NeXTStep, in 1991 (according to an old NeXT brochure I have), supported jpeg. I don't know if that was in NXImage or only on an app-by-app basis, but it would seem odd to me if they took the effort to include it in some programs, but not in NXImage itself (not that being odd makes it impossible or anything!).
Yeah, except that my usage wasn't wrong. The two capitalizations aren't mutually exclusive, like you claim. When used specifically, "NEXTSTEP" refers to NeXT's complete OS on non-NeXT hardware. Used generically (which is what I was doing), it refers to all the various concoctions of NeXTStep, the frameworks, the objects, the bundled apps, etc., pre-OS X (and sometimes it even refers to OS X, but that's not commonplace).
You're right that the web wasn't developed on NEXTSTEP in the specific sense, but it certainly was developed on NEXTSTEP in the generic sense. NeXTSTEP is also used generically.
Sometimes precision is useful, sometimes it's superfluous, but imprecision isn't the same as "wrong". In my case, I was never claiming to be precise. If I had, I would have been wrong. I chose "NEXTSTEP" specifically because I didn't know the details (I didn't know the differences between the various capitalizations, but I did know that "NEXTSTEP" was commonly used to refer to them all).
If you don't know the distinction, then you'll have problems with these sentences too:
"Man discovered the nature of radioactivity during the 1800's."
"The population of NYC is 8 million."
"Unknown people left large stone heads on Easter Island."
All are correct, but imprecise. Sometimes a context calls for precision, sometimes it doesn't. Nonsense is not knowing the difference.
No, it was on NeXTStep. Capitalisation is meaningful here
It is meaningful, which is why I used NEXTSTEP, as NEXTSTEP is the standard capitalization used when referring to NEXTSTEP in general, since it was the last capitalization scheme. Just like you might say the Romans did such-and-such in Istanbul, or the Dutch founded New York, or some unknown people left strange heads on Easter Island.
The first web browser was on NEXTSTEP (now called OS X), which supported jpeg natively. If you support images at all using NEXSTEP's built-in objects (I assume it was NSImage then as now), you automatically get jpeg support. You'd have to pretty much have some reason not to show jpegs if you weren't going to include support for them, unlike Netscape (nee Mosaic) where the developers had to add in all the formats you wanted individually (graphics format support wasn't all that advanced back then under most Unices, as Rasterman wouldn't start on imlib for about 4-5 years).
The version he distributed was not the new versions availible.
I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. Tiger isn't available in stores, but you can download it for $500 (in fact, you're licensed to install it on 5 computers, so each copy costs less than a single Panther copy, from that point of view). There are some special internal seeds of Tiger, and some not-widely-distributed seeds, if that's what you mean.
Even under the new versions you sign an NDA.
I don't believe you actually sign an NDA. You click "I agree". These actions are not identical (not even from a legal point of view, which I am not addressing--virtually everyone agrees that it's Apple's legal right to sue, but the outcry is whether this whole mess is even remotely fair).
My point being that this is a publicly available beta. You can't walk into an Apple Store and buy it, but basically anyone can buy it from Apple. It's hard to claim this is some sort of "top secret prototype" if you make the damn thing available to anyone with $500, and post data on it on your websites and stream public videos showing off its features.
This is just a small-time case of piracy. Fine the kid $2k, scare him half to death (so he and others think twice, then thrice, before doing the same thing) and call it a day. What you don't do is destroy a person's professional life before it even gets started.
The guy pirated a piece of software anyone can buy for $500. This isn't some top-secret prototype. That's the whole point. He's being treated as though he absconded something that to be publicly available would damage the company.
Tiger is for all intent and purposes for things related to this case, public. It's still "private" as a technicality to prevent Microsoft and others from legally copying Tiger's non-public features (and there aren't really any) and to keep pre-release quality software from damaging Apple's reputation.
This is intellectual property of Apple, and should be treated as such.
He pirated software, he should pay the penalty.
No sympathy here.
Few are arguing that there should be no consequences. The argument is that the consequences are extraordinarily excessive.
