The sad thing about this kind of terrorism is that, somewhere under the concern for public safety, there's an epidemic of people committing suicide because they're being taught to. Where's the public focus on that? Where are the Help Lines for people so affected by their religion/cult that they're thinking about suicide?
It reminds me of "Waco" a little, in that this is a culture of very isolated, indoctrinated people. In their hearts they are not "evil" people, or indeed doing anything wrong. That's a major crime right there, turning a human being into that - a machine of war and politics. They need to be convinced that they are dying for politics and hatred, not for their religion, which is one of peace, as much as any religion is.
Just seems logical, nevermind humane, to me, to address that as part of the "war on terror". For it's also a war being waged on the minds of these young people, by enclaves of their own people. At that level it's criminal exploitation and slavery, and should be discussed widely as such, so young people don't mindlessly fall for it. Again these things come down to education.. an educated society doesn't go quite that astray, and the West has let these countries putrefy while we ride on their backs so here we are.. but that's another topic.
I've heard people talk about open source projects having this problem - a lack of solid, coherent vision, because there are too many people invested in the project mainly out of "interest". They don't get any cash out of it, so why should they stick around if the project doesn't go the way they want it to and they lose that interest?
The more internal politics in a project, the less stable it becomes.
But the solution is simple as I see it. There are two streams of knowledge relevant for Wikipedia. One is factual, historic, objective. The other is *cultural*. So they should split the project in twain, or at least allow articles to be flagged as one or the other and perhaps make that a democratic public process as well.
I do not believe you can mix the two in the same context. At least this approach should stop people leaving the project just because they're bummed out.
"Similarly, questions like "what happened before the creation of the universe" and "who created God" are not really meaningful."
I disagree entirely. It is very useful, both intellectually and psychologically, to ask questions that have no answers. We have to deal with that all our lives. The origin of the universe is only one of a multitude of unanswerable questions we have to reconcile ourselves with during a lifetime. Death, misfortune, what another person is really feeling, who is my dad.. oops.
I actually believe it's the other way around - we ask about the nature of the universe *because* we are wired up already to deal with an unpredictable reality of unanswerable questions. We have to be, because we started off having to ask questions in the first place to survive. They just became more complicated as time went on, but we ask them for the same reasons - to feel like we have a grasp on things.
So much horsepower is going into the _look_ of a game, but so little into animation techniques to make it _feel_ real not just look real. Character animation sucks on all games as far as I've seen. We still have pre-programmed movements that jerk from one animation phase to another, the whole process is very rigid, unintelligent and desperate for an overhaul of technology.
I'd like to see inverse-kinematics used in character animations. Example: As you walk in real life, you decide where your feet need to be, not where your thighs, hips or knees need to be. They follow automatically, as does your torso. Your arms tend to swing for balance. Your torso leans and sways to maintain a general centre of gravity across your limbs. When you are pushed, again your feet decide where they need to be to adjust your centre of gravity, stop a fall, etc.
With all the CPU power at our disposal, I don't see anyone trying out stuff like this. It would really make 3D games feel more realistic and dynamic, removing scripted movements. It's just an extension of the physics engine and ragdoll, but of course needs a lot of rules placed on it to make it not look silly while playing.
Then there's the dismal state of AI, and of course storytelling and engaging a players' imagination. "Gaming" is about imagination, otherwise it's just entertainment; interactive TV.
UT3 is a perfect example of how stagnated that genre is. UT3 is like Vista to UT2004's XP. We came from a place of innovation way back in the Zork days, when people were thinking up *new ways to tell a story*. Now it's all about hype and visuals but little real innovation.
I've been saying for many years that Windows should have the option for a tabbed interface - indeed perhaps by default. The use of "windows" should be an option. By far most average computer users I've met (I'm talking home users not business or professional users) have trouble with the concept and/or use of windows. I have NEVER been convinced a window-based interface was intuitive. In my mind, it isn't - not for the novice user.
Maybe I'm biased, thinking back to CP/M, DR-DOS, Concurrent MS-DOS, which had a kind of "workspace" tabbing interface. You'd do ONE task in each screen, being able to tab back and forth between them. They'd all run concurrently. There was no common clipboard between them back then, but the idea is you'd be able to do that in a modern environment, instead of fiddling with individual windows.
Keep in mind MS doesn't only make OS's..NET, when introduced, did not require extra h/ware. Innovation does not hinge on hardware.
