According to the Times, when the University of Texas complained that its Dell PCs were failing, the company said the school's math department had pushed them too hard, making them solve difficult calculations
From: michael@dell.com To: xxxx@utexas.edu Re: Hardware failures running Matlab
You're exceeding the floating-point unit's recommended duty cycle. Turn it off for awhile.
Anecdotes and self-reported RSSI readings are not "actual testing."
There was a time when any ham radio operator, never mind EE, would have known not to design an antenna this way. But times change, and like Galadriel said, some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.
The real pathos comes in when you understand that you don't even need to be a math guru to do this sort of work. Ten minutes in a good EM simulator would have told Apple's engineers all they needed to know to avoid making this mistake.
Nah, water doesn't really start to ruin your day until 24 GHz. Water doesn't do anything special at 2.5 GHz, regardless of the chorus of canard-wielding canaries who will claim that's why microwave ovens work there.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
OT, but the Apple that I once believed in published their schematics and firmware source listings in the back of their reference manuals. I don't know what rough beast slouches around One Infinite Loop these days, but it's not Apple anymore.
This part might be an unwarranted assumption. Neutron radiation can cause adverse biological effects at much lower levels than alpha or beta radiation.
The first part implies the second part. If the neutrons don't interact with matter, then that must also include biological matter, right?
Twitter is one those ideas that anyone could have thought up over a beer and implemented in a long weekend of hacking, and it could also have been done in 1995. Why didn't I get rich by doing just that? Because I'm apparently a fucking moron, who was too dumb to realize that apparently everybody else on the planet was dying for a one-to-many version of SMS with an artificial 140-character limitation.
I suspect that's why many developers dislike Twitter. It makes everyone who hears about it feel stupid and out of touch.
1) Show me evidence that Bush started started the optional wars because of his religion. He did have backing from many others at the top for the war, so what makes you think he started those wars because of his religion?
There are various quotes floating around, some of them apocryphal -- such as this one reported by the BBC.
Personally I'm not convinced that he believed he was starting the Afghan and Iraqi wars at God's prompting, even if he claimed he did. He just sold them as modern-day crusades (literally at first, until wiser heads in the Administration told him to ease up on the Crusader rhetoric.)
When you're trying to get people to die for your cause, religion is a handy tool, and Bush was just making use of the tools he had available. It would be nice if that particular tool hadn't been available to him, that's all I'm saying.
You may be right but given what I see from Stalin and Mao, it's not great comfort if the Great Atheist Leader starts killing millions of his own citizens rather those of some other country.
Personality cults are not atheistic. Stalin and Mao were explicit God-substitute figures. Even today, try selling atheism in Pyongyang and see how well it goes over. You will probably come home in a wooden box.
Better examples would be the present-day Nordic states, which are among the least theistic in recent history and also among the most peace-loving. When you don't have another life to look forward to, you have a big incentive to make the most of this one.
3) As for Galileo, from what I see it sure looks like he wasn't forced into his faith by terror from being burned at the stake as you originally claimed (without evidence).
Exactly what does it prove or disprove if Galileo was a member of the Church, willing or otherwise? I never claimed he wasn't. The Pope was actually a personal friend of his, at least until they ended up on different sides of a political pissing match. Science back then was similar to science today in at least one respect: you worked with the establishment, or you didn't work at all.
At any rate, if you don't agree that cases like Giordano Bruno's had a chilling effect on the progress of science, I'm afraid there's not much I can do to persuade you.
The point of network TV isn't to sell DVDs, it's to sell commercials.
Don't forget syndication and spinoffs, though. Is Star Trek's value limited to the 1968 Fords it helped sell? That's certainly the case with reality TV, but dramatic serials are different.
Yes and hence people with such issues may not actually negatively affect the long term survivability of the group.
I used to think the same way, until Bush II used his faith to justify starting optional wars with my tax dollars, and in my name. The stem-cell funding brouhaha and the advent of taxpayer-funded "faith based initiatives" pushed me the rest of the way over the edge.
Eventually I realized that religion posed a more general problem: in an age of nuclear weapons, the idea that it's acceptable for our leaders to listen to invisible voices is really not OK. Responsibility is a survival strategy now. It's time that we, as humans, hold ourselves accountable for our actions. That means giving up the idea that some Santa Claus in the sky is going to save us.
As things stand, it won't be Satan who ends the world; it'll be somebody who is acting entirely on his own, but who is very sure that he's got God on his side. The guy standing next to him won't lift a finger because he believes the same thing.
Show me evidence that that was Galileo's reason for being a Catholic.
The real reason is that people didn't know much about the world and Universe back then, and what they did know terrified them. The Church provided "answers" that worked at the time. Not well enough to put a fleet of GPS satellites into orbit, but well enough to help everyone from peasants to philosophers sleep a little better at night.
The idea that we still need such an institution in 2010, though, is just pathetic.
The placebo effect works very well (google if you don't believe me).
