For those who don't know, it's self-fulfilling prophecy. This is why calling people "a spelling idiot" is stupid. Everyone mispells something every once in a while. For slashdot editors, that translates to at least one spelling/grammar error per post, but who's counting =D
The problem with advancement in science is that it can render past advancements obsolete. That is, if a nation suddenly discovers a weapon that can a) destroy nuclear weapons as the US launches them and b) vaporize any point on the earth in a second, the big bad nuclear weapons stop being such a big bad deal. If the US, or any other contry, was silly enough to not be working on something in secret, then they're asking for trouble. It would all work out okay if everyone was completely open with their research, but at the point where one country is being secretive, then there's the chance that the one nation will suddenly have the whole world by the balls by once scientific advancement. If everyone has secrets, then deterence plays a bigger role, and nobody wants to play their trump card because nobody knows what the best trump card is! A pretty scary scenario, but deterence has worked for the past several decades and I find it more appealing than the alternative. Of course all goes to hell in a hand basket with terrorist who are willing to die and take the whole world down with them. As long as terrorists don't want their homelands to be blown to bits, that scenario is a little far off. But if people are wacked out enough to want to blow up the whole world, then we're all in trouble. Then again, there is the scenario of the lion, backed into a corner, soon to be slaughtered; despite knowing its fate, it will lash out one last time - back a country into a corner, and even if the people who run the country don't want to use their trump card, they may turn to that in their darkest hour, with nothing to lose.
Because, you know, we haven't ever had a FBI agent who sold US intelligence to other countries. I mean, we know they're good Americans so they would never sell out America.
I've heard that the anti-christ is coming from Europe. When all of Europe is as one, then he shall arise, placing his mark on Europeans with biometric id cards, created to use sexidecimal.
Sorry US, you don't get to participate in the fall of the World, unless you want to start cooperating with the rest of the world. Oh right, nevermind.
The argument is necesarially that these measures would have prevented past terrorist attacks, but tht it might help prevent future ones. It doesn't get to the root problem of what happened on September 11th (there's a lot of people who really really really really really hates us), but that wouldn't be a reason to not do this.
Of course, the more security you put in place, the more secretive nefarious people will try to be. I wonder if it's more likely to catch a terrorist who knows there's extreme security so they're very delibrate in their actions and extremely careful, versus catching a terrorist who thinks there is minimal security so is less likely to be so secretive and careful.
To make light of; to treat with derision or contempt, as if by saying pooh! pooh
It's a term used in logic, and it's appropriate for the situation. Or would you have prefered a *scientific* techincal term? That makes sense - lots of scientific dribble for the masses to read and try to understand.
Matt PC? Have they ever considered Mike PC, or even Jennifer PC? I bet there are more Steve PC's than I can shake a stick at (and I can shake a stick at a lot of PCs!).
This is the problem with Linux, always being targeted at the needs of a smallish audience.
They're both good guys, why do we want to kick the crap out of each other? I'd be more interested in watching Megatron and Optimus Prime go at it (fighting, I don't know how the other interpretation would work with Transformers) than Duke and Lady Jane or something.
Wouldn't setting it to something like 0 be better? I mean, I could miss it sticking at 12,000 for a while, but if I notice that my altitude is suddenly 0, I think my first instinct will be to pull up as fast as possible.
there's a security bug in kadmind4, as mentioned in the previous slashdot story! Instead of focusing on checking for buffer overflow errors, they were busy playing Tetris;)
Yeah, well most people grew up with a car so they had experiences with all those terms and ideas, so that generally doesn't happen. Plus, you have to take drivers education class in most places in the US, so people are informed. Kids now a days have computers everywhere - at home, at school, on tv, etc. In a decade or so, a majority of these semi-stupid complaints will probably be replaced by more intelligen ones... like why do I shutdown my computer from the start men?;)
[Yes, I realize this was for comic relief, but there was something else I thought was worth saying]
No, I'm not slow, dull, and unmotivated. But wait, I'm an education major! How could that be? I must be some reject from the math department, right? No wait, I remember why I went into teaching: it was because I valued helping others more than making money. Am I motivated? Hmmm... I dunno, I guess the fact that it worries me that if I don't perform well as a teacher, I could be hurting the abilities of hundreds of students to perform well in math.