The issues I see are: a) Games are going to bottleneck. This will be good - more emphasis on gameplay not gfx. b) Things people DO with their puter will stabilise. ATM we can even make our own movies complete with Light Sabre fx. What else is there in life? c) Distributed computing will rise, particularly as internet speeds increase. d) More focus on internet apps - that's where the hardware/infrastructure growth will happen for decades to come. e) Following from (d), a complete re-think of what a consumer computer is.
Can they tell if someone's looking at a cow, regardless of the subject considering it a sacred animal? Or a spider, regardless of whether someone has the phobia?
TFA said, "Earlier decoders could only tell whether someone looked at a general type of image -- at a dog, for example -- but couldn't identify more specific photos, such as a small dog eating a bone. They've also been incapable of predicting what thought patterns an image would provoke. The Berkeley model overcame both those limitations. "
But, frustratingly, it doesn't actually say what it specifically CAN and CAN'T do. I found the article very thin on detail and full of "what ifs".
but I thought IE did a better job with one thing - the box model. Firefox can simulate it using -mox-box-sizing: border-box. I've read that IE's box model makes sense to lots of people, who say the W3C's version is unintuitive, and I agree with that.
Let's not forget IE came up with lots of groovy things that initially made it a web app developer's wet dream. Standards are just that - if IE's stuff had been adopted by and built on by W3C, we wouldn't be complaining so much. Perhaps MS was ignoring the W3C (or vice versa) while the standards were first being written up, I don't know.
But IMO W3C deserves a slice of the blame for causing such a huge divergence in HTML. They could have brought more of IE's DOM ideas into the picture. e.g. IE had implemented "outerHTML" as well as innerHTML. What's so bad about that? A different box model with "padding" taken into account in content size. Again, what's so bad about that?
Standards are essential, but surely we didn't have to go through such hell just to get an agreed set of HTML rules. W3C could have done more to avoid a lot of pain. Just my opinion.
I'd really like to see a wireless keyboard with a trackpad built in. Never seen it on the market, wonder why?
Would be very useful indeed. Forgive the quick n dirty photoshopping:
http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/194/keyboardpadas2.th.jpg
"We" obviously means myself and anyone else who thinks it was unreasonable prattle pretending to be logic. I'm sure you understand that "we" doesn't necessarily mean you, the rest of the world or anyone who wouldn't agree with me. It's pointless picking on it, just assume I don't mean you if it doesn't apply.
What you've said is fine, though I'm not sure who it's directed at. I'd (hesitantly) add that we don't directly perceive the world in any way at all. Things we "see" are just our brains' reactions to incoming light and, combines with the rest of our senses, we surmise what reality actually is. Of course you already know that, but I apologise for using "we" if you don't.;)
In response to this, I think people are often taking the word "mobile" too far. I would LOVE to work without sitting at my desk. But not while I'm "mobile". I want to work while I'm lying back on the sofa, relaxed and thinking about my code and work as only a relaxed mind can.
Forget power naps or taking five on the beanbags in your progressive office. Lie back on that beanbag and do some creative work! That's what I'm hanging out for - not having to worry about ergonomics while sitting at a desk. I've tried working with my laptop on my lap and I have no idea why they called it a laptop. Staring down is bad for your neck. The keys are too small and have no action.
I also wish they'd make a laptop which you can SNAP ON a flattish external keyboard to make the keys usable without cramping your style, just like a desk keyboard.
OR, a FOLD-BACK laptop - the screen folds way back, making a triangle you can stand up on something and use an external kbd in front of it. The screen "flips" when you fold it back of course, so it's not upside down. The body of the laptop faces away from you, as you don't need it anyway.
OR - and this is very Space 1999 - a lovely 1970's vintage bendy lightstand sporting an lcd screen on top instead of a lamp. You recline on your sofa and bend the screen over so it's in front of your face, then start tapping on your external kbd. Laptop (or PC) stays where it belongs, on your desk.
Anything - anything - to get me away from typing while sitting at my desk!
"The physical material of the body is not persistent; the data is persistent. A life term is only limited by the ability to replicate the data provided the life force or animation principal persists."
Ok, where does the "data" reside, if not in the physical material of the body? Is it not DNA which codes for the entire material body, aka its "data set"? But wait, DNA is material! So explain then, what you mean by "the data is persistent".
