Well, there are a couple of issues here:
First, NP-Hard refers to the worst case. To say that a problem is X-Hard or X-Complete means that the problem is not solvable in deterministic polynomial time/in general./ It does not mean that there are not solvable instances of the problem or that there aren't heuristics that can speed up the process for certain kinds.
The latter, in fact, is that to which the entire field of machine learning is devoted. For example, the AI problem of planning is PSPACE-Complete, but there freely available planners that do quite well on certain instances, but they cannot be guaranteed to work for every instance in a reasonable amount of time, because the generalized problem is PSPACE-Complete.
There is a possibly deeper issue here of what these equations actually represent, and how model-dependent they are, but it sounds as though you have some misconceptions about computational complexity theory.
Actually, Sega makes a a significant number of excellent titles which no one buys, especially in America. It just so happens that Sonic Team's games sell well because they have the most mass-market appeal. Recently examples of others include the four Yakuza games, Valkyria Chronicles (the best game I've played in several years), Virtua Fighter 5, Virtua Tennis 3, and Outrun 2006. Since you mentioned Sonic, very few people are complaining about the excellent Sonic Rush games. Most of the games that people complain about not games developed by Sega of Japan, but games merely published by Sega. And to be fair, Sonic Unleashed is not a bad game. The werehog levels are not action levels; they're platforming levels. People complain that it's slow, but they only complain that it's slow because it's a Sonic game. If it had been any other slow platforming character, like all of the others, no one would have been outraged, even if they had disliked the gameplay. I think that including the levels was a bad decision, but I don't think how some evaluated it is very even-handed. Sonic games are aimed primarily towards kids, and they seem to like Sonic Unleashed, overall.
I've heard statistics from some sources as high as 97% of black voters will be voting for Obama, just google for some of it it's out there. Even if they're off and lets say it's only 85%, still.
If 85% of white people voted for McCain, it would be considered racist.
Just saying.
Check your statistics (and your assumptions).
Democratic presidential candidates always get ~90% of the black vote; so, it's just unreasonable to suggest that this is because Obama is black.
Kerry got ~88% of the black vote in 2004, while Gore got ~90%. Current estimates suggest that OBama has ~91% of the black vote, which is essentially unchanged.
In the Democratic primaries, Senator Clinton was doing very well among black voters in polls, until certain incidents in South Carolina.
I understand that, and I agree. But I still think that the software should be open source for the reasons that I mentioned. With something as significant as voting, there should be complete transparency.
I think that any voting software should be open source. If we're to trust our votes to machines, then the software running them should be in an open box, not a black one. Perhaps then we wouldn't have to read about the security holes; we could find point them out ourselves.
As others have no doubt mentioned, Java is a much simpler language than C++, and, if you know C++, learning the basics of Java will not take comparatively much work. I would recommend reading a lightweight book which concisely explains the basics, and then attempting to write some programs in the language. There is no need to get a book designed from programming novices. You might even look at the Java Tutorials online.
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/
Additionally, using Google to search for 'Java for C++ programmers yields some useful results, such as this one:
http://www.javacommerce.com/displaypage.jsp?name=java_for_cplus.sql&id=18260
That's interesting. I loved PSO's sense of mood. (The same is true of the Phantasy Star series, in general).
I think of it as less cyberpunk and more "future perfect, with dark, moody undertones." It has a very clean sci-fi feel, but still manages to convey a sense of edginess.
There is also something known as a priori reasoning, which, as someone who has to deal with a lot of mathematical proofs, I find to be quite important.
In any case, given the tone of your replies, and the fact that you (paradoxically) made the blanket statement that all philosophy is and always has been useless, I shall kindly bow out of this discussion, to save everyone some time.
