Re:2600 is completely WRONG on this one.
on
2600 v. Ford Motors
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· Score: 1
To 99% of people accessing the WWW site, this would look like Ford had registered fuckgeneralmotors.com.
I would say that it's a person's responsibility to understand how "things" that they're using work. It's not 2600's fault that the average person doesn't have a clue how to do a whois. If some 10 year-old tries to drive a car and gets into an accident, is it GM's fault that the kid didn't know that R is for Reverse, and not Race?
I disagree with you entirely. Yes, "most legitimate companies are ok about not sending junk to you", but Kozmo obviously wasn't. She had clicked on the opt-out button. No more needs to be said. And obviously, Kozmo didn't give a rat's ass about it's customers' privacy - emails to their privacy address bounced! There's no reason to put up with that.
If all else fails, call them up and have your account terminated
I tried that with Amazon when they decided to change their privacy policy. They told me that they couldn't terminate my account because they needed records. They told me to contact somebody else to get myself removed from their mailing list.
Yes, because you have modified the agreement the vendor showed to you.
I would say that I have modified the proposal that the vendor showed me. Then I submitted my altered proposal, and they accepted it, and only then did it become an agreement. Kind of like haggling with a really stupid person.
Think about the Avis, American Airlines, or Best Western websites. Don't you think those sites are mission critical and hold
vast amounts of data?
I would guess that the databases "attached" to these web sites don't hold much information at all. They hold some front-end stuff, maybe names and information about locations. But they undoubtedly connect to back-end legacy systems that hold reservation information, which would be the higher-volume data. These are often kept in old mainframe databases that aren't relational. Think about it, do you think that Avis wired up their reservation system (and all of the travel agents who use it) to the db for their website when they made their website, or do you think they wired the website to use their pre-existing back end?
Rudementary physics is the basis for more complicated physics. Yes, those rudementary laws are broken (or appear to me in our limited knowledge) when you
talk about quantum physics, but the laws always apply.
Errrr, ummmm. Tell me what you mean by rudimentary physics. If by rudimentary physics, you mean Newtonian mechanics and the like, then NO, rudimentary physics is not the basis for more complicated physics. You cannot derive quantum mechanics from Newtonian mechanics. OTOH, you CAN derive Newtonian mechanics from quantum mechanics.
The reason that things like the Big Bang appear to contradict Newtonian mechanics is that Newtonian mechanics is a special case that doesn't apply to the situation at the (theorized) Big Bang. No contradiction, you're just trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
... scientists who subscribe to theories such as the "Big Bang" are not [laughed at], even though they are physically impossible if you apply even rudementary physics to their theories.
That's your problem right there. Rudimentary physics doesn't explain the Big Bang. It can be explained if you go into some quite complicated physics, but if you know nothing other than Newton's laws, you'd make a statement like you just did.
I can give you more concrete and physically possible examples to help prove creationism than a
scientist could for evolution
Hogwash. That's all I have to say about that one....
...if the fakes are legal you can't prosecute for the real thing....
This is a ridiculous reason to outlaw something. I think I have a good analogy here. If I have a home-burned CDR with music on it in my car, should I be arrested if I'm pulled over and a police officer sees the cd? He can't immediately tell if it's legal or not - he doesn't know if I have the originals at home. Does he arrest me because it could be illegal? Or maybe it's a better analogy if we say that burning any music cd is illegal because it may be difficult to tell if it is legal, or if the music is pirated.
Usually in the USA, you give people the benefit of the doubt. No doubt that child pornography is a "bad" thing, but that doesn't mean that we should squash people's rights just because we might not be able to tell the difference between the fakes and the real thing. (not that I really know how I feel about this issue, it's just that this is the wrong reason for faking child pornography to be illegal).
The energy that it takes to move matter any appreciable distance (light years) is immense compared to the energy that it takes to transmit data via electromagnetic waves. This isn't going to change with new technology in the next few hundred years, it's due to physics. So (assuming that other intelligent life is intelligent enough to make the same deductions), the chance of contacting other intelligent life (assuming it exists) is very many times larger if we attempt to do so first through electromagnetic means.
In case you didn't guess, Prairie Island (the power plant I alluded to above) was pretty close to my back yard growing up. And guess what? That "nearby stream" is the Mississippi River, which they apparently haven't made into a radioactive dump (though you'd like to think that everything anywhere near a nuclear power plant is polluted with radioactivity, that just isn't true).
