What the google ads show is what everyone should have known before... The internet is a place where people come looking for you, and when that's the case, you don't need loud, fancy graphics, you only need enough information for them to identify your product (text).
This isn't true if there are 1,000 other companies/products just like yours. Or if you are selling something that isn't necessarily consciously wanted by the buyer (they aren't looking). Sometimes advertisers have to CREATE a market for their product.
Javascript is such an integral part of the web these days, it would be difficult to surf without it. With Firefox's default popup blocking and the Adblock extension, I haven't seen a popup ad in ages. I barely even see regular banner ads. Do you have a particular website in mind which uses these new generation popup/unders so I can test my browser?
But that's exaclty my point. Putting a story in space does not in and of itself make a story scifi unless that setting effects the story in some sci-fi way.
They're space outlaws flying around in space ships. It doesn't get much more sci-fi than that. The fact that you can imagine it taking place in a different setting is completely irrelevent.
In fact the original post points to this with Apollo 13 being set in space but not being sci-fi.
Apollo 13 isn't sci-fi because a) it is based on a true story and b) utilizes no technology which doesn't already exist.
Nothing about them being in space ever has any real effect on the story. Since it doesn't it's not really sci-fi, it's just drama that happens to be set in space.
You keep saying that, but it isn't getting any more correct. I always hate to resort to a dictionary, but here it is from dictionary.com:
science fiction n.
A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background.
Firefly transcends the technological details. Firefly does not utilize them.
Right, and my commute to work in the mornin transcends cars. It does not utilize them. It is just good drama.
WTF are you smoking?
Just because you could imagine a story being told in a different setting, doesn't mean the setting is irrelevent. If the writers wanted to set Firefly in the Old West, they would have. But they didn't. They chose to write sci-fi. They could have written it as fantasy if they really wanted to. But they didn't. They wrote it as sci-fi.
The point is, flying through space has nothing to do with the story. In a true sci-fi story the characters have to actively deal with something not possible or not yet existing in reality. Without that part to the story there is no possible classification. If you took Friends the TV show and the only thing you changed about it was a back drop of Mars outside their kitchen window but otherwise the characters changed nothing, nothing about being on Mars or dealing with living on Mars ever entered the story that would not make Friends Sci-fi.
I totally disagree. You underestimate the value of setting. Friends specifically deals with young, upper-middle class, urban (New York) living. There is just no way you could effectively replace New York with a Mars "backdrop" without changing the story. There are many New York specific elements to a sitcom like Friends. Even changing the setting to, say, Chicago would change Friends a bit. What if you moved it to Paris? There are actually very few stories which could be set anywhere without changing the story. Although you could retain the "moral" of the story despite the backdrop.
Firefly is just a that kind of story. That it takes place on a space ship is inconsequential to pretty much anything about Firefly. That's not true of sci-fi. In sci-fi, remove the sci-fi part and the whole basis for the story disappears.
That is the definiton of BAD sci-fi, as far as I am concerned. I hate sci-fi that tries to wow the reader/watcher with wizbang technological elements. Those are the kind of stories which will look really stupid 50 years from now when the technology doesn't turn out as depicted. Good sci-fi transcends the technological details (while still utilizing them). It does not depend on them.
Remove the time travel, A.I. or cybernetics from Terminator, remove the Force, the Death Star, the robots from Star Wars, remove the teleporter, nanites, the holodesk, alternate cultures from Star Trek, remove the Matrix from the Matrix.
Terminator: Bad, overblown. wizbang, pop sci-fi.
Star Wars: Mostly fantasy, not much sci-fi.
Star Trek: Good sci-fi which could find adequate technological substitutes. Just look at the Star Trek episodes and scenes that take place on the holodeck or in the past.
The Matrix: Of course you can't take the matrix out of The Matrix. It is right there in the title.:-P Seriously, it is conceivable that The Matrix could be a metaphysical thriller (fantasy?) rather than sci-fi.