I'm not sure what "scientific to some degree" here means, because leaving out just one part of the scientific method can have disastrous results. (There are even some rather interesting philosophical arguments for why we should be skeptical of any result that can be observed). The point of my comment is unrelated to what makes people happy; it is with regard to what is actually true. The fact of the matter is that empiricism is inherently error-prone, especially with regard to complex phenomena such as human intelligence and behavior. As a result, I believe it is irresponsible for certain people in certain fields to assert, frankly, that correlation implies causation, but only within their field.
This is unsurprising, and should probably be patently obvious to anyone who has ever worked with children. This is why it's destructive to classify people based on some perceived innate intelligence or lack thereof. Certainly, there are some people who are especially gifted in one or many areas, for whatever reason, and some who are predisposed to be remedial in those same areas. However, it is irresponsible to draw conclusions based on fleeting performance statistics. This actually reminds me of another study which showed that girls who took an exam after having read an article about how women are supposedly intellectually inferior scored worse on the exam.
This is also an implicit critique for those in certain fields of biology, who, unwilling to question their genetic reductionistic assumptions, continuously attempt to explain everything about humanity in terms of genetics or selection pressure, as though their particular field exists within an epistemological vacuum.
I think that this argument is pointless. I've used both Eclipse and Netbeans extensively for Java and C++. Now I use Netbeans, because I think that it's more pleasant to use, and it has features which appeal to me personally. However, some people like Eclipse, and that's fine. Eclipse's high customizability (lack of structure) annoys me. Some complain that Netbeans is "slow," but it really isn't. Yes, it takes about.1 seconds for the context-sensitive code-completion to pop up, but I frankly don't know any people who code faster than their IDE. If that is the case, then the code isn't very complex and such people probably don't need any IDE at all.
Neither Netbeans nor Eclipse can reasonably be considered "lean," but neither are they the clunkers that some would have people believe. Those people probably haven't used it in 6 years. Both computers and Java have gotten faster since then.
That's fair enough. I don't claim to be an expert on Russia, by any stretch of the imagination. I do know, however, that, in the US, depending on where one is, one might get the impression that we all love president Bush.
The EXACT same thing happened to me. In fact, my hands hurt and my right wrist for days if I use a "standard keyboard" for fifteen minutes. I've used a Kinesis contoured keyboard for six years now. I'm a CS grad student, and I would not be if I didn't have this keyboard.
There's nothing defensive about what he or she said; it's a logical statement. You say, "It's not a perception; it's an effect based on chemical reactions in the brain." Actually, those are the same thing; so, that is a false dichotomy. You furthermore do not bother to define what "likely" means in this instances. We are forced to assume, therefore, that "likely," in this case, means "coincides with my presuppositions." As for your last statement, it isn't clear to me how you (1) know what this person believes, and thus (2) have any grounds for saying that his or her beliefs are "mean and pointless." It is, therefore, greatly ironic that you accuse the other commenter of saying that he "[twists] this far beyond what anyone is saying." The tendency of so many to denigrate anyone who pokes a hole in their vitriolic, anti-religious rhetoric is getting very old.
I've spent my fair share of time on Eclipse (and, despite what people on here seem to think, it has been available on the Mac for a long time). I definitely prefer NetBeans. Eclipse is too customizable for me, when it comes to Java programming. It's stressful, and the learning curve is very high. When I first used Netbeans, it was very intuitive; Eclipse had me scouring message boards every twenty minutes, trying to figure out what trick I needed to use. I've also have the misfortune of trying to use SWT. Does Java really need another, non-standard GUI toolkit? No, it does not. Some people claim that Netbeans is slow, but I that anyone using a computer less than five years old should be fine.
Well, I come from both a science and a philosophy background, because I believe that scientists should know philosophy, in no small part to avoid making the kinds of category mistakes that you're making right now. I.e., I'm a scientist who knows philosophy, and thus knows the limits of science. I'm also someone with enough experience to know when someone considers himself so superior to the person with he's discussing that the discussion is futile. I'm not going to debate with you the merits of describing someone as a "continental philosopher."