I strongly beleive that nuclear power is not the best solution available
You may be right that solar and wind power have the potential to be "better" power sources, but nuclear power might be the best solution available right now. (But of course, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be developing new truly renewable power sources.)
I agree that there are several nuclear plants within 5 to 15 miles of populated areas, however, how many more proposed sites have been shot down because of their proximity to populated areas?
I think that this is a function of the general populace's belief that nuclear power is unsafe, rather than any real dangers.
What Three Mile Island showed the general populace is that even well designed plants fail, and that's a very frightening proposition.
You're probably right about this. But what TMI should have shown the general populace is that when a well-designed plant fails, it isn't a disaster.
Short burst only. First, the bulb that the rubidium is in is pretty small, second, the rubidium atoms lose their coherence relatively quickly through interactions with the walls of the bulb holding the rubidium (as much as you try to keep the vapor from interacting with the walls, there's always some interaction).
I agree that there are some definite cons to nuclear power, but I have to take exception to some of the things that you said:
Why do you think nuclear power plants can't be built near populated areas?
Why do you say this? Why can't they? Prarie Island Nuclear plant (Red Wing, MN) is built about 5 miles outside of what is officially the Twin Cities metro area. Of course, it's 30 or so miles from St. Paul, but there are still a couple of towns of 15000 people about 5 or 10 miles from it. That qualifies as "close" to me, so I think that you're imagining this limitation. (btw, there's no evidence of any harmful effects of the nuclear plant in any nearby residents).
Unfortunately there is sufficient evidence for concern that even the redundant backup systems would fail. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island provide very convincing examples of what happens when systems fail at a nuclear power plant.
Yes, but what you failed to mention is that they provide very different examples of what happens when systems fail. Chernobyl shows that when systems (and people - it was mostly people failing, not systems) fail at a poorly-designed plant (positive feedback), disaster can strike. Three Mile Island shows us that when systems fail at a well-designed plant (negative feedback), you have a mess on your hands, but no disaster. Nuclear power done intelligently and carefully does not have to be dangerous.
Yes, but if you start reusing code using the "cp" command, then you have extra copies of the code to maintain. With OOP (or even carefully with procedural program), you can maintain one copy of the code no matter how many times you use it....
It's just that Chernobyl didn't
get stopped early enough. No doubt this thread will be filled with Xenophobic "Hahaha, the Russians are crap and have no money, and the US is better, hahaha"
comments when in actual fact, since Chernobyl, the US has easily been able to compete on the "incidents" front with any other country..
It is more than this, though. They do deserve some of that sort of talk in this case. The design for Chernobyl (and others in the former USSR) is such that when problems happen there is positive feedback. Makes it easy for problems to escalate. All nuclear reactors in the US are designed for negative feedback. When things start to get out of hand, that very fact slows down the reaction. This obviously doesn't make the reactor entirely safe, but it does greatly reduce the chance of catastrophic disaster.
Color is just a function of wavelength, and there is obviously an infinite number of discreet wavelengths within the visible color spectrum.
I could be wrong (and I'm sure somebody will let me know if I am), but Quantum Mechanics dictates that there are a finite number of discrete wavelengths within the visible spectrum, thus a finite (though very very large) number of colors within it.
Re:So you rate money higher than altruism?
on
Geek Charities?
·
· Score: 1
Exactly. It undoubtedly makes this person feel good to help someone else, and that's why he/she does it. Much like the "Friends" episode where Phoebe tries to do something nice just because it's nice - not because it makes her feel good. She can't.
Since the Earth has enough land area to provide 3 billion possible building sites for the Pyramid (or so I've read, I'M not about to verify this!), the odds of
it's having been built where it is are 1 in 3 billion (also what I've read
This argument doesn't work. You've started with the knowledge of where the pyramids are, and said "Hmmmm. What could possibly be special about that position. Oh! I know! They're right in the spot that is the 'Center of Earth's Land Mass'" (not that I understand how you claim that it's the center of Earth's land mass - I would think that would be near the center of the earth since the earth is (nearly) a sphere!). Then you say the odds of that are 1 in 3 billion. So.... What are the odds of me living in the house that I live in? Since there are 6 billion people on the earth, I'd say 1 in 6 billion! Impossible! By your reasoning, I just proved that I don't live in my own house.
