I often search for stuff, and then Google lists some very promising searches, with a lot of relevant text in the description, but no cached version available. So I click on the link, and I get a "register/subscribe page" with totally NO SIGN of any of the text that previously appeared. Anyway this happens especially with journals.
I thought Google had a policy that a site was not allowed to show Google one thing and a normal user something else?
Or that policy has "Unless Google is paid off by said site" somewhere?
Anyway, ends up I need to skip all those sites and find a free site/page that deals with a similar topic.
I'd rather Google list sites that I can access for free above the sites which I can't.
I suppose I should go use the other search engines more regularly.
Our lawyers would like to discuss with you further on your unauthorized reproduction of our intellectual property.
In the meantime please be aware that Augmented Genetics Technology Corp owns your first-born (and any of your future progeny).
You should have read the EULA before you got that "super enhancer" DNA treatment.
You swear you never went for that treatment? Yeah right, you must have gone to some Pirate clinic for illegal treatment.
You claim it must have been some viral infection you caught that somehow altered your DNA?
Yeah right, that never happens (even though we do use viruses as part of the treatment to insert the new DNA, the viruses have been crippled and will _never_ spread).
You are assuming that the brain is just one implementation of a computer.
And even if it is true, if it's only true in the way that "The universe is just one implementation of a computer" then I don't think that teaches us that much about the brain/mind (it will still teach us something of course).
Don't get me wrong though, I do agree that computer science and information theory are fundamental sciences.
And I also agree with you that the first AI wouldn't be a model of the brain.
I'm no neuroscientist or computer scientist but I suspect that the first preliminary step towards an AI would be something that automatically makes models of the external world. Then the next step would be for it to predict. e.g. if it sees a ball moving towards a wall, it should model the situation _faster_than_real_time_ and predict that it will hit the wall. This sort of thing is very useful for simple creatures.
You then work at improving the automatic modelling and prediction stuff. Throw in quantum computers if you want to run "infinite" models in parallel (sounds like that will come in handy eh?) .
Then the next step would be for it to model and predict _itself_ in addition to everything else. Of course it could have already jumped to that stage by then - it's a natural step if it had attempted to model other creatures at any point. Or perhaps the self modelling comes first[1].
Lastly, BEFORE we do all of that, we should ask WHY do we want to do that and whether it's such a good idea in the first place.
We already have plenty of creatures imprisoned at the local pet shop, farms already. If you want to do things faster/better, you could just augment humans or animals.
We've already got billions of imprisoned conscious chickens in the world. They're not smart enough? Conscious != smart. Before we go create something, I think we should ask what are we trying to solve here. If you think it'll be cruel and terrible to implant chicken brains into robots to do stuff, then maybe we shouldn't be creating conscious creatures, we should be aiming for something else. e.g. augmenting humans so that we can control multiple robots easily, recognize stuff faster etc.
I suggest that there are already plenty of brains/minds in the world. We're already having difficulty taking care of the new/existing ones, managing them, putting them to good use etc.
[1] Then again, perhaps the "God modelling" comes first (e.g. YHWH).
I personally think that minds work by creating models of things. And I suspect that consciousness is at least partly due to a mind recursively modelling/simulating itself.
As for quantum consciousness - if quantum computing makes it easier to run many simulations/models in parallel and pick the "best" answer in just "one cycle", then being able to do that would be a big advantage. Whether minds/brains do quantum computing I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it isn't all as simple as "just chemicals + electrical impulses", given even a single white blood cell isn't that stupid for its size.
Even if the brain/mind does use quantum mechanics etc, just saying that still doesn't tell us how.
"It's not Microsoft's initiative to impose DRM on everyone. It's the movie industry and the cable industry."
Really? Did the movie industry foot the bill for Vista's extra DRM features (beyond what's necessary to play HD-DVD)?
After all, I find it hard to believe that Microsoft's customers were actually clamouring for tilt-bits and "forced downgrade of video resolution" stuff.
Oh well, I guess most people won't mind paying for the bullets used to execute them either.
