Keep in mind that eternity is a very long time even if you're magically always in your physical and mental prime.
If you're unlucky and the universe density parameter is less than or equal to 1, when the light from the last stars (long dead) stops reaching you, it will be very dark, cold, boring and lonely.
Who knows maybe eventually something might still happen - eternity is after all a very very long time. You might even tear chunks of flesh from yourself to form a new planet/star (assuming you regenerate so you'd always be in your prime).
If the density parameter is more than 1 the nonfun bits might still take up a long time. Nonfun = where you get squashed and superheated.
Eternal life without heaven and "perfection" would be hard to distinguish from hell. Feel free to figure out your own definition of perfection in the context of eternity and what I've mentioned.
Of course if you were one of those highlander types you'd probably get your head chopped off way before then (unless someone resourceful was mean/angry enough to send you naked into a near-sun orbit or on a long journey in space ).
If that helped him win "C" student votes with the expense of some "A" student votes, then he's not so dumb or incompetent as a politician. There are lots more "C" students than "A" students:).
Fact is he got reelected, so he "passed". If Obama doesn't get reelected then Obama fails.
If the person that gets reelected was doing a bad job, then the voters and/or the voting system fails.
Yeah, people should be eating the smaller and younger crustaceans/fish/molluscs not the older fertile ones.
The norm for them for the past few hundred million years is the fertile ones spawn in the thousands/millions and a few survive to fertile adulthood, the rest get eaten or die for other reasons.
You write the code that actually does the queries as stored procedures in the database,
Uh, how would that achieve "database independence" (as the OP etc are talking about)? How would it make it easier to migrate to a 3rd DB?
Using lots of stored procedures would make it even harder to migrate, since you would have to rewrite most of them.
If you're actually suggesting writing X versions of stored procedures just to be able to run on X different DBs that's not solving the migration problem. That's continuously living in the migration problem.
That's like suggesting that people be in both the frying pan and fire just so that moving from one to the other is not more painful;).
Yes I know some C programmers do something analogous for different platforms/architectures but there's a reason why people prefer to use what the C programmers write, rather than write C...
Another reason is because more people are used to other people speaking/writing English badly.
Just look at Slashdot for examples;).
You can speak English incredibly badly and still make your point.
Only if your point is blunt or not subtle. e.g. "me Tarzan you Jane"
A higher standard of English would allow people to say many more (or even multiple) things in interesting (and potentially humorous) ways rather than people assuming that that person said something wrong or not being able to "get it" (whoosh and all that).
But yes English is easier in some ways.
Chinese script is more complex and the tones are a problem for many. So it's likely that even fewer reach "rarefied levels" with it. Spending hours memorizing hundreds or thousands of characters doesn't leave you with as much time to learn to wield them skilfully.
With English you can read a new word, guess how to pronounce/mispronounce it (and maybe misspell it intelligibly later). With Chinese, if you see a new word, you typically need to look up a Chinese dictionary to figure out how to pronounce it. And you need to do a fair bit more memorization to be able to write it so that people know what you are writing later.
Nowadays there's software to help look it up so it's much better, but in the old days you practically had to be a scholar to have the time to do all that.
Much of the geography I studied in school was a waste of time. Names of many countries changed.Top exports of many countries have changed over the years. And the stupid syllabus didn't even teach students how to navigate using maps...
Just learn enough about where the bigger and more powerful countries are so you're not too ignorant. Learn about climate too. But other than that, when you need it you can just look it up on wikipedia, get a guidebook or even free tourist brochure and that'll be all the geography you need.
While the climate might change, it'll still be a safe bet that non-mountainous places near the equator would tend to be warmer than those near the poles.
Are you saying that running a second PC is a significant cost when compared to the cost of oil/gas heating?
I'm not talking about using a PC to heat your home. I'm saying in the big picture it doesn't cost that much despite what the screaming people with kill-a-watt meters say. Their two SUVs probably cost more;).
