D) We are intelligently designed, and no other lifeforms were created. The rest of the universe is the designer showing off to us, having fun, being artistic, whatever.
According to W3Counter, Linux passed 2% in January.
If their figures are believable, Linux use has close to doubled in the past nine months.
So what? Nothing double is still nothing. If you have one user and gain a second, you've doubled, but quite frankly, given the number of users out there, that is neither hard nor impressive. So Linux goes from 1% to 2%. Big deal. It isn't that hard (or notable) to get 1% or 2% of the market (or even 3% or 4%). If you have 45% of computer users, which is probably a billion people, and double that, that's something worth talking about.
Also note that the people who tend to use Linux are power users, and power users probably make up 5-10% of the population. Linux hasn't even got half of them, further making this statistic fairly pointless.
The real question here is, how much would the necessary bribe be, and who is corrupt enough in the EU Commission to push this through for MSFT?
Actually, a better question would be who is stupid enough to follow this idiot lawmaker into the self destruction of their government services?
Fact is, Microsoft doesn't need to bribe anyone. People NEED their software. You can't just pull Office out and plug in Open Office. Anyone knowledgeable about IT who works for any large institution (and I happen to work for a very large, Fortune 500 company) knows that once you pick a major software system to use, such as Windows and Office, you don't just rip those out overnight. Every sizable organization I've seen has written incredible amounts of custom software that integrates with Office and Windows. Just the number of custom apps and plugins written to work with Excel is usually incredible. You pull away Office, and especially Windows, and most all of your organization's software and processes suddenly stop working.
Any attempt by the EU to migrate off the Microsoft platform could likely take half a decade, if it even succeeds at all. Most such projects tend to fail unless they have very competent leadership, and most governments run a little short in that department.
And then, should they succeed in getting off the product, they will have to cope with likely having no 24x7 support hotline for Open Office, if that's what they choose to go with. So looking at all this, the question really does become, "Who is idiot enough to follow this idiot?"
This doesn't mean that their concerns are necessarily invalid, but they shouldn't be given any more credibility than other non-members of the LHC team.
Yes, this nuclear safety officer should get more credibility than others outside the LHC team. Here's why: random Joe Schmoe from Vermont or some random state has no experience, no education in this area etc. His credibility is neutral, as would be that of any member of the general public. The nuclear safety officer may not have any more educational experience than Joe Schmoe, but he works on the LHC, and is therefore in a position to hear things that some random member of the public may not be exposed to. Therefore, we have to give him somewhat higher credibility, and at least listen to his concerns and ask where he got them from. Could be he overheard the head scientist talking about it, or saw a report on the subject. He has access to much more information than a random individual (especially since scientists are in the business of being open and often don't secure their research as heavilly as, say, the military might)
Even in 2000, it was difficult to find a lot of DVDs for much under $15-$20 at your big-box discount stores like Best Buy, etc.
Umm, I don't know what you're talking about, because it's that difficult NOW. I'm not sure what you are buying, but if you go into a big box store, heck, if you go into Target (because I just went shopping for DVDs a few days ago), you will find that most popular titles are around 20 bucks. You are guaranteed 15. Just take a look at any Disney/Pixar release, no matter how old, and regardless of popularity. 20 bucks. And that goes for most other Popular titles as well.
If you get really lucky, you might find a 13 dollar version of the base movie in a store or online (which is all I want anyway), but for the most part, every store just sells the "collector's edition", and you pay about 7 dollars more for all that worthless commentary that no one watches anyway. It appears that every DVD made today is "collectible" or "special".
Even Amazon is in on this garbage, because I left Target without buying anything, planning to go to Amazon and buy them cheaper, and I found that Amazon, for the most part, had the same prices. Therefore, I did not buy from Amazon either.
What Microsoft says is technically true though. Yes, there are many developers who write code for no money, but at the same time, I don't know anyone who does it entirely for selfless, charitable reasons.
Many of the most active open source coders are poster children for being self absorbed. It's just that, instead of being self absorbed with money and material possessions, they prefer to be paid in the form of being well known, having prestige, and generally getting their ego stroked.
Many others program just to stick it to the man because they have some sort of grudge against govt. or corporations, and others because they simply want lots and lots of software for free (thinking if they give theirs away, others will too). Stallman probably fits into both of these camps.