I'm just going to say a couple of things and this let this die, since you have already placed me in some sort of "religious" category in the dark recesses of your mind, and it seems to be a very hot place, in which case further discussion is not worth the time of each of us.
First, when I said "no one is denying that we exist as animals, I meant no one in this discussion. Second, it is, again, disingenuous to belittle someone's views simply because they differ from you, by declaring why they "want" to believe something. (I can understand why someone would want to believe that science is an epistemological end unto itself: it is pride, or, more precisely, hubris). Or maybe it's because we do things like contemplate our own deaths, build computers, compose music, create art, and debate the merits of scientific positivism.
One doesn't have to believe in God to see that we're a bit different from apes, regardless of how much of our DNA we share with them, even if only on an intuitive level.
I actually sort of smirked when you implied that I don't "understand or accept science." Yeah... Well, I'm sure that you're a very big guy in the philosophy of science field, but I guarantee that I do, in fact, understand science. Sorry, but you can't make someone who is doing science right now, wrestled with these issues for years, and who has studied philosophy of science feel bad because he can't live up to your grand scientific understanding.
We all have some reading to do, but nothing that I've said shows some kind of lack of knowledge; it simply shows a different perspective from you. I honestly don't know why you're preaching to me about natural selection and evolution, because, as someone in science, I accept both as fact. What I do not accept as fact, or even logical, is that this necessarily implies the kinds of philosophical claims that have been made. Only someone who assumes that someone who doesn't accept all of his assumptions must be some kind of religious zealot would think that, simply because I think that there were some very blatant nonsequiturs in previous posts, I must be one of "those" people. Questioning one's assumptions is healthy; denigrating those with whom you disagree because they annoy you is not.
You seem to be missing the point: that one needs to define "special," as unambiguously as possible, before saying that humans aren't special, and that, even if you define it in the way you have chosen to do in this instance -- a definition with which I take serious issue anyway -- it is not at all clear that humans would not be special, according to that definition. It would only mean that we (or you and your friends, in this case) can't think of one. Since you used the word "falsifiable," it is worth pointing out that, logically, one cannot falsifiably show that something doesn't exist, in a domain which has not been exhausted or even well defined. I'm not aware of many people, who have thought seriously about the subject, who would say that we have exhausted the domain of human classification. Even if we had, much of this is a matter of interpretation of that data in that domain. That is the point.
Again, no one is denying that we exist as "animals." However, semantics aside, it is not difficult to see why most people take issue with the notion that, simply because we have a lot in common with other creatures, we are not different in some very substantial and meaningful ways, which separate us from them. You can insult people who hold such views all day, but I could just as easily say that anyone who doesn't see that, while typing on a computer and listening to music, has his eyes closed. I don't do that, however, because I try not to be quite so arrogant. This is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one, per se -- and, as I said initially, there needs to be some tolerance of people with different philosophical views. This is rarely shown in forums like Slashdot, unfortunately, largely because of groupthink.
In any case, making blanket statements like there is "no evidence" in support of the claim that 'man is special,' is, frankly, over-simplifying the issue and not doing justice to what should be a very meaningful philosophical discussion.
I agree with your earlier points, but I think that, in the latter half of your post, you exemplified part of this whole issue: people on both sides -- naturalistic and non-naturalistic -- tend to over-reach in their induction. I'm certainly no "creationist," but there is no logical reason that evolution implies that humans are not "special," in some way. (Of course, we'd have to define what "special" means in this instance). Science's domain is describing how the mechanics of things in nature work. Science will never "show" that man is not "special," that God doesn't exist, etc. This is simply not the domain of science. Science's epistemology, in general, doesn't address those kinds of questions, despite how often many, sometimes bitter, people attempt to argue that it does.