I just have one real machine running Windows and one real machine running a Linux distro, which serves as a fileserver, VM host for various VMs, and a general "swiss army knife server".
It uses more electricity but in the greater scheme of things it's no big deal compared to stuff like air conditioning (or heating if you're in a cold climate).
The other one is say I'm cruising towards a traffic light junction and it's green for me, so I keep moving (or slow down slighty), and some idiot blows through the red and hits me or I hit him. The resulting collision speed could be quite high.
Whereas if it was a roundabout and the idiot drove into me, unless I'm unlucky it would tend to be a "glancing" blow, or as you said - he would be stopped by the first roundabout he crashed into and so not hit me at the second one;).
if everyone just followed the rules of the road and didn't enter the roundabout until their way was clear
1) Drivers can't always clearly see their exit from their entry point in the roundabout. So they'll just enter when they can. 2) If they don't enter someone else will (good old game theory stuff and all that) and if they keep never entering, they'll be stuck there holding up everyone behind them till rush hour ends:). 3) It might be clear when they start moving, but the other 2 drivers from the other entrances wanting to go to the same exit might also start moving too, then the 3 of them block up the way the other drivers who have entered after them because THEIR way was clear... 3) is unlikely to happen because of 1) and 2), but in the absence of 1) and 2) it's almost inevitable in peak hours (it's just like a smooth traffic flow in peak hour is almost guaranteed to be interrupted by that one selfish/incompetent/insane/unfortunate driver out of 100 and from that point onwards traffic flow will be slow till peak hour ends).
So what happens is they fill up the roundabout whenever there's space to enter, and wait for the car in front to move, if the roundabout is a bit stuck they "inch" about so that eventually a vehicle or two can squeeze out.
In my 3rd world country they work better than traffic lights for low to medium traffic (and they are less likely to fail because of lightning etc), but fail worse than traffic lights for congested traffic conditions.
If the drivers in a roundabout can't leave because of a few drivers who want to get out to one congested exit, it can mean the whole roundabout gets stuck so that even vehicles heading for other exits have to wait till the congested exit clears. This is not necessarily true for traffic light junctions - unless the drivers block the intersection when their exit isn't free - most drivers don't so it usually doesn't fail that badly as often (but we have bad drivers so it still fails so we also have cops manning some traffic light junctions during peak hours;) ), whereas with roundabouts you get in the roundabout and hope for the best. That's why in peak hours some roundabouts end up being controlled by traffic cops in order to make sure they don't get stuck.
So at some congested places roundabouts are being replaced by traffic lights.
But why the heck should voters have to pay for photo ID? Just let people be entitled to a free one once every 4 years (e.g. if you keep losing your photo ID, you either pay for the replacement or you don't vote, I think that's fair).
Or they know they are losing but they prefer to safely keep milking the cow and later BBQ it, than to do something riskier and potentially lose their jobs much faster.
Look how long Nokia took before their recent incident. So there might be plenty of time to live it up before they have to use their golden parachutes.
Of course the open letters don't help this approach...
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind that eternity is a very long time even if you're magically always in your physical and mental prime.
If you're unlucky and the universe density parameter is less than or equal to 1, when the light from the last stars (long dead) stops reaching you, it will be very dark, cold, boring and lonely.
Who knows maybe eventually something might still happen - eternity is after all a very very long time. You might even tear chunks of flesh from yourself to form a new planet/star (assuming you regenerate so you'd always be in your prime).
If the density parameter is more than 1 the nonfun bits might still take up a long time. Nonfun = where you get squashed and superheated.
Eternal life without heaven and "perfection" would be hard to distinguish from hell. Feel free to figure out your own definition of perfection in the context of eternity and what I've mentioned.
Of course if you were one of those highlander types you'd probably get your head chopped off way before then (unless someone resourceful was mean/angry enough to send you naked into a near-sun orbit or on a long journey in space ).