Finally, some program for free just to learn more or have fun. Not necessarilly saying that any or all of the above reasons are bad, only that there are few, if any, programmers who write free software for charity. Most expect to get some sort of benefit out of it. The thing the Africans need to realize is that most programmers prefer to get money in exchange for their coding, and if you don't allow patents, and therefore don't allow programmers to get money in exchange for coding, you have cut off about 98% of your source of new code. You can get some people to work for ego stroking, but most have mortgages to pay and lives to live, and they need money like everyone else. In general, Microsoft is very correct that software costs money, and you aren't going to get it for free.
On the verge? What would happen to our economy if we had a falling out? Damned near everything you can buy these days is made there!
Plus, they have for decades had nuclear weapons.
They not only already are a superpower, they are more powerful than the US. I don't see how we could possibly hurt them, but they could destroy us.
Thank you, patriotic multinational corporations, for buying my government and ruining my once great nation.
Actually, I still think we could hurt them far more than they can hurt us, for the following reasons:
Yes, they make everything, but who buys their stuff? If no one buys their stuff, what happens to them? They lose trillions of dollars. If they stop making their stuff, what happens to us? In the short term, prices on eBay go up for goods Americans have that are out of stock, but in the long run, we build our own factories to fill the market needs, and that is actually good for Americans. And if the factories don't get built here, they go to India and Latin American countries, which are far more stable anyway.
You say they have nuclear weapons. Well, we have more, and as China is a smaller nation in terms of land area, we have the advantage of having less square footage to wipe out. You say you can't see how we could hurt them, when we could actually wipe out their country many times over. And we have a least a partial missile shield, which of course wouldn't stop them, but is at least slightly better than the nothing they have. So there isn't going to be a nuclear engagement.
If we had a conventional weapons war, our conventional weapons are better. True, they have more people, but as more of our weaponry becomes automated that becomes less of an advantage for them, so long as we can mass produce our robots.
We also have higher technology than they do. We alone posess most of the technology for making the fastest computer chips, and that gives us an extraordinary advantage. They recently attempted to make their own home grown "Dragon" PC chip in an effort to not be dependent on us, and it turned out to be the equivalent of a very slow 486.
I will agree with you on one thing though: our multinationals are selling us out. They are building factories there so that they can sell in that market and avoid duties, but that really sucks for us because it pumps up the economy of a repressive regime. Still, though, at least that reason is better than the more common reason, which is that they want cheap labor to make goods they will ultimately sell not in China, but in the US. That's almost treason to humanity, because there are many countries in the world that aren't so repressive and that have people who would be desperate for those jobs and would work just as cheap. But no, we give their jobs to the repressive nation.
Honestly, I don't think this is so sad. I mean, the rovers are cool and all, but they were designed to look for life on Mars, and obviously there wasn't any. There really isn't that much of a point in continuing their mission. They've taken plenty of cool pictures, snooped around their immediate area (the one considered most likely to harbor life on the whole planet), and found nothing. So with no life on Mars, and the rovers too slow to get to the other side of the planet and send us some pictures we haven't seen, it seems like now might be a reasonable time to shut them down. NASA has lots of other cool missions and a new capsule to design and fly, and after all, these rovers would have eventually been shut down anyway.
They say that the apalling sequels to Rendevous with Rama (an excellent work and a science-fiction classic) were basically entirely Gentry Lee's doing in spite of the prominent appearance of both names on the covers.
This is a normal tactic in the book industry. It is a way for publishers to introduce new authors they think might be good to the reading public. If you saw a book by someone named Gentry Lee, how likely would you be to buy it if you had never heard of him before? Now, if you see Arthur C Clark's name on the cover, you would be likely to buy it. It's not a totally bad system, because it does help to get people who are really good authors established. My father is a best selling author and the first 6-10 of his books were coauthored with someone famous (who did little more than add a couple anecdotes and a forward).
The big problems with the system, though, are when you have authors who are famous not checking up on the books they put their names on. This can happen either because they are lazy, getting old, or most likely just want another paycheck that they know a book with their name on it will bring. This can dilute the brand when bad books with their name on it get out, and sometimes hurt the author if thecoauthor gets into a scandal or does something disgraceful. That also happened to my dad when the famous coauthor did something entirely out of character with what the books were about.
