Actually all it requires is a command shell of some kind that will run and interact appropriately with a unix kernel. The command shell can be any program, BASH, CSH, TCSH, ZSH, or EMACS . . . that can interact appropriately with the system services. In linu sh is simply and alias for bash (though of course linux is not really a unix). DOS is the same way. Most people assumed command.com was necessary, but in fact all that was reuired was a suitable command shell. 4DOS was far superior.
Asimov's argument is one of the best written about these issues. One of the most important observations is that attempting to answer some questions is simply dropping another authoritative answer and probably an unacceptable one for the questioner as well. Avoiding that offering that answer is to avoid helping to polarize issues in a manner that can't possibly advance science's purposes.
There are many highly strange, well documented puzzles that are avoided by decent scientists because public and scientific perceptions have already polarized into discrete and completely immiscible camps. This socio-cultural stance makes it impossible for a serious study to be made because the majority of the interested have actually already made up their minds in one of two mutually exclusive positions and someone attempting to approach an issue often finds themselves criticized by lunatics for not sharing their beliefs or cold shouldered by religious zealots for not worshipping at the same alter, and make no mistake, one of these groups will be attemtping to excerise a "healthy scepticism" while the other is attemtping to hold an "open mind." Open minds should not require an open-mouthed, drool-on-the-chin credultity, and a good, functional scientific model of reality should not be mistaken for religious truth.
Your issues are the main reason why I reworked the analogy. Computers are general purpose devices that are configured either by or for the user to achieve the user's purposes (communications, bookkeeping, word processing, games, etc.). Your insistance that your system offer web access is a particular customization. There are plenty of systems that should not be able to access the internet.
The point about NTFS is mistaken. The fs is an integral part of the basic information storage and manipulation function of the system. There are already many competitors to NTFS. On linux alone you can use any one of something like six or seven, or maybe more. One you can't really use is NTFS which is proprietary. Microsoft's stance vis-a-vis NTFS actually helps the competition since they can cooperate.
Actually, I used to prefer Trumpet to the MS version and it never cost me $200. Perhaps it does now. The only reason there is ANY official MS support for the internet in Windows is because of Netscape, Java and OS/2. BG does not like the internet. It is far beyond MS's ability to control. When MS realized that OS/2 supported the internet with desktop icons for things like WWW sites and FTP libraries, and they saw the potential for the Netscape/ Jave combination to actually produce an internet centric OS, MS went out and bought up one of the browsers available at the time (Mosaic maybe? I don't remember off hand, but the copyrights and credits were still in the earlier versions of IE). At this time it was still necessary to log on to MS BBS to download the winsock support, or you go for the Trumpet implementation (which in my opinion was better - better information available, faster to come on line). Then MS gave the software away FREE. MS took a deliberate and steady loss in order to undercut Netscape and preempt the growing threat from OS/2, which was a valid competitor for Win95, but not for NT, something the media obligingly ignored by insisting on comparing OS/2 to NT. The point here is that MS pushed the growth of its monopoly by through means that should have had the FTC after them big time. They did not compete with Netscape; they destroyed the market Netscape operated in.
It was self evident that Netscape was doomed soon after MS started giving away IE. There was no way the Netscape could make enough through site development and support to finance improving the software. MS on the other hand robbed everyone who purchased a cpu with their "tax" and could finance development of the pseudo-free IE indefinitely.
So, I think you are correct about addressing MS, and the their forcing OEMs to install nothing but Windows. I also think the states are wrong about "modularizing" windows and forcing MS to open the code. What they SHOULD be asking for is an end to the MS tax and coercion, just as you suggest. That alone would put a major obstacle in the path of MS's anticompetitive behaviour.
A better view of the car analogy is that a vehicle is sold ready to perform a basic function of transportation. For this the required bits are a place for the driver, wheels, power train, minimum essential guages for monitoring the vehicle's systems. Some places require more by law. In Israel no vehicle - at least the new ones - can be without air conditioning, so in.il AC is not an "option." Many drivers consider a radio essential if for no other reason than that you monitor road conditions.
A basic DOS computer is similar in that it comes ready for file I/O and data storage. The OS provides a means of insuring the basic I/O functions of the computer are available to the user.
Computers are generalized tools for data storage. By adding functionality you can increase particular areas of utility. Similarly, tweaking a motor vehicle's design and adding specialized options allows you to mutate the basic vehicle into specialized versions for any purpose from police work, to carrying a little league team, to stock car racing.
Web browsing, sound systems, word processing and number crunching are NOT essential to the functioning and utlity of a computer, but any one of them may be an essential option to the way you use it.
So, "all the bits" raises the question of what are essential bits for operating a computer and what is extraneuos. Microsoft and Mr. Gates are taking a view that they know better than a user what are the essential bits, regardless of your requirements or how their decisions effect the performance and general utility of hardware you own. By redefining what are essential features of an OS, Microsoft can act against percieved threats to its core businesses. If an OS (OS/2) includes internet functionality as an option, make it an essential. If Java plus Netscape present a viable (or conceivable) potential to replace Windows, undercut prices (to kill Netscape), destandardize features and at the same time leverage market penetration to sideline open standards for proprietary one standards (to scuttle Java). Above all, continue to migrate your users away from other potentially competing systems (Win 3.11 was a useful tactical release to limit OS/2 since Win 3.11 provided services that weren't in the new OS/2 such as True Type fonts. It kept IBM playing catch up.)