*What is the point* of throwing around a "theory" which:
a) misrepresents established scientific principles (challenging them is ok, misrepresenting them is not), b) is internally inconsistent, or at the very best, full of large gaping holes in reasoning, and c) uses technical language for no other purpose than to sound technical.
It's the same age-old approach used by snake oil salesmen and, more recently, "intelligent design".
No, the flawed reasoning is in the original post. Don't know why I'm wasting time on this but anyway:
"My Proof for Immortality."
If you call that opinion piece a "proof", it's already evident you're not talking the same language as everyone else. I don't know what a "conceptual proof" is. If you mean "proof of concept", that implies you have evidence that the concept holds water.
You compare biology with "data":
"The human body is a data set. This data set is transferred repeatedly throughout life and it is the data representing the body that is persistent."
Explain how data representing the body is persistent? What data, do you mean DNA coding? Actual cells die and get replaced, so it can't be that. DNA is NOT persistent, as it can be damaged. So what data, exactly, is persistent? The entire "proof" revolves around attaching the biology to a concept of "data" ("The human body is a data set.") and if the poster can't be bothered establishing that introductory premise in logic, then you can't blame on us for not bothering to take him/her seriously.
".. because both the female and male genes combine producing a hybrid data set that contains the best features of both that were developed during their life spans genetic modifications."
This is exactly why we dismiss such prattle. Like any good politician or magician, words are used to make things sound feasible where, on anything closer than casual examination, they are revealed as bollocks. eg. Since genetic "defects" (congenital disease etc) are also passed along into this "hybrid data set" as it is so eloquently and technically described, it's hardly a result that anyone would call "the best features of both".
Basically, if even thinking about that post is a way to "evolve" one's mind, you'd best pin it up at the local zoo to get anything out of it.
.NET is a nice dev platform. Shock horror it brought VB into the real world, which is a pretty innovative thing to do just in itself. I like.NET. I grew up with MS and the shenanigans make me a sad panda, but.NET really restored my faith in MS's ability to innovate and create. It's still in there somewhere.
Everything that came after that though - Vista, Office 2008, even SQL Mgmt Studio 2005 were like, OMG what have you done to my productivity?! I don't get it - it's like MS's usability dept has lost the plot! It's hurting everything they do. Really basic UI principles out the door, and I mean basic stuff like just being able to see as much info on screen as possible and achieve things with a minimum of clicks and keystrokes.
I'm worried for that little kernel of innovation that still exists in MS, as proven by.NET's existence. It was their first new idea in ages, and it really made waves. Sadly it feel like MS is being less about innovation as time goes on. If Silverlight is just another type of Flash, forcing it on people won't change the fact it's not really innovative and therefore not really that necessary.
MS's problem is that they're looking down the barrel of not being *necessary* anymore. Maturing alternative OS's and office systems will do to them what 3rd party PC's did to IBM. But IBM is still innovating. Can MS do the same? Or is.NET destined to be their final magnum opus?
So basically you're applying Conservation of Energy to gravity, which the old rubber-sheet analogy doesn't do. In your analogy, the "water mass" under the rubber sheet is contained and conserved, making for a completely different (and more complex) set of interactions between points of gravity.
Kind of like two people sitting on a water bed, compared to two people sitting on a trampoline. The dynamics are completely different. And I don't just mean socially.
Another question follows on from that.... is the "water mass" the carrier of "waves" between gravity events? Think of dropping a mass next to another mass on the "trampoline" analogy. Do the same on a water bed - bouncey bouncey - gravity waves go back and forth between the masses. I guess this would apply on a trampoline but to a much lesser degree. But I'm probably playing way too much with the analogies now. Suffice to say experiments may be thought up to determine which is the more accurate picture.
"The main difference is that smoking tobacco doesn't really benefit anybody wheras burning coal and oil has literally driven the engines of production creating tremendous wealth for the whole world."
Read: the whole *western* world. Spout that to the countless millions of impoverished in China, India and Africa and they'll eat your for lunch. Nothing personal, just because they're starving.
"Even if coal and oil use is causing noticeable and net deleterious effects, there is some argument that they should be forgiven past liability and even protected from some amount of current liability, as long as they are taking reasonable steps to mitigate deleterious effects, now."