So here's the basic rule of thumb when buying books. If you see a book with two names on it (one of them being a famous person you recognize), IMMEDIATELY assume that the book was written by the other, unknown author with the name in small print. Know that you are taking a risk and getting a book that may not be as good as previous books by the famous author. However, also know someone at the publishing house thought this author was pretty good or they wouldn't be trying to publish him and get his name known. So there is some chance you may find a gem of a book, and if so, you should buy books from that author again. But know going in that 95% of the time you see coauthors on anything other than a university text, the famous coauthor did 0% of the work, and probably didn't even read the book before putting his name on it. You have no guarantee he liked it, and no guarantee of quality (because even if he wrote the forward, he didn't necessarilly read the book).
This is a great example of mods and commenters (i.e. GP, currently modded informative) who don't know what the hell they're talking about. Parent post is correct -- while you can use Verilog for programming an FPGA (field-programmable gate array), Verilog has many uses in hardware design. It's called Verilog HDL (hardware description language) for a reason. Here is an overview of Verilog for the uninitiated.
The parent post is absolutely correct. I recieved a degree in computer engineering from Iowa State, and have first hand lab experience of using Verilog to design CPUs and memory modules. It is definately a hardware design language. Mod parent and grandparent up.
Or better yet, get a barebones PC somewhere like Newegg. Those typically take care of the more annoying PC construction jobs, like putting thermal on a CPU and mounting the mobo. By the time you buy one of those, you just need to get a hard drive an any external cards you require, and you are ready to go at low cost and without a buying a windows license.
Note: if we were talking about Windows users, I would never suggest this, but I assume most Linux users probably have the skills to buy and plug in some add on cards and hard drives.
If you ever play MS Flight Simulator, you start to realize just how many airports there are in the US. Many of the small ones are uncontrolled, often without a tower and maybe just a single building. There's no way the feds can watch them all. Even some of the larger municipal airports will be lucky to have a dedicated fed at them, because it turns out there is one in just about every city of 30,000 or more, and even many smaller cities (though of course you aren't going to find 737 service to them). My bet is even with extra funding, you aren't going to be standing in line for TSA security screenings at most private airports. Thank goodness.
So I know most people here always give firefox a free pass (since it is FOSS and anti-Microsoft I'm sure), but IE isn't the only browser getting worse with time. If you actually look at those results, you can see that Firefox 3 is worse than Firefox 2. Makes you wonder if some good coders who initially architected both browsers (and really understood them) have left, leaving some less experienced coders doing the new work.
No, the problem isn't that the UN doesn't have an army. The problem is that they are quite possibly the most corrupt organization the world has ever seen, and I'm sure there are a lot of countries (cough Iran Cuba China cough) that would just love to have ICANN be governed by people who love to take bribes.
The result is that now, almost 2 years after its release, almost a third of my users are still on IE6. Personally, that is really frustrating.
Actually, that's probably not the reason people are still on IE6. I work for a major Fortune 500 company, and we are all still on IE6. This post is brought to you on IE6. Why? Because businesses, especially large ones where all the people are, are really cautious to adopt new technologies. They want to be sure they will work with all the custom software they've written. In our case, some programs depended on very IE6 specific things, or were hacks of some sort, so we are STILL on IE6, and that's all that is supported here. And as a web developer, I have to develop in IE6 so I can see what my users will see. I would love to upgrade, but can't until the company moves us all forward. So that's probably why you have so many IE6 hits; anyone on a laptop issued by a large corporation is probably still using it.
To be specific we're talking about controversy in scientific circles
Actually, there still is quite a bit of this too. And the Discovery Institute is a case in point. Most of its members are scientists with Ph.D.s who teach in universities. Guillermo Gonzalez was a professor of Astronomy at my alma mater, Iowa State University. You can't just dismiss them and say there is no controversy in the scientific community, when they teach and research science for a living, and hold the same degrees and positions as other academics. To say there is no controversy is to define the scientific community as only those scientists that believe in Evolution, and while many people clearly do try to do just that, such an approach smacks of arrogance, and doesn't make a lot of sense, because again, save this one area of disagreement, these people are indistinguishable from other scientists.
Side note: There are other scientists who take issue with evolution as well, but aren't in the Discovery Institute because they know that is the kiss of death to anyone seeking tenure.
