consumers not wanting wifi is one reason why wifi might be phased out; but telcos not wanting wifi is another reason that you should not overlook.
Citations:
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/finetypography/ht/line_length.htm
http://desktoppub.about.com/library/nosearch/bl-linelength.htm
Notice how newspapers break the content into columns, even if a single article covers 5 columns in page width? There is an optimal text width that helps people read best. 80 might be a number coming from punch card days, but it is still a good approximation of "ideal" column width as used by various publishing standards. It is, in fact, a bit more than ideal column width. I see 2 reasons for this:
1. Breaking simple text simply results in excessive hyphenation. Breaking code into multiple lines has higher impact because code has its own indentation too.
2. Indented code that starts at 20th column and ends in 80th column => total width is 60 columns which closer to the ideal columns width.
You are right. I'd like to add here that for a programmer to write such comments, he must be able think all the possible ways the thing can be done. Often, the only reason WHY a particular way is chosen is : that is the only one that occurs to the programer at the time and it seems good enough. The simplest way does not always occur to people first.
What if the developer is developing that very server? And it needs admin privileges to restart?
If dolphin communications have more complexity per unit time, that would mean that dolphins can possibly convey more information than humans, right? Why this reverse conclusion? Maybe I am missing something. Any link to the study?
It sure is an anecdote, but you didn't even have that. You had a completely unjustified statement of it being reasonable "to infer a high probability that their brain structure was effectively identical".
Active brain cells, you can figure if you use a bit of them, constitute:
That part of the brain which actively helps in increasing IQ (rather than that which maybe eats glucose but has zero/negative effect on IQ).
So a person with higher number of brain cells but lower IQ (with all the biases of IQ tests) has lower proportion of "active" brain cells. Please let me know what was so hard to figure about that, given the context of relation between size of brain and IQ.
In my family, we all are, of course, closely related. When we compare adult males, we have different heights and it is the length of legs that is most different. Rest of the body is very similar in length. By your reasoning, ratio of height/leg-length should be similar in a family?
Similarly, this hominid might have had the same or less number of "active" brain cells as an average human today, but a higher number of total brain cells. This is possible despite it being closely related to humans.
I remember that, but there might be preparation against that exopack coming off / malfunctioning / removed for adjustment. Before the exopack is replaced, during such period, the person can take a whiff of Pandoran air for which there might be partial protection.
Jake didn't turn deep blue/purple (cyanosis) after taking a few breaths of it
He was taken to tour Pandoras forests in his own (i.e. as a cripple) body too. He might be inoculated against whatever is in the air, or whatever is not in the air (if there is no oxygen). Possibly genetically treated, possibly chemically, maybe symbiotic microbes placed inside him to enable him to survive a whiff or two of pure Pandoras air. This is a much more technologically advanced age than today we are talking about.
There are some that aren't, but as far as I'm aware, the list of harmful compounds is much longer than the one of compounds that are harmless on skin contact.
Both the lists are so long (at the very least thousands of well-known chemicals in both) that it does not matter which is longer. One is longer than another (itself an unsubstantiated fact) is no reason to not include compounds as possible major component of atmosphere. Human body is itself primarily made up of compounds: organic, inorganic(salts, water etc), organometallic. When in solution, element ions do have an independent function but the ionic form cannot be said to be elemental.
However, if the Pandoran atmosphere contained a (strong) reducing agent, then any contact of it with human-breathable (i.e. oxygen-containing) atmosphere
There is no evidence that the Pandoran atmosphere contained any oxygen. Even if it does come in contact with oxygen at some point in time, oxygen doesn't react with all, even most reducing agents at room temperature. Any expectation of fireworks is misplaced.
The "no toxic or corrosive shit" observation rules out many compounds, or at least high concentrations of them
Where did you get the idea that compounds must be corrosive/toxic? The same observation also rules out many elemental gases, that doesn't mean you didn't "guess" other elemental gases in the Pandoran atmosphere. Why would many compounds being toxic/corrosive prevent other compound gases to be present in atmosphere?
there was a "might makes right" is bad
Remember why the humans left Pandora eventually? It was because of the "might" of the things defending Pandora against humans. So, the movie re-inforces the doctrine - "might makes right".
Chimpanzees also never created and Aristotle, a Shakespeare, or a Bach. Hell, they never even produced a Jesus.
Maybe they produced something better than these which you don't know. Just like most chimpanzees don't know about your Aristotle, Shakespeare, Bach and Jesus.
The oxidising agent need not be in the air. Combustible material in a heated condition could release such an oxidising agent, which oxidises a strong reducing agent from the air. Somewhat reverse of what typically happens on earth: heat wood/gasoline/ => release hydrocarbon etc. gases => oxidised by oxygen in air.
