Wow, do I ever agree with you! A man (or woman?) after my own heart.
A few other bad things that MS did to what had been perfectly good designs:
Change the Control key to CapsLock. How often do I use the control key? All the time. How often do I use the CapsLock? Once a year, maybe? Sheez. The now-standard position for the control keys (next to some other key I don't want to use, I think it's a windows key) is very hard for my pinky to find. If someone wants a CapsLock key, put it there. (One of the first customizations I do to a new computer is to put the Control back where God intended it to be, using RegEdit.)
Replace the Office menus with the Ribbon. I wouldn't mind if it were an option, but to force its use. Yuck.
There are some good things MS has done, like its support of Unicode. But I sure wish they'd replace the notion that everyone needs to work in the same way, with the notion of customizability.
BTW, why should *people* have to be the ones who give? Isn't the whole point of computers that we can make them do whatever we want? Within limits of time and memory... but those aren't going to keep us from having a Start menu. Only stupidity will do that.
I'm not arguing with you about Metro, I think you're right on--I can't imagine why I would want to interact with the OS in that way, when I have two 27" monitors and a keyboard.
But I will take issue with you on whether the Office 2010 Ribbon is customizable. It will be customizable when I can remove *any* item (not just a ribbon or a "tab"); when I can get rid of all the distracting hieroglyphic icons, leaving just good old words written in alphabetic characters; and when I can assign my own shortcut keys to menu items. Like the menu used to be. Now *that* was customizable.
"the Incas did not use wheeled vehicles": true, but neither did anyone else in the Western hemisphere, regardless of the terrain. (I have heard that there were Mayan toys with wheels, although I can't find a reliable citation. But they never used the wheel for carrying loads.)
Even with wide "flat" grasslands, you need some kind of a path before a wheel becomes practical. In my experience, at least, grasslands are not really flat--there are all kinds of bumps, not to mention the occasional stream. Try riding a bicycle across a grassy field, I think you'll see: much harder than riding it on a trail. But I think your point is right--given the grasslands, there would have been paths between villages.
I used to say it wasn't the wheel that people invented first, it was the path that a wheeled vehicle could travel on.
Provided the asteroid's mass is much smaller than the Earth's--which it is, unless it's made of neutronium--then its deflection does not significantly depend on its mass.
I'm sure someone (not me) will re-analyze the Mayan calendar and show that it's a couple months off..and Mayan doomsday is actually scheduled for 15 Feb 2013.
BTW, the location of the Chicxulub crater is at the northern edge of Maya-land, although the only Mayans around then were dinosaurs.
"Current technology does not allow 'pinpoint' landings": Is this because it's difficult to find where you want to go as you're coming down, or because there's no way to maneuver during descent to land at a given target? If the former, could the radio signals from Curiosity serve as a target beacon?
I worked at Boeing Computer Services during the mid-80s on syntactic parsing of English. The parser once found a sentence (I think it was from the WSJ) of about 20 words that was over 1000 ways ambiguous. That's getting towards the worst case end, although I think sentences like "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" (...) are still harder. (In case you think that's not a real sentence, let me assure you that I'm not buffaloing you...)
Anyway, our parser was later put to work with a simplified grammar to enforce the usage of "Simplified English" grammar in aircraft manuals. The motivation was that the manuals often have to be read by non-native speakers of English, so keeping them as simple as possible is really important. And no, simplified English is not the native language of engineers.
So what's your term for the legions of regular folks and politicians who believe, for no good scientific reason, that global warming is happening, and that it must be because of humans? True believers? Fundamentalists?
Most of us don't have the data and time to decide whether global warming is happening, or whether it's a result of instrument error, misinterpretation of tree rings, etc.; and the further we go back, the harder the question becomes. (Well, maybe until the close of the last Ice Age.) So we take someone's word for it. We used to call such people priests, now we call them scientists. And since we can't validate their data, we rely on secondary and tertiary evidence to decide whether we believe. Secondary evidence might include consistency among different climate scientists, or whether specialists in fields like statistics find the climate scientists' use of statistics to be correct. Tertiary evidence might be judgments about whether their sources of income bias them (in either direction!), or whether they try to suppress contrary opinions.
If most of us must rely on secondary or tertiary evidence to decide *whether* global warming is happening, then it's even harder to decide whether it's caused by humans (or to what extent it's caused by humans). Certainly there are other possibilities, which we--and for that matter scientists--are largely ignorant about.
Personally, I think "skeptic" is a much better term.
Without revealing my own beliefs (call me a chicken), how do you know there were any lions (or lambs) in the Garden? For all we know, it was fenced in, and had only a few species of animals. Or maybe Adam did his naming looking through the fence.
Only one problem: the science. Last time I looked (about sunset), the Earth did not rotate around the Sun, it revolved around it once in one year. It rotates about its own axis once per day.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, do I ever agree with you! A man (or woman?) after my own heart.
A few other bad things that MS did to what had been perfectly good designs:
Change the Control key to CapsLock. How often do I use the control key? All the time. How often do I use the CapsLock? Once a year, maybe? Sheez. The now-standard position for the control keys (next to some other key I don't want to use, I think it's a windows key) is very hard for my pinky to find. If someone wants a CapsLock key, put it there. (One of the first customizations I do to a new computer is to put the Control back where God intended it to be, using RegEdit.)