Other note: I have said nothing about my personal views, so don't start making assumptions and arguing the merits of evolution with me. I confine my post entirely to the point that saying there is no controversy in the scientific community is ridiculous.
Very few psych majors do psych professional.
I have a BA from U. of Houston, which I have used to do tech support and sales for a software company, and developed my own FPS as a solo project.
I've also found this to be true. Lol, I actually knew people in college that did nothing but program computers in their spare time, and took psych because it was easy, wouldn't distract them and gave them more time to do the programming they wanted. They didn't ever expect to practice psych.
I think that he is referring to long term and big sites. Honestly it's not too unreasonable. If Comcast is fucking me up the a** and I can get my internet from Google why wouldn't I?
You can't get your Internet from Google though. The thing McNealy misses (and he is a complete idiot), is that you still have to have some form of connection to the web to even use VOIP or other technologies. Enter the ISP, who provides the connection (whether that be cable, DSL, satellite, phone line) and the bandwidth. We all have to subscribe to Comcast or some other such entity first before we can access eBay's VOIP services.
The other thing McIdiot should realize is that the destination sites do not even want to enter this market. They are not about to start laying cable or launching satellites to try to compete with the telcos. That isn't their core business area and they don't care about it. Their business is making cool, useful websites, and that's how they became big, profitable companies in the first place. They didn't do it by laying cable.
One last note... yes, Google is bidding on part of the radio spectrum here in the US, but it isn't because Google is trying to enter the telco arena and start providing Internet access. It is unlikely that Google could provide air wave access that would be as fast as wired anyway. Google is mostly doing this to make sure there is some good spectrum available for people to make interesting wireless devices for (otherwise the cell phone companies would snap it up and monopolize even more airwaves). So Google may be "competeing" with some telcos in bidding, but the odds that Google actually starts truly competing in the area of bandwidth subscribers is ridiculous. Google is not about to become an ISP, any more than Apple is about to become a cellular carrier because it manufactured a cell phone.
I'm graduating with a BA in CS this year, and barely looking at any CS jobs below 85k, and there are plenty above.
Reality is about to kick you very hard in the groin.
Agreed. The only way that happens (especially with a BA and not a BS) is if you are in an area where there is an incredibly high cost of living, and all wages are inflated as a result. In that case, that 85k won't be what you thought it was.
So is light supposed to pass through dark matter? I mean, if there is so much of this stuff out there, it ought to be doing a lot more than just lensing light. It ought to be flat out blocking it. I mean, how does light just pass through matter (because dark matter is still considered matter), especially such huge objects with such large mass?
So from what I gather, this is still more pie in the sky from dark matter proponents then? It has been argued that we don't need dark matter to explain the universe, and that a minor tweaking of Newton's law of universal gravitation would explain everything. As of yet, no one has truly detected/demonstrated dark matter particles.
If our fundamental laws are a bit off, then this bending/distorting of the light would be explained by that, and these dark matter constructions would be nothing but an illusion created by a mathematical error in our first principles. Therefore, until someone can actually demonstrate a dark matter particle, I am not jumping on this bandwagon. There are experiments underway to actually find dark matter, and for now I await their results.
Props to Sony. Whatever their other evils, they clearly kept their eye on the ball.
Lol... they didn't keep their eye on the ball. They missed the entire Nintendo blue ocean revolution. Going with the baseball analogy, it's like they missed the Roger Clemens fastball, but were able to hit granny's consolation toss at the end of the game. My Wii beats both consoles in sales and overall fun, and it did it without having a next gen player.
The appropriate response to Microsoft and Sony is not good job or tsk tsk depending on which player they picked. The response for both should be, "Good try guys, but you both sucked it up. Better luck next time around."
Slashdot Mirror
D) We are intelligently designed, and no other lifeforms were created. The rest of the universe is the designer showing off to us, having fun, being artistic, whatever.
So what? Nothing double is still nothing. If you have one user and gain a second, you've doubled, but quite frankly, given the number of users out there, that is neither hard nor impressive. So Linux goes from 1% to 2%. Big deal. It isn't that hard (or notable) to get 1% or 2% of the market (or even 3% or 4%). If you have 45% of computer users, which is probably a billion people, and double that, that's something worth talking about.