Making dubious philosophical claims, such as "Science shows that man isn't special," or, as an ever growing number of shallow thinkers claim, "Science disproves 'religion'," does not help matters. Not only are those statements categorically false, but they only serve to galvanize people and force them into a defensive (and, eventually, offensive) mode. People on both sides of the issue, I think, need to learn to accept that not everyone has the same worldview, and that not everyone who has a different worldview from oneself is necessarily intellectually handicapped.
I fail to see how a mathematical model is any more useful explaining phenomenal properties in sentient beings than any other, less complex method. The problem is not that we lack an explanation for phenomenal properties; the problem is more concerned with the fact that they exist at all and are unlike any other known phenomena. The fact that my hand jerks back when I touch a stove makes sense. The very real, yet intangible phenomenal property of the sensation of pain -- or that particular pain -- itself is something which is, by its very nature, unobservable by anyone except the person experiencing it. (Looking at my facial expressions, the neurons firing in my brain, or a very clever computational model are not the same as experiencing the pain. Experiencing the pain itself is the only way to "observe" the pain, as it is, by nature, a mental experience. That is the point: that this is outside of the realm of what is observable, because it is, by nature, something which is non-physical, regardless of whether or not it is an artifact of something which is physical and therefore observable.
This is definitely he realm of philosophy: specifically, philosophy of the mind. You are describing, indirectly, I think, the mind-body problem. (You also raised some other issues, but I think that this is the most basic of them). Science will never have an explanation for things such as sensations: pain, taste, smell, etc; naturalistic science is limited to immediately observable things. Because of this, science may observe that, for example, when humans feel X, nerves Y fire. However, since, by definition, a phenomenal (mental) event is observable only by the person experiencing it, it would seem to be something non-physical, by definition, despite whatever physical correlates may exist. As these things are conceptually outside of the realm of what we can put under a microscope, so to speak, I think it's safe to say that there will never be a scientific explanation for how this works. Philosophers, however, have been trying forever, and the two main groups are the materialists (who, for various reasons, I think are just burying their heads in the sand, with regard to phenomenal properties of mental events), and the dualists, who, like me, believe that, since sensations (and consciousness, in general) are first-person experiences to which only the experiencer is privy, they cannot be physical. They are inherently non-physical and unobservable, short of some sort of psychic empathy, which, of course, a materialist would reject outright anyway. There are other, less popular groups, such as functionalists (think of Turing machines), but those dualists and physicalists/materialists are the two primary ones. There are subgroups thereof, of course.
I agree. It is certainly not too late, when one considers that Linux has just caught up to Windows 98 in terms of current operating system installed base. Additionally, considering the shifting dynamics of operating systems, with things like Mac OS gaining marketshare against Windows every day, I would agree that "it's never too late." It certainly wasn't too late for Java to gain widespread usage, even when C++ was quite well-established.
Interestingly, I installed Solaris in a VM just last week (I use a Mac), since our graduate CS department at Emory uses SanRay computers.
To be fair, Microsoft recently admitted that there is an unacceptable amount of Xbox 360 failures, and is taking a $1 billion hit in order to extend the warranty. Granted, it took them awhile, but they still did it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there are a couple of issues here: First, NP-Hard refers to the worst case. To say that a problem is X-Hard or X-Complete means that the problem is not solvable in deterministic polynomial time /in general./ It does not mean that there are not solvable instances of the problem or that there aren't heuristics that can speed up the process for certain kinds.
The latter, in fact, is that to which the entire field of machine learning is devoted. For example, the AI problem of planning is PSPACE-Complete, but there freely available planners that do quite well on certain instances, but they cannot be guaranteed to work for every instance in a reasonable amount of time, because the generalized problem is PSPACE-Complete.
There is a possibly deeper issue here of what these equations actually represent, and how model-dependent they are, but it sounds as though you have some misconceptions about computational complexity theory.