Reducing the innovation and diversity available to computer users can't really be counted as a "personal" contribution regardless of the significance.
Even though he isn't coding, he still hands down directives like a god from on high, and his army of workers bend to his will like tree branches snapping in a hurricane.
... and afterward the landscape is littered with trash.
First, publishing the story automatically reduces the level of car theft, since the thieves don't what car they look at is the problem vehicle. Second, this is a valid means of investigating car theft. You have to acquire a reasonable suspect, and chop shops rarely have signs advertising their business. Third, career crooks mostly ARE dumbasses who learn their trades during stints in prison. You can imagine my amusement to learn that one local institution with the words "Vocational Institute" in the name was in reality a maximum security prison. The reason three strikes works is that the return on your educational investment as a crook simply isn't there anymore. By the time you learn your trade, they throw away the key. Fourth, and last, the cops will be spending your tax dollars regardless.
The damage to this nation from the kind of thought you express here goes far beyond what you seem to think. Terrorists are trivial risks. Driving a car on any road on the US is infinitely more of a risk than encountering a terrorist. Never the less through the simple minded ideas of "acceptable risk" you assert your terror. Bin Laden has conquered your thought. The loss this causes is incalculable. It means women can't wear bobby pins on planes anymore, that your grandmother can't knit on a plane because her knitting needles might be used as weapons.
It means that some undereducated fool at a security check point will tell you "its for your own safety," when anyone that can think KNOWS that no US flight, and probably none anywhere will ever again be taken over by terrorists in the foreseeable futre because the 9-11 terrorists proved themselves liars. No passenger can ever again accept the risk of believing a terrorist's assertion that they won't be hurt. This "security" is not for your own good; it was not for your own good; it will never be for your own good. Building a reliable mass transit would be for your own good.
While you are thinking about this try running a simultaneous search on google for "Bush" and "bin Laden." After you read a few of THOSE hits, the fact that an ORACLE data base could monitor every emergency room bed in New York state "on the eve of " 9-11 might really get your paranoia going. Look into the stock transactions for American and United in the month immediately before 9-11 and try to correlate those moves with any news about the companies. Someone made several fortunes shorting them, but not all of the profits have been collected yet.
There was a set of links that showed up with this post including one regarding a French study. The author concluded that there actuall are several drowned islands, just west of Gibraltar, that were submerged about 11,000 years ago. Sea level at the height of the Pleistocene was about 400 feet (120 meters) below its present level. So, in fact there is a substantial piece of real estate now underwater that once was dry land when you consider the planet as a whole. The French author plans to dive on these "islands" this summer. It is worth noting - to us archaeologists any way - that this is the second drowned city found off India. Another was found last year in 120 feet of water off southwest India - the other side of the subcontinent from the latest find. My colleagues are unconfortable with the radiocarbon dates from this site, which reportedly run about 9,000 years old. This would tack a good 5,000 years onto the archaeology of civilizations, as opposed to less complexly organized societies.
Theologians, prophets and madmen do not employ hypotheses to make their "predictions. Raw data does not "predict" any thing. It's just data. Analysts look at that data, test it for trends, and then try to make some kind of guess about the future of the current trends. No theologian has ever done that beyond trying to predict whether they will have a congregation next year. No prophet ever bothered with that level of work, and madmen are incapable of it.
Conway's Life uses some very simple rules and a starting configuration. The rest is simply complex interactions. One of the points of interest in Conway's game was that the outcomes are extremely sensitive to tiny, even single cell, variations in initial conditions.
Many social scientists have tried to get some sort of understanding of what makes society tick, but generally the assumption is that the rules are complex, the interactions are complex, and the outcomes impossible to calculate. Of course, one of the major sticking points of any attempt at determing the rules by which social systems behave has always been the theologians, prophets, and madmen, as well as anyone else who found their pride offended by being regarded as predictable, or whose grifts were threatened by the prospect of a better understanding of the phenomenon.
The article seems, deliberately or not, to draw a dichotomy between Heinlein and Homer. The distinction is spurious, but claiming the Odyssey as an ancestor rather than say Citizen of the Galaxy can probably justfiably be considered pretentious.
Yep, astonishing. What always puzzled me was that she had noticed the mouse cursor move, when she tried to work the "foot pedal." But that was all that happened, so things were not working properly. My part of the conversation was pretty surreal too. "...your mouse.......the small oval thing with three buttons on the same end as the cord......yes mam, it is called a mouse....... IT'S WHERE???"
Urban legends are often a convenient way to bury an embarassing attitude. Strictly speaking, a single individual identified as the "creator" of an urban legend, means that the story is neither urban, nor a legend, simply fiction with an author. A very real astronomer at the end of the 19th century pitied coming generations of astronomers and physicists because there was nothing more to discover but the details. Also, the means by which bumble bees stayed aloft WAS an aerodynamic mystery until quite recently. I think the article announcing the explanantion can be found in the Scientific American archives.
