Some people think ice ages may be caused by the effect of cosmic rays on clouds. The glacial cycles would then be caused by the additional cosmic rays from supernovas during our solar system's passage through the galaxy's spiral arms. You can find a lot of links about it by googling, but here are three:
I used VMS for so many years that sometimes I dream about it, and sometimes I miss the versioning of files.
What happened with Windows!? Everyone has heard the rumor, which Dave Cutler denies, that since he had a hand in designing VMS, then defected to the Evil Empire to design Windows (NT), that naturally, WNT is just VMS with each letter +1.
But it sure doesn't feel like VMS. In fact it feels like a cow turd but don't take that as flamebait, just MHO.
I took a look at the site, and it looks like an interesting book, but as Richard Wallace says in the link I posted previously, you can't understand the OS by studying the transistors (of a CPU).
We also have no clue about what intelligence is. Maybe if we stopped equating human thinking with intelligence, we might make some progress.
That is not meant to be a cynical remark. It may be now that AI researchers like Minsky have sobered up, they realize that if a machine passes for human, that doesn't make it intelligent.
And if a machine is intelligent, there is no reason to suppose that it could imitate a human. How many of us can imitate another species convincingly?
The sooner that we divorce our concept of intelligence from our concept of ourselves, then the sooner we might begin to understand what intelligence is and is not.
If a being from another solar system drove here in it's spaceship that it's race built, I think it would have to be intelligent. But it's not human, so it's more interesting to know what intelligence is than to know how human brains work.
At best it's just one example of how to produce intelligence. At worst, it just a bunch of glop, as Richard Wallace says in the/. interview in 2002:
was the Unix V7 "learn" program, which was an interactive tutorial that taught C and file system commands, among other things.
Without that I wouldn't be the programmer that I am today. Here's the README:
The C script is not complete; use at your own risk.
Lessons are in
/usr/lib/learn/*
Source is in
/usr/src/cmd/learn
Miscellaneous supporting code is also in source.
Make a learn by
make
When this seems right, extract the lessons by
make lessons
This extracts the lesson archives
for each course. You can also do this one step at a
time with "make files", "make editor", etc.,
if you don't want all courses.
If you do things separately, you must also say
make play; make log
Finally, check that it's sensible with
make check
If that doesn't print any messages,
you're probably in good shape.
Learn requires general write permission on the user playpen
directory.../lib/play. Lesson directories may be protected.
Learn collects a log file for each script in the.../lib/log
directory, with a file for each script (files,
editor, etc.) containing an entry for each lesson
attempted. These files will grow without bound,
unless they are periodically truncated.
The log files should have general write permission.
If you don't want logging (a sensible position to take),
set the variable "logging" to zero in source/lrndef
before making learn.
Learn requires about 1500 blocks to make itself,
and about 1000 when completely made.
Please report problems, bad lessons, etc., to
Brian Kernighan, MH 6021, 2C-518, or
Mike Lesk, MH 6377, 2C-572. Thanks.
Since scp and ssh are preferrable to ftp and telnet, it would be best if Microsoft comes prepackaged with Cygwin.
And then you can have all of the other Unix "power tools" as well.
Or they could just sell Linux and call it Windows 7. They're no good at software anyway.
Their act is getting old.
If they don't come up with something this time people will keep XP forever. The risk then, is that their stalwarts might, as a lark, try something new, and then find out what they've been missing all this time by using an OS designed by businessmen for granny, little Joey, and uncle Al, instead of an OS written by and for programmers.
Except that there is an estimate based on the rate of expansion* that the diameter is at least 93 billion light years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe#Size.2C_age.2C_contents.2C_structure.2C_and_laws).
Is it possible to be a libertarian and at the same time a Christian zealot?
Obviously not, since the libertarian philosiphy is "laissez faire", and the Christian (and of course, all the other ancient superstitions) philosophy is "Believe this or rot in hell."
