Look at it as a definition of an abbreviation. Just mention what it stands for in full, and from that point on you can use the abbreviation. For instance:
"This week, the RIAA - the facade behind which Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI operate in these matters - sued a single mother of four for sharing a video of her 9 year old daughter's family reunion performance. Touching though the Metallica cover was, the RIAA felt James Hetfield should be duely compensated, and took upon itself the noble task of collecting the money on behalf of poor James. Whether the $23.109,60 fine will be paid remains to be seen, as the family has been living on little more than food stamps since the untimely departure of the father. RIAA reported to seeing good chances of settling the matter out of court. In unrelated news: James Hetfield was denied adoption of a 9 year old girl from Kuweit, but says he was not deterred, and will be persuing adoption closer to home."
...if Slashdot started naming the large companies behind the RIAA at every occurrence, so any misbehavior on their part is directly related to the "Big Four". Right now, most of us reading about the RIAA don't directly associate them with Sony, Warner, EMI and Universal. And this is exactly what they intended! Let's not endulge them any further.
...I say. If reference counting or basic allocation deallocation coupling is something you cannot do, you're in the wrong business. However, educating students in the art (c.i.t. I know) of programming with Java calls for these kinds of problems.
You're right, because we would know if knowledge or art had been lost over the centuries. Just like in the Middle Ages.
Peasant #1 "Did you know the Romans knew that the earth was round?"
Peasant #2 "Yeah, I know, but that knowledge was lost"
I bought a state of the art computer, with *gasp* a 1.3GB hard disk. So, that's a factor of 500 easily, compared to today. And the IDE-interface is still present on some current motherboards. So all I have to do somewhere in the lifetime of my current computer is find an IDE-cable, hook up the disk, and copy the data to my 500GB hard disk. This will take about 30 minutes maybe? So, that's 30 minutes work, once every 12 years to guarantee the persistance of all my trivial data throughout the decades.
What kind of data that will be lost otherwise do we have to back-up for posterity? I mean, come on, no one is going through your perl-scripts, c++ classes, 10000 digital holiday pictures, diaries of what you had for breakfast, or IRC logfiles. You are not that important! Although it would be fun to speculate what kind of information would have been in the caveman-wiki.
I agree with you on active storage being the future of longterm storage. Eventually it will get automated for data that has already been archived, and then the only point is to get your current data into archive.
Look at how small PDA's can be. Just store any hardware device that can interface with the datastorage. Make sure its interfaces are completely documented and readable from the device itself.
Continuing from that, why not just print the interface specifications of the storage device on high-quality paper an store them with the storage unit? I know, current specs are quite long, but if you design for easy storage and long-term retrieval, this shouldn't be a real problem.
When you join the military, stemcells are harvested from your body, and a brainless clone is grown in an Antarctic lab.
"I lost and arm, BRB -> Antarctica"
... it's actually worse. We're all agreeing here, it's who comes up with the most ludicrous comparison or the most disturbing details about the case what counts.
So, the question is: What can any of us do about this?
... is the reason. Not knowing about bytes and gigabytes is one thing - you can always catch up on that - but being taught that it's fine to ignore the basic scientific methods upon which we have built our entire society, is quite something else. Of course it will not confilct with everyday things most of the time, but it signifies a breakdown of common sense.
To say the least, it would require a premise far more complex than something like the anthropic principle and multiple universes.
However, if you are willing to believe that, would you also be willing to believe that you were created just a fraction second ago with false memories, and that anyone but you is just there to give you the experience of being alive. And you will die within a fraction of a second from now. But, you might think, as I am reading this, surely seconds have past. Or have they? You might also believe in the Tooth Fairy. Because, you see, once you move away from Occam's Razor and common sense, anything is possible.
...Western society. Maybe exaggerated rigth now, but you're getting there. A Secretary of State mentioned this discussion in the Netherlands a few years ago. She became a laughing stock, and rightfully so.
I look at it this way: if you make a movie of yourself rolling dice, eventually you'll roll 20 6's straight. Cut all except that part, youtube it, and amaze the world with your amazing dice skillz ("He must know how to throw dice!"). Anthropic principle, multiple universes, they all sound a hell of a lot more plausible than anything remotely connected to Creationism.
Don't try and make a point about torrents not being 'piracy' by mentioning a few users who downloaded a Linux distro last winter. Anyone knows it's a flawed argument; they're statistically irrelevant anecdotes. Remember those words, as they apply in almost any debate where a general statement is made, and some not too bright person tries to refute it.
'our Western democracies'...
Do not even for a second think you can compare the situation in the US of A to other Western democracies. You are NOT the (Western) world. Every week several such disturbing news reports find their way to our media, here in Europe, all of them making us bless ourselves for not living in the 'Land of the Free'. Good luck though...
Genetic variation is an induced property. It is easier to achieve, since less error correction is needed; it makes the species less vulnerable to f.i. viral attacks; and it encourages evolution thanks to much more frequent 'prototyping'. Hence species with slightly different genes for each member are more likely to succeed in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I am going to have a heart attack from NOT being surprised!