To a certain extent. But, like cigarettes, they have been fighting against culpability for several decades now. There is an equal argument that they should pay for stuffing their heads in the sand for so long. Even if only (like our entire judicial system) as a message to others: do not behave like this or else!
"The earth can support 6 billion modern people. It already does. It cannot support 6 billion cave-men."
If you call living in the 21st century "modern", of course you're correct. If you call clean food and drinking water and a secure future for your children "modern", then I'm afraid it's the other way around.
If a a system is deteriorating under current load, you wouldn't say the system is "supporting" that load, except in a very immediate sense.
... according to the plaintiffs, who allege that Yahoo board members have placed "personal distaste for Microsoft" ahead of shareholder welfare. Anything that goes against shareholder value - say environmental or ethical responsibility - is seen as wrong, according to shareholder bottom-line.
If you can virtualise (I assume there's an EU version of that word) on these things, why don't web hosting services use them, instead of messing with banks of multiple PCs? Or are we talking slight difference in capital investment?
Ma[n]y lower class people use it to get broadband at the place they rent. They dont have to involve the landlord to get an cables installed and can take it with them when they move elsewhere.
On behalf of people who rent..:|
I would suggest there's no such thing as "natural selection".
Except as a term to describe change over time, perhaps, much like there isn't necessarily (at least in my mind) such a thing as "time", except as a term to describe measurable change. If you can imagine that we perceive time due to change, not change due to time, then imagine that natural selection is merely a loaded way of saying "systems compete".
It's a loaded term because it generally means "improvements over time". Given that all species can die quite unexpectedly from outside causes (e.g. dinosaurs vs meteors), what exactly does "improvement" mean, if not a completely relative judgement within a closed ecosystem?
Dinosaurs survived very well until Meteorus Impactus said hello. So within the Earth ecosystem, Dino ruled. Within a wider ecosystem, they fail. So where in that wider picture is "natural selection" exactly?
More pertinently, there's global climate change. If "natural selection" took us from humus to human, only to be wiped out by a change in the weather, then at the very least I'd say "natural selection" doesn't mean what we think it means.
Slashdot Mirror
That sounds like an arch support..
But while we're on the subject..
The sad thing about this kind of terrorism is that, somewhere under the concern for public safety, there's an epidemic of people committing suicide because they're being taught to. Where's the public focus on that? Where are the Help Lines for people so affected by their religion/cult that they're thinking about suicide?
It reminds me of "Waco" a little, in that this is a culture of very isolated, indoctrinated people. In their hearts they are not "evil" people, or indeed doing anything wrong. That's a major crime right there, turning a human being into that - a machine of war and politics. They need to be convinced that they are dying for politics and hatred, not for their religion, which is one of peace, as much as any religion is.
Just seems logical, nevermind humane, to me, to address that as part of the "war on terror". For it's also a war being waged on the minds of these young people, by enclaves of their own people. At that level it's criminal exploitation and slavery, and should be discussed widely as such, so young people don't mindlessly fall for it. Again these things come down to education.. an educated society doesn't go quite that astray, and the West has let these countries putrefy while we ride on their backs so here we are.. but that's another topic.
I've heard people talk about open source projects having this problem - a lack of solid, coherent vision, because there are too many people invested in the project mainly out of "interest". They don't get any cash out of it, so why should they stick around if the project doesn't go the way they want it to and they lose that interest?
The more internal politics in a project, the less stable it becomes.
But the solution is simple as I see it. There are two streams of knowledge relevant for Wikipedia. One is factual, historic, objective. The other is *cultural*. So they should split the project in twain, or at least allow articles to be flagged as one or the other and perhaps make that a democratic public process as well.
I do not believe you can mix the two in the same context. At least this approach should stop people leaving the project just because they're bummed out.
If they break into a chorus of Moon River, something definitely got past the ring of protection.
"Similarly, questions like "what happened before the creation of the universe" and "who created God" are not really meaningful."
I disagree entirely. It is very useful, both intellectually and psychologically, to ask questions that have no answers. We have to deal with that all our lives. The origin of the universe is only one of a multitude of unanswerable questions we have to reconcile ourselves with during a lifetime. Death, misfortune, what another person is really feeling, who is my dad.. oops.
I actually believe it's the other way around - we ask about the nature of the universe *because* we are wired up already to deal with an unpredictable reality of unanswerable questions. We have to be, because we started off having to ask questions in the first place to survive. They just became more complicated as time went on, but we ask them for the same reasons - to feel like we have a grasp on things.