No sympathy? OK, asshole, turn yourself in to everyone whose IP rights you violated (c'mon, you expect me to believe you've never, ever violated someone's IP rights?) and ask them to ruin your life both financially and professionally.
If you are not prepared to do that, then SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU HYPOCRITICAL ASSHOLE.
Car analogies are almost always flawed. A "free tank" that is "faster, more maneuverable and more fuel-efficient" than a Volvo or a Ford?
OS X is Unix (technically, moreso than Linux is, even), and is far more tank-like than you imagine. It's just that it looks like a "car of the future".
How frequent are vulnerabilities in Safari? In IE? In Firefox?
Safari and Firefox are about the same, and only Firefox has any spyware for it at all (like one xpi that does the ol' ad switcharoo on you, no big deal, but it's there). Neither have any (that I'm aware of) exploits in the wild. IE spends more time with known, unpatched exploits than not.
That's because the open source apps have all their exploits reported as separate incidents, with incident IDs and so on. Apple (and Microsoft) slipstream security fixes into other patches all the time and just don't report them.
It's unclear exactly which part of the quoted paragraph you are trying to refute/correct. Apple lists the changes in their patches (there's even a "Bill Of Materials" file which lists the files changed). Maybe they roll in a buffer-overrun fix with a performance fix, or something but that doesn't change the fact that it's unheard of to have a pwn3d Mac OS X home PC, where that's all too common under Windows. Nor does it change the fact that security updates have predominantly revolved around Free/Open Source software. That's not a bad thing (in fact, it's good that free software gets updated). It's just meant to point out that OS X is not the security nightmare that Windows is.
I disabled Firefox's extention thing and run a firewall on my Linux box. Is that becasue Linux is inherently flawed?
It means you are overly cautious (or a liar, which I think is probably the case).
Linux doesn't need a firewall unless you run non-public services on it. Do you run non-public services on it? Firefox extensions aren't the same as ActiveX.
You are exploiting the same logical fallacy as the original poster I was responding to. Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux all have firewalls. MSIE, Safari, and Firefox are all extensible and scriptable.
Due to design decisions, only Windows actually needs a firewall in the default and most common configuration. Only MSIE's scripting and extension capabilities are considered critical security risks.
You're completely wrong. Windows isn't inherently flawed, the way people use it is inherently flawed (we're talking about NT-based OSes here)
That's stupid. The "wrong" way people use it that you are referring to is, in fact, the way you're supposed to use it.
For myself, I'm not diligent at _all_.
You would be more convincing if you didn't immediately list the ways you are diligent. That's almost as amusing as you saying that Windows isn't inherently flawed, but that you turn off ActiveX and use a firewall as a means to deal with some of Windows' flaws.
Argh! This is one of the most blatantly obvious mistakes that always get modded up on Slashdot.
Yes, absolutely every general purpose OS can be rooted, spywared, hacked, or otherwise compromised.
By analogy, anything can kill you, poison can kill you, water can kill you, a bullet can kill you and a butterfly can kill you. Being possible is not the same as being probable.
In the binary, off/on, sense, security can theoretically be compromised. But we don't live in theory, we live in practice. There are no known kernel exploits for Mac OS X, there is no known spyware, there are no known viruses, there have been a handful of OS X specific exploits that require the user to run a program (and generally ask you to supply an admin password), and have all been "proof of concepts". The bulk of OS X security updates have been for Open Source/Unix apps, which are all turned off by default, and have never been reported as actually exploited.
It's virtually impossible to just randomly get rooted, trojaned, hit by a virus, or otherwise find your Mac is pwn3d. On Windows, you need to be fairly diligent, and even then you can't be sure.
You gotta ask yourself why this is. The answer isn't just "Windows is more common" (although that is a part of it. Windows is inherently flawed from a security standpoint. Mac OS X is inherently secure (relatively speaking). That doesn't mean it's impossible to hack a Mac, but it does mean that the risks are fewer, and are far more easily mitigated.