"Once you get outside reasonably trivial and/or small and medium sized websites, you'll find that people generally don't run x86 to serve their pages"
Really? So far many of the top 10 sites use x86 servers. MSN, Google and even Myspace[1]. Wikipedia uses x86 servers. A Baidu press release hints that they use x86 - I'd be surprise if they didn't.
I don't know about Yahoo - I know they have used x86 servers before (FreeBSD + Apache), but my guess is Yahoo could be a more heterogenous network now. I'm still sure they use very many x86 servers.
AFAIK Ebay and Amazon use very very many x86 servers. Ebay does have a few Sun servers.
Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft) use very many x86 servers - if WoW is not 24/7 and real-time transactional enough I don't know what is.
If you need supercomputing, nowadays you can do it with x86 as well (and believe me very many are)- in many cases the expensive interconnects are often the bits that count. But going x86 allows you to get more nodes and interconnects.
Most corp websites are trivial in comparison. If it's a website for the public they'd run out of bandwidth first if their IT people know how to do stuff AND are allowed to. If they have lots of servers it's usually because their IT people don't. And when their IT people don't, that's where expensive consultants sweep in. When you have a company that's clueless, it's in the selfish interest of the expensive consultants to suggest expensive hardware and software, so that their fees look reasonable in comparison, and they have someone big to hide behind if things go belly-up. So that's where stuff like Oracle, SAP and other expensive stuff come in. There are more such companies than clueful ones that somehow are willing to pay and retain expensive consultants/talent to put together free and cheap stuff.
Personally I think in the earlier days a fast x86 was the equivalent of getting a pig to fly by strapping on a rocket. And the other CPUs were eagles in comparison. But nowadays all the eagles and pigs are strapped onto huge rockets, and the rockets are now so big that whether it's a pig or eagle doesn't influence the rocket speed as much.
BUT the faster and cheaper rockets are the x86 ones now. I'd personally have preferred something else to have won, but oh well...
But "just x86" is not such a limiting choice nowadays.
T1s weren't really much ahead of x86 the day they were launched in terms of performance/watt (if they were even ahead at all). And they fell further behind pretty soon after. Go look at the performance/watt figures (possible keywords: intel opteron sun t1 watts). Go look at the idle/load power consumption of comparable servers. And the performance/watt of Intel and AMD x86 cpus have been getting better every few months. Only in very specific/contrived cases are T1s better in performance than x86s, or even performance/watt. And if any of those cases ever become important enough, AMD and Intel will be right on it.
The competition is so stiff between AMD and Intel, that trashing Sun's SPARC CPUs is now just a "side note" when it happens. Even a few years ago Fujitsu was already making better SPARCs than Sun, what an embarassment that was.
Sun's SPARC offerings are more for those people who have SPARC and need to keep a SPARC upgrade path.
The problem with current copyright laws is that in the future everyone might be able to have that sort of memory for hearing, sight etc. You can also have virtual telepathy. Most of the tech is already available, it's just a matter of cost and making the implants safer and better.
As it is, you'd probably have to have DRM in your brain "add-on", and possibly pay a fee just to remember stuff, and be prohibited from communicating with your friends about certain things.
A penny for your thoughts? That's probably too cheap for the RIAA, MPAA etc.
Heh, they're lucky they weren't in Georgia. Some 17 year old guy got jailed 10 years for "aggravated child molestation" - he had _consensual_ oral sex with a 15 year old girl.
Given that it's generally considered preferable to test drugs on animals before using them on humans, I suggest that we test prospective parents on animals first before they get allowed to bring up children .
They have to successfully bring up a dog or some other pet first. Then a bunch of certifiers come and see if the animal is well-adjusted and doing fine. If not, then they see if it's the fault of the prospective parents.;).
The brain doesn't necessarily work visually. Since blind people still manage somehow:).
And there are lots of more important life affecting problems than visual calculations.
