Shakespeare called and he doesn't like your scenario.
Shakespeare? I believe it was Ripley that said things about "from orbit" and "to be sure". Although she was talking about something a lot easier to eradicate than lawyers...
Yes, I'd been thinking of the typical Gaza / Bali night club / London train station style suicide bombers. As I said in reply to an earlier post, I think that the real lines of this 'holy war' will eventually be militant theists vs. atheists. To arms against the invisible sky faeries! For they are our greatest threat!
I agree with your amendment, although I'm not convinced that biotech is as advanced as you say. The problem there is lack of knowledge, not lack of tools. Substituting "the average person" in place of "the average doctor" also dramatically increases the chance that just one of them will be willing to die for the sake of blowing things up in a big way. "Some men, Mr. Wayne, just want to watch the world burn."
I very much agree. That, or some kind of EM weapon (think the Pulse in Dark Angel), would be far more feasible than an actual nuke - that's why I said "nuclear-scale weapons" rather than simply "nukes". As time goes by, we will discover more and easier ways to make things go bang.
Absolute certainties are for the religious - like the man-made global warming crackpots.
Actually, absolute certainties also have a place in mathematics and logic. Although, if you would prefer, next time I'll say "very very likely" instead of "certain".
Aren't the "typical" terrorists/extremists, particularly the ones who get into a position to be able to launch an attack on foreign soil, highly educated, and reasonably well off? I don't think the stereotype of "they only do it because they're so ignorant they believe in sky faeries" really holds water.
You make a good point. The typical third-world suicide bombings are carried out by poor, desperate people but as you say, the high profile, effective attacks on first world countries are not. They're carried out by people who are highly educated, intelligent, and wealthy... but who still somehow believe in vengeful sky faeries, at least to the point of claiming them as motivation.
I propose that it is the sky faeries that we really have to fear, so long as people believe in them.
It is a certainty that any well-funded terrorist group will eventually have access to nuclear-scale weapons, and probably in the next hundred years. We need to fix the social problems that cause terrorism before that happens. In real terms, that involves raising the level of education and the quality of life in all parts of the globe to the point where there are no large groups of people who are still so poor that they have nothing to lose, or so ignorant that they have nothing to believe in beyond what their local preacher tells them.
Iraq didn't have WMDs because it didn't want them. A country is a large, stationary target that can't afford to risk playing dirty. What we should be afraid of are small groups with no allegiance to anything except their crackpot holy war (witness Hezbollah and their use of Lebanese civilians as human shields - they're the military equivalent of a guy who straps a playgroup full of 2-year-olds to himself before going on a shooting rampage, and then blames the police for any harm that comes to them).
Well, the light output of an LCD is naturally polarised, so an LCD using polarised glasses is actually far easier to make than a temporal interlacing design (using shutter glasses). Also, shutter glasses require ridicorously high refresh rates and still cause eye strain, not to mention the glasses are powered and thus are heavier and can run out of batteries.
One thing I think will be interesting is whether there will be enough time for the fixed-perspective "3D" to really take off before "true" 3D becomes practical (using screens whose pixels can emit different light colours in different directions, a la HoloVizio). Generating a display like this is tractable (I presume they're using a lenticular sheet system with multiple columns of pixels behind each lenticular strip) but capturing live video in such a manner will prove an interesting challenge.
Also, don't neglect the clitoris. It is not just that little nub, the clit is a series of expansive bulbs which almost envelops the vagina itself.
Actually, I have a theory on this (backed up by a paper I read once - don't laugh, people do research this kind of stuff). My theory is that the sensitive nerve cluster that (for men) is in the glans is (in women) stretched out along the length of the vagina but is mostly protected by the vaginal muscles. The clit is one end of the nerve cluster, and at various other points (the 'g-spot', and just up behind the cervix, among others) it may be close enough to the interior surface to be stimulated. It just depends how the whole area develops.
Pretty sure he meant more layers of tissue, not fecal matter. And yes, it's not that uncommon for women to find such things pleasurable once they get past the "ow that hurts" stage.