So much horsepower is going into the _look_ of a game, but so little into animation techniques to make it _feel_ real not just look real. Character animation sucks on all games as far as I've seen. We still have pre-programmed movements that jerk from one animation phase to another, the whole process is very rigid, unintelligent and desperate for an overhaul of technology.
I'd like to see inverse-kinematics used in character animations. Example: As you walk in real life, you decide where your feet need to be, not where your thighs, hips or knees need to be. They follow automatically, as does your torso. Your arms tend to swing for balance. Your torso leans and sways to maintain a general centre of gravity across your limbs. When you are pushed, again your feet decide where they need to be to adjust your centre of gravity, stop a fall, etc.
With all the CPU power at our disposal, I don't see anyone trying out stuff like this. It would really make 3D games feel more realistic and dynamic, removing scripted movements. It's just an extension of the physics engine and ragdoll, but of course needs a lot of rules placed on it to make it not look silly while playing.
Then there's the dismal state of AI, and of course storytelling and engaging a players' imagination. "Gaming" is about imagination, otherwise it's just entertainment; interactive TV.
UT3 is a perfect example of how stagnated that genre is. UT3 is like Vista to UT2004's XP. We came from a place of innovation way back in the Zork days, when people were thinking up *new ways to tell a story*. Now it's all about hype and visuals but little real innovation.
I've been saying for many years that Windows should have the option for a tabbed interface - indeed perhaps by default. The use of "windows" should be an option. By far most average computer users I've met (I'm talking home users not business or professional users) have trouble with the concept and/or use of windows. I have NEVER been convinced a window-based interface was intuitive. In my mind, it isn't - not for the novice user.
Maybe I'm biased, thinking back to CP/M, DR-DOS, Concurrent MS-DOS, which had a kind of "workspace" tabbing interface. You'd do ONE task in each screen, being able to tab back and forth between them. They'd all run concurrently. There was no common clipboard between them back then, but the idea is you'd be able to do that in a modern environment, instead of fiddling with individual windows.
Keep in mind MS doesn't only make OS's. .NET, when introduced, did not require extra h/ware. Innovation does not hinge on hardware.
The issues I see are:
a) Games are going to bottleneck. This will be good - more emphasis on gameplay not gfx.
b) Things people DO with their puter will stabilise. ATM we can even make our own movies complete with Light Sabre fx. What else is there in life?
c) Distributed computing will rise, particularly as internet speeds increase.
d) More focus on internet apps - that's where the hardware/infrastructure growth will happen for decades to come.
e) Following from (d), a complete re-think of what a consumer computer is.
"So it suddenly makes more sense to run Linux in order to have the hardware that the user wants."
Or XP.
Can they tell if someone's looking at a cow, regardless of the subject considering it a sacred animal? Or a spider, regardless of whether someone has the phobia?
TFA said, "Earlier decoders could only tell whether someone looked at a general type of image -- at a dog, for example -- but couldn't identify more specific photos, such as a small dog eating a bone. They've also been incapable of predicting what thought patterns an image would provoke. The Berkeley model overcame both those limitations. "
But, frustratingly, it doesn't actually say what it specifically CAN and CAN'T do. I found the article very thin on detail and full of "what ifs".
but I thought IE did a better job with one thing - the box model. Firefox can simulate it using -mox-box-sizing: border-box. I've read that IE's box model makes sense to lots of people, who say the W3C's version is unintuitive, and I agree with that.
Let's not forget IE came up with lots of groovy things that initially made it a web app developer's wet dream. Standards are just that - if IE's stuff had been adopted by and built on by W3C, we wouldn't be complaining so much. Perhaps MS was ignoring the W3C (or vice versa) while the standards were first being written up, I don't know.
But IMO W3C deserves a slice of the blame for causing such a huge divergence in HTML. They could have brought more of IE's DOM ideas into the picture. e.g. IE had implemented "outerHTML" as well as innerHTML. What's so bad about that? A different box model with "padding" taken into account in content size. Again, what's so bad about that?
Standards are essential, but surely we didn't have to go through such hell just to get an agreed set of HTML rules. W3C could have done more to avoid a lot of pain. Just my opinion.