You're way over generalizing. I know plenty of "regular" physics, chemistry, ECE, EE, CS, and [insert your major] majors who are completely unmotivated, are as slow as molasses, and really didn't take much away from high school. They aren't stupid, per se, they just don't care. I'll grant that some teachers aren't the sharpest, and some of them were probably referred to teaching because they weren't very successful in other areas. But the majority of the rest of us that feel a calling to help students, partly because we saw such horrible teaching in the past, don't fit your description.
And I believe Apple has a program for home schoolers as well. I'm not sure about this specific deal, but you can read more about Apple's home school connection here:
http://www.apple.com/education/k12/homeschool/ Matt Fahrenbacher Senior in Mathematics and Education University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign
The Bird of Prey has made 38 flights since being secretly launched in 1996. Nobody's saying where the flights took place, but the best guess is Area 51, the USAF's secret flight-test center in Nevada. The Bird's innovative features are sure to inform the design of next-generation stealth aircraft, but the plane itself, having served its purpose, is being retired--which is why Boeing and the Air Force were willing to make it public today.
That's kind of disappointing... it's sort of like driving a new car around the block a couple times a year for 6 years and never really showng it off. At least you'd think they'd use them in one of those upcoming battles on terrorism... or perhaps they are and aren't telling us (as they hid the mere existance of the plane for over ten years).
Makes you wonder (in a good and bad way) what else the US government has up its sleeve.
It's very difficult to get an algorithm to cover oddly defined spaces, especially when there's objects (aka furniture) in the way. Should the robot move the furniture? What if a piece of furniture has a clearance that is below the robot's ability to vacuum under?
Now that I think abou it, the robot probably only vacuums area that it can physically move over, so after a couple months, Fibonaccinumbers come into play and you'll have a dust bunny population explosion. But that's about the same amount of area any kid will vacuum, except that kids will probably skip any areas that don't look dirty (even if they really are).
No it's not. The jump in logic may not be obvious, but it is valid. This is essentially the way that India's independence from Britain came about, by passive resistance. When the British people saw all the horrible things that were being done to non-violent Indians, support for continued colonizations quickly dwindled. So, after the British fought, the Indians won.
It works here to - as soon as Microsoft starts fighting Linux, guess what gets free advertising? Even more, anyone in the business community can smell blood when they see one company getting so worked up over a competitor. If Linux wasn't the real deal, Microsoft wouldn't have to worry about it. So essentially, Microsoft fights Linux, Linux wins (in the sense that it gains larger name recognition, and hopefully, larger deployment).
``We have told our sales force to really understand that this is kind of job one,'' Ballmer, 46, said in an interview last week. ``People are saying by and large, `It might be easier for me to move my Unix apps to Linux than to Windows,' although we're pretty close to making that untrue.''
A quote that didn't make the article:
We're just hoping that people aren't stupid enough to look at Linux and think it's related to Unix. For pete's sake, Linux stands for Linux Is Not UniX. There you have it. I feel a monkey dance coming on.
In other news, Balmer has admitted publically that it is currently easier to move Unix apps to Linux than to Windows. May the mass porting begin!
I love gravity experiments, and the "Monkey and the Hunter" experiment is by far my favorite. If I'm shooting a monkey hanging onto a tree, would it be in the monkey's best interest to continue holding onto the branch, or to let go? One would think, let go. But because gravity effects the bullet the same amount as it effects the monkey (save air resistance, but that's why we're using Physics air;)), letting go will actually increase the chance of a hit.
Another gravity favorite shows the previous result in a slightly different setting. Take a bunch of balls with different weights but equal friction coefficient. Then take a "Pine Wood Derby"-esque ramp and race the balls to the bottom. My brother did this experiment in elementary school, and he was quite suprised to see that the time it took for balls to reah the bottom was independent of weight.
I'm thinking no. If it was Harrison Ford, or Mel Gibson, or some well built man running around shooting things and solving puzzles, then you might have a winner. But an exaggerated female? As much as womyn might enjoying having their sex depicted as a main character in a game, I'm not sure they're in to an exaggeration that they don't agree with (most men wouldn't mind being more built, most womyn, I'd presume, are probably not into being considered unattractive because their breasts aren't the size of basketballs).