Other numbers are also repeated throughout. Each of the Pyramids four walls, when measured as a straight line, are 9,131 inches, for a total of 36,524 inches.
At first glance, this number may not seem significant, but move the decimal point over and you get 365.24. Modern science has shown us that the exact length of
the solar year is 365.24 days.
Are you proposing that the ancient Egyptians (or aliens or whoever else) had some concept of the inch? Give me a break - the inch is a completely arbitrary unit that has not been around for nearly long enough for it to matter here. COINCIDENCE.
Of course anecdotal evidence doesn't really
constitute a valid argument either way.
It does in this case, because what he's talking about is what's best for him, not what's best in general. So I think that that's enough evidence for him to make his decision on what he's going to use.
First (and very OT), if I had mod points, I'd mod you down, too....
...Microsoft is spinning [.Net] as innovative new platform but what they're really doing is giving developers an updated set of handcuffs...
Yeah Right.. The same one Java Developers wear:)
The handcuffs that are being referred to are the ones that handcuff you to Windows. How does that relate to Java?
building the Framework for Other OS's including Linux. Obviously it would be benefit them financially, but we are not tied down to
one OS ultimately.
How are they going to port all of the Windows APIs that.NET works with? This claim is just bogus to try to lure developers who think that they'll eventually be able to code cross-platform with it.
True.. But Sun should rather worry about closing the holes in Sun Solaris 2.7 before they comment on Windoze.
Are you trying to suggest that any version of windoze is more secure than Solaris???
Your whole argument here is, unfortunately, little more than the M$ party line. You haven't added anything substantive to the discussion, you've just sprayed out a bunch of irrelavencies and hopes for what M$ just might do in the future.
You know, the more I think about it, it's much more ridiculous than that. I live in the US. We have a saying here: "Innocent until proven guilty". I shouldn't have to prove that it's a legit piece of software. They're the ones hunting for witches, they have to prove that it's pirated. And my not having a receipt for it does not prove that a piece of software is pirated.
That means an invoice, credit card statement, or any other piece of paper that
establishes who you bought it from, payment form, vendor order number, and the quantity purchased.
Does this seem ridiculous to anyone else? What if I bought, say, Micros~1 Word from my neighbor (completely legitimately, he wipes it off of his computer)? I don't have a paper trail, but I do have a legit copy....
Slashdot Mirror
To 99% of people accessing the WWW site, this would look like Ford had registered fuckgeneralmotors.com.
I would say that it's a person's responsibility to understand how "things" that they're using work. It's not 2600's fault that the average person doesn't have a clue how to do a whois. If some 10 year-old tries to drive a car and gets into an accident, is it GM's fault that the kid didn't know that R is for Reverse, and not Race?
If all else fails, call them up and have your account terminated
I tried that with Amazon when they decided to change their privacy policy. They told me that they couldn't terminate my account because they needed records. They told me to contact somebody else to get myself removed from their mailing list.
Yes, because you have modified the agreement the vendor showed to you.
I would say that I have modified the proposal that the vendor showed me. Then I submitted my altered proposal, and they accepted it, and only then did it become an agreement. Kind of like haggling with a really stupid person.
Actually, I would say that that sort of problem *is* because of MySQL. If I did that using Oracle: "Rollback". MySQL: SOL.
Think about the Avis, American Airlines, or Best Western websites. Don't you think those sites are mission critical and hold vast amounts of data?
I would guess that the databases "attached" to these web sites don't hold much information at all. They hold some front-end stuff, maybe names and information about locations. But they undoubtedly connect to back-end legacy systems that hold reservation information, which would be the higher-volume data. These are often kept in old mainframe databases that aren't relational. Think about it, do you think that Avis wired up their reservation system (and all of the travel agents who use it) to the db for their website when they made their website, or do you think they wired the website to use their pre-existing back end?
Rudementary physics is the basis for more complicated physics. Yes, those rudementary laws are broken (or appear to me in our limited knowledge) when you talk about quantum physics, but the laws always apply.
Errrr, ummmm. Tell me what you mean by rudimentary physics. If by rudimentary physics, you mean Newtonian mechanics and the like, then NO, rudimentary physics is not the basis for more complicated physics. You cannot derive quantum mechanics from Newtonian mechanics. OTOH, you CAN derive Newtonian mechanics from quantum mechanics.
