I'm still not sure whether the points system makes movies better, like tipping makes service in resturants better,
It doesn't work when the tipping is expected. It should be volunteered for above average service.
Despite common belief - expressed below in one of the comments - the USA is not the only country that gives tips. In Australia the typical tip is 10-15%. However the staff don't get the tip for doing their job. They get the tip if they do the job well. Giving no tip is a polite way of saying "your service sucked"
Intelligent design? As far as I know, nobody has actually refuted "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe. The man is not an idiot, he knows his molecular biology, and he raises some valid points. Screaming, "He's just a creationist!" doesn't make the points go away.
Behe has been debunked so often that he should start his own "My Store Is Full Of Debunks, All Debunks Must Go, 75% Off All Debunks This Saturday Only" sale. He consistently uses an example of 40 proteins for flagellum and then claims that the flagellum is irreducibly complex. He ignores simpler flagellums with fewer proteins. He also ignores scientists who have demonstrated simpler variants of the flagellum that Behe claims are irreducibly complex and the evolutionary pathways that they travelled! The fact that Behe still uses arguments that have been debunked should be a gigantic clue that he's a con-artist.
But don't take my word for it. There are books and websites devoted to debunking Behe. Anybody who still thinks he has a valid point is ignoring the facts.
The biggest problem with Behe is that his argument is essentially a God Of The Gaps argument. He says "we don't know how it happened therefore God did it". Basically it's an appeal to ignorance.
But if you tell everyone that the cost of embracing science is the revocation of their faith, well, you're cutting out a huge number from the pool then. As anti-Christian as Slashdot is,
You're kidding, right? Slashdot is one of the few blogs I read where not only is there a high proportion of vocal Christians (and vocal Creationists, blah) but it's one of the few blogs where their nitwit ideas got moderated upwards on a regular basis. I regularly see pro-Christian posts at +5 Insightful and their factual counterarguments moderated to -1 Troll. I never see a Buddhist or Islamic comment get similar treatment, unless it's a negative stereotype against those religions.
One of the problems I see with the "Intelligent Design" craziness is that the scientific community rolled over too easily on the name. In the infamous debate between pro-life vs pro-choice, neither side is so stupid as to let the other decide the name. Each faction chooses a name that reflects the detail that they think is most important. I suggest using a similar strategy against ID. The following names are suggestions but please contribute your own.
Incompetent Design (thank you New Scientist)
Divine Intervention (makes it clear what this is all really about)
Theory of Scientology (face it, this is what the Scientologists have been saying all along)
Alien Abduction and Genetic Manipulation Theory (let's lump them in with the other kooks)
The Theory of Allah's Guidance (my personal favourite because it works wonders against Americans)
There have been other mistakes - such as allowing the Creationists to convince the public that there is a valid debate between two equally acceptable sides, and using scientific gobbledygook when the public lacks the education to distinguish factual gobbledygook from Creationist gobbledygook - but I think letting the Creationists choose the name was the most significant mistake.
Yes, we know just how successful Sun has been at promoting computing as a utility... [slashdot.org]
Did you read the comments in that/. article that said the Register was being deceptive and that Sun did have customers for their Grid? The comments even linked to articles (on other sites) where happy customers extolled the virtues of using the Grid.
Following from this, it probably won't be long until government bodies follow suit in the UK, and the trend spreads from country to country.
Why does your comment - and the dozens of other comments just like it - remind me so much of Disco Stu. "Sales of Disco records were up 200% in 1979... if these trends continue... eeeeyyyy!"
There is far too small a dataset to extrapolate any trends. I hope, like many others, that OASIS ODT becomes the dominant document format. That would mean I could continue to use OO.o without people kvetching about the incompatible formatting. But there are plenty of ways that Microsoft could meet the tickbox requirement of supporting OASIS ODT while still making that feature entirely unusable.
We saw it when it came out in 68 and reckoned it was about evolution.
My interpretation of 2001 (and the sequels) is that the black obelisks are what cause our evolution to occur. The first obelisk was found on Earth by apes with no tool skills. After finding the obelisk they learn about tools, weapons and this leads them to evolve into humans. The second obelisk is found on the Moon by humans only after we have perfected our tool skills to the point of space travel. That second obelisk eventually leads to David evolving into the next stage for humanity; the Star Child.