It took a few minutes to find but I found what the previous poster is rabid about and pasted it here. It is a bit disconcerting that while most Americans consider the U.S.A. to be a stable country, unlike the ones that are constantly declaring states of emergency in order to keep their autocratic, dictatorial, fucktards in power, now we discover that we (yes, U.S. citizen here) are doing the same thing.
Not to keep George "Fucktard" Bush in power longer, of course, since the Constitution does not allow that, but just to give him more power while he's there. I'm not necessarily in favor of it, unless it is necessary in helping certain parties to understand (such as with a bullet to the brain) that it is not considered socially acceptable to blow up Mariotts in Pakistan.
Anyway, here it is.
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 18, 2008
Notice: Continuation Of The National Emergency With Respect To Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, Or Support Terrorism
RSS Feed White House News
On September 23, 2001, by Executive Order 13224, I declared a national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706). I took this action to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists, including the terrorist attacks in New York, in Pennsylvania, and against the Pentagon committed on September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks against United States nationals or the United States. Because the actions of these persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States, the national emergency declared on September 23, 2001, and the measures adopted on that date to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 23, 2008. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism.
This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.
In the mid '80s, all I new how to do was IBM 360/JCL/Fortran and DEC PDP11 Fortran.
Then my fortunes changed when I had the chance to buy a used Altos 8086 computer running Microsoft's version of AT&T Version 7 Unix called "Xenix" ()
What was great about it, is that it had a program called "learn" () which was a tutorial that taught both Unix and C.
It's a shame that "learn" is not included in modern Unix and Linux distros. That would be a valuable resource for students that would otherwise only be exposed to an OS (which will remain nameless here) that was designed for computer illiterates.
This is your chance to make sure the next generation can at least perceive the elegance and thought that went into making an OS and programming language that was designed by and for programmers, instead of by and for businessmen.
Great... maybe. I just took at look at their website and found a lot of shit written by sales and marketing that I just don't have the patience to try to understand what they are babbling about.
And, of course the obligatory photos of models pretending to be employees, happy customers, or drunken vagrants; who the fuck knows.
And why do the marketeers that they hire to advise them on their "onlin presence" insist on that shit?
Does anyone here get a boner when they see those fucking pictures of happy corporate people on every fucking corporate website?
Someone gives you a binary executable file to run. It's a two thread program compiled and linked for say, an IBM 360 or maybe a MIPS R6000, it doesn't matter. You say "fine", and submit it to your virtual cloundWare, and one thread executes in Greenland, and the other in Malaysia.
Slashdot Mirror
PS. I'm also disappointed that this political shit is considered "News for Nerds", even if it is "Stuff that Matters".
Shampoo is Palin!
curious as to what effects space radiation has on our solar system, and in turn, our planet
, and which was not modded offtopic.
http://www.aip.org/pnu/2002/split/599-2.html
http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/19866
What happened with Windows!? Everyone has heard the rumor, which Dave Cutler denies, that since he had a hand in designing VMS, then defected to the Evil Empire to design Windows (NT), that naturally, WNT is just VMS with each letter +1.
But it sure doesn't feel like VMS. In fact it feels like a cow turd but don't take that as flamebait, just MHO.
How do you feel about apostrophes?
I took a look at the site, and it looks like an interesting book, but as Richard Wallace says in the link I posted previously, you can't understand the OS by studying the transistors (of a CPU).
That is not meant to be a cynical remark. It may be now that AI researchers like Minsky have sobered up, they realize that if a machine passes for human, that doesn't make it intelligent.
And if a machine is intelligent, there is no reason to suppose that it could imitate a human. How many of us can imitate another species convincingly?
The sooner that we divorce our concept of intelligence from our concept of ourselves, then the sooner we might begin to understand what intelligence is and is not.
Sorry about your shift key, but keyboards are cheap.
At best it's just one example of how to produce intelligence. At worst, it just a bunch of glop, as Richard Wallace says in the /. interview in 2002:
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/26/0332225&tid=99
But first you have to make machine intelligent. Then you have to make it imitate a human. Those are not the same things.
Without that I wouldn't be the programmer that I am today. Here's the README:
The C script is not complete; use at your own risk.