Also note that the people who tend to use Linux are power users, and power users probably make up 5-10% of the population. Linux hasn't even got half of them, further making this statistic fairly pointless.
Actually, a better question would be who is stupid enough to follow this idiot lawmaker into the self destruction of their government services?
Fact is, Microsoft doesn't need to bribe anyone. People NEED their software. You can't just pull Office out and plug in Open Office. Anyone knowledgeable about IT who works for any large institution (and I happen to work for a very large, Fortune 500 company) knows that once you pick a major software system to use, such as Windows and Office, you don't just rip those out overnight. Every sizable organization I've seen has written incredible amounts of custom software that integrates with Office and Windows. Just the number of custom apps and plugins written to work with Excel is usually incredible. You pull away Office, and especially Windows, and most all of your organization's software and processes suddenly stop working.
Any attempt by the EU to migrate off the Microsoft platform could likely take half a decade, if it even succeeds at all. Most such projects tend to fail unless they have very competent leadership, and most governments run a little short in that department.
And then, should they succeed in getting off the product, they will have to cope with likely having no 24x7 support hotline for Open Office, if that's what they choose to go with. So looking at all this, the question really does become, "Who is idiot enough to follow this idiot?"
Yes, this nuclear safety officer should get more credibility than others outside the LHC team. Here's why: random Joe Schmoe from Vermont or some random state has no experience, no education in this area etc. His credibility is neutral, as would be that of any member of the general public. The nuclear safety officer may not have any more educational experience than Joe Schmoe, but he works on the LHC, and is therefore in a position to hear things that some random member of the public may not be exposed to. Therefore, we have to give him somewhat higher credibility, and at least listen to his concerns and ask where he got them from. Could be he overheard the head scientist talking about it, or saw a report on the subject. He has access to much more information than a random individual (especially since scientists are in the business of being open and often don't secure their research as heavilly as, say, the military might)
Umm, I don't know what you're talking about, because it's that difficult NOW. I'm not sure what you are buying, but if you go into a big box store, heck, if you go into Target (because I just went shopping for DVDs a few days ago), you will find that most popular titles are around 20 bucks. You are guaranteed 15. Just take a look at any Disney/Pixar release, no matter how old, and regardless of popularity. 20 bucks. And that goes for most other Popular titles as well.
If you get really lucky, you might find a 13 dollar version of the base movie in a store or online (which is all I want anyway), but for the most part, every store just sells the "collector's edition", and you pay about 7 dollars more for all that worthless commentary that no one watches anyway. It appears that every DVD made today is "collectible" or "special".
Even Amazon is in on this garbage, because I left Target without buying anything, planning to go to Amazon and buy them cheaper, and I found that Amazon, for the most part, had the same prices. Therefore, I did not buy from Amazon either.
What Microsoft says is technically true though. Yes, there are many developers who write code for no money, but at the same time, I don't know anyone who does it entirely for selfless, charitable reasons.
Many of the most active open source coders are poster children for being self absorbed. It's just that, instead of being self absorbed with money and material possessions, they prefer to be paid in the form of being well known, having prestige, and generally getting their ego stroked.
Many others program just to stick it to the man because they have some sort of grudge against govt. or corporations, and others because they simply want lots and lots of software for free (thinking if they give theirs away, others will too). Stallman probably fits into both of these camps.
Finally, some program for free just to learn more or have fun. Not necessarilly saying that any or all of the above reasons are bad, only that there are few, if any, programmers who write free software for charity. Most expect to get some sort of benefit out of it. The thing the Africans need to realize is that most programmers prefer to get money in exchange for their coding, and if you don't allow patents, and therefore don't allow programmers to get money in exchange for coding, you have cut off about 98% of your source of new code. You can get some people to work for ego stroking, but most have mortgages to pay and lives to live, and they need money like everyone else. In general, Microsoft is very correct that software costs money, and you aren't going to get it for free.
Actually, I still think we could hurt them far more than they can hurt us, for the following reasons:
I will agree with you on one thing though: our multinationals are selling us out. They are building factories there so that they can sell in that market and avoid duties, but that really sucks for us because it pumps up the economy of a repressive regime. Still, though, at least that reason is better than the more common reason, which is that they want cheap labor to make goods they will ultimately sell not in China, but in the US. That's almost treason to humanity, because there are many countries in the world that aren't so repressive and that have people who would be desperate for those jobs and would work just as cheap. But no, we give their jobs to the repressive nation.
