There's prior art on that. It was invented in ancient Egypt.
Let's face it, text was invented for a purpose. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be exactly *the* thousand words you need to convey your information.
So you can post whatever you want under the guise of anonymity, full stop?
No, you got it wrong. You can post whatever you want, full stop. Which part of "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" you don't understand? Anonymity is only needed if you don't want to be recognized.
Free speech has never meant freedom from consequences.
That's a different thing. But what are exactly the consequences? Which consequences do these bitches, identified solely as "Jane Doe 1" and "Jane Doe 2", claim they suffered? Mental anguish? That's definitely *NOT* an actionable consequence of free speech.
In order to claim slander, there are two prerequisites: first, the allegations must be false, second, someone must believe the allegations to be true. Unless they can prove there is someone somewhere stupid enough to believe in anonymous posts they read on the internet, there are no consequences to that trolling.
And if she was sinless, Jesus wouldn't have had to die for sin: she could have done it.
It goes further than that: according to the dogma of Immaculate Conception Mary was conceived without any sin, including the original sin, because the perfection of Jesus couldn't be born of an imperfect being.
I wonder how mathematical induction would fit to this dogma, because, in order to be perfect, Mary should also be born of a perfect woman, and so on, all the way to Eve who committed the original sin to begin with. Let's say, it would be the "mother of all paradoxes"...
it's not like anyone else was copying or distributing other works on as large a scale.
Only in Europe, and only because anyone who wrote a book without the Church approval would be burned at the stake. But what about the rest of the world? While the monks in Europe were copying their religious texts, the rest of the world was inventing Damascus steel and the number zero, among many other things.
The monks in Europe were so blinded by their faith they couldn't see the brightest supernova in historic times. Not a single mention to one of the most remarkable natural events ever seen on Earth. No wonder they call it the DARK Age!
Actually, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire had more to do with it.
The cause of that fall is still under debate, but the least that can be said is that it was closely correlated to the rise of the Roman Church. OK, correlation is not causation, but there is no causation without correlation, causation hasn't been disproved either.
The Church, if anything, managed to save some of the knowledge that would otherwise would have been lost.
Yes, and the rest of that knowledge was lost when they scraped old parchment to write their own texts
Do you know the human brain has about 100 billion neurons? Each neuron can be represented as a weighted average of its inputs, a typical human neuron has some 1000 inputs and does around a hundred operations per second.
So, yes, *maybe* there could be some very smart algorithm that mimics human reasoning, but that's not how it's done in the human brain. It's raw computing power all the way.
not the US since the Iraq war has sucked up all our money
And it would be interesting to note that the US stopped the Apollo moon project in the 1970s in part because the Vietnam war was sucking up all their money.
Perspective is a funny thing. If you consider that they had $63 billion in 2004, it means they are losing $10 billion/year. Well, not exactly losing, since most of that has been paid to stockholders as dividends, but the fact remains that they *have* to use their cash pile to keep their market value from plunging, operational profits alone won't do it.
All the points you mention may be valid, but I think that's not the most important issue here. It doesn't matter what are Microsoft's future plans, the important thing is that they have seen the need for a major change in tactics. This means they are starting to see the possibility of defeat.
More probably, 2007 was The Year of the Linux Desktop. The Asus eeePC showed that the Linux desktop is a perfectly viable business proposition, at the same time that Windows Vista flopped in the market.
Microsoft isn't defeated yet, but they are certainly doing a strategic retreat. You can be quite sure they will do their best effort to regroup and counterattack, but at this moment no one can deny that free software is advancing.
Having to muck around with httpd.conf and chmod wouldn't exactly be an improvement over their current stack, especially for intra-corp applications.
Where I work, both approaches are used.
The difference I've seen in the 10+ years since we've had web-based applications in the intranet is that with Apache you must have an experienced analyst who configures httpd.conf once, then the system runs forever. With IIS you must have someone with much less experience, who's always doing this or that to keep the system running.
The consequence is that we have a few very critical systems that run in Apache, while the less important systems run in IIS. We don't keep accounting with enough detail to be sure, but I'd guess the TCO for Apache is much less than for IIS, since so much less attention is needed.
So, you might ask, why not use Apache for everything? The simple answer is that the experienced analysts who take care of the critical systems do not like the kind of stuff that gets relegated to IIS. There are people who do not mind implementing a meeting room reservation system, and there are people who know how to configure Apache, and the two don't mix.
people would be better employed saving the planet by working to prevent so many car journeys being made in the first place
Yes, I agree. Maybe if those geeks designed a world-wide web that allowed people to shop from their homes... Oh, forget that, driving to the supermarket or the mall is more glamorous and geek-friendly, I guess.