On another front of supposed urban myth I have heard for instance that the story of the house wife who called computer support because her control pedal was not working is an urban myth. None the less, during a brief stint as stand-in support, I personally answered just such a call. The woman had reasoned by physical analogy that the mouse was like her sewing machine control. Diagnosing that over the phone was pretty entertaining. Many true, but improbable stories embedded themselves as myth in our psychic landscape, but that fact hat they are myth may not make them less true. Just for fun, how long ago did your biologist take a shot at discrediting the physcist?
They are putting the cart before the horse here. The shift of discussion to chlorophyll and away from water is misdirection.
Let's see here. "They" are the people that said in effect, "there seems to be a spectrographic signature for chlorophyll in some particular areas around and ON Pathfinder in these multispectral images. We don't really know what it means, and we are not drawing conclusions until we have completely analized these data."
Now you, in contrast, already know what? "They" are apparently committing psuedoscience because a spectrograph has yielded empirical results that you do not like on mathematical grounds? Is this not similar to the physicist that argued that bumble bees can't fly based on mathematical grounds? Then too, just what IS all that hydrogen bound up in around Mar's south pole, if it is not in water ice?
"Cold fusion"? Feldmeyer and Smythe? Might you be meaning Pons and Fleischman?
Combining H2 with O is an entropic process, meaning it requires quite a bit of energy .
Really, igniting hydrogen and oxygen does require a small initial input, but since the reaction is exothermic, the reaction usually continues until the reactants are too diffuse to maintain the process. I know from actual experimentation that you can take hydrogen and release it into ambient air without getting any reaction. But if you apply a match, then you get a reaction. This seems to me to indicate, based upon your logic and mathematics, that there really is no water on this planet either.
Your argument could be (but isn't) logically flawless, and still be subject to the adage that "logic is method for being wrong with confidence."
The team then used 96 proof vodka and 54 proof whisky instead of pure alcohol and successfully recreated a smaller amount of the material. Nanotubes were not created from mixtures with lower alcohol contents.
It looks like beer is proof against nanotube construction.
The litany of development you recite is the exact reason these archaeologists are surprised.
Actually, the story indicates the Irish archaeologist was on a fishing expedition for an astronomical correlation for those 5 Ky old carvings. So he wasn't surprised. In fact no archaeologist familiar with the Megalithic and Neolithic archaeology of Britain and Ireland is really going to be surprised. These people had some very profound abilities in geometery that they used regularly to construct Henges, and major mortuary monuments. No surprises for archaeologists in this other than the irritatingly over-explicit just-so story about the burned "sacrificial victims" and the limestone cenotaph, and that came from the archaeologist, not the archaeology.
Being an archaeologist, I reckon this needs an answer, or a reply at least. First, there is a very broad brush being used here implying that all us Marshalltown wielders are arrogant. It is logically fallacious, and contrary to reality as well. Among the most aggravating aspects of archaeology is the regionalization and insularism that we have to deal with whenever we move outside our normal regions and go some where else. Crossing the Atlantic results in enormous differences in how archaeologists view what they do, how they learn their trade, and even what's considered worth finding. Go to Israel and you find the Israelis were bery fond of architecture to the sometimes complete loss of most archaeological information. Go to Britain and you will find the discipline heavily invested in "post-processualism" and the use of critical theory, a practice that seems more than a little odd to many from the western side of the pond. Talk to a historical archaeologist about prehistory or vice versa, and you will undoubtedly get an earful, most of it not much use to hear. You have to remember that archaeologists are human, prone to the same failings as the rest of the race, particularly the fondess for collecting pet ideas, regardless of their real utility.
Now, consider the article. First, it wasn't written by an archaeologist but instead is a "popular" piece written by a reporter. There are major gaps in the story as advanced and these would be subject to peer-review normally, but the popular press doesn't wait for such measured and qualified (as in 'hedged') discussion. There are several obvious criticisms.
For instance, the implication of the limestone pillar or post is that after celebrating their survival, these people dashed off and lugged home a piece of alien rock to employ as a cenotaph. The whole picture is absurd. Second, there is the suggestion that the burned bones in the tomb/s were human sacrifices, but nothing was offered in support of this. You can go on, but the real problem is that there is no way to differentiate between the archaeologist's words and thoughts, and the wax -if any- in the ears of the reporter.
Now, considering Ireland and the Irish 5Ky ago. First, as far the evidence goes, I have to admit that it appears my very own ancestors trotting over those green, green bogs were indeed illiterate. They were not however, unsophisticated.
The period in question saw the the construction of the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, and the rise of the megalithic cultures of western Europe, when huge stones were moved miles for the construction of graves, sacred precincts, henge monuments and the great passage graves. Some of these latter show a profound concern for astronomical phenomena and years ago it was proven that Stone Henge in England could be used to predict eclipses, both lunar and solar. It seems reasonable then to suspect a concern among the occupants of the British Isles with things like solar calendar events, and where the moo will rise and set, and even eclipses.
So, what do we really know about people 5Ky ago? Precious little. The Egyptians were busy inventing, agricultural was off to a good start throughout Asia, the middle east, Egypt, and Europe wherever the Neolithic was taking hold. Writing is invented by the Eygptians during the Early Dynastic period. We know that the Egyptians were religious and built grandly. We know that the use of stone in architecture really appears at its earliest in western Europe, but not why. Consequently, many archaeologists argue by analogy. Thus during solar eclipses in the Middle East, Bedouin stay home, keep their kids, cattle, horses and camals inside and wait for the darkness to go away. Being exposed to the dark of an eclipse out doors is bad cess and any sensible, traditional Arab avoids it. Now, since the last time this happened was just about three years ago, you are right, we may not have changed that much. On the other hand would these early Irish be likely to resemble us or the Bedouin more? Think about it some, then tell me who the arrogant one is?