I'd really like to see a wireless keyboard with a trackpad built in. Never seen it on the market, wonder why? Would be very useful indeed. Forgive the quick n dirty photoshopping: http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/194/keyboardpadas2.th.jpg
"We" obviously means myself and anyone else who thinks it was unreasonable prattle pretending to be logic. I'm sure you understand that "we" doesn't necessarily mean you, the rest of the world or anyone who wouldn't agree with me. It's pointless picking on it, just assume I don't mean you if it doesn't apply.
;)
What you've said is fine, though I'm not sure who it's directed at. I'd (hesitantly) add that we don't directly perceive the world in any way at all. Things we "see" are just our brains' reactions to incoming light and, combines with the rest of our senses, we surmise what reality actually is. Of course you already know that, but I apologise for using "we" if you don't.
In response to this, I think people are often taking the word "mobile" too far. I would LOVE to work without sitting at my desk. But not while I'm "mobile". I want to work while I'm lying back on the sofa, relaxed and thinking about my code and work as only a relaxed mind can.
Forget power naps or taking five on the beanbags in your progressive office. Lie back on that beanbag and do some creative work! That's what I'm hanging out for - not having to worry about ergonomics while sitting at a desk. I've tried working with my laptop on my lap and I have no idea why they called it a laptop. Staring down is bad for your neck. The keys are too small and have no action.
I also wish they'd make a laptop which you can SNAP ON a flattish external keyboard to make the keys usable without cramping your style, just like a desk keyboard.
OR, a FOLD-BACK laptop - the screen folds way back, making a triangle you can stand up on something and use an external kbd in front of it. The screen "flips" when you fold it back of course, so it's not upside down. The body of the laptop faces away from you, as you don't need it anyway.
OR - and this is very Space 1999 - a lovely 1970's vintage bendy lightstand sporting an lcd screen on top instead of a lamp. You recline on your sofa and bend the screen over so it's in front of your face, then start tapping on your external kbd. Laptop (or PC) stays where it belongs, on your desk.
Anything - anything - to get me away from typing while sitting at my desk!
Then there's this:
"The physical material of the body is not persistent; the data is persistent. A life term is only limited by the ability to replicate the data provided the life force or animation principal persists."
Ok, where does the "data" reside, if not in the physical material of the body? Is it not DNA which codes for the entire material body, aka its "data set"? But wait, DNA is material! So explain then, what you mean by "the data is persistent".
*What is the point* of throwing around a "theory" which:
a) misrepresents established scientific principles (challenging them is ok, misrepresenting them is not),
b) is internally inconsistent, or at the very best, full of large gaping holes in reasoning, and
c) uses technical language for no other purpose than to sound technical.
It's the same age-old approach used by snake oil salesmen and, more recently, "intelligent design".
No, the flawed reasoning is in the original post. Don't know why I'm wasting time on this but anyway:
"My Proof for Immortality."
If you call that opinion piece a "proof", it's already evident you're not talking the same language as everyone else. I don't know what a "conceptual proof" is. If you mean "proof of concept", that implies you have evidence that the concept holds water.
You compare biology with "data":
"The human body is a data set. This data set is transferred repeatedly throughout life and it is the data representing the body that is persistent."
Explain how data representing the body is persistent? What data, do you mean DNA coding? Actual cells die and get replaced, so it can't be that. DNA is NOT persistent, as it can be damaged. So what data, exactly, is persistent? The entire "proof" revolves around attaching the biology to a concept of "data" ("The human body is a data set.") and if the poster can't be bothered establishing that introductory premise in logic, then you can't blame on us for not bothering to take him/her seriously.
".. because both the female and male genes combine producing a hybrid data set that contains the best features of both that were developed during their life spans genetic modifications."
This is exactly why we dismiss such prattle. Like any good politician or magician, words are used to make things sound feasible where, on anything closer than casual examination, they are revealed as bollocks. eg. Since genetic "defects" (congenital disease etc) are also passed along into this "hybrid data set" as it is so eloquently and technically described, it's hardly a result that anyone would call "the best features of both".
Basically, if even thinking about that post is a way to "evolve" one's mind, you'd best pin it up at the local zoo to get anything out of it.
I think it would be properly classed as "a cunning plan".
.NET is a nice dev platform. Shock horror it brought VB into the real world, which is a pretty innovative thing to do just in itself. I like .NET. I grew up with MS and the shenanigans make me a sad panda, but .NET really restored my faith in MS's ability to innovate and create. It's still in there somewhere.