The placebo effect is only meaningful if you don't have a real treatment. Next time you come down with a serious illness, how about we just give you a glass of Kool-Aid and let the placebo effect take its course?
Atheists are just as prone to delusions, after all even Richard Dawkins incorrectly claims that "atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind" - you can go to a hospital to find atheist patients with unhealthy minds.
Truly, your reasoning is compelling.
There have been many scientists who believed there's a God, and their life, science and work were not diminished by their belief.
Well, sure. Newton was an alchemist, but his irrational thinking in that field didn't limit his other work. It didn't help, either, but hey, we all need our hobbies.
At worst, you could say that a parent is guilty of negligence for passing their religious beliefs along to their children.
A negligence charge might be a good first step. In the US, failure to send your child to school or otherwise account for his/her K-12 education is indeed a criminal matter, and I think it's fair to apply the reasoning behind truancy laws here as well. If your child grows up without the knowledge that 2+2=4, or who George Washington was, or what a cell is -- or with the knowledge that a cosmic Jewish zombie will send her to hell if she doesn't beg forgiveness for (not) taking part in certain events involving a talking snake and a magical fruit tree -- then the parent should be held responsible for harm done to society as a whole.
I agree that people can be warped, but I mean actually peaceful, not someone who is twisted into believing that they are doing good while they do evil
That's just more weasel-language, though. What's "evil"? To me, the fact that Leonardo da Vinci didn't have his own 8-core Mac Pro is "evil."
Teaching kids ridiculous things backed up with threats they're too young to understand has an effect that goes beyond the immediate families involved. All of civilization suffers when we indulge superstition. Sound radical? Well, that's the reasoning that brought us public education, isn't it... stupidity costs us all.
Religion, being opt-in stupidity, certainly costs us all... yet here in the US, our own government actually nurtures and promotes it.
Slashdot Mirror
Just do what I do, and misspell your name slightly when you register your Facebook account. That will keep it from being searchable.
It worked fine during the subsequent five Apollo missions, so whatever.
From: michael@dell.com
To: xxxx@utexas.edu
Re: Hardware failures running Matlab
You're exceeding the floating-point unit's recommended duty cycle. Turn it off for awhile.
Sent from my iPhone
ipad can't do half things an N900 can.
Sober up, then post.
Anecdotes and self-reported RSSI readings are not "actual testing."
There was a time when any ham radio operator, never mind EE, would have known not to design an antenna this way. But times change, and like Galadriel said, some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.
The real pathos comes in when you understand that you don't even need to be a math guru to do this sort of work. Ten minutes in a good EM simulator would have told Apple's engineers all they needed to know to avoid making this mistake.
if ANYONE were the antichrist, they should be voted out of office
Well, no, not in the USA, where government is explicitly commanded to separate itself from religious affairs.
Nah, water doesn't really start to ruin your day until 24 GHz. Water doesn't do anything special at 2.5 GHz, regardless of the chorus of canard-wielding canaries who will claim that's why microwave ovens work there.
Sigh. No, it's just that not every argument against Big Government can be dispelled conveniently by invoking Sinclair Lewis.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
OT, but the Apple that I once believed in published their schematics and firmware source listings in the back of their reference manuals. I don't know what rough beast slouches around One Infinite Loop these days, but it's not Apple anymore.
People with attention-span deficit disorder shouldn't play with radioactive stuff.
This part might be an unwarranted assumption. Neutron radiation can cause adverse biological effects at much lower levels than alpha or beta radiation.
The first part implies the second part. If the neutrons don't interact with matter, then that must also include biological matter, right?
Yeah, I agree with you there, China is something else entirely. They may yet sell us the rope we'll hang ourselves with.
Capitalism has spun off plenty of wars, killing at least thousands.
Sure, certain capitalist-leaning countries have committed international atrocities, and no one is trying to justify those actions.
The point is, the capitalist countries are the ones that don't shoot their own citizens for trying to leave.
Really? Thirty million killed by Stalin alone is matched by Western capitalist democracies, how?
Hmm... I can't find a single definition of "cult" that's more applicable to communism than to capitalism
Hint: which -ism requires you to shoot your own people to keep them from practicing it?
I love the sound of cognitive dissonance in the morning.
Can't stand the iPad, totally useless in the sun; as in I like to read outdoors
Translation: I haven't actually tried it, but some guy on Slashdot said so
Twitter is one those ideas that anyone could have thought up over a beer and implemented in a long weekend of hacking, and it could also have been done in 1995. Why didn't I get rich by doing just that? Because I'm apparently a fucking moron, who was too dumb to realize that apparently everybody else on the planet was dying for a one-to-many version of SMS with an artificial 140-character limitation.
I suspect that's why many developers dislike Twitter. It makes everyone who hears about it feel stupid and out of touch.
1) Show me evidence that Bush started started the optional wars because of his religion. He did have backing from many others at the top for the war, so what makes you think he started those wars because of his religion?
There are various quotes floating around, some of them apocryphal -- such as this one reported by the BBC.