If that helped him win "C" student votes with the expense of some "A" student votes, then he's not so dumb or incompetent as a politician. There are lots more "C" students than "A" students :).
Fact is he got reelected, so he "passed". If Obama doesn't get reelected then Obama fails.
If the person that gets reelected was doing a bad job, then the voters and/or the voting system fails.
Yeah, people should be eating the smaller and younger crustaceans/fish/molluscs not the older fertile ones.
The norm for them for the past few hundred million years is the fertile ones spawn in the thousands/millions and a few survive to fertile adulthood, the rest get eaten or die for other reasons.
Us eating the big ones is messing things up.
You write the code that actually does the queries as stored procedures in the database,
Uh, how would that achieve "database independence" (as the OP etc are talking about)? How would it make it easier to migrate to a 3rd DB?
Using lots of stored procedures would make it even harder to migrate, since you would have to rewrite most of them.
If you're actually suggesting writing X versions of stored procedures just to be able to run on X different DBs that's not solving the migration problem. That's continuously living in the migration problem.
That's like suggesting that people be in both the frying pan and fire just so that moving from one to the other is not more painful ;).
Yes I know some C programmers do something analogous for different platforms/architectures but there's a reason why people prefer to use what the C programmers write, rather than write C...
Another reason is because more people are used to other people speaking/writing English badly.
Just look at Slashdot for examples ;).
You can speak English incredibly badly and still make your point.
Only if your point is blunt or not subtle. e.g. "me Tarzan you Jane"
A higher standard of English would allow people to say many more (or even multiple) things in interesting (and potentially humorous) ways rather than people assuming that that person said something wrong or not being able to "get it" (whoosh and all that).
But yes English is easier in some ways.
Chinese script is more complex and the tones are a problem for many. So it's likely that even fewer reach "rarefied levels" with it. Spending hours memorizing hundreds or thousands of characters doesn't leave you with as much time to learn to wield them skilfully.
With English you can read a new word, guess how to pronounce/mispronounce it (and maybe misspell it intelligibly later). With Chinese, if you see a new word, you typically need to look up a Chinese dictionary to figure out how to pronounce it. And you need to do a fair bit more memorization to be able to write it so that people know what you are writing later.
Nowadays there's software to help look it up so it's much better, but in the old days you practically had to be a scholar to have the time to do all that.
Much of the geography I studied in school was a waste of time. Names of many countries changed.Top exports of many countries have changed over the years. And the stupid syllabus didn't even teach students how to navigate using maps...
Just learn enough about where the bigger and more powerful countries are so you're not too ignorant. Learn about climate too. But other than that, when you need it you can just look it up on wikipedia, get a guidebook or even free tourist brochure and that'll be all the geography you need.
While the climate might change, it'll still be a safe bet that non-mountainous places near the equator would tend to be warmer than those near the poles.
Are you saying that running a second PC is a significant cost when compared to the cost of oil/gas heating?
;).
I'm not talking about using a PC to heat your home. I'm saying in the big picture it doesn't cost that much despite what the screaming people with kill-a-watt meters say. Their two SUVs probably cost more
I just have one real machine running Windows and one real machine running a Linux distro, which serves as a fileserver, VM host for various VMs, and a general "swiss army knife server".
It uses more electricity but in the greater scheme of things it's no big deal compared to stuff like air conditioning (or heating if you're in a cold climate).
It's called discretion.
But not every 10 year old knows it. Nor many alleged adults either.
Some years ago I did see BTU used for gas.
And seems it's still used in some areas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therm
For most roundabouts I've seen and used[1], the idiot's approach would not be 90 degrees to my car.
So it would be a glancing blow compared to the "cross road style" traffic light intersection.
[1] Other than the miniature ones that are basically a little mound in the middle of an intersection.
The other one is say I'm cruising towards a traffic light junction and it's green for me, so I keep moving (or slow down slighty), and some idiot blows through the red and hits me or I hit him. The resulting collision speed could be quite high.