Seems to me that the fact that they were traveling around space as if it were a bus traveling from city to city pretty much covers the "someting not yet in existence" requirement. I haven't seen Serenity (but I have seen Firefly), but it seems to me that the reason it IS such good sci-fi is because you could imagine the people having the exact same problems on current day Earth. Any good story, whether it be sci-fi or fantasy, should present issues which we can relate to now. If it is sci-fi, the story will generally take place in the future or some other "world' with different, but plausable, technology. If it is fantasy, it will tend to focus on fantastical setting which has never and probably will never exist. Sci-fi usually suggests the possibility of some specific situation actually happening. In this sense, Firefly is pure sci-fi.
It's clearly NOT the NAT that's providing you security here, but simple matters of routing.
Simple matters such as... NAT and its consequences?
So as the parent post said, NAT is not security. Routing and firewalling can provide some security, but not the NAT itself.
Hogwash. NAT implies routing. There are two ways in which one can implement security on a router. Translate (NAT) packets such that no external hosts can initiate connections to hosts behind the router. Or actively block access to hosts using access control lists (firewall). Obviously these two methods can be combined, but suffice it to say that NAT can very well provide security itself. You can quibble over how GOOD the security is, but you can't argue that it isn't security.
I don't think it would necessarily be a conscious anger. It could be an unconscious resentment. Even though you know you saved money, you might still be annoyed that you have to look at these distracting OS ads on top of the normal ads on the web. You wouldn't be mad ad your decision to take the Adware OS, you would be mad at the producer of the Adware OS.
If MS did make an Adware OS, i think it would cause further erosion of their brand and corporate image.
Of course, then you have to wonder how many of these vulnerabilities are discovered by Black Hats and never release information. Black Hats are probably sitting on hundreds of otherwise undiscovered exploits. There is no reason to believe that only "security organizations" can find exploits like this.
Ah, so listening to new music really is like gambling. You buy a song cheap hoping to get a good one that others haven't discovered yet. This would be like going for the long shot. Or you can just shell out more money for the "sure thing."
Question is, will music ratings eventually be based on the price a song sells for on iTunes?
which aided by the sale of mobile phone ringtones,
Who are the morons paying money for ringtones, anyway? This has to be one of the most trivial wastes of money I've ever heard of. Are people being entertained by ringtones? Do they just sit there enjoying the music before they answer the phone? Who was the first person to think, "hey, people will pay money to change the noise their phone makes when someone calls them?"
Since all services and applications run as NLMs, it is difficult to NOT unload an NLM during normal operations. I'm not talking about unloading "random services" or drivers. I'm talking about unloading specific things like a backup agent/server or Groupwise agents.. or the DHCP service. Common tasks when working at the console. Fact is that I have abended many a Netware server by unloading certain NLMs. ARCServe is famous for doing this. Or if the server doesn't abend, the console will hang if the NLM is "stuck." There is a procedure for regaining the console, but it isn't pretty. Basically you have to halt the system, go into debug mode, run some cryptic commands involving CPU registers, and then return. And that isn't guaranteed to work. Many times I have had no choice but to hard reboot a Netware server because an NLM was hung and I couldn't access the command prompt.
Oh sure, Netware is stable... as long as you don't try to unload modules in the wrong order or just look at the console funny. Don't get me wrong, Netware spits out files better than anything else, but that damned console is cursed. Between the random Abends and "unload xxx.nlm" freezing the console, it is anything but stable. We have a Groupwise server and for some reason I can no longer stop and restart the Groupwise services. Just stopping the MTA causes an abend. Even Windows isn't that bad. Our main file server periodically (about once a month) just abends and halts for no apparent reason.
Hogwash. It is easy to install software on a Windows user's PC while they are using it.
1) Package the software as spyware. 2) Upload it somewhere on the internet. Anywhere. Doesn't matter where. 3) It will inevitably find its way to all the Windows computers in your office within 20 minutes. 5) Profit!
If you are worried about the wrong people getting your software, add something to the package that detects the identity of the host and have it delete itself if not in your office.