Personally I'm not convinced that he believed he was starting the Afghan and Iraqi wars at God's prompting, even if he claimed he did. He just sold them as modern-day crusades (literally at first, until wiser heads in the Administration told him to ease up on the Crusader rhetoric.)
When you're trying to get people to die for your cause, religion is a handy tool, and Bush was just making use of the tools he had available. It would be nice if that particular tool hadn't been available to him, that's all I'm saying.
You may be right but given what I see from Stalin and Mao, it's not great comfort if the Great Atheist Leader starts killing millions of his own citizens rather those of some other country.
Personality cults are not atheistic. Stalin and Mao were explicit God-substitute figures. Even today, try selling atheism in Pyongyang and see how well it goes over. You will probably come home in a wooden box.
Better examples would be the present-day Nordic states, which are among the least theistic in recent history and also among the most peace-loving. When you don't have another life to look forward to, you have a big incentive to make the most of this one.
3) As for Galileo, from what I see it sure looks like he wasn't forced into his faith by terror from being burned at the stake as you originally claimed (without evidence).
Exactly what does it prove or disprove if Galileo was a member of the Church, willing or otherwise? I never claimed he wasn't. The Pope was actually a personal friend of his, at least until they ended up on different sides of a political pissing match. Science back then was similar to science today in at least one respect: you worked with the establishment, or you didn't work at all.
At any rate, if you don't agree that cases like Giordano Bruno's had a chilling effect on the progress of science, I'm afraid there's not much I can do to persuade you.
The point of network TV isn't to sell DVDs, it's to sell commercials.
Don't forget syndication and spinoffs, though. Is Star Trek's value limited to the 1968 Fords it helped sell? That's certainly the case with reality TV, but dramatic serials are different.
I suspect I'll use it a lot more on the iPad.
You'll wish to God there was some way to turn it off on the iPad, actually. It's actually a real nuisance.
Yes and hence people with such issues may not actually negatively affect the long term survivability of the group.
I used to think the same way, until Bush II used his faith to justify starting optional wars with my tax dollars, and in my name. The stem-cell funding brouhaha and the advent of taxpayer-funded "faith based initiatives" pushed me the rest of the way over the edge.
Eventually I realized that religion posed a more general problem: in an age of nuclear weapons, the idea that it's acceptable for our leaders to listen to invisible voices is really not OK. Responsibility is a survival strategy now. It's time that we, as humans, hold ourselves accountable for our actions. That means giving up the idea that some Santa Claus in the sky is going to save us.
As things stand, it won't be Satan who ends the world; it'll be somebody who is acting entirely on his own, but who is very sure that he's got God on his side. The guy standing next to him won't lift a finger because he believes the same thing.
Show me evidence that that was Galileo's reason for being a Catholic.
The real reason is that people didn't know much about the world and Universe back then, and what they did know terrified them. The Church provided "answers" that worked at the time. Not well enough to put a fleet of GPS satellites into orbit, but well enough to help everyone from peasants to philosophers sleep a little better at night.
The idea that we still need such an institution in 2010, though, is just pathetic.
The placebo effect works very well (google if you don't believe me).
The placebo effect is only meaningful if you don't have a real treatment. Next time you come down with a serious illness, how about we just give you a glass of Kool-Aid and let the placebo effect take its course?
Atheists are just as prone to delusions, after all even Richard Dawkins incorrectly claims that "atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind" - you can go to a hospital to find atheist patients with unhealthy minds.
Truly, your reasoning is compelling.
There have been many scientists who believed there's a God, and their life, science and work were not diminished by their belief.
Well, sure. Newton was an alchemist, but his irrational thinking in that field didn't limit his other work. It didn't help, either, but hey, we all need our hobbies.
Even Galileo Galilei was a Catholic.
Well, sure. It beat being burned at the stake.
At worst, you could say that a parent is guilty of negligence for passing their religious beliefs along to their children.
A negligence charge might be a good first step. In the US, failure to send your child to school or otherwise account for his/her K-12 education is indeed a criminal matter, and I think it's fair to apply the reasoning behind truancy laws here as well. If your child grows up without the knowledge that 2+2=4, or who George Washington was, or what a cell is -- or with the knowledge that a cosmic Jewish zombie will send her to hell if she doesn't beg forgiveness for (not) taking part in certain events involving a talking snake and a magical fruit tree -- then the parent should be held responsible for harm done to society as a whole.
I agree that people can be warped, but I mean actually peaceful, not someone who is twisted into believing that they are doing good while they do evil
That's just more weasel-language, though. What's "evil"? To me, the fact that Leonardo da Vinci didn't have his own 8-core Mac Pro is "evil."
Teaching kids ridiculous things backed up with threats they're too young to understand has an effect that goes beyond the immediate families involved. All of civilization suffers when we indulge superstition. Sound radical? Well, that's the reasoning that brought us public education, isn't it... stupidity costs us all.
Religion, being opt-in stupidity, certainly costs us all... yet here in the US, our own government actually nurtures and promotes it.