;).
Whereas if it was a roundabout and the idiot drove into me, unless I'm unlucky it would tend to be a "glancing" blow, or as you said - he would be stopped by the first roundabout he crashed into and so not hit me at the second one
if everyone just followed the rules of the road and didn't enter the roundabout until their way was clear
:).
1) Drivers can't always clearly see their exit from their entry point in the roundabout. So they'll just enter when they can.
2) If they don't enter someone else will (good old game theory stuff and all that) and if they keep never entering, they'll be stuck there holding up everyone behind them till rush hour ends
3) It might be clear when they start moving, but the other 2 drivers from the other entrances wanting to go to the same exit might also start moving too, then the 3 of them block up the way the other drivers who have entered after them because THEIR way was clear... 3) is unlikely to happen because of 1) and 2), but in the absence of 1) and 2) it's almost inevitable in peak hours (it's just like a smooth traffic flow in peak hour is almost guaranteed to be interrupted by that one selfish/incompetent/insane/unfortunate driver out of 100 and from that point onwards traffic flow will be slow till peak hour ends).
So what happens is they fill up the roundabout whenever there's space to enter, and wait for the car in front to move, if the roundabout is a bit stuck they "inch" about so that eventually a vehicle or two can squeeze out.
It also defeats the rest of his post ;). And I basically said the same thing with my last line of my OP.
In my 3rd world country they work better than traffic lights for low to medium traffic (and they are less likely to fail because of lightning etc), but fail worse than traffic lights for congested traffic conditions.
;) ), whereas with roundabouts you get in the roundabout and hope for the best. That's why in peak hours some roundabouts end up being controlled by traffic cops in order to make sure they don't get stuck.
If the drivers in a roundabout can't leave because of a few drivers who want to get out to one congested exit, it can mean the whole roundabout gets stuck so that even vehicles heading for other exits have to wait till the congested exit clears. This is not necessarily true for traffic light junctions - unless the drivers block the intersection when their exit isn't free - most drivers don't so it usually doesn't fail that badly as often (but we have bad drivers so it still fails so we also have cops manning some traffic light junctions during peak hours
So at some congested places roundabouts are being replaced by traffic lights.
But why the heck should voters have to pay for photo ID? Just let people be entitled to a free one once every 4 years (e.g. if you keep losing your photo ID, you either pay for the replacement or you don't vote, I think that's fair).
USD16 or USD20 * 300 million is only 5-6 billion bucks. And that's assuming the cost is 20 bucks (might be more or less depending on how inefficient the system is). The USA has blown away way more than that:
http://costofwar.com/en/
http://www.google.com/search?q=federal+reserve+trillions
The USA is willing to spend trillions picking governments in other countries, but not willing to spend a few billions in picking its own government.
Go figure what the real problem is.
Where is the hydrogen going to come from? Or the energy to generate it?
Hopefully it works better than it does for late stage patients:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sipuleucel-T#Survival_benefit
4-5 extra months for USD100K doesn't sound that good to me.
Do you really think that any other company wouldn't (doesn't) do the same thing?
The difference is not many other companies use "Don't be evil" as part of their semi-official code of conduct: http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html
Or they know they are losing but they prefer to safely keep milking the cow and later BBQ it, than to do something riskier and potentially lose their jobs much faster.
Look how long Nokia took before their recent incident. So there might be plenty of time to live it up before they have to use their golden parachutes.
Of course the open letters don't help this approach...
Make War not Love!
:)
War on Drugs!
War on Terror!
War on Crime!
War on Poverty!
Bear arms but don't bare breasts!
Because most of the very smart people are more interested in doing other things?
Couldn't you just replace TSA with Federal Government in that story?
Couldn't you all vote to replace the Federal Government if you all really disliked it so much?
Hmm are you tempting him to do it again with "vinyl"? ;)
You're probably not Facebook's customer either.
You're what Facebook sells to their customers.