Ouch. It's deja vu. I have told the very same story to ISPs too many times to think about while running OS/2 and Linux, as well as Windoze. In fact I must have been dealing with the same monkey as well.
But seriously if theories other than creationism aren't internally coherant then there is no strong case against spontaneous creation.
Not really. Any theory is a simplified, explanatory model of a natural process that is more complex than the theory. In short all theory is to some extent inadequate. If it weren't it would be a restatment of the natural process.
Creationism is not an explanatory theory in the same sense. It attempts to impose a socially comfortable tale on the natural process, but does not offer new insight into those processes. A good theory offers new phenomena too look for. Many of the current "troubles" in modern physics simply stem from pushing these explanations until the stretch factor exposes the places where they don't work as well. You can use Newtonian physical models to reach Mars, but you need relativity to make a GPS satellite system work. Ceationism simply can't help in any of these places.
At the dawn of the Chalcolithic, the old timers probably had a hard time believing you could extract metal from rock too. After all, it wasn't as if the rock would turn into copper tools on its own.
You really weren't serious about that question, were you?
But"micro-evolution is true, therefore macro-evolution is true", just doesn't follow.
The problem with reasoning like this is its naivety. Changes are cumulative, they do not go away automatically, magically, or because you wish they would. The second law of thermodynamics forbids it. There is no simple means to differentiate between "micro" and "macro" evolution when there is only a continuum of variation. Even saying that "they are still E. coli" is simplistic on a drastic scale. Recent evidence shows that bacteria exchange genetic information across species boundaries. So, given that they may be meandering around the petri dish with genes acquired from S. aureus as well other fun neighbors, what makes you certain that they ever were, much less still are E. coli. Its possible that the concept of "species" has been reified beyond any utility it ever had. Think about it.
Does anyone know of other OS projects with military association?
The basic systems that have driven the internet for decades were developed in part by the military and defense related government programs starting with DARPA.
From what I hear, IBM was a very bad monopoly and might have been just as bad as Microsoft. We'll never know because the choice was not given to us. You had to be a techie or REALLY want to install OS/2 in order to run it.
Pure baloney. OS/2 was difficult to install because it is a powerful OS backed by a lot of code to enable things like multitasking. Installing linux was a techie job. Installing OS/2 was just tedious (24 floppies worth of tedium).
How IBM got the source to Win16 but still had to pay Microsoft for every copy of WinOS2 sold in OS/2. I heard that many times from IBM people. I'm sure it was negotiated when Microsoft and IBM broke up their partnership. IBM monopolies had nothing to do with it since they had none.
IBM had contractual rights to Windows 16 bit code. They helped pay for its development, since portions were originally destined for NT. When the rift happened, IBM went a head with OS/2 while MS went with the development of NT. But!!! If you examined the file names for the early NT OS, up through 3.51 I believe, many of the files and libraries had "OS2" in their names, since they were legacy from before IBM and MS went their separate ways. IBM had been investigated for monopoly pratices in the '80s and was extremely cautious about its competitive practices, since it did not want federal regulators tramping around Armonk. Win95 did not kill OS/2, IBM did.
I don't think it was the greatest. The user interface was locked in. Much like NT (microsoft). So I never really cared for it.
You plainly never used OS/2 enough to know it. Presentation Manager (PM) was partially object oriented, while the WPS (work place shell) was fully OO. Companies like Stardock produced terrific desktops that were nothing like the default PM or WPS layouts. One of the cool things about Stardock's products was the addition of properties to file types based on inheritance, such as the property that text files were inherently editable. Click on a text file and it came up in an editor. Stardock's interface for OS/2 is very similar to KDE or GNOME, with multiple desktops, and a small windowed desktop selector. Windows 95 actually copied the OS/2 WPS or PM interface, which was quite clean and easy to use. OS/2 WARP was also the first desktop OS, besides Linux (and at that time it was not automated in Linux as it was in OS/2 WARP), to come with built-in communications (beyond some communications program such as ProComm) and internet connectivity, while Gates was still pushing that glorified BBS from Microsoft. At the time you still had to download winsock utilities from MS and install them if you wanted to use the internet. Micorsoft's prucahse of the parent program that became Internet Exporer was driven by the need to answer OS/2 and provide internet services. WAIS, Gopher, FTP and Web connections in OS/2 could be dropped as icons on the desktop. Click on them and the modem would automatically dial and connect. OS/2 was not as stable as Linux, but even when it went down, it came back with less trouble than Windows, and you could easily back step to a previous configuration, if a program installation clobbered the system with an incompatible driver or something. There was also never any necessity to reinstall OS/2 as the installation aged. This is still a common occurence even with modern versions of Windows when the registry becomes so clogged with crap the system becomes inherently unstable. OS/2's configuration files were simple, text based, and easy to fix with an editor. There is still a lot to like about it.
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Unix REQUIRES /bin/sh.