Re:How much difference between Java and C++?
on
OpenOffice Bloated?
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· Score: 1
Just be sure that the difference in startup speed is due to the java being disabled and not due to the fact that you just had OOo open a few seconds before. I just tried opening oowriter and it took about 30 seconds. Closing and opening again took about 1 second. It was so short a time I wouldn't have notice any difference if I then tried again with java disabled.
Seems easy enough to test. Load it once to cache then load it twice more. During each load I hit Ctrl-Q and measure the time from start to finish.
Cached w/ Java #1: real 0m14.333s
Cached w/ Java #2: real 0m14.607s
Same thing with Java disabled.
Cached w/out Java #1: real 0m9.002s
Cached w/out Java #2: real 0m8.982s
So there's a definite improvement. Not quite as good as 20 seconds -> 1 second though. I suspect the gp was seeing the benefit of the data being cached.
I'll be leaving it enabled on my machine. The startup time isn't really relevant as I tend to spend 5-6 hours inside Writer once it's started.
Re:Children, grow up and admit that OSS isn't perf
on
OpenOffice Bloated?
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· Score: 1
So I find it incredibly ironic that now that the shoe is on the other foot, the tables are turned, etc., that these very same people are dismissing "bloated" and "slow" as unimportant.
Are the "very same people" saying both things? I must admit I don't keep a database of what everybody said, so if you could post an example of a single person saying both contradictory things then that would be super.
The more interesting thing to note is that they actually did write 1,000s of letters that were probably well-written and well-formatted, unlike most modern e-mails (Or/. comments)
Admittedly I browse at +3 but despite that I'm often pleasantly surprised with the quality of/. comments. I rarely see ppl whu rit lik ths u no. Sometimes the poor spelling can be rediculous and occasionally, the, grammar can! slip. However on the whole I find it to be a higher standard than I receive in the office, where it's not abnormal to receive entire e-mails that are entirely illegible.
Actually, a lot of Hydrogen Economy True Believers need to enroll in that same class. Nothing against hydrogen per se, but half the nation seems to think of it as an energy source, which of course it isn't..
If you want to be pedantic, oil isn't an energy source either.
Democracy is about working together to be treated fairly.
Huh? Democracy is when government policy is decided by the majority preference of the people. What you're talking about sounds a lot more like the modern interpretation of socialism.
That is why Linux original used ext2 (same fs as minix).
Minix did not use ext2. Even the original Linux did not use ext2. The original Linux used minixfs, then later moved to extfs, then later again to ext2fs, and later again to ext3fs.
I think it was QNX that had one feature I did find interesting though.. the ability to move your logged in GUI session from client machine to client machine without shutting apps down or logging out. It was a pretty cool feature similar to what we can do with VNC today but smoother. I'd love to see that work in X. (If that wasn't QNX then I have no idea what it was!)
You don't need to read every Wikipedia policy before you contribute! However, the following policies are key to a productive Wikipedia experience, and the sooner you get to grips with them, the better.
...
2. Avoid bias. Articles should be written from a neutral point of view, representing differing views on a subject factually and objectively.
But believe what you will. You think your comments got deleted because of the "anti-Bush Internet". Whatever makes you happy.
I said that the operating costs for nuclear energy are about 1.5-2 cents a kilowatt hour.
Right, so the way you prove that nuclear is cheaper than the alternatives is by ignoring all the costs except for the one that makes your argument look good.
the '12 cent/kWH' figure that you get factors in a lot of the original R&D cost
No it doesn't. You're making stuff up again.
And - unlike wind - there is no subsidy for the operation of nuclear plants.
Hahaha, except for the 1.2c/kWh energy subsidy, the $150billion R&D subsidy, and the government's gift of limited liability without which it would be financially impossible to operate a nuclear plant. Yeah, except for those.
Why isn't there more nuclear power? Again, its politics.
No, it's due to economics. Nuclear power wouldn't exist without politics. It's not a financially sensible choice of power, and it would never have gotten off the ground if governments hadn't subsidised it every step of the way.