Honestly, I don't think this is so sad. I mean, the rovers are cool and all, but they were designed to look for life on Mars, and obviously there wasn't any. There really isn't that much of a point in continuing their mission. They've taken plenty of cool pictures, snooped around their immediate area (the one considered most likely to harbor life on the whole planet), and found nothing. So with no life on Mars, and the rovers too slow to get to the other side of the planet and send us some pictures we haven't seen, it seems like now might be a reasonable time to shut them down. NASA has lots of other cool missions and a new capsule to design and fly, and after all, these rovers would have eventually been shut down anyway.
I agree. I think that's the most reasonable thing I've read yet. Think of it as the anti-patent troll measure, only on the airwaves.
This is a normal tactic in the book industry. It is a way for publishers to introduce new authors they think might be good to the reading public. If you saw a book by someone named Gentry Lee, how likely would you be to buy it if you had never heard of him before? Now, if you see Arthur C Clark's name on the cover, you would be likely to buy it. It's not a totally bad system, because it does help to get people who are really good authors established. My father is a best selling author and the first 6-10 of his books were coauthored with someone famous (who did little more than add a couple anecdotes and a forward).
The big problems with the system, though, are when you have authors who are famous not checking up on the books they put their names on. This can happen either because they are lazy, getting old, or most likely just want another paycheck that they know a book with their name on it will bring. This can dilute the brand when bad books with their name on it get out, and sometimes hurt the author if thecoauthor gets into a scandal or does something disgraceful. That also happened to my dad when the famous coauthor did something entirely out of character with what the books were about.
So here's the basic rule of thumb when buying books. If you see a book with two names on it (one of them being a famous person you recognize), IMMEDIATELY assume that the book was written by the other, unknown author with the name in small print. Know that you are taking a risk and getting a book that may not be as good as previous books by the famous author. However, also know someone at the publishing house thought this author was pretty good or they wouldn't be trying to publish him and get his name known. So there is some chance you may find a gem of a book, and if so, you should buy books from that author again. But know going in that 95% of the time you see coauthors on anything other than a university text, the famous coauthor did 0% of the work, and probably didn't even read the book before putting his name on it. You have no guarantee he liked it, and no guarantee of quality (because even if he wrote the forward, he didn't necessarilly read the book).
The parent post is absolutely correct. I recieved a degree in computer engineering from Iowa State, and have first hand lab experience of using Verilog to design CPUs and memory modules. It is definately a hardware design language. Mod parent and grandparent up.
Or better yet, get a barebones PC somewhere like Newegg. Those typically take care of the more annoying PC construction jobs, like putting thermal on a CPU and mounting the mobo. By the time you buy one of those, you just need to get a hard drive an any external cards you require, and you are ready to go at low cost and without a buying a windows license.
Note: if we were talking about Windows users, I would never suggest this, but I assume most Linux users probably have the skills to buy and plug in some add on cards and hard drives.
If you ever play MS Flight Simulator, you start to realize just how many airports there are in the US. Many of the small ones are uncontrolled, often without a tower and maybe just a single building. There's no way the feds can watch them all. Even some of the larger municipal airports will be lucky to have a dedicated fed at them, because it turns out there is one in just about every city of 30,000 or more, and even many smaller cities (though of course you aren't going to find 737 service to them). My bet is even with extra funding, you aren't going to be standing in line for TSA security screenings at most private airports. Thank goodness.
So I know most people here always give firefox a free pass (since it is FOSS and anti-Microsoft I'm sure), but IE isn't the only browser getting worse with time. If you actually look at those results, you can see that Firefox 3 is worse than Firefox 2. Makes you wonder if some good coders who initially architected both browsers (and really understood them) have left, leaving some less experienced coders doing the new work.
No, the problem isn't that the UN doesn't have an army. The problem is that they are quite possibly the most corrupt organization the world has ever seen, and I'm sure there are a lot of countries (cough Iran Cuba China cough) that would just love to have ICANN be governed by people who love to take bribes.
One for each person in the study group! It's like being charged with multiple counts of murder, only with cheating!