The reason that things like the Big Bang appear to contradict Newtonian mechanics is that Newtonian mechanics is a special case that doesn't apply to the situation at the (theorized) Big Bang. No contradiction, you're just trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
That's your problem right there. Rudimentary physics doesn't explain the Big Bang. It can be explained if you go into some quite complicated physics, but if you know nothing other than Newton's laws, you'd make a statement like you just did.
I can give you more concrete and physically possible examples to help prove creationism than a scientist could for evolution
Hogwash. That's all I have to say about that one....
Microsoft won't lie to you.
ROFL!! That's the funnies thing I've heard this year!
This is a ridiculous reason to outlaw something. I think I have a good analogy here. If I have a home-burned CDR with music on it in my car, should I be arrested if I'm pulled over and a police officer sees the cd? He can't immediately tell if it's legal or not - he doesn't know if I have the originals at home. Does he arrest me because it could be illegal? Or maybe it's a better analogy if we say that burning any music cd is illegal because it may be difficult to tell if it is legal, or if the music is pirated.
Usually in the USA, you give people the benefit of the doubt. No doubt that child pornography is a "bad" thing, but that doesn't mean that we should squash people's rights just because we might not be able to tell the difference between the fakes and the real thing. (not that I really know how I feel about this issue, it's just that this is the wrong reason for faking child pornography to be illegal).
The energy that it takes to move matter any appreciable distance (light years) is immense compared to the energy that it takes to transmit data via electromagnetic waves. This isn't going to change with new technology in the next few hundred years, it's due to physics. So (assuming that other intelligent life is intelligent enough to make the same deductions), the chance of contacting other intelligent life (assuming it exists) is very many times larger if we attempt to do so first through electromagnetic means.
In case you didn't guess, Prairie Island (the power plant I alluded to above) was pretty close to my back yard growing up. And guess what? That "nearby stream" is the Mississippi River, which they apparently haven't made into a radioactive dump (though you'd like to think that everything anywhere near a nuclear power plant is polluted with radioactivity, that just isn't true).
I strongly beleive that nuclear power is not the best solution available
You may be right that solar and wind power have the potential to be "better" power sources, but nuclear power might be the best solution available right now. (But of course, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be developing new truly renewable power sources.)
I agree that there are several nuclear plants within 5 to 15 miles of populated areas, however, how many more proposed sites have been shot down because of their proximity to populated areas?
I think that this is a function of the general populace's belief that nuclear power is unsafe, rather than any real dangers.
What Three Mile Island showed the general populace is that even well designed plants fail, and that's a very frightening proposition.
You're probably right about this. But what TMI should have shown the general populace is that when a well-designed plant fails, it isn't a disaster.
Short burst only. First, the bulb that the rubidium is in is pretty small, second, the rubidium atoms lose their coherence relatively quickly through interactions with the walls of the bulb holding the rubidium (as much as you try to keep the vapor from interacting with the walls, there's always some interaction).
I agree that there are some definite cons to nuclear power, but I have to take exception to some of the things that you said:
Why do you think nuclear power plants can't be built near populated areas?
Why do you say this? Why can't they? Prarie Island Nuclear plant (Red Wing, MN) is built about 5 miles outside of what is officially the Twin Cities metro area. Of course, it's 30 or so miles from St. Paul, but there are still a couple of towns of 15000 people about 5 or 10 miles from it. That qualifies as "close" to me, so I think that you're imagining this limitation. (btw, there's no evidence of any harmful effects of the nuclear plant in any nearby residents).
Unfortunately there is sufficient evidence for concern that even the redundant backup systems would fail. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island provide very convincing examples of what happens when systems fail at a nuclear power plant.
Yes, but what you failed to mention is that they provide very different examples of what happens when systems fail. Chernobyl shows that when systems (and people - it was mostly people failing, not systems) fail at a poorly-designed plant (positive feedback), disaster can strike. Three Mile Island shows us that when systems fail at a well-designed plant (negative feedback), you have a mess on your hands, but no disaster. Nuclear power done intelligently and carefully does not have to be dangerous.
Yes, but if you start reusing code using the "cp" command, then you have extra copies of the code to maintain. With OOP (or even carefully with procedural program), you can maintain one copy of the code no matter how many times you use it....