Read some books. Please. Start with those I mentioned, and then read Vaclav Smil, Amory Lovins (although he's a bit 'pie in the sky', he's got some good ideas on efficiency), and maybe deffeys.
I've read the books, that's why I know you're blowing smoke. You say Lovins supports nuclear power? The same Lovins that wrote "Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy" and once said "phasing out nuclear power should make our electricity cost not more but less." Your arguments are specious. Your "facts" are fabricated. In the face of all this evidence, your condescending attitude is simply amusing. To leave you, here's a quote from Diesendorf. You might have heard of him.
"In the USA, no nuclear power stations have been ordered since 1978, primarily because of poor economics. (Initially the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 discouraged nuke building, but memories of that accident have faded and nowadays it is economics that rules out this technology.) However, there are signs the Bush administration may be preparing to grant a new round of massive subsidies to nuclear power. A 2003 report on "The Future of Nuclear Power" from an MIT team estimated that a hypothetical new nuclear power station in the USA could produce electricity at US 6.7 c/kWh (AUD 9 c/kWh). [Ed: note he says hypothetical, in practise it's still 12c/kWh] For comparison, wind power in the USA is currently priced in the range 4-5 c/kWh, depending upon siting and size of wind farm. In the UK, when the electricity industry was deregulated, nuclear energy had to be subsidised from a levy on electricity amounting to 1.2 billion pounds sterling per year. That is equivalent to a subsidy on each unit of nuclear electricity of UK 3 p/kWh (about AUD 6 c/kWh), making the total cost of a unit of nuclear electricity almost double the price of wind power at excellent sites in the UK." -- Mark Diesendorf
How do you know that? What kind of information is inappropriate?
It's inappropriate to use Wikipedia to spread political propaganda. That includes negative information about a presidential candidate, no matter whether you think it's true. Wikipedia is an attempt at a community-supported encyclopedia, not a sounding board for dissidents.
If the information is true, germaine and validatable, is it inappropriate?
How old are you to be asking such a question? Of course factual information can be inappropriate. It depends on context. You don't discuss a person's alcoholism at their wedding. You don't tell a grieving mother that their child was an arsehole. You don't tell your grandmother about your sex life. And you don't use Wikipedia to smear the reputation of a presidential candidate.
Again, you are making assumptions about my information.
I did not. You told us that you sent negative information about Kerry to Wikipedia. You damned yourself with your own words.
And when you turn them on, its like printing money - it costs on the order of 1.5 - 2 cents/kW to maintain and run them.
It costs 12c/kWh for nuclear power. I've no idea what hole you pulled your figure from, but I could take a wild guess.
First of all, your "original comment" was 'Nuclear is expensive and nobody wants a nuclear reactor in their backyard. End of discussion'
I'm glad you've finally noticed. I've no idea why you've put "First of all" in front of that sentence though, because you're the one who should be apologising for not paying attention to what I said.
The fact is that the mythbusters guys often engage in poorly constructed 'experiments' which a scientifically literate person would recognize as being inadequate for the purposes in question. Many of their efforts are laughably incomplete or rely on misunderstandings of the phenomena that contibute to whatever they're testing.
That last sentence sounds exactly like what normal scientists do every day.
We cannot build something that compares to the size and accuracy of the pyramids in Egypt, using only the materials and tools they had available at the time. Although we know for a fact they managed it somehow.
There have been numerous shows - on Discovery and similar channels - where Egyptologists demonstrate various methods that the Egyptians might have used. In the last show I watched a bunch of 50-60 year old unfit British scientists, working in the midday Sun of Egypt, in the middle of a desert, managed to move gigantic stones several hundred yards and stack them on top of each other. They demonstrated about a half dozen techniques, including their favourite which was sliding the rocks on sleds over wet sand.
I have no idea where you got the idea we "cannot build something" like the Pyramids. If a bunch of old bastards like that could do it using ancient techniques, I have no doubt that it can be done.
Great.. then spill it. Show me a counter-example study showing g/CO2 figures from cradle to grave for different solar energy technologies, and I might believe you.