Well no, it would more like having all the products in the store on a seven foot high shelf, so only seven footers can reach the items.
But wait, that business would go out of business real quick because a large number of people are under seven feet tall. The difference with the blind is that they make up a smaller segment of the population, and so an inaccessible business won't be effected by a small backlash from a minority group. Majority groups are always insulated from these issues, but minority groups rarely are.
I agree that suing probably isn't the answer. Instead, whatever documents that enable a business to operate should be temporarially suspended until that business comes into alignment with federal law.
Even if I grant most of the arguments that global warming is good or not happening, there's plenty of reason to have some guilt.
#1) The oil supply on earth is mainly controlled by other contries, some of which we're not exactly friendly with. Because our economy is so dependent on oil, this has two implications. One, the US is vulnerable to oil shocks that could originate from the Middle East, and two, we could be funding the countries who want to see us burn in Hell.
#2) The oil supply on earth is finite. I'll not argue how soon, and I'll grant that science does a good job of meeting developing needs, but it is distinctly possible that exhausting the oil supply on earth before science can develop efficient alternative source (renewable energies, astroid mining, etc), then we could see the world economy take a serious hit.
#3) When a person uses more oil than they normally would, that makes the supply of oil lower. In turn, that can cause oil prices to go up, hurting not those who drive the SUVs, but those people who can barely get by, or are starting to get their feet on the ground. Plus, being dependent on oil not only makes the US economy vulnerable to instability, but it's instability that uniquely effects those in the US (and other countries) that don't have a lot of leeway in their finances.
#4) I really don't like the smell of smoke (personally) or exhaust from vehicles. If everyone took your philosophy (stretching it to its logical limit), I'm sure a great deal of the population would at least be uncomfortable, and more likely suffering from chronic lung disease. There is an idea of doing some things for the good of others, not just for your own good. Capitalism is only works well if people aren't always out for themselves; otherwise we not only end up with great competition, but with poor workers being sent down coal shafts with no safety precautions and meat sold with rats and feces.
There he goes, with one of his crazy inventions. We've been flying with wings with moving parts ever since I was a wee ant. He should get back in line and prepare for the harvest... er... wait a minute.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who don't know, it's self-fulfilling prophecy. This is why calling people "a spelling idiot" is stupid. Everyone mispells something every once in a while. For slashdot editors, that translates to at least one spelling/grammar error per post, but who's counting =D
F-bacher
-1 Redundant
F-bacher
The problem with advancement in science is that it can render past advancements obsolete. That is, if a nation suddenly discovers a weapon that can a) destroy nuclear weapons as the US launches them and b) vaporize any point on the earth in a second, the big bad nuclear weapons stop being such a big bad deal. If the US, or any other contry, was silly enough to not be working on something in secret, then they're asking for trouble. It would all work out okay if everyone was completely open with their research, but at the point where one country is being secretive, then there's the chance that the one nation will suddenly have the whole world by the balls by once scientific advancement. If everyone has secrets, then deterence plays a bigger role, and nobody wants to play their trump card because nobody knows what the best trump card is! A pretty scary scenario, but deterence has worked for the past several decades and I find it more appealing than the alternative. Of course all goes to hell in a hand basket with terrorist who are willing to die and take the whole world down with them. As long as terrorists don't want their homelands to be blown to bits, that scenario is a little far off. But if people are wacked out enough to want to blow up the whole world, then we're all in trouble. Then again, there is the scenario of the lion, backed into a corner, soon to be slaughtered; despite knowing its fate, it will lash out one last time - back a country into a corner, and even if the people who run the country don't want to use their trump card, they may turn to that in their darkest hour, with nothing to lose.
F-bacher
Oh, wait a minute.
F-bacher
I've heard that the anti-christ is coming from Europe. When all of Europe is as one, then he shall arise, placing his mark on Europeans with biometric id cards, created to use sexidecimal.
Sorry US, you don't get to participate in the fall of the World, unless you want to start cooperating with the rest of the world. Oh right, nevermind.