When someone says, "Windows is malware-ridden, I'm switching to a Mac" (sometimes a toothless threat, sometimes not), the response, "but it's possible to write a rootkit for Mac OS X too," is not a counter-argument. It's, at best, a warning that someday that Mac might possibly, but not very likely, get a virus or something... maybe, probably not though.
But that's not going to happen. If you want hay, you'll remove the 3" grass and grow hay. It's not an issue.
As for 3" grass taking over, it's not going to have massive roots, because it's only got one little leaf to power it. It's not going to take over where taller plants block the sun. Who cares if it takes over little patches? Nature copes.
My point is that introducing a 3" grass does not reasonably run the risk of turning the entire land into nothing but 3" grass. If scientists do create a super-mega-grass that will overtake the lands, then the answer to the question, "is there any reasonable danger?" (the question I initially posed) will be an emphatic, "yes!", and the plant should not be introduced.
There are oodles of ethical questions to be answered BEFORE releasing a GM product into the wild. Profit is not the bottom line in the real world.
The are not "oodles" of ethical questions. There's only one[*]: "is there any reasonable danger?" Is there any reasonable danger for a terminator gene? NO. Think about it. If the terminator gene does cross species (let's assume it will). It will burn itself out. In general, it's not the GM part of GM products that causes problems, it's the IP part of GM that causes problems. It's no big deal if a GM plant cross-pollenates with non-GM, except if you allow Monsanto to sue the "victim".
Let's say you introduce a 3" grass. In order for it to be an ecological disaster (which is my question, once again, and not one among "oodles"), it would have to be highly prolific, and it would have to out compete the natural species. I don't see a 3" grass doing that. You don't eat "wild" cows, so it wouldn't be an issue. Farmers would just grow lawns of cow-length grass, and grow hay to feed their cows, etc.
[*] There's also a "should we even create this monster?" question which is assumed already answered in the lab (you dealt entirely with introducing GM products into the wild).
You post is highly unbalanced. I don't know if that's what you meant to portray, but it is how it came across.
And that's why we need private space exploration and development, and we finally have it. Many companies now see the possibility and they have the vision and motivation to do what NASA couldn't.
We need both private and public space programs (insomuch as we "need" any space program). Private enterprise does things that are difficult to do under public programs and vice versa.
Your post also strongly implies that no good comes from "pork", and that it's impossible to do anything right under public projects. This is clearly and embarrassingly false.
I think a far more accurate generalization would be that private (specifically, capitalist) enterprise tends towards the most efficient ways of doing things, and public (specifically, democratic) is crucial for doing those things that private enterprise can't or won't do.
All enterprise tends to try to protect itself (for example, NASA wants to be the only way into space, and MS wants to be the only way you get onto the Internet), but despite your cynicism, people on both sides of the coin take actions against their own short-term interests for the betterment of all.
Claiming I IMPLIED bias is not the same as saying they were biased. More importantly, I was clarifying someone elses point.
You said, "It does damage their credibility, however".
What's the "it" you are referring to? Is it not "their bias"? Before you try to weasel by saying the "it" was the original post, recall that the original post was about... their bias! Also, your post was entirely about... bias and that it affects their credibility! So taken in context, what else are you referring to?
You also weren't merely "clarifying" someone else's words. You were taking his stance. Why do I say this? Because you said, "It does damage their credibility, however." I bolded the word that illustrates my point.
You are a fool, and I'm not going to give you a pass on your linguistic idiocy. Saying something indirectly is still saying it.
Imagine you point to a orange house and say, "go into the red house." You are saying the orange house is red, even though you didn't say the words, "that house is red." You can't claim you didn't say it was red when I point out it's actually orange. Likewise, you did not say, "the original poster's claim was true," you did make a statement which implies it. Clarify your words if that's not what you meant, but don't blame me for understanding what the words you wrote mean.
BUT STOP FUCKING LYING.
I haven't. You have, however.
Are you a lawyer by trade? Or just a lying, whining little bitch by nature?