Different areas stimulate differently and some are more powerful than others. If girls say that specific area pleasures them more, you don't have to make tons of researches about it. You can just stimulate it.
Fixed.;)
Seriously, though - there are definitely some areas inside the vagina that do a lot more for the girl than other areas. And in my limited experience, they're different for each girl. Knowing how to find those areas through reading her body language is what differentiates a good lover from a mediocre one.
Of these, 21% said they prefer a phone running Android. (That's up from 6% in September.)
And the figures as you give them here are not at all misleading. However, in that context, it's much more useful to represent it as an increase of 15% of total market share. My guess is that it's just a case of 'sensationalism sells issues'.
True... and I guess the cognitive schism comes in at that point. A believer would say "Man (and woman) chose to disobey God and so were cast out, and brought the evils of the world upon themselves." I would say "God still created those evils in the first place, if you're omnipotent and omniscient then you have to take responsibility for your actions."
I guess that's the sticking point for me about all Abrahamic religions. They claim that their god has three traits:
Omniscience - is aware of everything.
Omnipotence - can do literally anything.
Ever-loving - acts out of pure love and benevolence.
It seems specious to me from the outset that any entity could fulfil more than two of these three traits in the world we live in. If it's omniscient and omnipotent, then the existence of suffering proves that it is not ever-loving. If it is omniscient and ever-loving then it must be powerless to prevent the suffering that it by definition both perceives and decries. If it is omnipotent and ever-loving then it must have just not noticed any suffering.
I wonder whether or not the same thing will happen to phones. As people use their phone for more and more, will the cost rise so much that it will be prohibitively expensive?
Actually, smart phones with big touchscreens directly compete with netbooks for their niche. There's nothing I would do on my Eee 900 (short of typing a longish email) that I can't do equally easily on my phone. However, phones have a massive advantage over netbooks in that they're heavily subsidised by service fees and the true cost is hidden behind monthly plans. Case in point - my Eee cost $500 two years ago, but my phone is only $29 a month. If I were your average consumer, I would expect the Eee to be a much more capable device even though I'm paying nearly $700 all up for my phone (including voice service but very little mobile network usage).
Does this mean that, at least for the near future, the idea of a phone as a true personal computer is just a device from science fiction stories(just like flying cars)?
Au contraire, phones are expanding nicely to fill the niche of 'personal computer' as Asimov wrote about. Technology is now at a point where a hand-held, pocketable device is powerful enough to take on the role. This is just the beginning.:)
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
Although according to the definitions I've read, usually Atheism is described as a conviction that God does NOT exist. Continued insistence by theists that God does in fact exist is cause enough for an Atheist to deny this existence. If I tell you that I have a milk jug, and you can see no evidence whatsoever that I have one, then you may very well tell me "you fool, I can see you have no milk jug". In that case you would only be exhibiting an acceptance of the concept of a milk jug, rather than the existence of the particular milk jug in question.
The key is not to Go Big, or Go Small, or Go Bare Metal, it is to go where their interest lies. If they really want to know about electron migration through a solid state material, Hell, go for it. But if they are interested in how to generate a web page, that's where you start.
Exactly. Well spake, sir, and I bet your students love you!
I suggest getting a small machine emulation like a 6800, 6809 or 8080, and teaching him assembler so he knows what's actually going on. Then teach him C, and explain what's going on there in terms of assembling and linking. Then teach him C++, then teach him python. That'll give him an expanding world he understands right down to the metal.
If he's got Aspergers' then this will work perfectly. If he's a regular 12-year-old kid, then he will get bored of register printouts within about twenty minutes.
Personally, at that age, I'd start by baking some cookies. Introduce programming as the act of writing a 'recipe' to explain to the computer how to 'cook' a particular thing. Probably start with programs to generate images, either using the line drawing functions in a graphics library, or by running through each pixel and colouring it based on a formula. Python should be fine (and certainly no less beginner-friendly than Pascal), if you learn it as a collection of magic words and leave the deeper stuff until later.
Slashdot Mirror
Well played, sir, well played.
Shakespeare called and he doesn't like your scenario.