Actually all it requires is a command shell of some kind that will run and interact appropriately with a unix kernel. The command shell can be any program, BASH, CSH, TCSH, ZSH, or EMACS . . . that can interact appropriately with the system services. In linu sh is simply and alias for bash (though of course linux is not really a unix). DOS is the same way. Most people assumed command.com was necessary, but in fact all that was reuired was a suitable command shell. 4DOS was far superior.
Would that be Creationism or cretinism?
Asimov's argument is one of the best written about these issues. One of the most important observations is that attempting to answer some questions is simply dropping another authoritative answer and probably an unacceptable one for the questioner as well. Avoiding that offering that answer is to avoid helping to polarize issues in a manner that can't possibly advance science's purposes.
There are many highly strange, well documented puzzles that are avoided by decent scientists because public and scientific perceptions have already polarized into discrete and completely immiscible camps. This socio-cultural stance makes it impossible for a serious study to be made because the majority of the interested have actually already made up their minds in one of two mutually exclusive positions and someone attempting to approach an issue often finds themselves criticized by lunatics for not sharing their beliefs or cold shouldered by religious zealots for not worshipping at the same alter, and make no mistake, one of these groups will be attemtping to excerise a "healthy scepticism" while the other is attemtping to hold an "open mind." Open minds should not require an open-mouthed, drool-on-the-chin credultity, and a good, functional scientific model of reality should not be mistaken for religious truth.
Your issues are the main reason why I reworked the analogy. Computers are general purpose devices that are configured either by or for the user to achieve the user's purposes (communications, bookkeeping, word processing, games, etc.). Your insistance that your system offer web access is a particular customization. There are plenty of systems that should not be able to access the internet.
The point about NTFS is mistaken. The fs is an integral part of the basic information storage and manipulation function of the system. There are already many competitors to NTFS. On linux alone you can use any one of something like six or seven, or maybe more. One you can't really use is NTFS which is proprietary. Microsoft's stance vis-a-vis NTFS actually helps the competition since they can cooperate.
Actually, I used to prefer Trumpet to the MS version and it never cost me $200. Perhaps it does now. The only reason there is ANY official MS support for the internet in Windows is because of Netscape, Java and OS/2. BG does not like the internet. It is far beyond MS's ability to control. When MS realized that OS/2 supported the internet with desktop icons for things like WWW sites and FTP libraries, and they saw the potential for the Netscape/ Jave combination to actually produce an internet centric OS, MS went out and bought up one of the browsers available at the time (Mosaic maybe? I don't remember off hand, but the copyrights and credits were still in the earlier versions of IE). At this time it was still necessary to log on to MS BBS to download the winsock support, or you go for the Trumpet implementation (which in my opinion was better - better information available, faster to come on line). Then MS gave the software away FREE. MS took a deliberate and steady loss in order to undercut Netscape and preempt the growing threat from OS/2, which was a valid competitor for Win95, but not for NT, something the media obligingly ignored by insisting on comparing OS/2 to NT. The point here is that MS pushed the growth of its monopoly by through means that should have had the FTC after them big time. They did not compete with Netscape; they destroyed the market Netscape operated in.
It was self evident that Netscape was doomed soon after MS started giving away IE. There was no way the Netscape could make enough through site development and support to finance improving the software. MS on the other hand robbed everyone who purchased a cpu with their "tax" and could finance development of the pseudo-free IE indefinitely.
So, I think you are correct about addressing MS, and the their forcing OEMs to install nothing but Windows. I also think the states are wrong about "modularizing" windows and forcing MS to open the code. What they SHOULD be asking for is an end to the MS tax and coercion, just as you suggest. That alone would put a major obstacle in the path of MS's anticompetitive behaviour.
A better view of the car analogy is that a vehicle is sold ready to perform a basic function of transportation. For this the required bits are a place for the driver, wheels, power train, minimum essential guages for monitoring the vehicle's systems. Some places require more by law. In Israel no vehicle - at least the new ones - can be without air conditioning, so in .il AC is not an "option." Many drivers consider a radio essential if for no other reason than that you monitor road conditions.
A basic DOS computer is similar in that it comes ready for file I/O and data storage. The OS provides a means of insuring the basic I/O functions of the computer are available to the user.
Computers are generalized tools for data storage. By adding functionality you can increase particular areas of utility. Similarly, tweaking a motor vehicle's design and adding specialized options allows you to mutate the basic vehicle into specialized versions for any purpose from police work, to carrying a little league team, to stock car racing.
Web browsing, sound systems, word processing and number crunching are NOT essential to the functioning and utlity of a computer, but any one of them may be an essential option to the way you use it.
So, "all the bits" raises the question of what are essential bits for operating a computer and what is extraneuos. Microsoft and Mr. Gates are taking a view that they know better than a user what are the essential bits, regardless of your requirements or how their decisions effect the performance and general utility of hardware you own. By redefining what are essential features of an OS, Microsoft can act against percieved threats to its core businesses. If an OS (OS/2) includes internet functionality as an option, make it an essential. If Java plus Netscape present a viable (or conceivable) potential to replace Windows, undercut prices (to kill Netscape), destandardize features and at the same time leverage market penetration to sideline open standards for proprietary one standards (to scuttle Java). Above all, continue to migrate your users away from other potentially competing systems (Win 3.11 was a useful tactical release to limit OS/2 since Win 3.11 provided services that weren't in the new OS/2 such as True Type fonts. It kept IBM playing catch up.)