Sure it was. It's just that it can't logically do so, so it tries with overwhelming "facts" (like the article against DHMO is full of facts, it's the presentation that gets you--this guy's presentation is nowhere near as good, but he tried the same basic method).
It does damage their credibility, however. No one should read the findings without understanding the bias of the people who did the research.
Yeah, the fact that they worked under a Democratic President for 8 of the last 15 years sure damages their credibility! Funny that that's actually as close to 50/50 as you can get in 1-year increments. How many years does that work out to if you extend it to 20 years?
The bias of the guy I was replying to is far more incriminating than that of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
You'll notice I never claimed anyone was biased, only that if a bias exists it should be well known.
Like hell you didn't. "It does damage their credibility, however." Your words, not mine.
OS X is another strong possibility. Sony's President was recently on stage with Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo, hinting at working with Apple in the future. A recent slashdot story linked to an article which states that 3 PC manufacturers have been begging Apple to license OS X to them. I'll bet Sony was one of them, and IBM would also be a logical suitor.
Since OS X is essentially NEXTSTEP 6, and the Cell workstations would be great for science or 3d, OS X is a likely candidate OS. The Cell is also going to be in TVs, so I could easily imagine the OS to be OS X (with a shell more logical for TVs, of course, not the Aqua GUI).
This would be a bold move for Apple, Sony, and IBM, and it just seems so right.
I agree, though, that they'll also run Linux--it runs on pretty much everything!
No no, this isn't language evolving, it's just stupidity.
What are you saying? I don't understand your English. You omitted the comma between "No" and "no" at the start of your sentence.
What next,
I'm so confused. Did you mean, "What's next"?
people don't feel like articulating apostrophes?
If that's what's next, it should be, "people won't feel like".
People don't feel like distinguishing between they're/there/their (although an alarming number don't already)?
You've once again committed the "don't" vs. "won't" error. Additionally, your use of the oblique between "they're", "there" and "their" is improper.
Any time I see someone utter or write the incorrect version of the phrase I picture the kind of person who says the latest catchphrase or buzzword without a clue to its origin and/or meaning.
I've never really seen it that way, but you've begun to change my mind. You do strike me as the "kind of person who says the latest catchphrase or buzzword without a clue to its origin and/or meaning," if for no other reason than that you composed such an abysmally improper sentence.
Call me a snob, but I'm proud of our beautiful language (yet still more forgiving of American English than a lot of my fellow Brits).
Really, I could care less.
(which is proper English, unlike my parenthetical aside here, because the phrase is ironic and usually sarcastic)
It's not a bogus concept at all. What you've done is highlighted a limitation of the English language.
"Emergent behavior" is a true and valid concept. English can not logically, non-contradictorily, and concisely, convey that concept, so you get a phrase like, "more than the sum of its parts", which does convey the concept, at the cost of some absolute logical consistency.
While nothing can literally be "more than the sum of its parts", it can exhibit behavior that is not designed into it, not innate to the parts being summed, and not even possible to have predicted ahead of time. This (and more) is what the phrase means.
When you factor in the latter, it then becomes possible to calculate the statistical INEVITABILITY that a Roomba will accidentally bump a door closed, locking itself into a room.
In the case of the Roomba, you could calculate the possibility or impossibility of it locking itself into a room, but it's possible that it could be completely impossible to calculate whether it ever will.
Along the lines of, "is a virus life? if so, is a crystal life too?", the Roomba case is really a rudimentary example of emergent behavior, with which one could go either way. But the question posed, which is "as things become more automated, what sorts of odd and unpredicted (and unpredictable) behaviors will emerge?" is an interesting one indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
NeXTStep, in 1991 (according to an old NeXT brochure I have), supported jpeg. I don't know if that was in NXImage or only on an app-by-app basis, but it would seem odd to me if they took the effort to include it in some programs, but not in NXImage itself (not that being odd makes it impossible or anything!).
What nonsense, just admit your usage was wrong.