Like whether to go for chocolate or vanilla cake, or both. Or whether this funny smelling stuff should be eaten or not. Or whether I can make it safely up the slope. Or whether I can jump, reach that branch AND it is likely to hold me (this is not just simple visual - since you need to estimate your weight, _current_ strength factoring fatigue, branch strength and a LOT of other things).
Laugh, but really a lot of this has been proven over hundreds and millions of years to be more important than silly math calculations;).
I actually believe that the brain builds and maintains models of stuff all the time, and uses those - and consciousness is at least partly due to the result of a mind recursively simulating itself. After all its very useful for a creature to model other creatures - knowing what they might do is important, and then when they try to model each other modelling each other etc, things start to get interesting - then you get introspection, better correction of flawed models etc. And that's why I believe many animals (if not most) are conscious/sentient - just would be simpler and easier for them to do what they do.
You have stuff like a single neuron that fires just for a specific abstract concept. Go search for "Halle Berry" neuron.
So it could be more like billions of neurons watching "Sensory Channel + Stream of Consciousness", going mostly blah and then suddenly you get one little neuron yelling "It's Halle Berry!!!".
Maybe followed by another one yelling "It's on a TV!"
And then some neuron yelling "It's neurons screaming about Halle Berry on TV!".
Then followed by maybe "Change Channel!" or "Pay attention!"... So on and so forth.
I'm no neuroscientist, but that's about what I gather happens and sure looks quite different from logic gates.
More like splitting huge lookup tables into small pieces where each neuron provides an "answer" when it recognizes an "address".
So maybe out of the 100 billion neurons, you have a few hundred million or so dedicated to recognizing very specific things, and a few hundred million recognizing the various sort of "recognitions", etc etc.
Personally, I find it strange that so many self-proclaimed staunch Christians _blindly_ support whatever Israel (as a nation) does.
I can understand Christians loving Israel and Jews etc. But blind support of their _actions_ and policies is ridiculous given that a look at the Bible (or even just the Torah + the prophets) will tell you that Israel has a track record of mostly doing the wrong things (despite still being God's Chosen).
The meaning of the name Israel should give them a clue. Go figure why God called Israel Israel.
"The law that if Joe User buys an HD-DVD at Wal-Mart and sticks it into his HD-DVD drive on his brand new computer running Vista, it had better work."
Vista adds _extra_ DRM crap that normal HD-DVD players don't have. Go look it up, if you don't know it already (you probably do).
"it[DRM] shows itself to be the massive failure it ultimately is."
Yah, by avoiding Vista, HD-DVD etc where possible.
Unless you're the sort that thinks buying lots of things helps make them "massive failures" in the market place.
"All other things being equal, which is more valuable?"
But all other things aren't equal.
As for all that rights stuff, you are free to exercise your rights to make Vista. I'm free to keep telling people not to switch to Vista. In fact it may be my responsibility to do so given I think it's not in their long term interests to do so.
If you see the way they react- focus on shooting the messenger rather than fix the problem, I doubt you should bother spending so much on that game anymore.
There's enough crap like that for "free" in the real world. Why pay some corrupt corp for crap like this?
Well if you can figure out a way to get the seeds to safely travel at near light speeds then 1 year to the seeds could be 100 years or more to us.
The hard part is if you want a way to get the seeds to come back at any chosen time:).
The alternative is of course to send seed batches at 1 year intervals on 100 year round trips. Then after 100 years they keep coming back at 1 year intervals.
Of course if that is possible then, someone could send some popular authors on a trip that lasts a short time for them, but 200 years for everyone else. The authors aren't dead so the copyright lasts a long time.
Uh because it's obviously a stupid way to deploy explosives in a city. I haven't even seen the show (nor intend to ever see it), but its definitely over reaction. Sure they should be fined for littering or whatever it takes to clean up. But all that because stupid people thought it was a bomb? What next? What if some stupid paranoid nut claims your Xbox/Modded PC/flashlight/whatever you left on the library table (while getting a book) or put in the trash/car/etc is a bomb? You willing to get in _big_ trouble for that, just because it's now AOK to overreact to stuff "just to be on the safe side"?