Reducing the innovation and diversity available to computer users can't really be counted as a "personal" contribution regardless of the significance.
Even though he isn't coding, he still hands down directives like a god from on high, and his army of workers bend to his will like tree branches snapping in a hurricane.
... and afterward the landscape is littered with trash.
Insightful of you.
First, publishing the story automatically reduces the level of car theft, since the thieves don't what car they look at is the problem vehicle. Second, this is a valid means of investigating car theft. You have to acquire a reasonable suspect, and chop shops rarely have signs advertising their business. Third, career crooks mostly ARE dumbasses who learn their trades during stints in prison. You can imagine my amusement to learn that one local institution with the words "Vocational Institute" in the name was in reality a maximum security prison. The reason three strikes works is that the return on your educational investment as a crook simply isn't there anymore. By the time you learn your trade, they throw away the key. Fourth, and last, the cops will be spending your tax dollars regardless.
The damage to this nation from the kind of thought you express here goes far beyond what you seem to think. Terrorists are trivial risks. Driving a car on any road on the US is infinitely more of a risk than encountering a terrorist. Never the less through the simple minded ideas of "acceptable risk" you assert your terror. Bin Laden has conquered your thought. The loss this causes is incalculable. It means women can't wear bobby pins on planes anymore, that your grandmother can't knit on a plane because her knitting needles might be used as weapons.
It means that some undereducated fool at a security check point will tell you "its for your own safety," when anyone that can think KNOWS that no US flight, and probably none anywhere will ever again be taken over by terrorists in the foreseeable futre because the 9-11 terrorists proved themselves liars. No passenger can ever again accept the risk of believing a terrorist's assertion that they won't be hurt. This "security" is not for your own good; it was not for your own good; it will never be for your own good. Building a reliable mass transit would be for your own good.
While you are thinking about this try running a simultaneous search on google for "Bush" and "bin Laden." After you read a few of THOSE hits, the fact that an ORACLE data base could monitor every emergency room bed in New York state "on the eve of " 9-11 might really get your paranoia going. Look into the stock transactions for American and United in the month immediately before 9-11 and try to correlate those moves with any news about the companies. Someone made several fortunes shorting them, but not all of the profits have been collected yet.
There was a set of links that showed up with this post including one regarding a French study. The author concluded that there actuall are several drowned islands, just west of Gibraltar, that were submerged about 11,000 years ago. Sea level at the height of the Pleistocene was about 400 feet (120 meters) below its present level. So, in fact there is a substantial piece of real estate now underwater that once was dry land when you consider the planet as a whole. The French author plans to dive on these "islands" this summer. It is worth noting - to us archaeologists any way - that this is the second drowned city found off India. Another was found last year in 120 feet of water off southwest India - the other side of the subcontinent from the latest find. My colleagues are unconfortable with the radiocarbon dates from this site, which reportedly run about 9,000 years old. This would tack a good 5,000 years onto the archaeology of civilizations, as opposed to less complexly organized societies.
Theologians, prophets and madmen do not employ hypotheses to make their "predictions. Raw data does not "predict" any thing. It's just data. Analysts look at that data, test it for trends, and then try to make some kind of guess about the future of the current trends. No theologian has ever done that beyond trying to predict whether they will have a congregation next year. No prophet ever bothered with that level of work, and madmen are incapable of it.
Conway's Life uses some very simple rules and a starting configuration. The rest is simply complex interactions. One of the points of interest in Conway's game was that the outcomes are extremely sensitive to tiny, even single cell, variations in initial conditions.
Many social scientists have tried to get some sort of understanding of what makes society tick, but generally the assumption is that the rules are complex, the interactions are complex, and the outcomes impossible to calculate. Of course, one of the major sticking points of any attempt at determing the rules by which social systems behave has always been the theologians, prophets, and madmen, as well as anyone else who found their pride offended by being regarded as predictable, or whose grifts were threatened by the prospect of a better understanding of the phenomenon.
The article seems, deliberately or not, to draw a dichotomy between Heinlein and Homer. The distinction is spurious, but claiming the Odyssey as an ancestor rather than say Citizen of the Galaxy can probably justfiably be considered pretentious.
You mean I'm supposed to mouse with my hand?
....the small oval thing with three buttons on the same end as the cord... ...yes mam, it is called a mouse... .... IT'S WHERE???"
Yep, astonishing. What always puzzled me was that she had noticed the mouse cursor move, when she tried to work the "foot pedal." But that was all that happened, so things were not working properly. My part of the conversation was pretty surreal too. "...your mouse...
Urban legends are often a convenient way to bury an embarassing attitude. Strictly speaking, a single individual identified as the "creator" of an urban legend, means that the story is neither urban, nor a legend, simply fiction with an author. A very real astronomer at the end of the 19th century pitied coming generations of astronomers and physicists because there was nothing more to discover but the details. Also, the means by which bumble bees stayed aloft WAS an aerodynamic mystery until quite recently. I think the article announcing the explanantion can be found in the Scientific American archives.