Yeah, except that my usage wasn't wrong. The two capitalizations aren't mutually exclusive, like you claim. When used specifically, "NEXTSTEP" refers to NeXT's complete OS on non-NeXT hardware. Used generically (which is what I was doing), it refers to all the various concoctions of NeXTStep, the frameworks, the objects, the bundled apps, etc., pre-OS X (and sometimes it even refers to OS X, but that's not commonplace).
You're right that the web wasn't developed on NEXTSTEP in the specific sense, but it certainly was developed on NEXTSTEP in the generic sense. NeXTSTEP is also used generically.
Sometimes precision is useful, sometimes it's superfluous, but imprecision isn't the same as "wrong". In my case, I was never claiming to be precise. If I had, I would have been wrong. I chose "NEXTSTEP" specifically because I didn't know the details (I didn't know the differences between the various capitalizations, but I did know that "NEXTSTEP" was commonly used to refer to them all).
If you don't know the distinction, then you'll have problems with these sentences too:
"Man discovered the nature of radioactivity during the 1800's."
"The population of NYC is 8 million."
"Unknown people left large stone heads on Easter Island."
All are correct, but imprecise. Sometimes a context calls for precision, sometimes it doesn't. Nonsense is not knowing the difference.
No, it was on NeXTStep. Capitalisation is meaningful here
It is meaningful, which is why I used NEXTSTEP, as NEXTSTEP is the standard capitalization used when referring to NEXTSTEP in general, since it was the last capitalization scheme. Just like you might say the Romans did such-and-such in Istanbul, or the Dutch founded New York, or some unknown people left strange heads on Easter Island.
The first web browser was on NEXTSTEP (now called OS X), which supported jpeg natively. If you support images at all using NEXSTEP's built-in objects (I assume it was NSImage then as now), you automatically get jpeg support. You'd have to pretty much have some reason not to show jpegs if you weren't going to include support for them, unlike Netscape (nee Mosaic) where the developers had to add in all the formats you wanted individually (graphics format support wasn't all that advanced back then under most Unices, as Rasterman wouldn't start on imlib for about 4-5 years).
The version he distributed was not the new versions availible.
I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. Tiger isn't available in stores, but you can download it for $500 (in fact, you're licensed to install it on 5 computers, so each copy costs less than a single Panther copy, from that point of view). There are some special internal seeds of Tiger, and some not-widely-distributed seeds, if that's what you mean.
Even under the new versions you sign an NDA.
I don't believe you actually sign an NDA. You click "I agree". These actions are not identical (not even from a legal point of view, which I am not addressing--virtually everyone agrees that it's Apple's legal right to sue, but the outcry is whether this whole mess is even remotely fair).
My point being that this is a publicly available beta. You can't walk into an Apple Store and buy it, but basically anyone can buy it from Apple. It's hard to claim this is some sort of "top secret prototype" if you make the damn thing available to anyone with $500, and post data on it on your websites and stream public videos showing off its features.
This is just a small-time case of piracy. Fine the kid $2k, scare him half to death (so he and others think twice, then thrice, before doing the same thing) and call it a day. What you don't do is destroy a person's professional life before it even gets started.
The guy pirated a piece of software anyone can buy for $500. This isn't some top-secret prototype. That's the whole point. He's being treated as though he absconded something that to be publicly available would damage the company.
Go to http://www.apple.com/macosx/ and you can learn all about Tiger. Go to http://developer.apple.com/ and you can sign up to buy Tiger today.
Tiger is for all intent and purposes for things related to this case, public. It's still "private" as a technicality to prevent Microsoft and others from legally copying Tiger's non-public features (and there aren't really any) and to keep pre-release quality software from damaging Apple's reputation.
This is intellectual property of Apple, and should be treated as such.
He pirated software, he should pay the penalty.
No sympathy here.
Few are arguing that there should be no consequences. The argument is that the consequences are extraordinarily excessive.
No sympathy? OK, asshole, turn yourself in to everyone whose IP rights you violated (c'mon, you expect me to believe you've never, ever violated someone's IP rights?) and ask them to ruin your life both financially and professionally.