Yeah right like that makes you safer.
A sack or bag can contain a bigger threat than those silly things. Cars, vans, trucks = even better. Fill with explosives. Drive to location. Leave the area. BOOM.
All this overreaction doesn't make you more secure AND they have lots of costs.
This was just as bad as those people kicking up a big fuss over some sikhs wearing turbans.
If anything, widespread ignorance is what makes you guys less safe. If there were fewer ignorant people, the US wouldn't be spending billions and lives in Iraq encouraging more and more people to hate the USA.
I like Windows (Win 95, 2K or WinXP in classic mode) because I can create folders in the start menu and call them stuff like: 1 Explore 2 Tools 4 Command Prompt 7 ssh
Then in the folders I can put more similarly named folders or shortcuts. For example in "1 Explore" I could have 1 Explore Desktop 2 Explore My Documents 3 Explore Home Directory A Explore A C Explore C R Explore CDROM drive
And in "2 Tools" I could have: Calculator Notepad
Then I just press winkey, 1, R = explore CDROM Drive. Or winkey, 2, C = start calculator. And so on.
No need to download and install new software. No need to figure out configuration files- it's a fairly logical extension of the windows start menu behaviour. I can even copy the relevant directories to a new machine to transfer the setup.
At the office I use KDE, and it's ok for some stuff, but I haven't figured out how to do this on KDE.
Win98 sucks because if you press the windows key too early during the boot up/login process you crash something and have to restart again.
Slashdot Mirror
Mrs. Thatcher obviously didn't rely on luck.
I often search for stuff, and then Google lists some very promising searches, with a lot of relevant text in the description, but no cached version available. So I click on the link, and I get a "register/subscribe page" with totally NO SIGN of any of the text that previously appeared. Anyway this happens especially with journals.
I thought Google had a policy that a site was not allowed to show Google one thing and a normal user something else?
Or that policy has "Unless Google is paid off by said site" somewhere?
Anyway, ends up I need to skip all those sites and find a free site/page that deals with a similar topic.
I'd rather Google list sites that I can access for free above the sites which I can't.
I suppose I should go use the other search engines more regularly.
Our lawyers would like to discuss with you further on your unauthorized reproduction of our intellectual property.
In the meantime please be aware that Augmented Genetics Technology Corp owns your first-born (and any of your future progeny).
You should have read the EULA before you got that "super enhancer" DNA treatment.
You swear you never went for that treatment? Yeah right, you must have gone to some Pirate clinic for illegal treatment.
You claim it must have been some viral infection you caught that somehow altered your DNA?
Yeah right, that never happens (even though we do use viruses as part of the treatment to insert the new DNA, the viruses have been crippled and will _never_ spread).
You are assuming that the brain is just one implementation of a computer.
And even if it is true, if it's only true in the way that "The universe is just one implementation of a computer" then I don't think that teaches us that much about the brain/mind (it will still teach us something of course).
Don't get me wrong though, I do agree that computer science and information theory are fundamental sciences.
And I also agree with you that the first AI wouldn't be a model of the brain.
I'm no neuroscientist or computer scientist but I suspect that the first preliminary step towards an AI would be something that automatically makes models of the external world.
Then the next step would be for it to predict. e.g. if it sees a ball moving towards a wall, it should model the situation _faster_than_real_time_ and predict that it will hit the wall. This sort of thing is very useful for simple creatures.
You then work at improving the automatic modelling and prediction stuff. Throw in quantum computers if you want to run "infinite" models in parallel (sounds like that will come in handy eh?) .
Then the next step would be for it to model and predict _itself_ in addition to everything else. Of course it could have already jumped to that stage by then - it's a natural step if it had attempted to model other creatures at any point. Or perhaps the self modelling comes first[1].
Lastly, BEFORE we do all of that, we should ask WHY do we want to do that and whether it's such a good idea in the first place.
We already have plenty of creatures imprisoned at the local pet shop, farms already. If you want to do things faster/better, you could just augment humans or animals.