Ten years ago, if anyone mentioned "Linux Desktop", the unanimous answer would be "Bah!" Today, in this Slashdot article threads, people are discussing itty-bitty details like "they should improve this", "no, they should improve that before this", etc.
I still don't know when is the year of the Linux Desktop, but I bet that fifty years from now the consensus will be that it was sometime between 2001 and 2007.
Fundamental public services should not be privatized they should be public and operating in a fully transparent manner.
Yes, because we all know the government always does everything in the most economical and efficient way, right?
You may want to take a look at this paper about health care in France. It comes from a very trustworthy source, the OECD, and presents some surprising data. Although public health care in France is "universal" in the sense that almost everybody is covered by the public health care system, 92% of the French people have additional private health insurance.
Let me quote from the summary: "The public system is facing chronic deficits and recent cost-containment policies have not proved very successful. The government has signalled an interest in reforms that would redefine the role of public and private insurance, shifting some responsibilities from the former to the latter."
I just quoted this paper about health care because I had it on hand, and you mentioned health care, but I admit that electric power is more of a "natural monopoly" than health care in some ways. I think emergency health care should be guaranteed by the government, because when you suffer an accident you are in no position to negotiate, but health care does not need to run wires all the way from the power plant to your home.
So, yes, I think there is need for some regulation in electric power, but from all I have read, California is hardly an example of a well-conceived deregulation. I think there are many ways of creating a better system for private utilities. You cannot say that all deregulation is bad based on just the California example.
Which part of "practical" you don't understand? Energy storage technology has gone *backwards* compared to other technologies. At one time, electric cars outsold gasoline cars. Not only you CANNOT store electricity, at least not in the amount that's needed at the price that's needed, but technology has lagged behind.
I mean seriously, you could probably get more power on a full moon night with those than with all the solar panels you could put up into space.
Quoting yourself: "Wow OK that's stupid". Google "moon albedo" to start with and then do some math.
And what does the rest of the world have to do with anything? We're talking about America here.
Oh, is that so? Then why don't you just invade some more oil-producing countries?
That's what I don't like about people like you who read one book about one topic... I actually find it healthier to make my opinion off Slashdot comments...
Yes, right, why read books when you can read Slashdot instead?
is that it's as easy to fix kernel bugs as it is to point them out!
This "Linux haters" thing is not even wrong. There haven't been any kernel bugs in Linux worth mentioning for at least since version 2 came out. Watch what Linus Torvalds says, there's no plan for version 3 yet. No need.
What makes Windows and OSX more popular than Linux is the same reason why Java is more popular than Python or Ruby, it's corporate sponsorship. With enough marketing, people will pay more for an inferior product, just compare the Asus eeePC Windows version with the Linux version to see what I mean.
You answered your own question, "nights don't last as long in space and clouds are more sparse up there too".
Funny coincidence, I had just finished re-reading this book when I saw this article. The Nevada desert you mention is in the dark about half of the time, exactly when people in the US need electricity for their lights. And what about Europe? The Far East? OK, use the Sahara and the deserts in Asia, but you'd still need a lot of power transmission and storage capacity.
Remember, if we knew how to *store* electricity, we would have practical electric cars by now, and laptop computers would have more than a few hours battery capacity. There's a strong economical incentive to develop electricity storage systems, but it's still very far from being a practical reality, therefore solar power is necessarily just a supplement to other sources of energy.
I think Dr. O'Neill's mistake was to assume the time needed for development would be so short. However, if you read his book, you'll see it all makes sense from an engineering point of view. All the objections in the thread to which you replied have been answered in his book, it's not science fiction at all, just future technological development.
Alcohol is a factor in 41% of all traffic-related deaths
Giving the Wiki quote the benefit of doubt and assuming it's correct, let's see what it reads:
"NHTSA defines fatal collisions as "alcohol-related" if they believe the driver, a passenger, or a nonoccupant of the vehicle (such as a pedestrian or pedalcyclist) had a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.01 or greater"
And, if you keep reading, you'll see that
"On average, about 60 percent of the BAC values are missing or unknown. To analyze what they believe is the complete data, statisticians simulate BAC information."
Wow! So they have to simulate 60% of the data to find a correlation, and then assume a causation from that? I think you made my point for me, alcohol *has* been picked at random as *the* villain.