If you are not prepared to do that, then SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU HYPOCRITICAL ASSHOLE.
Car analogies are almost always flawed. A "free tank" that is "faster, more maneuverable and more fuel-efficient" than a Volvo or a Ford?
OS X is Unix (technically, moreso than Linux is, even), and is far more tank-like than you imagine. It's just that it looks like a "car of the future".
How frequent are vulnerabilities in Safari? In IE? In Firefox?
Safari and Firefox are about the same, and only Firefox has any spyware for it at all (like one xpi that does the ol' ad switcharoo on you, no big deal, but it's there). Neither have any (that I'm aware of) exploits in the wild. IE spends more time with known, unpatched exploits than not.
That's because the open source apps have all their exploits reported as separate incidents, with incident IDs and so on. Apple (and Microsoft) slipstream security fixes into other patches all the time and just don't report them.
It's unclear exactly which part of the quoted paragraph you are trying to refute/correct. Apple lists the changes in their patches (there's even a "Bill Of Materials" file which lists the files changed). Maybe they roll in a buffer-overrun fix with a performance fix, or something but that doesn't change the fact that it's unheard of to have a pwn3d Mac OS X home PC, where that's all too common under Windows. Nor does it change the fact that security updates have predominantly revolved around Free/Open Source software. That's not a bad thing (in fact, it's good that free software gets updated). It's just meant to point out that OS X is not the security nightmare that Windows is.
I disabled Firefox's extention thing and run a firewall on my Linux box. Is that becasue Linux is inherently flawed?
It means you are overly cautious (or a liar, which I think is probably the case).
Linux doesn't need a firewall unless you run non-public services on it. Do you run non-public services on it? Firefox extensions aren't the same as ActiveX.
You are exploiting the same logical fallacy as the original poster I was responding to. Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux all have firewalls. MSIE, Safari, and Firefox are all extensible and scriptable.
Due to design decisions, only Windows actually needs a firewall in the default and most common configuration. Only MSIE's scripting and extension capabilities are considered critical security risks.
You're completely wrong. Windows isn't inherently flawed, the way people use it is inherently flawed (we're talking about NT-based OSes here)
That's stupid. The "wrong" way people use it that you are referring to is, in fact, the way you're supposed to use it.
For myself, I'm not diligent at _all_.
You would be more convincing if you didn't immediately list the ways you are diligent. That's almost as amusing as you saying that Windows isn't inherently flawed, but that you turn off ActiveX and use a firewall as a means to deal with some of Windows' flaws.
Argh! This is one of the most blatantly obvious mistakes that always get modded up on Slashdot.
Yes, absolutely every general purpose OS can be rooted, spywared, hacked, or otherwise compromised.
By analogy, anything can kill you, poison can kill you, water can kill you, a bullet can kill you and a butterfly can kill you. Being possible is not the same as being probable.
In the binary, off/on, sense, security can theoretically be compromised. But we don't live in theory, we live in practice. There are no known kernel exploits for Mac OS X, there is no known spyware, there are no known viruses, there have been a handful of OS X specific exploits that require the user to run a program (and generally ask you to supply an admin password), and have all been "proof of concepts". The bulk of OS X security updates have been for Open Source/Unix apps, which are all turned off by default, and have never been reported as actually exploited.
It's virtually impossible to just randomly get rooted, trojaned, hit by a virus, or otherwise find your Mac is pwn3d. On Windows, you need to be fairly diligent, and even then you can't be sure.
You gotta ask yourself why this is. The answer isn't just "Windows is more common" (although that is a part of it. Windows is inherently flawed from a security standpoint. Mac OS X is inherently secure (relatively speaking). That doesn't mean it's impossible to hack a Mac, but it does mean that the risks are fewer, and are far more easily mitigated.
When someone says, "Windows is malware-ridden, I'm switching to a Mac" (sometimes a toothless threat, sometimes not), the response, "but it's possible to write a rootkit for Mac OS X too," is not a counter-argument. It's, at best, a warning that someday that Mac might possibly, but not very likely, get a virus or something... maybe, probably not though.