We've already got billions of imprisoned conscious chickens in the world. They're not smart enough? Conscious != smart. Before we go create something, I think we should ask what are we trying to solve here. If you think it'll be cruel and terrible to implant chicken brains into robots to do stuff, then maybe we shouldn't be creating conscious creatures, we should be aiming for something else. e.g. augmenting humans so that we can control multiple robots easily, recognize stuff faster etc.
I suggest that there are already plenty of brains/minds in the world. We're already having difficulty taking care of the new/existing ones, managing them, putting them to good use etc.
[1] Then again, perhaps the "God modelling" comes first (e.g. YHWH).
I personally think that minds work by creating models of things. And I suspect that consciousness is at least partly due to a mind recursively modelling/simulating itself.
As for quantum consciousness - if quantum computing makes it easier to run many simulations/models in parallel and pick the "best" answer in just "one cycle", then being able to do that would be a big advantage. Whether minds/brains do quantum computing I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it isn't all as simple as "just chemicals + electrical impulses", given even a single white blood cell isn't that stupid for its size.
Even if the brain/mind does use quantum mechanics etc, just saying that still doesn't tell us how.
Uh if you are going to resort to getting an intelligent creature without understanding how it was done, you might as well get one from a petshop.
Sure animals have disadvantages but how sure are you that the AI you get after doing that "evolve it" thing won't have similar disadvantages too?
"It's not Microsoft's initiative to impose DRM on everyone. It's the movie industry and the cable industry."
Really? Did the movie industry foot the bill for Vista's extra DRM features (beyond what's necessary to play HD-DVD)?
After all, I find it hard to believe that Microsoft's customers were actually clamouring for tilt-bits and "forced downgrade of video resolution" stuff.
Oh well, I guess most people won't mind paying for the bullets used to execute them either.
Someone should tell Sun that, after all they even put a very 1990s flaw in their telnetd.
Or are they trying to tell us that their new Solaris is for people who like going "retro"?
Why don't you run another sshd on a different port?
Well if you don't want it to be any smarter then it should actually NOT do reverse DNS lookups by default (which appears to be the default).
I personally don't see why default reverse DNS is such a good idea for sshd. In fact I'd say it's a BAD idea in most cases.
"Once you get outside reasonably trivial and/or small and medium sized websites, you'll find that people generally don't run x86 to serve their pages"
Really? So far many of the top 10 sites use x86 servers. MSN, Google and even Myspace[1]. Wikipedia uses x86 servers. A Baidu press release hints that they use x86 - I'd be surprise if they didn't.
I don't know about Yahoo - I know they have used x86 servers before (FreeBSD + Apache), but my guess is Yahoo could be a more heterogenous network now. I'm still sure they use very many x86 servers.
AFAIK Ebay and Amazon use very very many x86 servers. Ebay does have a few Sun servers.
Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft) use very many x86 servers - if WoW is not 24/7 and real-time transactional enough I don't know what is.
If you need supercomputing, nowadays you can do it with x86 as well (and believe me very many are)- in many cases the expensive interconnects are often the bits that count. But going x86 allows you to get more nodes and interconnects.
Most corp websites are trivial in comparison. If it's a website for the public they'd run out of bandwidth first if their IT people know how to do stuff AND are allowed to. If they have lots of servers it's usually because their IT people don't. And when their IT people don't, that's where expensive consultants sweep in. When you have a company that's clueless, it's in the selfish interest of the expensive consultants to suggest expensive hardware and software, so that their fees look reasonable in comparison, and they have someone big to hide behind if things go belly-up. So that's where stuff like Oracle, SAP and other expensive stuff come in. There are more such companies than clueful ones that somehow are willing to pay and retain expensive consultants/talent to put together free and cheap stuff.
Personally I think in the earlier days a fast x86 was the equivalent of getting a pig to fly by strapping on a rocket. And the other CPUs were eagles in comparison. But nowadays all the eagles and pigs are strapped onto huge rockets, and the rockets are now so big that whether it's a pig or eagle doesn't influence the rocket speed as much.