.NET's existence. It was their first new idea in ages, and it really made waves. Sadly it feel like MS is being less about innovation as time goes on. If Silverlight is just another type of Flash, forcing it on people won't change the fact it's not really innovative and therefore not really that necessary.
.NET destined to be their final magnum opus?
Everything that came after that though - Vista, Office 2008, even SQL Mgmt Studio 2005 were like, OMG what have you done to my productivity?! I don't get it - it's like MS's usability dept has lost the plot! It's hurting everything they do. Really basic UI principles out the door, and I mean basic stuff like just being able to see as much info on screen as possible and achieve things with a minimum of clicks and keystrokes.
I'm worried for that little kernel of innovation that still exists in MS, as proven by
MS's problem is that they're looking down the barrel of not being *necessary* anymore. Maturing alternative OS's and office systems will do to them what 3rd party PC's did to IBM. But IBM is still innovating. Can MS do the same? Or is
That's an intriguing thought.
So basically you're applying Conservation of Energy to gravity, which the old rubber-sheet analogy doesn't do. In your analogy, the "water mass" under the rubber sheet is contained and conserved, making for a completely different (and more complex) set of interactions between points of gravity.
Kind of like two people sitting on a water bed, compared to two people sitting on a trampoline. The dynamics are completely different. And I don't just mean socially.
Another question follows on from that.... is the "water mass" the carrier of "waves" between gravity events? Think of dropping a mass next to another mass on the "trampoline" analogy. Do the same on a water bed - bouncey bouncey - gravity waves go back and forth between the masses. I guess this would apply on a trampoline but to a much lesser degree. But I'm probably playing way too much with the analogies now. Suffice to say experiments may be thought up to determine which is the more accurate picture.
Anyway, very interesting.
"The main difference is that smoking tobacco doesn't really benefit anybody wheras burning coal and oil has literally driven the engines of production creating tremendous wealth for the whole world."
Read: the whole *western* world. Spout that to the countless millions of impoverished in China, India and Africa and they'll eat your for lunch. Nothing personal, just because they're starving.
"Even if coal and oil use is causing noticeable and net deleterious effects, there is some argument that they should be forgiven past liability and even protected from some amount of current liability, as long as they are taking reasonable steps to mitigate deleterious effects, now."
To a certain extent. But, like cigarettes, they have been fighting against culpability for several decades now. There is an equal argument that they should pay for stuffing their heads in the sand for so long. Even if only (like our entire judicial system) as a message to others: do not behave like this or else!
"The earth can support 6 billion modern people. It already does. It cannot support 6 billion cave-men."
If you call living in the 21st century "modern", of course you're correct. If you call clean food and drinking water and a secure future for your children "modern", then I'm afraid it's the other way around.
If a a system is deteriorating under current load, you wouldn't say the system is "supporting" that load, except in a very immediate sense.
... according to the plaintiffs, who allege that Yahoo board members have placed "personal distaste for Microsoft" ahead of shareholder welfare. Anything that goes against shareholder value - say environmental or ethical responsibility - is seen as wrong, according to shareholder bottom-line.If you can virtualise (I assume there's an EU version of that word) on these things, why don't web hosting services use them, instead of messing with banks of multiple PCs? Or are we talking slight difference in capital investment?
On behalf of people who rent..
Marked as Troll, hm. /. doesn't like criticism of Wikipedia. Electronic graffiti wall isn't an inaccurate description.
I would suggest there's no such thing as "natural selection".
Except as a term to describe change over time, perhaps, much like there isn't necessarily (at least in my mind) such a thing as "time", except as a term to describe measurable change. If you can imagine that we perceive time due to change, not change due to time, then imagine that natural selection is merely a loaded way of saying "systems compete".
It's a loaded term because it generally means "improvements over time". Given that all species can die quite unexpectedly from outside causes (e.g. dinosaurs vs meteors), what exactly does "improvement" mean, if not a completely relative judgement within a closed ecosystem?
Dinosaurs survived very well until Meteorus Impactus said hello. So within the Earth ecosystem, Dino ruled. Within a wider ecosystem, they fail. So where in that wider picture is "natural selection" exactly?
More pertinently, there's global climate change. If "natural selection" took us from humus to human, only to be wiped out by a change in the weather, then at the very least I'd say "natural selection" doesn't mean what we think it means.