Science has changed the environment natural selection is working in, it has done nothing to natural selection itself
If someone can have children who could not before, then the environment has changed, natural selection is still at work, just in a different environment, only if we eliminate all the evolutionary pressures do we affect natural selection - when we don't die however stupid we are, however many diseases we get (or we eliminate them all), and we can have children no matter how faulty our genes, then we will have stopped natural selection..however this is not likely...
Peacocks show to peahens that they are very fit because they can grow a large tail, maintain it, go to the effort of displaying it, avoid predators even though they brightly coloured - and so tend to breed more than the ones with smaller bedraggled tails or the ones that got caught...It's called sexual selection
Evolution only 'sees' how many of your genes are passed on... if you ensure this by who you breed with (so you have children more likely to survive to have children of their own) , the way you teach your children (so they survive...), then it is still natural selection
Put one line of Propitiatory code in your project and see what happens.... you will get sued, or required to pay large licensing fees
The GPL does the same, but does not need you to pay or tangle with lawyers, it just requires one thin that you don't cut the end user off from the code...that is your payment
If you don;t agree with the payment required don't use it, the same as if Propitiatory code required you to pay overly large fees, or give them your code etc.. and you were not happy with this...
GPL : Our code is free, it remains free, your code is now free as well LGPL : Our code is free, it remains free, your code is yours BSD : Our code is free, you can lock your version down, it is now yours
If you are building a system on top of open source then you will at an absolute minimum find bugs in it, and be able to suggest where the bug is and how to fix it even if you cannot spare the time to attempt to do it yourself, if you do then it is quite likely to get fixed, and this will mean you will not have waste time coding round the bug...
So your options are : Report bugs with enough detail to get them fixed and if you have the time and budget help fix them, or waste time and resources working round the bug....
You don't have to do this but it makes no sense not to...GPL does not force you to (it just makes sure others can), BSD does not force you to (but other may not be able to or even realise there is an issue)
Steve Jobs - Got Lucky and capitalised on it... Bill Gates - Got lucky, and capitalised on it..
This is true of most business leaders, the hard part is getting your timing right (most do this through luck more than judgement), and then capitalising on this... this is the hard part that even they do not know how to quantify
The point is that the entire Hubble budget was less than what is wasted (i.e. not correctly spent) on defence...
Defence is (basically) good but perhaps there are more economies to be made in the much, much larger and less well scrutinised defence budget than the over scrutinised space budget..?
If you count 3rd party software as anything beyond the bare OS, then Linux cannot boot...and there is no such thing in Windows...
If you count it as the bare system as installed from CD/DVD (A fairer comparison) then Linux can do many more things than windows, it depends on the Distro...but some have ISO mounting built into the file manager
I you count what you can install from the system without paying extra (i.e. Windows Update, Package Manager) then Linux wins hands down...
This is simply another case of "Microsoft have finally noticed people are writing 3rd party apps to do something that should be in Windows, and so have folded it in..."
The good news is they have done it, the bad news is that they took so long...
Last UK election the party in charge and who is currently making all the decisions (in a coalition) got 36.1% of the popular vote...The previous government got 35.2% of the popular vote...
Under PR (any method) both times they would have got slightly less seats, would still have formed a coalition with the same (minority) party, and ended up with the same situation...
In the EU a coalition is in charge, because they have PR...
We don't have a two party system in the UK or the EU... This is not the USA?
People generally complain about the ribbon, because it is a bad design, some people like it (love it even), some people cannot get on with it, looking at the comments above some people who use it every day and have done so for prolonged periods, still do not like it...
This should tell you it is not people who decided in 5 minutes they did not like it and never used it again, these are people forced to use it, who still hate it 5 years later
I disliked that MS kept moving things around the menus with each new version, I disliked the folding menus, I disliked the ribbon, I still dislike the ribbon, I use it because I cannot turn it off... When I use software without the ribbon, I mostly don't notice because it is easy... When I use anything with the Ribbon I notice because it gets in my way, Still, after 5 years of using it on a daily basis...
The Menu took very little space, the default toolbar took a second line... where was all the other space taken up...?
I turned off the folding menus that hid little used items, because it made the used items appear in places i was not expecting, and hid items I might use but forgot about because they were hidden. The Ribbon hides most items so they do not get used.... is this MS's way of getting rid of the little used features they have added over the years?
Not directly elected - Because this is Proportional Representation, you vote for a candidate, they get less votes than another candidate and get in anyway, or you vote for a candidate and another person from the same party gets in because of your vote...