F-bacher
The argument is necesarially that these measures would have prevented past terrorist attacks, but tht it might help prevent future ones. It doesn't get to the root problem of what happened on September 11th (there's a lot of people who really really really really really hates us), but that wouldn't be a reason to not do this.
Of course, the more security you put in place, the more secretive nefarious people will try to be. I wonder if it's more likely to catch a terrorist who knows there's extreme security so they're very delibrate in their actions and extremely careful, versus catching a terrorist who thinks there is minimal security so is less likely to be so secretive and careful.
F-bacher
It's a term used in logic, and it's appropriate for the situation. Or would you have prefered a *scientific* techincal term? That makes sense - lots of scientific dribble for the masses to read and try to understand.
F-bacher
And if you actually read the article, you would have realized that Jim Oberg is still going to write the book, but with alternative funding.
F-bacher
Matt PC? Have they ever considered Mike PC, or even Jennifer PC? I bet there are more Steve PC's than I can shake a stick at (and I can shake a stick at a lot of PCs!).
This is the problem with Linux, always being targeted at the needs of a smallish audience.
F-bacher
They're both good guys, why do we want to kick the crap out of each other? I'd be more interested in watching Megatron and Optimus Prime go at it (fighting, I don't know how the other interpretation would work with Transformers) than Duke and Lady Jane or something.
F-bacher
I had always thought that SI was the English system; I have no idea why.
Thanks,
F-bacher
Wouldn't setting it to something like 0 be better? I mean, I could miss it sticking at 12,000 for a while, but if I notice that my altitude is suddenly 0, I think my first instinct will be to pull up as fast as possible.
F-bacher
Oh wait... -1 Redundant
Here's a good site though with tons of examples.
My favorite would be the infamous time when NASA did half its calculation in metric and the rest in SI. ;)
F-bacher
[self duck];
F-bacher
Yeah, well most people grew up with a car so they had experiences with all those terms and ideas, so that generally doesn't happen. Plus, you have to take drivers education class in most places in the US, so people are informed. Kids now a days have computers everywhere - at home, at school, on tv, etc. In a decade or so, a majority of these semi-stupid complaints will probably be replaced by more intelligen ones... like why do I shutdown my computer from the start men? ;)
[Yes, I realize this was for comic relief, but there was something else I thought was worth saying]
Matt
No, I'm not slow, dull, and unmotivated. But wait, I'm an education major! How could that be? I must be some reject from the math department, right? No wait, I remember why I went into teaching: it was because I valued helping others more than making money. Am I motivated? Hmmm... I dunno, I guess the fact that it worries me that if I don't perform well as a teacher, I could be hurting the abilities of hundreds of students to perform well in math.
You're way over generalizing. I know plenty of "regular" physics, chemistry, ECE, EE, CS, and [insert your major] majors who are completely unmotivated, are as slow as molasses, and really didn't take much away from high school. They aren't stupid, per se, they just don't care. I'll grant that some teachers aren't the sharpest, and some of them were probably referred to teaching because they weren't very successful in other areas. But the majority of the rest of us that feel a calling to help students, partly because we saw such horrible teaching in the past, don't fit your description.
And I believe Apple has a program for home schoolers as well. I'm not sure about this specific deal, but you can read more about Apple's home school connection here:
http://www.apple.com/education/k12/homeschool/
Matt Fahrenbacher
Senior in Mathematics and Education
University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign
That's kind of disappointing... it's sort of like driving a new car around the block a couple times a year for 6 years and never really showng it off. At least you'd think they'd use them in one of those upcoming battles on terrorism... or perhaps they are and aren't telling us (as they hid the mere existance of the plane for over ten years).
Makes you wonder (in a good and bad way) what else the US government has up its sleeve.
F-bacher
It's very difficult to get an algorithm to cover oddly defined spaces, especially when there's objects (aka furniture) in the way. Should the robot move the furniture? What if a piece of furniture has a clearance that is below the robot's ability to vacuum under?
Now that I think abou it, the robot probably only vacuums area that it can physically move over, so after a couple months, Fibonaccinumbers come into play and you'll have a dust bunny population explosion. But that's about the same amount of area any kid will vacuum, except that kids will probably skip any areas that don't look dirty (even if they really are).