Replace the Office menus with the Ribbon. I wouldn't mind if it were an option, but to force its use. Yuck.
There are some good things MS has done, like its support of Unicode. But I sure wish they'd replace the notion that everyone needs to work in the same way, with the notion of customizability.
Right, MS-DOS didn't have a start menu.
BTW, why should *people* have to be the ones who give? Isn't the whole point of computers that we can make them do whatever we want? Within limits of time and memory... but those aren't going to keep us from having a Start menu. Only stupidity will do that.
I'm not arguing with you about Metro, I think you're right on--I can't imagine why I would want to interact with the OS in that way, when I have two 27" monitors and a keyboard.
But I will take issue with you on whether the Office 2010 Ribbon is customizable. It will be customizable when I can remove *any* item (not just a ribbon or a "tab"); when I can get rid of all the distracting hieroglyphic icons, leaving just good old words written in alphabetic characters; and when I can assign my own shortcut keys to menu items. Like the menu used to be. Now *that* was customizable.
"the Incas did not use wheeled vehicles": true, but neither did anyone else in the Western hemisphere, regardless of the terrain. (I have heard that there were Mayan toys with wheels, although I can't find a reliable citation. But they never used the wheel for carrying loads.)
"A lot of those cultures also never developed "Western" materialism and greed." How do you know this?
I would love to fly a dinosaur!
Even with wide "flat" grasslands, you need some kind of a path before a wheel becomes practical. In my experience, at least, grasslands are not really flat--there are all kinds of bumps, not to mention the occasional stream. Try riding a bicycle across a grassy field, I think you'll see: much harder than riding it on a trail. But I think your point is right--given the grasslands, there would have been paths between villages.
I used to say it wasn't the wheel that people invented first, it was the path that a wheeled vehicle could travel on.
For a long time, wheels had white walls.
No, we're nowhere near 26k miles in diameter. Not even obese Americans.
Provided the asteroid's mass is much smaller than the Earth's--which it is, unless it's made of neutronium--then its deflection does not significantly depend on its mass.
I'm sure someone (not me) will re-analyze the Mayan calendar and show that it's a couple months off..and Mayan doomsday is actually scheduled for 15 Feb 2013.
BTW, the location of the Chicxulub crater is at the northern edge of Maya-land, although the only Mayans around then were dinosaurs.
Oh, you mean *that's* what that icon is for? I can't read hieroglyphics.
"Current technology does not allow 'pinpoint' landings": Is this because it's difficult to find where you want to go as you're coming down, or because there's no way to maneuver during descent to land at a given target? If the former, could the radio signals from Curiosity serve as a target beacon?
Picture or link? Why is it so expensive?
You'd better tell these folks
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DynamicalSystem.html
they're wrong.
I worked at Boeing Computer Services during the mid-80s on syntactic parsing of English. The parser once found a sentence (I think it was from the WSJ) of about 20 words that was over 1000 ways ambiguous. That's getting towards the worst case end, although I think sentences like "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" (...) are still harder. (In case you think that's not a real sentence, let me assure you that I'm not buffaloing you...)
Anyway, our parser was later put to work with a simplified grammar to enforce the usage of "Simplified English" grammar in aircraft manuals. The motivation was that the manuals often have to be read by non-native speakers of English, so keeping them as simple as possible is really important. And no, simplified English is not the native language of engineers.
"Determining if something is NP-Hard, is... wait for it.... wait for it... NP-Hard!"
Wrong.
So what's your term for the legions of regular folks and politicians who believe, for no good scientific reason, that global warming is happening, and that it must be because of humans? True believers? Fundamentalists?
Most of us don't have the data and time to decide whether global warming is happening, or whether it's a result of instrument error, misinterpretation of tree rings, etc.; and the further we go back, the harder the question becomes. (Well, maybe until the close of the last Ice Age.) So we take someone's word for it. We used to call such people priests, now we call them scientists. And since we can't validate their data, we rely on secondary and tertiary evidence to decide whether we believe. Secondary evidence might include consistency among different climate scientists, or whether specialists in fields like statistics find the climate scientists' use of statistics to be correct. Tertiary evidence might be judgments about whether their sources of income bias them (in either direction!), or whether they try to suppress contrary opinions.
If most of us must rely on secondary or tertiary evidence to decide *whether* global warming is happening, then it's even harder to decide whether it's caused by humans (or to what extent it's caused by humans). Certainly there are other possibilities, which we--and for that matter scientists--are largely ignorant about.
Personally, I think "skeptic" is a much better term.
...and also where N=0
It supports UTF-8 clumsily (if at all)??!!! I'm going to stop paying my subscription to /.
Nach
I know of no company in "the car industry, or aerospace, or banking" that invented a drink like Tang.
Without revealing my own beliefs (call me a chicken), how do you know there were any lions (or lambs) in the Garden? For all we know, it was fenced in, and had only a few species of animals. Or maybe Adam did his naming looking through the fence.
Wow, a scientific answer to a Biblical reference.
Only one problem: the science. Last time I looked (about sunset), the Earth did not rotate around the Sun, it revolved around it once in one year. It rotates about its own axis once per day.
What, Microsoft bought Gnome?