First past the post is at least a vote for a candidate not a party...
As always don't virtualise what should not be virtual, some things need direct access to the hardware, many don't, the ones that don't can be virtualised, the ones that do should not be....
Realtime hardware and very heavy use of I/O to/from hardware are the parts that do not virtualise well and so should be avoided
Left in Pub does not mean left in Pub by Drunken contractor - probably went in for food at lunchtime, and left it behind, just like others have left them on trains, taxi's etc when not drunk....Pubs in the UK are very often not just Bars, they are nearer Restaurants with a Bar...
There is a drinking culture in the UK, the problem is that the culture is to drink, without food, in order to get drunk, other countries drink as much, but with food (which lessens the effect), and consider being drunk to be ill mannered...
The first being that if you live in the US it might look like a really efficient car, but in the rest of the civilised world we have Non-Hybrid cars that make a Prius look like a Gas Guzzler...They are modern Diesels....
C does not have strings.... It has a char and a pointer to a char - this means you have low level control of everything (and you have to cope with the consequences)
C++ Does have strings, they are objects/classes and so the implementation is hidden and can be changed arbitrarily - This means you don't need to worry about the implementation, but lose some of your control...
Pick a language for what it is good at, don't complain when the hand-holding language won't let you do something, or the low level language won't stop you...
They appear to be using some form of Fractal compression, i.e you have a formula to generate the object, when you need to render it you pick a compression level that means that you render the object to the current resolution - So an object in the distance will be only rendered so it occupies a few pixels, a nearer object a few thousand, etc... you get 'infinite' resolution as they claim, the difficult part is encoding the object in such a way that you can, a) render quickly, and b) stop the object looking repetitive (Like fractal trees often look) even when very close up...
Slashdot Mirror
Science has changed the environment natural selection is working in, it has done nothing to natural selection itself
If someone can have children who could not before, then the environment has changed, natural selection is still at work, just in a different environment, only if we eliminate all the evolutionary pressures do we affect natural selection - when we don't die however stupid we are, however many diseases we get (or we eliminate them all), and we can have children no matter how faulty our genes, then we will have stopped natural selection ..however this is not likely ...
Peahens are dull and brown
Peacocks show to peahens that they are very fit because they can grow a large tail, maintain it, go to the effort of displaying it, avoid predators even though they brightly coloured - and so tend to breed more than the ones with smaller bedraggled tails or the ones that got caught ...It's called sexual selection
Evolution only 'sees' how many of your genes are passed on ... if you ensure this by who you breed with (so you have children more likely to survive to have children of their own) , the way you teach your children (so they survive...), then it is still natural selection
Put one line of Propitiatory code in your project and see what happens .... you will get sued, or required to pay large licensing fees
The GPL does the same, but does not need you to pay or tangle with lawyers, it just requires one thin that you don't cut the end user off from the code ...that is your payment
If you don;t agree with the payment required don't use it, the same as if Propitiatory code required you to pay overly large fees, or give them your code etc .. and you were not happy with this ...
GPL : Our code is free, it remains free, your code is now free as well
LGPL : Our code is free, it remains free, your code is yours
BSD : Our code is free, you can lock your version down, it is now yours
If you are building a system on top of open source then you will at an absolute minimum find bugs in it, and be able to suggest where the bug is and how to fix it even if you cannot spare the time to attempt to do it yourself, if you do then it is quite likely to get fixed, and this will mean you will not have waste time coding round the bug ...
So your options are : Report bugs with enough detail to get them fixed and if you have the time and budget help fix them, or waste time and resources working round the bug ....
You don't have to do this but it makes no sense not to ...GPL does not force you to (it just makes sure others can), BSD does not force you to (but other may not be able to or even realise there is an issue)
Steve Jobs - Got Lucky and capitalised on it ... ..
Bill Gates - Got lucky, and capitalised on it
This is true of most business leaders, the hard part is getting your timing right (most do this through luck more than judgement), and then capitalising on this... this is the hard part that even they do not know how to quantify
The point is that the entire Hubble budget was less than what is wasted (i.e. not correctly spent) on defence...
Defence is (basically) good but perhaps there are more economies to be made in the much, much larger and less well scrutinised defence budget than the over scrutinised space budget ..?
WE will when the US Economy stops dragging the EU economy down so that entire countries become bankrupt ...
If you count 3rd party software as anything beyond the bare OS, then Linux cannot boot ...and there is no such thing in Windows ...