F-bacher
No it's not. The jump in logic may not be obvious, but it is valid. This is essentially the way that India's independence from Britain came about, by passive resistance. When the British people saw all the horrible things that were being done to non-violent Indians, support for continued colonizations quickly dwindled. So, after the British fought, the Indians won.
It works here to - as soon as Microsoft starts fighting Linux, guess what gets free advertising? Even more, anyone in the business community can smell blood when they see one company getting so worked up over a competitor. If Linux wasn't the real deal, Microsoft wouldn't have to worry about it. So essentially, Microsoft fights Linux, Linux wins (in the sense that it gains larger name recognition, and hopefully, larger deployment).
Matt
A quote that didn't make the article:
In other news, Balmer has admitted publically that it is currently easier to move Unix apps to Linux than to Windows. May the mass porting begin!
F-bacher
I love gravity experiments, and the "Monkey and the Hunter" experiment is by far my favorite. If I'm shooting a monkey hanging onto a tree, would it be in the monkey's best interest to continue holding onto the branch, or to let go? One would think, let go. But because gravity effects the bullet the same amount as it effects the monkey (save air resistance, but that's why we're using Physics air ;)), letting go will actually increase the chance of a hit.
Another gravity favorite shows the previous result in a slightly different setting. Take a bunch of balls with different weights but equal friction coefficient. Then take a "Pine Wood Derby"-esque ramp and race the balls to the bottom. My brother did this experiment in elementary school, and he was quite suprised to see that the time it took for balls to reah the bottom was independent of weight.
Matt Fahrenbacher
I'm thinking no. If it was Harrison Ford, or Mel Gibson, or some well built man running around shooting things and solving puzzles, then you might have a winner. But an exaggerated female? As much as womyn might enjoying having their sex depicted as a main character in a game, I'm not sure they're in to an exaggeration that they don't agree with (most men wouldn't mind being more built, most womyn, I'd presume, are probably not into being considered unattractive because their breasts aren't the size of basketballs).
F-bacher
Well no, it would more like having all the products in the store on a seven foot high shelf, so only seven footers can reach the items.
But wait, that business would go out of business real quick because a large number of people are under seven feet tall. The difference with the blind is that they make up a smaller segment of the population, and so an inaccessible business won't be effected by a small backlash from a minority group. Majority groups are always insulated from these issues, but minority groups rarely are.
I agree that suing probably isn't the answer. Instead, whatever documents that enable a business to operate should be temporarially suspended until that business comes into alignment with federal law.
F-bacher
Even if I grant most of the arguments that global warming is good or not happening, there's plenty of reason to have some guilt.
#1) The oil supply on earth is mainly controlled by other contries, some of which we're not exactly friendly with. Because our economy is so dependent on oil, this has two implications. One, the US is vulnerable to oil shocks that could originate from the Middle East, and two, we could be funding the countries who want to see us burn in Hell.
#2) The oil supply on earth is finite. I'll not argue how soon, and I'll grant that science does a good job of meeting developing needs, but it is distinctly possible that exhausting the oil supply on earth before science can develop efficient alternative source (renewable energies, astroid mining, etc), then we could see the world economy take a serious hit.
#3) When a person uses more oil than they normally would, that makes the supply of oil lower. In turn, that can cause oil prices to go up, hurting not those who drive the SUVs, but those people who can barely get by, or are starting to get their feet on the ground. Plus, being dependent on oil not only makes the US economy vulnerable to instability, but it's instability that uniquely effects those in the US (and other countries) that don't have a lot of leeway in their finances.
#4) I really don't like the smell of smoke (personally) or exhaust from vehicles. If everyone took your philosophy (stretching it to its logical limit), I'm sure a great deal of the population would at least be uncomfortable, and more likely suffering from chronic lung disease. There is an idea of doing some things for the good of others, not just for your own good. Capitalism is only works well if people aren't always out for themselves; otherwise we not only end up with great competition, but with poor workers being sent down coal shafts with no safety precautions and meat sold with rats and feces.
F-bacher
There he goes, with one of his crazy inventions. We've been flying with wings with moving parts ever since I was a wee ant. He should get back in line and prepare for the harvest... er... wait a minute.
[/end attempt at humor]
F-bacher