Why would you need headroom? The current draw creates a load on the alternator and the alternator creates just enough to satisfy the draw. The more you try to draw, the more energy is taken from the engine. If it was just about using the excess electricity, wouldn't it be much easier just to run an electric motor instead of converting to hydrogen? I don't think the priimary benefit is from the hydrogen itself as a power source. I think it is just a matter of making tthe diesel burn more efficiently,
I have a particular sympathy for the trucking industry here. Most of them are barely making a profit as it is. And gas prices are REALLY hurting them. They don't really have the extra $$$ to think of the environment first, unfortunately.
Actually, I don't have a problem with the theory of evolution. I believe that in the relatively near past life was created at a beginning state. Life has evolved since and is still evolving today, or perhaps it is better to say life is adapting. I see evolution as a tool with which God gave life the ability to survive and adapt. I do how ever have obvious problems with abiogenesis. I do not find it necessary that life started either as it is now or as bits of RNA in a pool of primordial ooze, to believe that evolution is happening around us. This neither negates or proves biblical creation. The idea of abiogenesis is the portion of the argument where I am afraid "evolutionist" will lose me. Next, the biblical story of Adam involves a God who breaths life into his creation and therefore life is not created from nothing but from the very breath of God (Genesis 2:7)
The text is: "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." Dust -> Man sounds a lot like abiogenesis to me. Although taking it literally clearly doesn't make much sense.
Third there are those who would say geology and astronomy tell a much different story, one of a young earth which has experienced a world wide flood.
Well, they would be quite wrong. Aside from the practical problems of a global flood (where all the water came from and where did it go) there is simply no evidence for such an event. Very little of geology makes sense if crammed into a 6000 year time frame. Unless you want to asssert that God created Earth so that it looked older than it really is. If you start going down that road, then it is difficult to trust any physical evidence.
This is where the axiom with which one looks upon the evidence comes into play,
Axiom of science: Follow wherever the evidence leads.
Axiom of Creationism: Bible trumps evidence. If the evidence doesn't fit the the Biblical interpretation du jour, discard it.
Also, I realize that Geology, Astronomy, and Evolutionary Theory are independent of one another. However, in order to believe that life was created by chance and that random evolution has brought us this far you must have an earth of an extremely old age
Which both geology and astronomy confirm. So what is the problem? Also, please keep in mind that evolution does NOT address how life was started. You may also want to consider dropping the loaded terms "chance" and "random." Those are terms that are used to create strawman arguments against evolution. Evolution is not random.
I agree 100% it's just like that other crackpot theory that starts with the axiom that life on earth began with abiogenesis
If you are referring to the theory of evolution, then you are wrong. It does not assume abiogenesis. Evolutionary theory stands regardless of how life started.
That said, even the Bible suggests abiogenesis (Adam created from dust/mud).
and that the universe has existed, well for however long they need to fit the current theory.
Theories on how long the universe has existed are completely independent of evolutionary theory. Geology (not biology) tells us that that the Earth has been around for more than 4 billion years. Astronomy suggests that the universe has been around for about 14 billion. Neither figure has anything to do with biology or the theory of evolution.
Actually you can prove something without something else, it's called inductive reasoning. I'd point you towards Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas, but I don't think you can handle too much truth at once.
And I'd point you to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem.
It pisses me off how aethiests scream "but you can't disprove it!!!!" I'm sorry.. but isn't that what makes something true?!?!
Actually, no. If you define something in such a way that it isn't, in theory, falsifiable, the fact that it hasn't been falsified is meaningless. For instance, you can't disprove the claim that there are unicorns somewhere in the universe because there is no way to check every part of the universe for unicorns. When you are checking one part of the universe, the alleged unicorns could just travel to a part that you already checked.
God's existence has been proven many many many times.
It has? By whom? Please note that logical proofs don't count. Logic doesn't necessarily have anything to do with physical reality, as any mathematician will tell you. All the supposed "proofs" I've read for God (including St. Thomas Aquinas) are based on some assumption that I simply don't agree with. A logical conclusion, no matter how valid, is only as good as the assumptions and axioms it is based on. Take the "Prime Mover" proof for example. It assumes that the universe had a beginning. While it may seem like a reasonable assumption, we don't really know if the universe even had a beginning, per se.