Actually, Sega makes a a significant number of excellent titles which no one buys, especially in America. It just so happens that Sonic Team's games sell well because they have the most mass-market appeal. Recently examples of others include the four Yakuza games, Valkyria Chronicles (the best game I've played in several years), Virtua Fighter 5, Virtua Tennis 3, and Outrun 2006. Since you mentioned Sonic, very few people are complaining about the excellent Sonic Rush games. Most of the games that people complain about not games developed by Sega of Japan, but games merely published by Sega. And to be fair, Sonic Unleashed is not a bad game. The werehog levels are not action levels; they're platforming levels. People complain that it's slow, but they only complain that it's slow because it's a Sonic game. If it had been any other slow platforming character, like all of the others, no one would have been outraged, even if they had disliked the gameplay. I think that including the levels was a bad decision, but I don't think how some evaluated it is very even-handed. Sonic games are aimed primarily towards kids, and they seem to like Sonic Unleashed, overall.
I've heard statistics from some sources as high as 97% of black voters will be voting for Obama, just google for some of it it's out there. Even if they're off and lets say it's only 85%, still.
If 85% of white people voted for McCain, it would be considered racist.
Just saying.
Check your statistics (and your assumptions). Democratic presidential candidates always get ~90% of the black vote; so, it's just unreasonable to suggest that this is because Obama is black. Kerry got ~88% of the black vote in 2004, while Gore got ~90%. Current estimates suggest that OBama has ~91% of the black vote, which is essentially unchanged. In the Democratic primaries, Senator Clinton was doing very well among black voters in polls, until certain incidents in South Carolina.
I understand that, and I agree. But I still think that the software should be open source for the reasons that I mentioned. With something as significant as voting, there should be complete transparency.
I think that any voting software should be open source. If we're to trust our votes to machines, then the software running them should be in an open box, not a black one. Perhaps then we wouldn't have to read about the security holes; we could find point them out ourselves.
As others have no doubt mentioned, Java is a much simpler language than C++, and, if you know C++, learning the basics of Java will not take comparatively much work. I would recommend reading a lightweight book which concisely explains the basics, and then attempting to write some programs in the language. There is no need to get a book designed from programming novices. You might even look at the Java Tutorials online. http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/ Additionally, using Google to search for 'Java for C++ programmers yields some useful results, such as this one: http://www.javacommerce.com/displaypage.jsp?name=java_for_cplus.sql&id=18260
That's interesting. I loved PSO's sense of mood. (The same is true of the Phantasy Star series, in general).
I think of it as less cyberpunk and more "future perfect, with dark, moody undertones." It has a very clean sci-fi feel, but still manages to convey a sense of edginess.
And yes, the soundtrack is brilliant.
There is also something known as a priori reasoning, which, as someone who has to deal with a lot of mathematical proofs, I find to be quite important. In any case, given the tone of your replies, and the fact that you (paradoxically) made the blanket statement that all philosophy is and always has been useless, I shall kindly bow out of this discussion, to save everyone some time.
I'm not sure what "scientific to some degree" here means, because leaving out just one part of the scientific method can have disastrous results. (There are even some rather interesting philosophical arguments for why we should be skeptical of any result that can be observed). The point of my comment is unrelated to what makes people happy; it is with regard to what is actually true. The fact of the matter is that empiricism is inherently error-prone, especially with regard to complex phenomena such as human intelligence and behavior. As a result, I believe it is irresponsible for certain people in certain fields to assert, frankly, that correlation implies causation, but only within their field.
This is also an implicit critique for those in certain fields of biology, who, unwilling to question their genetic reductionistic assumptions, continuously attempt to explain everything about humanity in terms of genetics or selection pressure, as though their particular field exists within an epistemological vacuum.
I think that this argument is pointless. I've used both Eclipse and Netbeans extensively for Java and C++. Now I use Netbeans, because I think that it's more pleasant to use, and it has features which appeal to me personally. However, some people like Eclipse, and that's fine. Eclipse's high customizability (lack of structure) annoys me. Some complain that Netbeans is "slow," but it really isn't. Yes, it takes about .1 seconds for the context-sensitive code-completion to pop up, but I frankly don't know any people who code faster than their IDE. If that is the case, then the code isn't very complex and such people probably don't need any IDE at all.