It's just that Chernobyl didn't get stopped early enough. No doubt this thread will be filled with Xenophobic "Hahaha, the Russians are crap and have no money, and the US is better, hahaha" comments when in actual fact, since Chernobyl, the US has easily been able to compete on the "incidents" front with any other country..
It is more than this, though. They do deserve some of that sort of talk in this case. The design for Chernobyl (and others in the former USSR) is such that when problems happen there is positive feedback. Makes it easy for problems to escalate. All nuclear reactors in the US are designed for negative feedback. When things start to get out of hand, that very fact slows down the reaction. This obviously doesn't make the reactor entirely safe, but it does greatly reduce the chance of catastrophic disaster.
Color is just a function of wavelength, and there is obviously an infinite number of discreet wavelengths within the visible color spectrum.
I could be wrong (and I'm sure somebody will let me know if I am), but Quantum Mechanics dictates that there are a finite number of discrete wavelengths within the visible spectrum, thus a finite (though very very large) number of colors within it.
Exactly. It undoubtedly makes this person feel good to help someone else, and that's why he/she does it. Much like the "Friends" episode where Phoebe tries to do something nice just because it's nice - not because it makes her feel good. She can't.
Fine, if the PHBs want calendaring software, they can use Meeting Maker, which has clients available for Windoze, *NIX and Macintosh.
Sounds to me like what Lotus Notes has provided for years!
Since the Earth has enough land area to provide 3 billion possible building sites for the Pyramid (or so I've read, I'M not about to verify this!), the odds of it's having been built where it is are 1 in 3 billion (also what I've read
This argument doesn't work. You've started with the knowledge of where the pyramids are, and said "Hmmmm. What could possibly be special about that position. Oh! I know! They're right in the spot that is the 'Center of Earth's Land Mass'" (not that I understand how you claim that it's the center of Earth's land mass - I would think that would be near the center of the earth since the earth is (nearly) a sphere!). Then you say the odds of that are 1 in 3 billion. So.... What are the odds of me living in the house that I live in? Since there are 6 billion people on the earth, I'd say 1 in 6 billion! Impossible! By your reasoning, I just proved that I don't live in my own house.
Other numbers are also repeated throughout. Each of the Pyramids four walls, when measured as a straight line, are 9,131 inches, for a total of 36,524 inches. At first glance, this number may not seem significant, but move the decimal point over and you get 365.24. Modern science has shown us that the exact length of the solar year is 365.24 days.
Are you proposing that the ancient Egyptians (or aliens or whoever else) had some concept of the inch? Give me a break - the inch is a completely arbitrary unit that has not been around for nearly long enough for it to matter here. COINCIDENCE.
Of course anecdotal evidence doesn't really constitute a valid argument either way.
It does in this case, because what he's talking about is what's best for him, not what's best in general. So I think that that's enough evidence for him to make his decision on what he's going to use.
First (and very OT), if I had mod points, I'd mod you down, too....
Yeah Right.. The same one Java Developers wear :)
The handcuffs that are being referred to are the ones that handcuff you to Windows. How does that relate to Java?
building the Framework for Other OS's including Linux. Obviously it would be benefit them financially, but we are not tied down to one OS ultimately.
How are they going to port all of the Windows APIs that .NET works with? This claim is just bogus to try to lure developers who think that they'll eventually be able to code cross-platform with it.
True.. But Sun should rather worry about closing the holes in Sun Solaris 2.7 before they comment on Windoze.Are you trying to suggest that any version of windoze is more secure than Solaris???
Your whole argument here is, unfortunately, little more than the M$ party line. You haven't added anything substantive to the discussion, you've just sprayed out a bunch of irrelavencies and hopes for what M$ just might do in the future.
You know, the more I think about it, it's much more ridiculous than that. I live in the US. We have a saying here: "Innocent until proven guilty". I shouldn't have to prove that it's a legit piece of software. They're the ones hunting for witches, they have to prove that it's pirated. And my not having a receipt for it does not prove that a piece of software is pirated.
That means an invoice, credit card statement, or any other piece of paper that establishes who you bought it from, payment form, vendor order number, and the quantity purchased.
Does this seem ridiculous to anyone else? What if I bought, say, Micros~1 Word from my neighbor (completely legitimately, he wipes it off of his computer)? I don't have a paper trail, but I do have a legit copy....