Actually, that's probably not the reason people are still on IE6. I work for a major Fortune 500 company, and we are all still on IE6. This post is brought to you on IE6. Why? Because businesses, especially large ones where all the people are, are really cautious to adopt new technologies. They want to be sure they will work with all the custom software they've written. In our case, some programs depended on very IE6 specific things, or were hacks of some sort, so we are STILL on IE6, and that's all that is supported here. And as a web developer, I have to develop in IE6 so I can see what my users will see. I would love to upgrade, but can't until the company moves us all forward. So that's probably why you have so many IE6 hits; anyone on a laptop issued by a large corporation is probably still using it.
Actually, there still is quite a bit of this too. And the Discovery Institute is a case in point. Most of its members are scientists with Ph.D.s who teach in universities. Guillermo Gonzalez was a professor of Astronomy at my alma mater, Iowa State University. You can't just dismiss them and say there is no controversy in the scientific community, when they teach and research science for a living, and hold the same degrees and positions as other academics. To say there is no controversy is to define the scientific community as only those scientists that believe in Evolution, and while many people clearly do try to do just that, such an approach smacks of arrogance, and doesn't make a lot of sense, because again, save this one area of disagreement, these people are indistinguishable from other scientists.
Side note: There are other scientists who take issue with evolution as well, but aren't in the Discovery Institute because they know that is the kiss of death to anyone seeking tenure.
Other note: I have said nothing about my personal views, so don't start making assumptions and arguing the merits of evolution with me. I confine my post entirely to the point that saying there is no controversy in the scientific community is ridiculous.
I've also found this to be true. Lol, I actually knew people in college that did nothing but program computers in their spare time, and took psych because it was easy, wouldn't distract them and gave them more time to do the programming they wanted. They didn't ever expect to practice psych.
You can't get your Internet from Google though. The thing McNealy misses (and he is a complete idiot), is that you still have to have some form of connection to the web to even use VOIP or other technologies. Enter the ISP, who provides the connection (whether that be cable, DSL, satellite, phone line) and the bandwidth. We all have to subscribe to Comcast or some other such entity first before we can access eBay's VOIP services.
The other thing McIdiot should realize is that the destination sites do not even want to enter this market. They are not about to start laying cable or launching satellites to try to compete with the telcos. That isn't their core business area and they don't care about it. Their business is making cool, useful websites, and that's how they became big, profitable companies in the first place. They didn't do it by laying cable.
One last note... yes, Google is bidding on part of the radio spectrum here in the US, but it isn't because Google is trying to enter the telco arena and start providing Internet access. It is unlikely that Google could provide air wave access that would be as fast as wired anyway. Google is mostly doing this to make sure there is some good spectrum available for people to make interesting wireless devices for (otherwise the cell phone companies would snap it up and monopolize even more airwaves). So Google may be "competeing" with some telcos in bidding, but the odds that Google actually starts truly competing in the area of bandwidth subscribers is ridiculous. Google is not about to become an ISP, any more than Apple is about to become a cellular carrier because it manufactured a cell phone.
So is light supposed to pass through dark matter? I mean, if there is so much of this stuff out there, it ought to be doing a lot more than just lensing light. It ought to be flat out blocking it. I mean, how does light just pass through matter (because dark matter is still considered matter), especially such huge objects with such large mass?
So from what I gather, this is still more pie in the sky from dark matter proponents then? It has been argued that we don't need dark matter to explain the universe, and that a minor tweaking of Newton's law of universal gravitation would explain everything. As of yet, no one has truly detected/demonstrated dark matter particles.
If our fundamental laws are a bit off, then this bending/distorting of the light would be explained by that, and these dark matter constructions would be nothing but an illusion created by a mathematical error in our first principles. Therefore, until someone can actually demonstrate a dark matter particle, I am not jumping on this bandwagon. There are experiments underway to actually find dark matter, and for now I await their results.
What? Do they not like free nights and weekends or something? They really are barbarians!
Lol... they didn't keep their eye on the ball. They missed the entire Nintendo blue ocean revolution. Going with the baseball analogy, it's like they missed the Roger Clemens fastball, but were able to hit granny's consolation toss at the end of the game. My Wii beats both consoles in sales and overall fun, and it did it without having a next gen player.
The appropriate response to Microsoft and Sony is not good job or tsk tsk depending on which player they picked. The response for both should be, "Good try guys, but you both sucked it up. Better luck next time around."