Note that the parent said "disproportionately large." Not just "large." Intelligence does roughly correlate to the ratio of brain to body size. An elephant's brain may be 3 times bigger than a human's, but its body is far more than 3 times larger than a humans body. An elephant has a lower brain/body ratio.
Slashdot Mirror
Even easier: My brower. My bandwidth. My choice.
-matthew
This isn't true if there are 1,000 other companies/products just like yours. Or if you are selling something that isn't necessarily consciously wanted by the buyer (they aren't looking). Sometimes advertisers have to CREATE a market for their product.
-matthew
Many people are paranoid.
Javascript is such an integral part of the web these days, it would be difficult to surf without it. With Firefox's default popup blocking and the Adblock extension, I haven't seen a popup ad in ages. I barely even see regular banner ads. Do you have a particular website in mind which uses these new generation popup/unders so I can test my browser?
-matthew
They're space outlaws flying around in space ships. It doesn't get much more sci-fi than that. The fact that you can imagine it taking place in a different setting is completely irrelevent.
In fact the original post points to this with Apollo 13 being set in space but not being sci-fi.
Apollo 13 isn't sci-fi because a) it is based on a true story and b) utilizes no technology which doesn't already exist.
Nothing about them being in space ever has any real effect on the story. Since it doesn't it's not really sci-fi, it's just drama that happens to be set in space.
You keep saying that, but it isn't getting any more correct. I always hate to resort to a dictionary, but here it is from dictionary.com:
science fiction n.
A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background.
Plot or background.
-matthew
Firefly transcends the technological details. Firefly does not utilize them.
Right, and my commute to work in the mornin transcends cars. It does not utilize them. It is just good drama.
WTF are you smoking?
Just because you could imagine a story being told in a different setting, doesn't mean the setting is irrelevent. If the writers wanted to set Firefly in the Old West, they would have. But they didn't. They chose to write sci-fi. They could have written it as fantasy if they really wanted to. But they didn't. They wrote it as sci-fi.
-matthew
I totally disagree. You underestimate the value of setting. Friends specifically deals with young, upper-middle class, urban (New York) living. There is just no way you could effectively replace New York with a Mars "backdrop" without changing the story. There are many New York specific elements to a sitcom like Friends. Even changing the setting to, say, Chicago would change Friends a bit. What if you moved it to Paris? There are actually very few stories which could be set anywhere without changing the story. Although you could retain the "moral" of the story despite the backdrop.
Firefly is just a that kind of story. That it takes place on a space ship is inconsequential to pretty much anything about Firefly. That's not true of sci-fi. In sci-fi, remove the sci-fi part and the whole basis for the story disappears.
That is the definiton of BAD sci-fi, as far as I am concerned. I hate sci-fi that tries to wow the reader/watcher with wizbang technological elements. Those are the kind of stories which will look really stupid 50 years from now when the technology doesn't turn out as depicted. Good sci-fi transcends the technological details (while still utilizing them). It does not depend on them.
Remove the time travel, A.I. or cybernetics from Terminator, remove the Force, the Death Star, the robots from Star Wars, remove the teleporter, nanites, the holodesk, alternate cultures from Star Trek, remove the Matrix from the Matrix.
Terminator: Bad, overblown. wizbang, pop sci-fi.
Star Wars: Mostly fantasy, not much sci-fi.
Star Trek: Good sci-fi which could find adequate technological substitutes. Just look at the Star Trek episodes and scenes that take place on the holodeck or in the past.
The Matrix: Of course you can't take the matrix out of The Matrix. It is right there in the title. :-P Seriously, it is conceivable that The Matrix could be a metaphysical thriller (fantasy?) rather than sci-fi.