Shakespeare? I believe it was Ripley that said things about "from orbit" and "to be sure". Although she was talking about something a lot easier to eradicate than lawyers...
Yes, I'd been thinking of the typical Gaza / Bali night club / London train station style suicide bombers. As I said in reply to an earlier post, I think that the real lines of this 'holy war' will eventually be militant theists vs. atheists. To arms against the invisible sky faeries! For they are our greatest threat!
I agree with your amendment, although I'm not convinced that biotech is as advanced as you say. The problem there is lack of knowledge, not lack of tools. Substituting "the average person" in place of "the average doctor" also dramatically increases the chance that just one of them will be willing to die for the sake of blowing things up in a big way. "Some men, Mr. Wayne, just want to watch the world burn."
I very much agree. That, or some kind of EM weapon (think the Pulse in Dark Angel), would be far more feasible than an actual nuke - that's why I said "nuclear-scale weapons" rather than simply "nukes". As time goes by, we will discover more and easier ways to make things go bang.
Absolute certainties are for the religious - like the man-made global warming crackpots.
Actually, absolute certainties also have a place in mathematics and logic. Although, if you would prefer, next time I'll say "very very likely" instead of "certain".
Aren't the "typical" terrorists/extremists, particularly the ones who get into a position to be able to launch an attack on foreign soil, highly educated, and reasonably well off? I don't think the stereotype of "they only do it because they're so ignorant they believe in sky faeries" really holds water.
You make a good point. The typical third-world suicide bombings are carried out by poor, desperate people but as you say, the high profile, effective attacks on first world countries are not. They're carried out by people who are highly educated, intelligent, and wealthy... but who still somehow believe in vengeful sky faeries, at least to the point of claiming them as motivation.
I propose that it is the sky faeries that we really have to fear, so long as people believe in them.
It is a certainty that any well-funded terrorist group will eventually have access to nuclear-scale weapons, and probably in the next hundred years. We need to fix the social problems that cause terrorism before that happens. In real terms, that involves raising the level of education and the quality of life in all parts of the globe to the point where there are no large groups of people who are still so poor that they have nothing to lose, or so ignorant that they have nothing to believe in beyond what their local preacher tells them.
Iraq didn't have WMDs because it didn't want them. A country is a large, stationary target that can't afford to risk playing dirty. What we should be afraid of are small groups with no allegiance to anything except their crackpot holy war (witness Hezbollah and their use of Lebanese civilians as human shields - they're the military equivalent of a guy who straps a playgroup full of 2-year-olds to himself before going on a shooting rampage, and then blames the police for any harm that comes to them).
I like you.
Well, the light output of an LCD is naturally polarised, so an LCD using polarised glasses is actually far easier to make than a temporal interlacing design (using shutter glasses). Also, shutter glasses require ridicorously high refresh rates and still cause eye strain, not to mention the glasses are powered and thus are heavier and can run out of batteries.
One thing I think will be interesting is whether there will be enough time for the fixed-perspective "3D" to really take off before "true" 3D becomes practical (using screens whose pixels can emit different light colours in different directions, a la HoloVizio). Generating a display like this is tractable (I presume they're using a lenticular sheet system with multiple columns of pixels behind each lenticular strip) but capturing live video in such a manner will prove an interesting challenge.
The millions of people who enjoy anal sex are not all small enough to fit without some painful stretching the first few times. :(
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter, if only for the reason that "it would be cool if it were true". And hey, maybe it is!
Yes, I am a man, and Im not gay..
Sounds like a case of suspiciously specific denial to me...
Also, don't neglect the clitoris. It is not just that little nub, the clit is a series of expansive bulbs which almost envelops the vagina itself.
Actually, I have a theory on this (backed up by a paper I read once - don't laugh, people do research this kind of stuff). My theory is that the sensitive nerve cluster that (for men) is in the glans is (in women) stretched out along the length of the vagina but is mostly protected by the vaginal muscles. The clit is one end of the nerve cluster, and at various other points (the 'g-spot', and just up behind the cervix, among others) it may be close enough to the interior surface to be stimulated. It just depends how the whole area develops.