If you count it as the bare system as installed from CD/DVD (A fairer comparison) then Linux can do many more things than windows, it depends on the Distro ...but some have ISO mounting built into the file manager
I you count what you can install from the system without paying extra (i.e. Windows Update, Package Manager) then Linux wins hands down ...
This is simply another case of "Microsoft have finally noticed people are writing 3rd party apps to do something that should be in Windows, and so have folded it in..."
The good news is they have done it, the bad news is that they took so long ...
Last UK election the party in charge and who is currently making all the decisions (in a coalition) got 36.1% of the popular vote ...The previous government got 35.2% of the popular vote ...
Under PR (any method) both times they would have got slightly less seats, would still have formed a coalition with the same (minority) party, and ended up with the same situation ...
In the EU a coalition is in charge, because they have PR ...
We don't have a two party system in the UK or the EU ... This is not the USA?
..Two international companies with headquarters in the USA, and offices all over the world ...
The third party (EU) is where a lot of their sales are.
The world does not revolve around the USA ...
People generally complain about the ribbon, because it is a bad design, some people like it (love it even), some people cannot get on with it, looking at the comments above some people who use it every day and have done so for prolonged periods, still do not like it ...
This should tell you it is not people who decided in 5 minutes they did not like it and never used it again, these are people forced to use it, who still hate it 5 years later
I disliked that MS kept moving things around the menus with each new version, I disliked the folding menus, I disliked the ribbon, I still dislike the ribbon, I use it because I cannot turn it off ... When I use software without the ribbon, I mostly don't notice because it is easy... When I use anything with the Ribbon I notice because it gets in my way, Still, after 5 years of using it on a daily basis ...
The Menu took very little space, the default toolbar took a second line ... where was all the other space taken up ...?
I turned off the folding menus that hid little used items, because it made the used items appear in places i was not expecting, and hid items I might use but forgot about because they were hidden. The Ribbon hides most items so they do not get used .... is this MS's way of getting rid of the little used features they have added over the years?
..Space that they took away in the previous version by adding the *$$%$ Ribbon ...!
davidu (18) Wins ....!
Not directly elected - Because this is Proportional Representation, you vote for a candidate, they get less votes than another candidate and get in anyway, or you vote for a candidate and another person from the same party gets in because of your vote ...
First past the post is at least a vote for a candidate not a party ...
A one off payment of 8.5Billion also known as less than 4 days spending on defence ....most of which are less careful about where the contracts go ...
Remember....
The Web is not the internet - The internet is ~ 20 years older than the Web
Email is not tied to the internet, it is around 10 years older then the internet .... !
As always don't virtualise what should not be virtual, some things need direct access to the hardware, many don't, the ones that don't can be virtualised, the ones that do should not be ....
Realtime hardware and very heavy use of I/O to/from hardware are the parts that do not virtualise well and so should be avoided
Left in Pub does not mean left in Pub by Drunken contractor - probably went in for food at lunchtime, and left it behind, just like others have left them on trains, taxi's etc when not drunk ....Pubs in the UK are very often not just Bars, they are nearer Restaurants with a Bar ...
There is a drinking culture in the UK, the problem is that the culture is to drink, without food, in order to get drunk, other countries drink as much, but with food (which lessens the effect), and consider being drunk to be ill mannered ...
London is largest metropolitan area by population in the EU
And :
NYC 8,175,133
London 7,825,200
So yes it is worth it ...
..another reason not to buy a Prius
The first being that if you live in the US it might look like a really efficient car, but in the rest of the civilised world we have Non-Hybrid cars that make a Prius look like a Gas Guzzler ...They are modern Diesels ....
They do occasionally let a real piece of verifiably genuine news slip in every so often, but I think this might just be sloppy journalism...
C does not have strings .... It has a char and a pointer to a char - this means you have low level control of everything (and you have to cope with the consequences)
C++ Does have strings, they are objects/classes and so the implementation is hidden and can be changed arbitrarily - This means you don't need to worry about the implementation, but lose some of your control ...
Pick a language for what it is good at, don't complain when the hand-holding language won't let you do something, or the low level language won't stop you ...
The real problem with shading and shadows is that none of these objects have a surface ... just a cloud of points
They appear to be using some form of Fractal compression, i.e you have a formula to generate the object, when you need to render it you pick a compression level that means that you render the object to the current resolution - So an object in the distance will be only rendered so it occupies a few pixels, a nearer object a few thousand, etc ... you get 'infinite' resolution as they claim, the difficult part is encoding the object in such a way that you can, a) render quickly, and b) stop the object looking repetitive (Like fractal trees often look) even when very close up ...