But that's not going to happen. If you want hay, you'll remove the 3" grass and grow hay. It's not an issue.
As for 3" grass taking over, it's not going to have massive roots, because it's only got one little leaf to power it. It's not going to take over where taller plants block the sun. Who cares if it takes over little patches? Nature copes.
My point is that introducing a 3" grass does not reasonably run the risk of turning the entire land into nothing but 3" grass. If scientists do create a super-mega-grass that will overtake the lands, then the answer to the question, "is there any reasonable danger?" (the question I initially posed) will be an emphatic, "yes!", and the plant should not be introduced.
There are oodles of ethical questions to be answered BEFORE releasing a GM product into the wild. Profit is not the bottom line in the real world.
The are not "oodles" of ethical questions. There's only one[*]: "is there any reasonable danger?" Is there any reasonable danger for a terminator gene? NO. Think about it. If the terminator gene does cross species (let's assume it will). It will burn itself out. In general, it's not the GM part of GM products that causes problems, it's the IP part of GM that causes problems. It's no big deal if a GM plant cross-pollenates with non-GM, except if you allow Monsanto to sue the "victim".
Let's say you introduce a 3" grass. In order for it to be an ecological disaster (which is my question, once again, and not one among "oodles"), it would have to be highly prolific, and it would have to out compete the natural species. I don't see a 3" grass doing that. You don't eat "wild" cows, so it wouldn't be an issue. Farmers would just grow lawns of cow-length grass, and grow hay to feed their cows, etc.
[*] There's also a "should we even create this monster?" question which is assumed already answered in the lab (you dealt entirely with introducing GM products into the wild).
You post is highly unbalanced. I don't know if that's what you meant to portray, but it is how it came across.
And that's why we need private space exploration and development, and we finally have it. Many companies now see the possibility and they have the vision and motivation to do what NASA couldn't.
We need both private and public space programs (insomuch as we "need" any space program). Private enterprise does things that are difficult to do under public programs and vice versa.
Your post also strongly implies that no good comes from "pork", and that it's impossible to do anything right under public projects. This is clearly and embarrassingly false.
I think a far more accurate generalization would be that private (specifically, capitalist) enterprise tends towards the most efficient ways of doing things, and public (specifically, democratic) is crucial for doing those things that private enterprise can't or won't do.
All enterprise tends to try to protect itself (for example, NASA wants to be the only way into space, and MS wants to be the only way you get onto the Internet), but despite your cynicism, people on both sides of the coin take actions against their own short-term interests for the betterment of all.
Ok, one thing. You are a liar.
Claiming I IMPLIED bias is not the same as saying they were biased. More importantly, I was clarifying someone elses point.
You said, "It does damage their credibility, however".
What's the "it" you are referring to? Is it not "their bias"? Before you try to weasel by saying the "it" was the original post, recall that the original post was about... their bias! Also, your post was entirely about... bias and that it affects their credibility! So taken in context, what else are you referring to?
You also weren't merely "clarifying" someone else's words. You were taking his stance. Why do I say this? Because you said, "It does damage their credibility, however." I bolded the word that illustrates my point.
You are a fool, and I'm not going to give you a pass on your linguistic idiocy. Saying something indirectly is still saying it.
Imagine you point to a orange house and say, "go into the red house." You are saying the orange house is red, even though you didn't say the words, "that house is red." You can't claim you didn't say it was red when I point out it's actually orange. Likewise, you did not say, "the original poster's claim was true," you did make a statement which implies it. Clarify your words if that's not what you meant, but don't blame me for understanding what the words you wrote mean.
BUT STOP FUCKING LYING.
I haven't. You have, however.
Are you a lawyer by trade? Or just a lying, whining little bitch by nature?
It doesn't, but it was never intended to.
Sure it was. It's just that it can't logically do so, so it tries with overwhelming "facts" (like the article against DHMO is full of facts, it's the presentation that gets you--this guy's presentation is nowhere near as good, but he tried the same basic method).