Pretty sure he meant more layers of tissue, not fecal matter. And yes, it's not that uncommon for women to find such things pleasurable once they get past the "ow that hurts" stage.
Different areas stimulate differently and some are more powerful than others. If girls say that specific area pleasures them more, you don't have to make tons of researches about it. You can just stimulate it.
Fixed. ;)
Seriously, though - there are definitely some areas inside the vagina that do a lot more for the girl than other areas. And in my limited experience, they're different for each girl. Knowing how to find those areas through reading her body language is what differentiates a good lover from a mediocre one.
Of these, 21% said they prefer a phone running Android. (That's up from 6% in September.)
And the figures as you give them here are not at all misleading. However, in that context, it's much more useful to represent it as an increase of 15% of total market share. My guess is that it's just a case of 'sensationalism sells issues'.
Yes... share growth is a useless metric for a new offering. Whats 350% of nothing? Still nothing. How about giving us the market share instead.
I guess it's the ultimate embodiment of the "new is good" sentiment. The newer the better, and not-yet-released is so good it breaks your brain!
I guess that's the sticking point for me about all Abrahamic religions. They claim that their god has three traits:
It seems specious to me from the outset that any entity could fulfil more than two of these three traits in the world we live in. If it's omniscient and omnipotent, then the existence of suffering proves that it is not ever-loving. If it is omniscient and ever-loving then it must be powerless to prevent the suffering that it by definition both perceives and decries. If it is omnipotent and ever-loving then it must have just not noticed any suffering.
I wonder whether or not the same thing will happen to phones. As people use their phone for more and more, will the cost rise so much that it will be prohibitively expensive?
Actually, smart phones with big touchscreens directly compete with netbooks for their niche. There's nothing I would do on my Eee 900 (short of typing a longish email) that I can't do equally easily on my phone. However, phones have a massive advantage over netbooks in that they're heavily subsidised by service fees and the true cost is hidden behind monthly plans. Case in point - my Eee cost $500 two years ago, but my phone is only $29 a month. If I were your average consumer, I would expect the Eee to be a much more capable device even though I'm paying nearly $700 all up for my phone (including voice service but very little mobile network usage).
Does this mean that, at least for the near future, the idea of a phone as a true personal computer is just a device from science fiction stories(just like flying cars)?
Au contraire, phones are expanding nicely to fill the niche of 'personal computer' as Asimov wrote about. Technology is now at a point where a hand-held, pocketable device is powerful enough to take on the role. This is just the beginning. :)
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
What he said. :)
Although according to the definitions I've read, usually Atheism is described as a conviction that God does NOT exist. Continued insistence by theists that God does in fact exist is cause enough for an Atheist to deny this existence. If I tell you that I have a milk jug, and you can see no evidence whatsoever that I have one, then you may very well tell me "you fool, I can see you have no milk jug". In that case you would only be exhibiting an acceptance of the concept of a milk jug, rather than the existence of the particular milk jug in question.
There is no god, do you hear me? Noooo... goooodddddd... - Tickle Me Emo
The key is not to Go Big, or Go Small, or Go Bare Metal, it is to go where their interest lies. If they really want to know about electron migration through a solid state material, Hell, go for it. But if they are interested in how to generate a web page, that's where you start.
Exactly. Well spake, sir, and I bet your students love you!
I suggest getting a small machine emulation like a 6800, 6809 or 8080, and teaching him assembler so he knows what's actually going on. Then teach him C, and explain what's going on there in terms of assembling and linking. Then teach him C++, then teach him python. That'll give him an expanding world he understands right down to the metal.
If he's got Aspergers' then this will work perfectly. If he's a regular 12-year-old kid, then he will get bored of register printouts within about twenty minutes.
Personally, at that age, I'd start by baking some cookies. Introduce programming as the act of writing a 'recipe' to explain to the computer how to 'cook' a particular thing. Probably start with programs to generate images, either using the line drawing functions in a graphics library, or by running through each pixel and colouring it based on a formula. Python should be fine (and certainly no less beginner-friendly than Pascal), if you learn it as a collection of magic words and leave the deeper stuff until later.