BUT the faster and cheaper rockets are the x86 ones now. I'd personally have preferred something else to have won, but oh well...
[1] http://computer.howstuffworks.com/myspace1.htm
But "just x86" is not such a limiting choice nowadays.
T1s weren't really much ahead of x86 the day they were launched in terms of performance/watt (if they were even ahead at all). And they fell further behind pretty soon after. Go look at the performance/watt figures (possible keywords: intel opteron sun t1 watts). Go look at the idle/load power consumption of comparable servers. And the performance/watt of Intel and AMD x86 cpus have been getting better every few months. Only in very specific/contrived cases are T1s better in performance than x86s, or even performance/watt. And if any of those cases ever become important enough, AMD and Intel will be right on it.
The competition is so stiff between AMD and Intel, that trashing Sun's SPARC CPUs is now just a "side note" when it happens. Even a few years ago Fujitsu was already making better SPARCs than Sun, what an embarassment that was.
Sun's SPARC offerings are more for those people who have SPARC and need to keep a SPARC upgrade path.
The problem with current copyright laws is that in the future everyone might be able to have that sort of memory for hearing, sight etc. You can also have virtual telepathy. Most of the tech is already available, it's just a matter of cost and making the implants safer and better.
As it is, you'd probably have to have DRM in your brain "add-on", and possibly pay a fee just to remember stuff, and be prohibited from communicating with your friends about certain things.
A penny for your thoughts? That's probably too cheap for the RIAA, MPAA etc.
Heh, they're lucky they weren't in Georgia. Some 17 year old guy got jailed 10 years for "aggravated child molestation" - he had _consensual_ oral sex with a 15 year old girl.
Given that it's generally considered preferable to test drugs on animals before using them on humans, I suggest that we test prospective parents on animals first before they get allowed to bring up children .
;).
They have to successfully bring up a dog or some other pet first. Then a bunch of certifiers come and see if the animal is well-adjusted and doing fine. If not, then they see if it's the fault of the prospective parents.
You'd want a leader who wouldn't make any lasting compromises?
Sure, vote in a Dictator then.
The brain doesn't necessarily work visually. Since blind people still manage somehow :).
;).
And there are lots of more important life affecting problems than visual calculations.
Like whether to go for chocolate or vanilla cake, or both. Or whether this funny smelling stuff should be eaten or not. Or whether I can make it safely up the slope. Or whether I can jump, reach that branch AND it is likely to hold me (this is not just simple visual - since you need to estimate your weight, _current_ strength factoring fatigue, branch strength and a LOT of other things).
Laugh, but really a lot of this has been proven over hundreds and millions of years to be more important than silly math calculations
I actually believe that the brain builds and maintains models of stuff all the time, and uses those - and consciousness is at least partly due to the result of a mind recursively simulating itself. After all its very useful for a creature to model other creatures - knowing what they might do is important, and then when they try to model each other modelling each other etc, things start to get interesting - then you get introspection, better correction of flawed models etc. And that's why I believe many animals (if not most) are conscious/sentient - just would be simpler and easier for them to do what they do.
Nope. Not really like a single gate at all.
You have stuff like a single neuron that fires just for a specific abstract concept. Go search for "Halle Berry" neuron.
So it could be more like billions of neurons watching "Sensory Channel + Stream of Consciousness", going mostly blah and then suddenly you get one little neuron yelling "It's Halle Berry!!!".
Maybe followed by another one yelling "It's on a TV!"
And then some neuron yelling "It's neurons screaming about Halle Berry on TV!".
Then followed by maybe "Change Channel!" or "Pay attention!"... So on and so forth.
I'm no neuroscientist, but that's about what I gather happens and sure looks quite different from logic gates.
More like splitting huge lookup tables into small pieces where each neuron provides an "answer" when it recognizes an "address".
So maybe out of the 100 billion neurons, you have a few hundred million or so dedicated to recognizing very specific things, and a few hundred million recognizing the various sort of
"recognitions", etc etc.