Slashdot Mirror
There's prior art on that. It was invented in ancient Egypt.
Let's face it, text was invented for a purpose. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be exactly *the* thousand words you need to convey your information.
Only because those are uncommon names. I'm willing to bet that the Verizon filter does not check for "cock" in the names.
Well, I guess Dr. Libshitz must be used to that. He probably had a lot of fights with kids who called him "shit lips" in school.
No, you got it wrong. You can post whatever you want, full stop. Which part of "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" you don't understand? Anonymity is only needed if you don't want to be recognized.
That's a different thing. But what are exactly the consequences? Which consequences do these bitches, identified solely as "Jane Doe 1" and "Jane Doe 2", claim they suffered? Mental anguish? That's definitely *NOT* an actionable consequence of free speech.
In order to claim slander, there are two prerequisites: first, the allegations must be false, second, someone must believe the allegations to be true. Unless they can prove there is someone somewhere stupid enough to believe in anonymous posts they read on the internet, there are no consequences to that trolling.
It goes further than that: according to the dogma of Immaculate Conception Mary was conceived without any sin, including the original sin, because the perfection of Jesus couldn't be born of an imperfect being.
I wonder how mathematical induction would fit to this dogma, because, in order to be perfect, Mary should also be born of a perfect woman, and so on, all the way to Eve who committed the original sin to begin with. Let's say, it would be the "mother of all paradoxes"...
Only in Europe, and only because anyone who wrote a book without the Church approval would be burned at the stake. But what about the rest of the world? While the monks in Europe were copying their religious texts, the rest of the world was inventing Damascus steel and the number zero, among many other things.
The monks in Europe were so blinded by their faith they couldn't see the brightest supernova in historic times. Not a single mention to one of the most remarkable natural events ever seen on Earth. No wonder they call it the DARK Age!
That's why I was more intelligent than my sister, I could count up to 11.
The cause of that fall is still under debate, but the least that can be said is that it was closely correlated to the rise of the Roman Church. OK, correlation is not causation, but there is no causation without correlation, causation hasn't been disproved either.
Yes, and the rest of that knowledge was lost when they scraped old parchment to write their own texts
And the Church murdering scholars and librarians that didn't belong to the Church didn't help too much either. The Church Father known as "Pillar of Faith" who had Hypatia killed was the same man who had Mary mother of Jesus proclaimed as an "eternal virgin".
OTOH, there has been a war over the outcome of a football match...
Do you know the human brain has about 100 billion neurons? Each neuron can be represented as a weighted average of its inputs, a typical human neuron has some 1000 inputs and does around a hundred operations per second.
So, yes, *maybe* there could be some very smart algorithm that mimics human reasoning, but that's not how it's done in the human brain. It's raw computing power all the way.
And it would be interesting to note that the US stopped the Apollo moon project in the 1970s in part because the Vietnam war was sucking up all their money.
Have you ever seen how Denmark is kicking the Scandinavian balls?
Perspective is a funny thing. If you consider that they had $63 billion in 2004, it means they are losing $10 billion/year. Well, not exactly losing, since most of that has been paid to stockholders as dividends, but the fact remains that they *have* to use their cash pile to keep their market value from plunging, operational profits alone won't do it.
All the points you mention may be valid, but I think that's not the most important issue here. It doesn't matter what are Microsoft's future plans, the important thing is that they have seen the need for a major change in tactics. This means they are starting to see the possibility of defeat.
More probably, 2007 was The Year of the Linux Desktop. The Asus eeePC showed that the Linux desktop is a perfectly viable business proposition, at the same time that Windows Vista flopped in the market.
Microsoft isn't defeated yet, but they are certainly doing a strategic retreat. You can be quite sure they will do their best effort to regroup and counterattack, but at this moment no one can deny that free software is advancing.
1) they ignore you
2) they laugh at you
3) they fight you
4) you win
Where I work, both approaches are used.
The difference I've seen in the 10+ years since we've had web-based applications in the intranet is that with Apache you must have an experienced analyst who configures httpd.conf once, then the system runs forever. With IIS you must have someone with much less experience, who's always doing this or that to keep the system running.
The consequence is that we have a few very critical systems that run in Apache, while the less important systems run in IIS. We don't keep accounting with enough detail to be sure, but I'd guess the TCO for Apache is much less than for IIS, since so much less attention is needed.