-matthew
Seems to me that the fact that they were traveling around space as if it were a bus traveling from city to city pretty much covers the "someting not yet in existence" requirement. I haven't seen Serenity (but I have seen Firefly), but it seems to me that the reason it IS such good sci-fi is because you could imagine the people having the exact same problems on current day Earth. Any good story, whether it be sci-fi or fantasy, should present issues which we can relate to now. If it is sci-fi, the story will generally take place in the future or some other "world' with different, but plausable, technology. If it is fantasy, it will tend to focus on fantastical setting which has never and probably will never exist. Sci-fi usually suggests the possibility of some specific situation actually happening. In this sense, Firefly is pure sci-fi.
-matthew
#1 If for only one reason; Mila Jovovich's outfit.
-matthew
Umm, since when does sci-fi necessarily include "special powers." Sounds like you are confusing "sci-fi" with "fantasy."
-matthew
Simple matters such as... NAT and its consequences?
So as the parent post said, NAT is not security. Routing and firewalling can provide some security, but not the NAT itself.
Hogwash. NAT implies routing. There are two ways in which one can implement security on a router. Translate (NAT) packets such that no external hosts can initiate connections to hosts behind the router. Or actively block access to hosts using access control lists (firewall). Obviously these two methods can be combined, but suffice it to say that NAT can very well provide security itself. You can quibble over how GOOD the security is, but you can't argue that it isn't security.
-matthew
I don't think it would necessarily be a conscious anger. It could be an unconscious resentment. Even though you know you saved money, you might still be annoyed that you have to look at these distracting OS ads on top of the normal ads on the web. You wouldn't be mad ad your decision to take the Adware OS, you would be mad at the producer of the Adware OS.
If MS did make an Adware OS, i think it would cause further erosion of their brand and corporate image.
-matthew
Of course, then you have to wonder how many of these vulnerabilities are discovered by Black Hats and never release information. Black Hats are probably sitting on hundreds of otherwise undiscovered exploits. There is no reason to believe that only "security organizations" can find exploits like this.
-matthew
Ah, so listening to new music really is like gambling. You buy a song cheap hoping to get a good one that others haven't discovered yet. This would be like going for the long shot. Or you can just shell out more money for the "sure thing."
Question is, will music ratings eventually be based on the price a song sells for on iTunes?
All hail capitalism.
-matthew
which aided by the sale of mobile phone ringtones,
Who are the morons paying money for ringtones, anyway? This has to be one of the most trivial wastes of money I've ever heard of. Are people being entertained by ringtones? Do they just sit there enjoying the music before they answer the phone? Who was the first person to think, "hey, people will pay money to change the noise their phone makes when someone calls them?"
[/smallrant]
-matthew
Since all services and applications run as NLMs, it is difficult to NOT unload an NLM during normal operations. I'm not talking about unloading "random services" or drivers. I'm talking about unloading specific things like a backup agent/server or Groupwise agents.. or the DHCP service. Common tasks when working at the console. Fact is that I have abended many a Netware server by unloading certain NLMs. ARCServe is famous for doing this. Or if the server doesn't abend, the console will hang if the NLM is "stuck." There is a procedure for regaining the console, but it isn't pretty. Basically you have to halt the system, go into debug mode, run some cryptic commands involving CPU registers, and then return. And that isn't guaranteed to work. Many times I have had no choice but to hard reboot a Netware server because an NLM was hung and I couldn't access the command prompt.
-matthew
Oh sure, Netware is stable... as long as you don't try to unload modules in the wrong order or just look at the console funny. Don't get me wrong, Netware spits out files better than anything else, but that damned console is cursed. Between the random Abends and "unload xxx.nlm" freezing the console, it is anything but stable. We have a Groupwise server and for some reason I can no longer stop and restart the Groupwise services. Just stopping the MTA causes an abend. Even Windows isn't that bad. Our main file server periodically (about once a month) just abends and halts for no apparent reason.
-matthew
Hogwash. It is easy to install software on a Windows user's PC while they are using it.
1) Package the software as spyware.
2) Upload it somewhere on the internet. Anywhere. Doesn't matter where.