Neither Netbeans nor Eclipse can reasonably be considered "lean," but neither are they the clunkers that some would have people believe. Those people probably haven't used it in 6 years. Both computers and Java have gotten faster since then.
That's fair enough. I don't claim to be an expert on Russia, by any stretch of the imagination. I do know, however, that, in the US, depending on where one is, one might get the impression that we all love president Bush.
Worth asking, as Gary Kasparov did, is this: How do you know that Putin is enormously popular in Russia? Are we relying on polls in a police state?
The EXACT same thing happened to me. In fact, my hands hurt and my right wrist for days if I use a "standard keyboard" for fifteen minutes. I've used a Kinesis contoured keyboard for six years now. I'm a CS grad student, and I would not be if I didn't have this keyboard.
There's nothing defensive about what he or she said; it's a logical statement. You say, "It's not a perception; it's an effect based on chemical reactions in the brain." Actually, those are the same thing; so, that is a false dichotomy. You furthermore do not bother to define what "likely" means in this instances. We are forced to assume, therefore, that "likely," in this case, means "coincides with my presuppositions." As for your last statement, it isn't clear to me how you (1) know what this person believes, and thus (2) have any grounds for saying that his or her beliefs are "mean and pointless." It is, therefore, greatly ironic that you accuse the other commenter of saying that he "[twists] this far beyond what anyone is saying." The tendency of so many to denigrate anyone who pokes a hole in their vitriolic, anti-religious rhetoric is getting very old.
I've spent my fair share of time on Eclipse (and, despite what people on here seem to think, it has been available on the Mac for a long time). I definitely prefer NetBeans. Eclipse is too customizable for me, when it comes to Java programming. It's stressful, and the learning curve is very high. When I first used Netbeans, it was very intuitive; Eclipse had me scouring message boards every twenty minutes, trying to figure out what trick I needed to use. I've also have the misfortune of trying to use SWT. Does Java really need another, non-standard GUI toolkit? No, it does not. Some people claim that Netbeans is slow, but I that anyone using a computer less than five years old should be fine.
This isn't actually new technology. Swarm has been an active research technology for some time, in robots and distributed systems.
I'm just going to say a couple of things and this let this die, since you have already placed me in some sort of "religious" category in the dark recesses of your mind, and it seems to be a very hot place, in which case further discussion is not worth the time of each of us.
First, when I said "no one is denying that we exist as animals, I meant no one in this discussion. Second, it is, again, disingenuous to belittle someone's views simply because they differ from you, by declaring why they "want" to believe something. (I can understand why someone would want to believe that science is an epistemological end unto itself: it is pride, or, more precisely, hubris). Or maybe it's because we do things like contemplate our own deaths, build computers, compose music, create art, and debate the merits of scientific positivism.
One doesn't have to believe in God to see that we're a bit different from apes, regardless of how much of our DNA we share with them, even if only on an intuitive level.
I actually sort of smirked when you implied that I don't "understand or accept science." Yeah... Well, I'm sure that you're a very big guy in the philosophy of science field, but I guarantee that I do, in fact, understand science. Sorry, but you can't make someone who is doing science right now, wrestled with these issues for years, and who has studied philosophy of science feel bad because he can't live up to your grand scientific understanding.
You seem to be missing the point: that one needs to define "special," as unambiguously as possible, before saying that humans aren't special, and that, even if you define it in the way you have chosen to do in this instance -- a definition with which I take serious issue anyway -- it is not at all clear that humans would not be special, according to that definition. It would only mean that we (or you and your friends, in this case) can't think of one. Since you used the word "falsifiable," it is worth pointing out that, logically, one cannot falsifiably show that something doesn't exist, in a domain which has not been exhausted or even well defined. I'm not aware of many people, who have thought seriously about the subject, who would say that we have exhausted the domain of human classification. Even if we had, much of this is a matter of interpretation of that data in that domain. That is the point.