So, you might ask, why not use Apache for everything? The simple answer is that the experienced analysts who take care of the critical systems do not like the kind of stuff that gets relegated to IIS. There are people who do not mind implementing a meeting room reservation system, and there are people who know how to configure Apache, and the two don't mix.
Yes, I agree. Maybe if those geeks designed a world-wide web that allowed people to shop from their homes... Oh, forget that, driving to the supermarket or the mall is more glamorous and geek-friendly, I guess.
I think you need to get some price information. Liquid Nitrogen does NOT cost $300/gallon
Doh, I was going to publish an article on "The Sexual Mores of Rednecks".
Well, I guess it's off to Wikipedia I go. Or do you think the Britannica would be willing to buy my text?
Ten years ago, if anyone mentioned "Linux Desktop", the unanimous answer would be "Bah!" Today, in this Slashdot article threads, people are discussing itty-bitty details like "they should improve this", "no, they should improve that before this", etc.
I still don't know when is the year of the Linux Desktop, but I bet that fifty years from now the consensus will be that it was sometime between 2001 and 2007.
Yes, because we all know the government always does everything in the most economical and efficient way, right?
You may want to take a look at this paper about health care in France. It comes from a very trustworthy source, the OECD, and presents some surprising data. Although public health care in France is "universal" in the sense that almost everybody is covered by the public health care system, 92% of the French people have additional private health insurance.
Let me quote from the summary: "The public system is facing chronic deficits and recent cost-containment policies have not proved very successful. The government has signalled an interest in reforms that would redefine the role of public and private insurance, shifting some responsibilities from the former to the latter."
I just quoted this paper about health care because I had it on hand, and you mentioned health care, but I admit that electric power is more of a "natural monopoly" than health care in some ways. I think emergency health care should be guaranteed by the government, because when you suffer an accident you are in no position to negotiate, but health care does not need to run wires all the way from the power plant to your home.
So, yes, I think there is need for some regulation in electric power, but from all I have read, California is hardly an example of a well-conceived deregulation. I think there are many ways of creating a better system for private utilities. You cannot say that all deregulation is bad based on just the California example.
Which part of "practical" you don't understand? Energy storage technology has gone *backwards* compared to other technologies. At one time, electric cars outsold gasoline cars. Not only you CANNOT store electricity, at least not in the amount that's needed at the price that's needed, but technology has lagged behind.
Quoting yourself: "Wow OK that's stupid". Google "moon albedo" to start with and then do some math.
Oh, is that so? Then why don't you just invade some more oil-producing countries?
Yes, right, why read books when you can read Slashdot instead?
This "Linux haters" thing is not even wrong. There haven't been any kernel bugs in Linux worth mentioning for at least since version 2 came out. Watch what Linus Torvalds says, there's no plan for version 3 yet. No need.
What makes Windows and OSX more popular than Linux is the same reason why Java is more popular than Python or Ruby, it's corporate sponsorship. With enough marketing, people will pay more for an inferior product, just compare the Asus eeePC Windows version with the Linux version to see what I mean.
You answered your own question, "nights don't last as long in space and clouds are more sparse up there too".
Funny coincidence, I had just finished re-reading this book when I saw this article. The Nevada desert you mention is in the dark about half of the time, exactly when people in the US need electricity for their lights. And what about Europe? The Far East? OK, use the Sahara and the deserts in Asia, but you'd still need a lot of power transmission and storage capacity.
Remember, if we knew how to *store* electricity, we would have practical electric cars by now, and laptop computers would have more than a few hours battery capacity. There's a strong economical incentive to develop electricity storage systems, but it's still very far from being a practical reality, therefore solar power is necessarily just a supplement to other sources of energy.
I think Dr. O'Neill's mistake was to assume the time needed for development would be so short. However, if you read his book, you'll see it all makes sense from an engineering point of view. All the objections in the thread to which you replied have been answered in his book, it's not science fiction at all, just future technological development.
Giving the Wiki quote the benefit of doubt and assuming it's correct, let's see what it reads:
"NHTSA defines fatal collisions as "alcohol-related" if they believe the driver, a passenger, or a nonoccupant of the vehicle (such as a pedestrian or pedalcyclist) had a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.01 or greater"
And, if you keep reading, you'll see that
"On average, about 60 percent of the BAC values are missing or unknown. To analyze what they believe is the complete data, statisticians simulate BAC information."
Wow! So they have to simulate 60% of the data to find a correlation, and then assume a causation from that? I think you made my point for me, alcohol *has* been picked at random as *the* villain.