Lessons are in
Source is in
Miscellaneous supporting code is also in source.
Make a learn by
make
When this seems right, extract the lessons by
make lessons
This extracts the lesson archives
for each course. You can also do this one step at a
time with "make files", "make editor", etc.,
if you don't want all courses.
If you do things separately, you must also say
make play; make log
Finally, check that it's sensible with
make check
If that doesn't print any messages,
you're probably in good shape.
Learn requires general write permission on the user playpen .../lib/play. Lesson directories may be protected.
directory
Learn collects a log file for each script in the .../lib/log
directory, with a file for each script (files,
editor, etc.) containing an entry for each lesson
attempted. These files will grow without bound,
unless they are periodically truncated.
The log files should have general write permission.
If you don't want logging (a sensible position to take),
set the variable "logging" to zero in source/lrndef
before making learn.
Learn requires about 1500 blocks to make itself,
and about 1000 when completely made.
Please report problems, bad lessons, etc., to
Brian Kernighan, MH 6021, 2C-518, or
Mike Lesk, MH 6377, 2C-572. Thanks.
...sat down with...
Sick and tired of cliche business jargon.
I've got to go sit down with my toilet.
Too bad that shift key failed after that first "H", but keyboards are cheap.
Unless we bring back lynch mobs.
Those were the days.
Hey Einstein, In a representative government, Joe Sixpack's opinion is supposed to be the one that counts.
That's only flamebait if you're an intollerant religious zealot, you asshole (whoever you are). Otherwise it's just the simple truth. Fuck you.
And then you can have all of the other Unix "power tools" as well.
Or they could just sell Linux and call it Windows 7. They're no good at software anyway.
Their act is getting old.
If they don't come up with something this time people will keep XP forever. The risk then, is that their stalwarts might, as a lark, try something new, and then find out what they've been missing all this time by using an OS designed by businessmen for granny, little Joey, and uncle Al, instead of an OS written by and for programmers.
(* faster than light)
Obviously not, since the libertarian philosiphy is "laissez faire", and the Christian (and of course, all the other ancient superstitions) philosophy is "Believe this or rot in hell."
Not to keep George "Fucktard" Bush in power longer, of course, since the Constitution does not allow that, but just to give him more power while he's there. I'm not necessarily in favor of it, unless it is necessary in helping certain parties to understand (such as with a bullet to the brain) that it is not considered socially acceptable to blow up Mariotts in Pakistan.
Anyway, here it is.
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 18, 2008
Notice: Continuation Of The National Emergency With Respect To Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, Or Support Terrorism
RSS Feed White House News
On September 23, 2001, by Executive Order 13224, I declared a national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706). I took this action to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists, including the terrorist attacks in New York, in Pennsylvania, and against the Pentagon committed on September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks against United States nationals or the United States. Because the actions of these persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States, the national emergency declared on September 23, 2001, and the measures adopted on that date to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 23, 2008. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism.
This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
September 18, 2008.
Sorry the links didn't work out: here's one: http://cm.bell-labs.com/7thEdMan/vol2/learn.bun
Then my fortunes changed when I had the chance to buy a used Altos 8086 computer running Microsoft's version of AT&T Version 7 Unix called "Xenix" ( )
What was great about it, is that it had a program called "learn" ( ) which was a tutorial that taught both Unix and C.
It's a shame that "learn" is not included in modern Unix and Linux distros. That would be a valuable resource for students that would otherwise only be exposed to an OS (which will remain nameless here) that was designed for computer illiterates.
This is your chance to make sure the next generation can at least perceive the elegance and thought that went into making an OS and programming language that was designed by and for programmers, instead of by and for businessmen.
And, of course the obligatory photos of models pretending to be employees, happy customers, or drunken vagrants; who the fuck knows.
And why do the marketeers that they hire to advise them on their "onlin presence" insist on that shit?
Does anyone here get a boner when they see those fucking pictures of happy corporate people on every fucking corporate website?
When you're ready for that, it's the real deal.