Personally, I find it strange that so many self-proclaimed staunch Christians _blindly_ support whatever Israel (as a nation) does.
I can understand Christians loving Israel and Jews etc. But blind support of their _actions_ and policies is ridiculous given that a look at the Bible (or even just the Torah + the prophets) will tell you that Israel has a track record of mostly doing the wrong things (despite still being God's Chosen).
The meaning of the name Israel should give them a clue. Go figure why God called Israel Israel.
"The law that if Joe User buys an HD-DVD at Wal-Mart and sticks it into his HD-DVD drive on his brand new computer running Vista, it had better work."
Vista adds _extra_ DRM crap that normal HD-DVD players don't have. Go look it up, if you don't know it already (you probably do).
"it[DRM] shows itself to be the massive failure it ultimately is."
Yah, by avoiding Vista, HD-DVD etc where possible.
Unless you're the sort that thinks buying lots of things helps make them "massive failures" in the market place.
"All other things being equal, which is more valuable?"
But all other things aren't equal.
As for all that rights stuff, you are free to exercise your rights to make Vista. I'm free to keep telling people not to switch to Vista. In fact it may be my responsibility to do so given I think it's not in their long term interests to do so.
If you see the way they react- focus on shooting the messenger rather than fix the problem, I doubt you should bother spending so much on that game anymore.
There's enough crap like that for "free" in the real world. Why pay some corrupt corp for crap like this?
Well if you can figure out a way to get the seeds to safely travel at near light speeds then 1 year to the seeds could be 100 years or more to us.
:).
The hard part is if you want a way to get the seeds to come back at any chosen time
The alternative is of course to send seed batches at 1 year intervals on 100 year round trips. Then after 100 years they keep coming back at 1 year intervals.
Of course if that is possible then, someone could send some popular authors on a trip that lasts a short time for them, but 200 years for everyone else. The authors aren't dead so the copyright lasts a long time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
"Mammals such as rats given heavy water to drink die after a week, at a time when their body water approaches about 50% deuteration"
The wiki is not always right tho...
Uh because it's obviously a stupid way to deploy explosives in a city. I haven't even seen the show (nor intend to ever see it), but its definitely over reaction. Sure they should be fined for littering or whatever it takes to clean up. But all that because stupid people thought it was a bomb? What next? What if some stupid paranoid nut claims your Xbox/Modded PC/flashlight/whatever you left on the library table (while getting a book) or put in the trash/car/etc is a bomb? You willing to get in _big_ trouble for that, just because it's now AOK to overreact to stuff "just to be on the safe side"?
Yeah right like that makes you safer.
A sack or bag can contain a bigger threat than those silly things. Cars, vans, trucks = even better. Fill with explosives. Drive to location. Leave the area. BOOM.
All this overreaction doesn't make you more secure AND they have lots of costs.
This was just as bad as those people kicking up a big fuss over some sikhs wearing turbans.
If anything, widespread ignorance is what makes you guys less safe. If there were fewer ignorant people, the US wouldn't be spending billions and lives in Iraq encouraging more and more people to hate the USA.
I like Windows (Win 95, 2K or WinXP in classic mode) because I can create folders in the start menu and call them stuff like:
1 Explore
2 Tools
4 Command Prompt
7 ssh
Then in the folders I can put more similarly named folders or shortcuts. For example in "1 Explore" I could have
1 Explore Desktop
2 Explore My Documents
3 Explore Home Directory
A Explore A
C Explore C
R Explore CDROM drive
And in "2 Tools" I could have:
Calculator
Notepad
Then I just press winkey, 1, R = explore CDROM Drive. Or winkey, 2, C = start calculator. And so on.
No need to download and install new software. No need to figure out configuration files- it's a fairly logical extension of the windows start menu behaviour. I can even copy the relevant directories to a new machine to transfer the setup.
At the office I use KDE, and it's ok for some stuff, but I haven't figured out how to do this on KDE.
Win98 sucks because if you press the windows key too early during the boot up/login process you crash something and have to restart again.