In fact, both oxidising and reducing agent gases can get released from heating the same combustible substance, also resulting in similar fires.
If I were to guess, then the atmospheric composition of Pandora is 50% N2, 30% O2 and 19% CO2, and 1% other stuff. I might be wrong about the ratio of nitrogen to oxygen, since I believe the higher CO2 content leads to higher oxygen requirements to support combustion.
Major components of atmosphere are not necessarily elemental molecules. They could be compounds too. I suspect your guess is too much tainted by presumption of similarity with earth's, and a lack of imagination. Not that I have any evidence to the contrary :)
1. The atmosphere isn't overly toxic or caustic, since humans "only" need a breathing mask and not full body protection equipment. Also, humans can take a few breaths of the stuff and be just fine if they're brought back to a breathable atmosphere, which rules out really toxic shit like carbon monoxide or hydrogen cyanide.
Right.
The Na'Vi have red blood, so their respiration is probably based on oxygen. Also, fire is possible on Pandora, which also indicates that the atmosphere contains significant amounts of oxygen.
Was their blood shown? Haemoglobin is not the only red thing in the world, is it?
Anyway, fire does not prove any oxygen at all. Any reaction so exothermic that it radiates visible light in significant intensity will be seen as something like fire. If the reaction involves gases and temperature attained is within an order of magnitude of most earth fires, it will be practically visually indistinguishable from earth fire. Even if somewhat earth like chemistry is assumed and the "fire" is oxidation of something, there are too many oxidising agents to count. It might even be flourine - occurs to me more easily because it is Oxygen's neighbour in the periodic table.
Carbon dioxide isn't an inert gas for the human body. It's a crucial element in blood acidity regulation
Right, I'd forgotten about that.
Well, it's improbable, but not impossible by our current knowledge. If the humans had FTL space ships, now that's something I'd file under "impossible". Then again, the whole symmetry thing evolved independently several times on Earth, as far as I know. And a "double" symmetry is probably the easiest to come up with while still gaining whatever evolutionary advantage symmetric shapes bring.
Yeah, I never said it is impossible. Just gives me an indigestion. If humanoid form is the only form you can imagine with a double symmetry, your imagination is seriously limited. Symmetry thing evolved independently, but how many times did it produce humanoid shapes? As compared to the total number of differently symmetrical shapes. Even among now-extinct species.
That must be a life, so boring, that I could not survive it.
Let me see you survive yours.
Since you refuse to refute "force wins", let me try to prove it.
Definition of force: whatever helps you in winning. So it axiomatically follows that "force wins".
Only thing left is to justify the choice of the above definition, given the common usage of the word. Justification follows:
1. In war, it is customary to exercise deception / propaganda / putting up an act. Sun Tzu in fact said that deception is the most important ability in a general, sure to guarantee an eventual victory. Wars so won are also considered to be won through "force", so it is certain that the word "force" doesn't just mean physical force (akin to the one that is measured in newtons) but intelligence is also a part of it.
2. Peaceful victories: Gandhi got some laws passed from the mighty British government (actually parliament) without directly hurting anyone physically. Such victories are also considered to be won through "force of character".
Let me know when you find force to not win.
True, but irrelevant, as Cameron-land != life. .... Would be nice to live in movie-land ...
Read the subject of the article on which you are commenting. Must be nice to live in a land where topic of discussion does not have to be followed oneself, but comments of others can be said to be irrelevant. Congrats.
I got the impression that their atmosphere is very different, because humans had to hide behind the transparent mask to breathe properly. Simply high amount of CO2 cannot do that. Even on earth, we have 70-75% inert gas (for our breathing purpose) and we breathe quite fine. Was it mentioned that atmosphere is similar to earth's?
I agree with your statement about seeing electromagnetic radiation because we see best in the wavelength range in which solar radiation filtered by atmosphere reaches best on earth's surface.
But about audio frequencies, even if the atmosphere is similar, it can carry various frequencies. Humans hear well in only a particular frequency range. Even different organisms on earth do not hear/emit sound in the same frequency range: elephants, dogs, bats, snakes all have vastly different audio frequency sensing ability despite living in the same atmosphere.
But having said all that, still the amount of similarity with an independently evolved species is too uncanny for me to digest. 2 eyes, 2 ears, a nose with 2 nostrills, 2 arms with hand like endings, a navel, 2 legs, tendency to hide one's groin, hair like thing on head and rest of the body relatively hairless? Doesn't seem to be realistic.
In fact, it is miraculous (almost impossibly so) that they still look so much like humans, can hear/see similar audio/electromagnetic frequencies and myriad other similarities to humans.
But yeah, from the story writer's point of view, it was necessary as its audience is human and it can only relate to human-like things.