Why would I do that? This is why I am not wasting my time discussing this with you. My primary comment - as demonstrated in the SUBJECT - is that nuclear power is expensive. That is an indisputable fact as even the nuclear power lobby admits that it is only profitable in the US when subsidised, and is best suited for countries that do not already have cheap plentiful supplies of fossil fuels (such as France).
My secondary comment was that the majority of people - foolish ignorant Slashdotters aside - do not want a nuclear power plant in their backyard. That is also an indisputable fact, as you would know if you have ever had the opportunity to read strategy material from the nuclear industry. They cite public opposition as one of the key concerns.
You have chosen to ignore my primary comment and my secondary comment and instead rant about CO2 emissions. You harp on about CO2, as if somehow those figures were being disputed, and then demand that I take the opposing position. Did you expect I would?
Start talking about long-term costs and I might show some interest.
For a person with "too much education in formal logic" you are remarkably poor at applying it, since you still are assuming that my information, because of my viewpoint, is wrong
At no stage did I ever claim that your information was wrong. As I've never read your anti-Kerry propaganda I was in no position to judge it's truthfulness. I commented that your self-claimed partisan propaganda was inappropriate for Wikipedia.
Go back and read the comments. Then go outside and stop obsessing over Kerry.
"being" ad hominem, in the context is was used, clearly means using ad hominem argumentation.
Right, so when you say "being" you mean "using". Do you also mean "being" when you say "using". Are you being rhetoric or are you using indignant because your grasp of the English language is inadequate?
Ad hominem argumentation is what I was talking about. It means attacking the person making the argument rather than addressing that person's points. It is a common but usually invalid rhetorical tactic.
In those few short words you clearly demonstrate that you don't know what "ad hominem" means. Listen up and I'll teach you.
You can construct an ad hominem argument while praising the person, as in "you are too intelligent to believe that drivel". You can attack the person without constructing an ad hominem argument, as in "you are an idiot". You can construct an ad hominem argument without praise or attack, as in "he has a vested interest in what he claims". You can construct an ad hominem argument simply by stating a change in the person's opinion, as in "you say that now but that's not what you said earlier".
Your layperson's interpretation - that ad hominem means "attacking the person" - clearly demonstrates your shallow understanding of the concept. Don't argue with me over this. I have too much education in formal logic to let a layperson like you condescendingly lecture me as to what "ad hominem" means.
By the way, it's "argumentem ad hominem", not "ad hominem argumentation". You claim to understand the Latin but given that woeful spelling I think your claim is spacatum tauri.
Partisan politics is the only kind of politics that exists
A fascinating insight into your mind, but unfortunately I have no desire to explore further. I see you've taken the opportunity to post another page and a half of anti-Kerry propaganda. You really are a hopeless case but nonetheless I wish you all the best in recovering from your obsession with partisan politics.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't work when the tipping is expected. It should be volunteered for above average service.
Despite common belief - expressed below in one of the comments - the USA is not the only country that gives tips. In Australia the typical tip is 10-15%. However the staff don't get the tip for doing their job. They get the tip if they do the job well. Giving no tip is a polite way of saying "your service sucked"
Behe has been debunked so often that he should start his own "My Store Is Full Of Debunks, All Debunks Must Go, 75% Off All Debunks This Saturday Only" sale. He consistently uses an example of 40 proteins for flagellum and then claims that the flagellum is irreducibly complex. He ignores simpler flagellums with fewer proteins. He also ignores scientists who have demonstrated simpler variants of the flagellum that Behe claims are irreducibly complex and the evolutionary pathways that they travelled! The fact that Behe still uses arguments that have been debunked should be a gigantic clue that he's a con-artist.
But don't take my word for it. There are books and websites devoted to debunking Behe. Anybody who still thinks he has a valid point is ignoring the facts.
The biggest problem with Behe is that his argument is essentially a God Of The Gaps argument. He says "we don't know how it happened therefore God did it". Basically it's an appeal to ignorance.
You're kidding, right? Slashdot is one of the few blogs I read where not only is there a high proportion of vocal Christians (and vocal Creationists, blah) but it's one of the few blogs where their nitwit ideas got moderated upwards on a regular basis. I regularly see pro-Christian posts at +5 Insightful and their factual counterarguments moderated to -1 Troll. I never see a Buddhist or Islamic comment get similar treatment, unless it's a negative stereotype against those religions.