It does damage their credibility, however. No one should read the findings without understanding the bias of the people who did the research.
Yeah, the fact that they worked under a Democratic President for 8 of the last 15 years sure damages their credibility! Funny that that's actually as close to 50/50 as you can get in 1-year increments. How many years does that work out to if you extend it to 20 years?
The bias of the guy I was replying to is far more incriminating than that of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
You'll notice I never claimed anyone was biased, only that if a bias exists it should be well known.
Like hell you didn't. "It does damage their credibility, however." Your words, not mine.
So, uh... This contradicts their findings how again?
If they had no nukes, they would be anothee insignificant SE Asian country, with nothing to fear from the US.
Just like Iraq?
Anyone in the know know why Debian is sticking to a fork of the old XFree code, and not moving to x.org like other distros?
Because it's not sticking to a fork of the old XFree86 code, and it is moving to X.Org, like other distros.
I can't see it running anything but linux.
OS X is another strong possibility. Sony's President was recently on stage with Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo, hinting at working with Apple in the future. A recent slashdot story linked to an article which states that 3 PC manufacturers have been begging Apple to license OS X to them. I'll bet Sony was one of them, and IBM would also be a logical suitor.
Since OS X is essentially NEXTSTEP 6, and the Cell workstations would be great for science or 3d, OS X is a likely candidate OS. The Cell is also going to be in TVs, so I could easily imagine the OS to be OS X (with a shell more logical for TVs, of course, not the Aqua GUI).
This would be a bold move for Apple, Sony, and IBM, and it just seems so right.
I agree, though, that they'll also run Linux--it runs on pretty much everything!
Ironic how both are named after big fat bovines.
Longhorn, it's what's for dinner.
No no, this isn't language evolving, it's just stupidity.
What are you saying? I don't understand your English. You omitted the comma between "No" and "no" at the start of your sentence.
What next,
I'm so confused. Did you mean, "What's next"?
people don't feel like articulating apostrophes?
If that's what's next, it should be, "people won't feel like".
People don't feel like distinguishing between they're/there/their (although an alarming number don't already)?
You've once again committed the "don't" vs. "won't" error. Additionally, your use of the oblique between "they're", "there" and "their" is improper.
Any time I see someone utter or write the incorrect version of the phrase I picture the kind of person who says the latest catchphrase or buzzword without a clue to its origin and/or meaning.
I've never really seen it that way, but you've begun to change my mind. You do strike me as the "kind of person who says the latest catchphrase or buzzword without a clue to its origin and/or meaning," if for no other reason than that you composed such an abysmally improper sentence.
Call me a snob, but I'm proud of our beautiful language (yet still more forgiving of American English than a lot of my fellow Brits).
Really, I could care less.
(which is proper English, unlike my parenthetical aside here, because the phrase is ironic and usually sarcastic)
It's not a bogus concept at all. What you've done is highlighted a limitation of the English language.
"Emergent behavior" is a true and valid concept. English can not logically, non-contradictorily, and concisely, convey that concept, so you get a phrase like, "more than the sum of its parts", which does convey the concept, at the cost of some absolute logical consistency.
While nothing can literally be "more than the sum of its parts", it can exhibit behavior that is not designed into it, not innate to the parts being summed, and not even possible to have predicted ahead of time. This (and more) is what the phrase means.
When you factor in the latter, it then becomes possible to calculate the statistical INEVITABILITY that a Roomba will accidentally bump a door closed, locking itself into a room.
In the case of the Roomba, you could calculate the possibility or impossibility of it locking itself into a room, but it's possible that it could be completely impossible to calculate whether it ever will.
Along the lines of, "is a virus life? if so, is a crystal life too?", the Roomba case is really a rudimentary example of emergent behavior, with which one could go either way. But the question posed, which is "as things become more automated, what sorts of odd and unpredicted (and unpredictable) behaviors will emerge?" is an interesting one indeed.
my tivo became self aware, and began recording wil & grace.
Thus restoring balance to the Universe--one machine goes into the closet, and another comes out.