On another front of supposed urban myth I have heard for instance that the story of the house wife who called computer support because her control pedal was not working is an urban myth. None the less, during a brief stint as stand-in support, I personally answered just such a call. The woman had reasoned by physical analogy that the mouse was like her sewing machine control. Diagnosing that over the phone was pretty entertaining. Many true, but improbable stories embedded themselves as myth in our psychic landscape, but that fact hat they are myth may not make them less true. Just for fun, how long ago did your biologist take a shot at discrediting the physcist?
They are putting the cart before the horse here. The shift of discussion to chlorophyll and away from water is misdirection.
Let's see here. "They" are the people that said in effect, "there seems to be a spectrographic signature for chlorophyll in some particular areas around and ON Pathfinder in these multispectral images. We don't really know what it means, and we are not drawing conclusions until we have completely analized these data."
Now you, in contrast, already know what? "They" are apparently committing psuedoscience because a spectrograph has yielded empirical results that you do not like on mathematical grounds? Is this not similar to the physicist that argued that bumble bees can't fly based on mathematical grounds? Then too, just what IS all that hydrogen bound up in around Mar's south pole, if it is not in water ice?
"Cold fusion"? Feldmeyer and Smythe? Might you be meaning Pons and Fleischman?
Combining H2 with O is an entropic process, meaning it requires quite a bit of
energy .
Really, igniting hydrogen and oxygen does require a small initial input, but since the reaction is exothermic, the reaction usually continues until the reactants are too diffuse to maintain the process. I know from actual experimentation that you can take hydrogen and release it into ambient air without getting any reaction. But if you apply a match, then you get a reaction. This seems to me to indicate, based upon your logic and mathematics, that there really is no water on this planet either.
Your argument could be (but isn't) logically flawless, and still be subject to the adage that "logic is method for being wrong with confidence."
The team then used 96 proof vodka and 54 proof whisky instead of pure alcohol and successfully recreated a smaller amount of the material. Nanotubes were not created from mixtures with lower alcohol contents.
It looks like beer is proof against nanotube construction.
The litany of development you recite is the exact reason these archaeologists are surprised.
Actually, the story indicates the Irish archaeologist was on a fishing expedition for an astronomical correlation for those 5 Ky old carvings. So he wasn't surprised. In fact no archaeologist familiar with the Megalithic and Neolithic archaeology of Britain and Ireland is really going to be surprised. These people had some very profound abilities in geometery that they used regularly to construct Henges, and major mortuary monuments. No surprises for archaeologists in this other than the irritatingly over-explicit just-so story about the burned "sacrificial victims" and the limestone cenotaph, and that came from the archaeologist, not the archaeology.
Being an archaeologist, I reckon this needs an answer, or a reply at least. First, there is a very broad brush being used here implying that all us Marshalltown wielders are arrogant. It is logically fallacious, and contrary to reality as well. Among the most aggravating aspects of archaeology is the regionalization and insularism that we have to deal with whenever we move outside our normal regions and go some where else. Crossing the Atlantic results in enormous differences in how archaeologists view what they do, how they learn their trade, and even what's considered worth finding. Go to Israel and you find the Israelis were bery fond of architecture to the sometimes complete loss of most archaeological information. Go to Britain and you will find the discipline heavily invested in "post-processualism" and the use of critical theory, a practice that seems more than a little odd to many from the western side of the pond. Talk to a historical archaeologist about prehistory or vice versa, and you will undoubtedly get an earful, most of it not much use to hear. You have to remember that archaeologists are human, prone to the same failings as the rest of the race, particularly the fondess for collecting pet ideas, regardless of their real utility.
Now, consider the article. First, it wasn't written by an archaeologist but instead is a "popular" piece written by a reporter. There are major gaps in the story as advanced and these would be subject to peer-review normally, but the popular press doesn't wait for such measured and qualified (as in 'hedged') discussion. There are several obvious criticisms.
For instance, the implication of the limestone pillar or post is that after celebrating their survival, these people dashed off and lugged home a piece of alien rock to employ as a cenotaph. The whole picture is absurd. Second, there is the suggestion that the burned bones in the tomb/s were human sacrifices, but nothing was offered in support of this. You can go on, but the real problem is that there is no way to differentiate between the archaeologist's words and thoughts, and the wax -if any- in the ears of the reporter.
Now, considering Ireland and the Irish 5Ky ago. First, as far the evidence goes, I have to admit that it appears my very own ancestors trotting over those green, green bogs were indeed illiterate. They were not however, unsophisticated.
The period in question saw the the construction of the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, and the rise of the megalithic cultures of western Europe, when huge stones were moved miles for the construction of graves, sacred precincts, henge monuments and the great passage graves. Some of these latter show a profound concern for astronomical phenomena and years ago it was proven that Stone Henge in England could be used to predict eclipses, both lunar and solar. It seems reasonable then to suspect a concern among the occupants of the British Isles with things like solar calendar events, and where the moo will rise and set, and even eclipses.
So, what do we really know about people 5Ky ago? Precious little. The Egyptians were busy inventing, agricultural was off to a good start throughout Asia, the middle east, Egypt, and Europe wherever the Neolithic was taking hold. Writing is invented by the Eygptians during the Early Dynastic period. We know that the Egyptians were religious and built grandly. We know that the use of stone in architecture really appears at its earliest in western Europe, but not why. Consequently, many archaeologists argue by analogy. Thus during solar eclipses in the Middle East, Bedouin stay home, keep their kids, cattle, horses and camals inside and wait for the darkness to go away. Being exposed to the dark of an eclipse out doors is bad cess and any sensible, traditional Arab avoids it. Now, since the last time this happened was just about three years ago, you are right, we may not have changed that much. On the other hand would these early Irish be likely to resemble us or the Bedouin more? Think about it some, then tell me who the arrogant one is?