Slashdot is about as pro-Christian as it gets.
One of the problems I see with the "Intelligent Design" craziness is that the scientific community rolled over too easily on the name. In the infamous debate between pro-life vs pro-choice, neither side is so stupid as to let the other decide the name. Each faction chooses a name that reflects the detail that they think is most important. I suggest using a similar strategy against ID. The following names are suggestions but please contribute your own.
There have been other mistakes - such as allowing the Creationists to convince the public that there is a valid debate between two equally acceptable sides, and using scientific gobbledygook when the public lacks the education to distinguish factual gobbledygook from Creationist gobbledygook - but I think letting the Creationists choose the name was the most significant mistake.
Did you read the comments in that /. article that said the Register was being deceptive and that Sun did have customers for their Grid? The comments even linked to articles (on other sites) where happy customers extolled the virtues of using the Grid.
Why does your comment - and the dozens of other comments just like it - remind me so much of Disco Stu. "Sales of Disco records were up 200% in 1979... if these trends continue... eeeeyyyy!"
There is far too small a dataset to extrapolate any trends. I hope, like many others, that OASIS ODT becomes the dominant document format. That would mean I could continue to use OO.o without people kvetching about the incompatible formatting. But there are plenty of ways that Microsoft could meet the tickbox requirement of supporting OASIS ODT while still making that feature entirely unusable.
My interpretation of 2001 (and the sequels) is that the black obelisks are what cause our evolution to occur. The first obelisk was found on Earth by apes with no tool skills. After finding the obelisk they learn about tools, weapons and this leads them to evolve into humans. The second obelisk is found on the Moon by humans only after we have perfected our tool skills to the point of space travel. That second obelisk eventually leads to David evolving into the next stage for humanity; the Star Child.
Seems easy enough to test. Load it once to cache then load it twice more. During each load I hit Ctrl-Q and measure the time from start to finish.
Same thing with Java disabled.
So there's a definite improvement. Not quite as good as 20 seconds -> 1 second though. I suspect the gp was seeing the benefit of the data being cached.
I'll be leaving it enabled on my machine. The startup time isn't really relevant as I tend to spend 5-6 hours inside Writer once it's started.
Are the "very same people" saying both things? I must admit I don't keep a database of what everybody said, so if you could post an example of a single person saying both contradictory things then that would be super.
Admittedly I browse at +3 but despite that I'm often pleasantly surprised with the quality of /. comments. I rarely see ppl whu rit lik ths u no. Sometimes the poor spelling can be rediculous and occasionally, the, grammar can! slip. However on the whole I find it to be a higher standard than I receive in the office, where it's not abnormal to receive entire e-mails that are entirely illegible.
If you want to be pedantic, oil isn't an energy source either.
Huh? Democracy is when government policy is decided by the majority preference of the people. What you're talking about sounds a lot more like the modern interpretation of socialism.
Minix did not use ext2. Even the original Linux did not use ext2. The original Linux used minixfs, then later moved to extfs, then later again to ext2fs, and later again to ext3fs.
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/teleport
No, it should hold neutral information. From the Wikipedia Policies and Guidelines.
But believe what you will. You think your comments got deleted because of the "anti-Bush Internet". Whatever makes you happy.
Right, so the way you prove that nuclear is cheaper than the alternatives is by ignoring all the costs except for the one that makes your argument look good.
No it doesn't. You're making stuff up again.
Hahaha, except for the 1.2c/kWh energy subsidy, the $150billion R&D subsidy, and the government's gift of limited liability without which it would be financially impossible to operate a nuclear plant. Yeah, except for those.
No, it's due to economics. Nuclear power wouldn't exist without politics. It's not a financially sensible choice of power, and it would never have gotten off the ground if governments hadn't subsidised it every step of the way.
I've read the books, that's why I know you're blowing smoke. You say Lovins supports nuclear power? The same Lovins that wrote "Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy" and once said "phasing out nuclear power should make our electricity cost not more but less." Your arguments are specious. Your "facts" are fabricated. In the face of all this evidence, your condescending attitude is simply amusing. To leave you, here's a quote from Diesendorf. You might have heard of him.