Look at it as a definition of an abbreviation. Just mention what it stands for in full, and from that point on you can use the abbreviation. For instance: "This week, the RIAA - the facade behind which Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI operate in these matters - sued a single mother of four for sharing a video of her 9 year old daughter's family reunion performance. Touching though the Metallica cover was, the RIAA felt James Hetfield should be duely compensated, and took upon itself the noble task of collecting the money on behalf of poor James. Whether the $23.109,60 fine will be paid remains to be seen, as the family has been living on little more than food stamps since the untimely departure of the father. RIAA reported to seeing good chances of settling the matter out of court. In unrelated news: James Hetfield was denied adoption of a 9 year old girl from Kuweit, but says he was not deterred, and will be persuing adoption closer to home."
...if Slashdot started naming the large companies behind the RIAA at every occurrence, so any misbehavior on their part is directly related to the "Big Four". Right now, most of us reading about the RIAA don't directly associate them with Sony, Warner, EMI and Universal. And this is exactly what they intended! Let's not endulge them any further.
...are all the look-at-me abbreviations here on slashdot. Just making you type it out full was entirely worth my time.
What's IANA?
...I say. If reference counting or basic allocation deallocation coupling is something you cannot do, you're in the wrong business. However, educating students in the art (c.i.t. I know) of programming with Java calls for these kinds of problems.
You assume correctly. I'm Dutch myself, and never used the word 'gratis' in English. Thanks you for clarifying.
'gratis' You Dutch or something?
I suppose this will all be raw sensor data from the LHC itself, right? Must be a bitch to get anything meaningfull out of it.
...how many seconds?
You're right, because we would know if knowledge or art had been lost over the centuries. Just like in the Middle Ages. Peasant #1 "Did you know the Romans knew that the earth was round?" Peasant #2 "Yeah, I know, but that knowledge was lost"
I bought a state of the art computer, with *gasp* a 1.3GB hard disk. So, that's a factor of 500 easily, compared to today. And the IDE-interface is still present on some current motherboards. So all I have to do somewhere in the lifetime of my current computer is find an IDE-cable, hook up the disk, and copy the data to my 500GB hard disk. This will take about 30 minutes maybe? So, that's 30 minutes work, once every 12 years to guarantee the persistance of all my trivial data throughout the decades.
What kind of data that will be lost otherwise do we have to back-up for posterity? I mean, come on, no one is going through your perl-scripts, c++ classes, 10000 digital holiday pictures, diaries of what you had for breakfast, or IRC logfiles. You are not that important! Although it would be fun to speculate what kind of information would have been in the caveman-wiki.
I agree with you on active storage being the future of longterm storage. Eventually it will get automated for data that has already been archived, and then the only point is to get your current data into archive. Look at how small PDA's can be. Just store any hardware device that can interface with the datastorage. Make sure its interfaces are completely documented and readable from the device itself. Continuing from that, why not just print the interface specifications of the storage device on high-quality paper an store them with the storage unit? I know, current specs are quite long, but if you design for easy storage and long-term retrieval, this shouldn't be a real problem.
When you join the military, stemcells are harvested from your body, and a brainless clone is grown in an Antarctic lab. "I lost and arm, BRB -> Antarctica"
... it's actually worse. We're all agreeing here, it's who comes up with the most ludicrous comparison or the most disturbing details about the case what counts. So, the question is: What can any of us do about this?
Just grow fields of brainless animals that are kept alive and fed artificially. And don't get all ethical on me.
... is the reason. Not knowing about bytes and gigabytes is one thing - you can always catch up on that - but being taught that it's fine to ignore the basic scientific methods upon which we have built our entire society, is quite something else. Of course it will not confilct with everyday things most of the time, but it signifies a breakdown of common sense.
To say the least, it would require a premise far more complex than something like the anthropic principle and multiple universes. However, if you are willing to believe that, would you also be willing to believe that you were created just a fraction second ago with false memories, and that anyone but you is just there to give you the experience of being alive. And you will die within a fraction of a second from now. But, you might think, as I am reading this, surely seconds have past. Or have they? You might also believe in the Tooth Fairy. Because, you see, once you move away from Occam's Razor and common sense, anything is possible.
...Western society. Maybe exaggerated rigth now, but you're getting there. A Secretary of State mentioned this discussion in the Netherlands a few years ago. She became a laughing stock, and rightfully so. I look at it this way: if you make a movie of yourself rolling dice, eventually you'll roll 20 6's straight. Cut all except that part, youtube it, and amaze the world with your amazing dice skillz ("He must know how to throw dice!"). Anthropic principle, multiple universes, they all sound a hell of a lot more plausible than anything remotely connected to Creationism.
Definitely! I'm visiting fora where the last post was at least 5 years ago :) Plus, I just don't like Civ 3 and Civ 4.
Pah! I discovered Miniaturization two years ago in Civilization II.
Don't try and make a point about torrents not being 'piracy' by mentioning a few users who downloaded a Linux distro last winter. Anyone knows it's a flawed argument; they're statistically irrelevant anecdotes. Remember those words, as they apply in almost any debate where a general statement is made, and some not too bright person tries to refute it.
'our Western democracies'... Do not even for a second think you can compare the situation in the US of A to other Western democracies. You are NOT the (Western) world. Every week several such disturbing news reports find their way to our media, here in Europe, all of them making us bless ourselves for not living in the 'Land of the Free'. Good luck though...
Genetic variation is an induced property. It is easier to achieve, since less error correction is needed; it makes the species less vulnerable to f.i. viral attacks; and it encourages evolution thanks to much more frequent 'prototyping'. Hence species with slightly different genes for each member are more likely to succeed in the long run.