Ouch. It's deja vu. I have told the very same story to ISPs too many times to think about while running OS/2 and Linux, as well as Windoze. In fact I must have been dealing with the same monkey as well.
But seriously if theories other than creationism aren't internally coherant then there is no strong case against spontaneous creation.
Not really. Any theory is a simplified, explanatory model of a natural process that is more complex than the theory. In short all theory is to some extent inadequate. If it weren't it would be a restatment of the natural process.
Creationism is not an explanatory theory in the same sense. It attempts to impose a socially comfortable tale on the natural process, but does not offer new insight into those processes. A good theory offers new phenomena too look for. Many of the current "troubles" in modern physics simply stem from pushing these explanations until the stretch factor exposes the places where they don't work as well. You can use Newtonian physical models to reach Mars, but you need relativity to make a GPS satellite system work. Ceationism simply can't help in any of these places.
Maybe we can add a lame-troll class for posts like this?
At the dawn of the Chalcolithic, the old timers probably had a hard time believing you could extract metal from rock too. After all, it wasn't as if the rock would turn into copper tools on its own.
You really weren't serious about that question, were you?
But"micro-evolution is true, therefore macro-evolution is true", just doesn't follow.
The problem with reasoning like this is its naivety. Changes are cumulative, they do not go away automatically, magically, or because you wish they would. The second law of thermodynamics forbids it. There is no simple means to differentiate between "micro" and "macro" evolution when there is only a continuum of variation. Even saying that "they are still E. coli" is simplistic on a drastic scale. Recent evidence shows that bacteria exchange genetic information across species boundaries. So, given that they may be meandering around the petri dish with genes acquired from S. aureus as well other fun neighbors, what makes you certain that they ever were, much less still are E. coli. Its possible that the concept of "species" has been reified beyond any utility it ever had. Think about it.
Does anyone know of other OS projects with military association?
The basic systems that have driven the internet for decades were developed in part by the military and defense related government programs starting with DARPA.
From what I hear, IBM was a very bad monopoly and might have been just as bad as Microsoft. We'll never know because the choice was not given to us. You had to be a techie or REALLY want to install OS/2 in order to run it.
Pure baloney. OS/2 was difficult to install because it is a powerful OS backed by a lot of code to enable things like multitasking. Installing linux was a techie job. Installing OS/2 was just tedious (24 floppies worth of tedium).
How IBM got the source to Win16 but still had to pay Microsoft for every copy of WinOS2 sold in OS/2. I heard that many times from IBM people. I'm sure it was negotiated when Microsoft and IBM broke up their partnership. IBM monopolies had nothing to do with it since they had none.
IBM had contractual rights to Windows 16 bit code. They helped pay for its development, since portions were originally destined for NT. When the rift happened, IBM went a head with OS/2 while MS went with the development of NT. But!!! If you examined the file names for the early NT OS, up through 3.51 I believe, many of the files and libraries had "OS2" in their names, since they were legacy from before IBM and MS went their separate ways. IBM had been investigated for monopoly pratices in the '80s and was extremely cautious about its competitive practices, since it did not want federal regulators tramping around Armonk. Win95 did not kill OS/2, IBM did.
I don't think it was the greatest. The user interface was locked in. Much like NT (microsoft). So I never really cared for it.
You plainly never used OS/2 enough to know it. Presentation Manager (PM) was partially object oriented, while the WPS (work place shell) was fully OO. Companies like Stardock produced terrific desktops that were nothing like the default PM or WPS layouts. One of the cool things about Stardock's products was the addition of properties to file types based on inheritance, such as the property that text files were inherently editable. Click on a text file and it came up in an editor. Stardock's interface for OS/2 is very similar to KDE or GNOME, with multiple desktops, and a small windowed desktop selector. Windows 95 actually copied the OS/2 WPS or PM interface, which was quite clean and easy to use. OS/2 WARP was also the first desktop OS, besides Linux (and at that time it was not automated in Linux as it was in OS/2 WARP), to come with built-in communications (beyond some communications program such as ProComm) and internet connectivity, while Gates was still pushing that glorified BBS from Microsoft. At the time you still had to download winsock utilities from MS and install them if you wanted to use the internet. Micorsoft's prucahse of the parent program that became Internet Exporer was driven by the need to answer OS/2 and provide internet services. WAIS, Gopher, FTP and Web connections in OS/2 could be dropped as icons on the desktop. Click on them and the modem would automatically dial and connect. OS/2 was not as stable as Linux, but even when it went down, it came back with less trouble than Windows, and you could easily back step to a previous configuration, if a program installation clobbered the system with an incompatible driver or something. There was also never any necessity to reinstall OS/2 as the installation aged. This is still a common occurence even with modern versions of Windows when the registry becomes so clogged with crap the system becomes inherently unstable. OS/2's configuration files were simple, text based, and easy to fix with an editor. There is still a lot to like about it.