3) It will inevitably find its way to all the Windows computers in your office within 20 minutes.
5) Profit!
If you are worried about the wrong people getting your software, add something to the package that detects the identity of the host and have it delete itself if not in your office.
-matthew
Why would you need headroom? The current draw creates a load on the alternator and the alternator creates just enough to satisfy the draw. The more you try to draw, the more energy is taken from the engine. If it was just about using the excess electricity, wouldn't it be much easier just to run an electric motor instead of converting to hydrogen? I don't think the priimary benefit is from the hydrogen itself as a power source. I think it is just a matter of making tthe diesel burn more efficiently,
-matthew
I have a particular sympathy for the trucking industry here. Most of them are barely making a profit as it is. And gas prices are REALLY hurting them. They don't really have the extra $$$ to think of the environment first, unfortunately.
-matthew
The text is: "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." Dust -> Man sounds a lot like abiogenesis to me. Although taking it literally clearly doesn't make much sense.
Third there are those who would say geology and astronomy tell a much different story, one of a young earth which has experienced a world wide flood.
Well, they would be quite wrong. Aside from the practical problems of a global flood (where all the water came from and where did it go) there is simply no evidence for such an event. Very little of geology makes sense if crammed into a 6000 year time frame. Unless you want to asssert that God created Earth so that it looked older than it really is. If you start going down that road, then it is difficult to trust any physical evidence.
This is where the axiom with which one looks upon the evidence comes into play,
Axiom of science: Follow wherever the evidence leads.
Axiom of Creationism: Bible trumps evidence. If the evidence doesn't fit the the Biblical interpretation du jour, discard it.
Also, I realize that Geology, Astronomy, and Evolutionary Theory are independent of one another. However, in order to believe that life was created by chance and that random evolution has brought us this far you must have an earth of an extremely old age
Which both geology and astronomy confirm. So what is the problem? Also, please keep in mind that evolution does NOT address how life was started. You may also want to consider dropping the loaded terms "chance" and "random." Those are terms that are used to create strawman arguments against evolution. Evolution is not random.
-matthew
Only if they place a brick wall just before the next camera...
-matthew
If you are referring to the theory of evolution, then you are wrong. It does not assume abiogenesis. Evolutionary theory stands regardless of how life started.
That said, even the Bible suggests abiogenesis (Adam created from dust/mud).
and that the universe has existed, well for however long they need to fit the current theory.
Theories on how long the universe has existed are completely independent of evolutionary theory. Geology (not biology) tells us that that the Earth has been around for more than 4 billion years. Astronomy suggests that the universe has been around for about 14 billion. Neither figure has anything to do with biology or the theory of evolution.
-matthew
And I'd point you to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem.
It pisses me off how aethiests scream "but you can't disprove it!!!!" I'm sorry.. but isn't that what makes something true?!?!
Actually, no. If you define something in such a way that it isn't, in theory, falsifiable, the fact that it hasn't been falsified is meaningless. For instance, you can't disprove the claim that there are unicorns somewhere in the universe because there is no way to check every part of the universe for unicorns. When you are checking one part of the universe, the alleged unicorns could just travel to a part that you already checked.
God's existence has been proven many many many times.
It has? By whom? Please note that logical proofs don't count. Logic doesn't necessarily have anything to do with physical reality, as any mathematician will tell you. All the supposed "proofs" I've read for God (including St. Thomas Aquinas) are based on some assumption that I simply don't agree with. A logical conclusion, no matter how valid, is only as good as the assumptions and axioms it is based on. Take the "Prime Mover" proof for example. It assumes that the universe had a beginning. While it may seem like a reasonable assumption, we don't really know if the universe even had a beginning, per se.
-matthew -matthew
Note that the parent said "disproportionately large." Not just "large." Intelligence does roughly correlate to the ratio of brain to body size. An elephant's brain may be 3 times bigger than a human's, but its body is far more than 3 times larger than a humans body. An elephant has a lower brain/body ratio.
-matthew