Again, no one is denying that we exist as "animals." However, semantics aside, it is not difficult to see why most people take issue with the notion that, simply because we have a lot in common with other creatures, we are not different in some very substantial and meaningful ways, which separate us from them. You can insult people who hold such views all day, but I could just as easily say that anyone who doesn't see that, while typing on a computer and listening to music, has his eyes closed. I don't do that, however, because I try not to be quite so arrogant. This is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one, per se -- and, as I said initially, there needs to be some tolerance of people with different philosophical views. This is rarely shown in forums like Slashdot, unfortunately, largely because of groupthink.
In any case, making blanket statements like there is "no evidence" in support of the claim that 'man is special,' is, frankly, over-simplifying the issue and not doing justice to what should be a very meaningful philosophical discussion.
Making dubious philosophical claims, such as "Science shows that man isn't special," or, as an ever growing number of shallow thinkers claim, "Science disproves 'religion'," does not help matters. Not only are those statements categorically false, but they only serve to galvanize people and force them into a defensive (and, eventually, offensive) mode. People on both sides of the issue, I think, need to learn to accept that not everyone has the same worldview, and that not everyone who has a different worldview from oneself is necessarily intellectually handicapped.
I fail to see how a mathematical model is any more useful explaining phenomenal properties in sentient beings than any other, less complex method. The problem is not that we lack an explanation for phenomenal properties; the problem is more concerned with the fact that they exist at all and are unlike any other known phenomena. The fact that my hand jerks back when I touch a stove makes sense. The very real, yet intangible phenomenal property of the sensation of pain -- or that particular pain -- itself is something which is, by its very nature, unobservable by anyone except the person experiencing it. (Looking at my facial expressions, the neurons firing in my brain, or a very clever computational model are not the same as experiencing the pain. Experiencing the pain itself is the only way to "observe" the pain, as it is, by nature, a mental experience. That is the point: that this is outside of the realm of what is observable, because it is, by nature, something which is non-physical, regardless of whether or not it is an artifact of something which is physical and therefore observable.
This is definitely he realm of philosophy: specifically, philosophy of the mind. You are describing, indirectly, I think, the mind-body problem. (You also raised some other issues, but I think that this is the most basic of them). Science will never have an explanation for things such as sensations: pain, taste, smell, etc; naturalistic science is limited to immediately observable things. Because of this, science may observe that, for example, when humans feel X, nerves Y fire. However, since, by definition, a phenomenal (mental) event is observable only by the person experiencing it, it would seem to be something non-physical, by definition, despite whatever physical correlates may exist. As these things are conceptually outside of the realm of what we can put under a microscope, so to speak, I think it's safe to say that there will never be a scientific explanation for how this works. Philosophers, however, have been trying forever, and the two main groups are the materialists (who, for various reasons, I think are just burying their heads in the sand, with regard to phenomenal properties of mental events), and the dualists, who, like me, believe that, since sensations (and consciousness, in general) are first-person experiences to which only the experiencer is privy, they cannot be physical. They are inherently non-physical and unobservable, short of some sort of psychic empathy, which, of course, a materialist would reject outright anyway. There are other, less popular groups, such as functionalists (think of Turing machines), but those dualists and physicalists/materialists are the two primary ones. There are subgroups thereof, of course.
Interestingly, I installed Solaris in a VM just last week (I use a Mac), since our graduate CS department at Emory uses SanRay computers.
To be fair, Microsoft recently admitted that there is an unacceptable amount of Xbox 360 failures, and is taking a $1 billion hit in order to extend the warranty. Granted, it took them awhile, but they still did it.
I guess that some people would say that becoming a Mac user has made me dumber. But my mom thinks I and my computer are cool.