Now back in your hole, you ignorant pissant.
It's inappropriate to use Wikipedia to spread political propaganda. That includes negative information about a presidential candidate, no matter whether you think it's true. Wikipedia is an attempt at a community-supported encyclopedia, not a sounding board for dissidents.
How old are you to be asking such a question? Of course factual information can be inappropriate. It depends on context. You don't discuss a person's alcoholism at their wedding. You don't tell a grieving mother that their child was an arsehole. You don't tell your grandmother about your sex life. And you don't use Wikipedia to smear the reputation of a presidential candidate.
I did not. You told us that you sent negative information about Kerry to Wikipedia. You damned yourself with your own words.
It costs 12c/kWh for nuclear power. I've no idea what hole you pulled your figure from, but I could take a wild guess.
I'm glad you've finally noticed. I've no idea why you've put "First of all" in front of that sentence though, because you're the one who should be apologising for not paying attention to what I said.
That last sentence sounds exactly like what normal scientists do every day.
There have been numerous shows - on Discovery and similar channels - where Egyptologists demonstrate various methods that the Egyptians might have used. In the last show I watched a bunch of 50-60 year old unfit British scientists, working in the midday Sun of Egypt, in the middle of a desert, managed to move gigantic stones several hundred yards and stack them on top of each other. They demonstrated about a half dozen techniques, including their favourite which was sliding the rocks on sleds over wet sand.
I have no idea where you got the idea we "cannot build something" like the Pyramids. If a bunch of old bastards like that could do it using ancient techniques, I have no doubt that it can be done.
Why would I do that? This is why I am not wasting my time discussing this with you. My primary comment - as demonstrated in the SUBJECT - is that nuclear power is expensive. That is an indisputable fact as even the nuclear power lobby admits that it is only profitable in the US when subsidised, and is best suited for countries that do not already have cheap plentiful supplies of fossil fuels (such as France).
My secondary comment was that the majority of people - foolish ignorant Slashdotters aside - do not want a nuclear power plant in their backyard. That is also an indisputable fact, as you would know if you have ever had the opportunity to read strategy material from the nuclear industry. They cite public opposition as one of the key concerns.
You have chosen to ignore my primary comment and my secondary comment and instead rant about CO2 emissions. You harp on about CO2, as if somehow those figures were being disputed, and then demand that I take the opposing position. Did you expect I would?
Start talking about long-term costs and I might show some interest.
At no stage did I ever claim that your information was wrong. As I've never read your anti-Kerry propaganda I was in no position to judge it's truthfulness. I commented that your self-claimed partisan propaganda was inappropriate for Wikipedia.
Go back and read the comments. Then go outside and stop obsessing over Kerry.
Right, so when you say "being" you mean "using". Do you also mean "being" when you say "using". Are you being rhetoric or are you using indignant because your grasp of the English language is inadequate?
In those few short words you clearly demonstrate that you don't know what "ad hominem" means. Listen up and I'll teach you.
You can construct an ad hominem argument while praising the person, as in "you are too intelligent to believe that drivel". You can attack the person without constructing an ad hominem argument, as in "you are an idiot". You can construct an ad hominem argument without praise or attack, as in "he has a vested interest in what he claims". You can construct an ad hominem argument simply by stating a change in the person's opinion, as in "you say that now but that's not what you said earlier".
Your layperson's interpretation - that ad hominem means "attacking the person" - clearly demonstrates your shallow understanding of the concept. Don't argue with me over this. I have too much education in formal logic to let a layperson like you condescendingly lecture me as to what "ad hominem" means.
By the way, it's "argumentem ad hominem", not "ad hominem argumentation". You claim to understand the Latin but given that woeful spelling I think your claim is spacatum tauri.
A fascinating insight into your mind, but unfortunately I have no desire to explore further. I see you've taken the opportunity to post another page and a half of anti-Kerry propaganda. You really are a hopeless case but nonetheless I wish you all the best in recovering from your obsession with partisan politics.
In the commercial space, superheated water and thermal towers are the most commonly used technology.
I have done far more research on this topic than you could imagine.
If you think commercial solar power has anything to do with photovoltaic cells then you really aren't educated about this topic.