So how is corporate welfare for small innovative companies any different than corporate welfare for big traditional companies? If Tesla motors suddenly was handed the "manufacturing infrastructure" of "Ford, Chrysler, and GM", they would, in order to be able to manage it, need to incorporate the management structure of Ford, Chrysler and GM too. Which would mean that the plan failed.
While you make a good point, there's another reason to blame the victim here. The nigerian scam is basically asking you to participate in a money laundering scheme, for your own personal profit. Had it not been a scam, it would have been illegal. The "victims" deserve what they get, and in my opinion should be prosecuted for attempted money laundering as well.
Why don't you say the same thing about Muslims and Buddhists? Afraid they might blow you up or sit on you?:-/
Another good reason would be that most religious people he/she knows personally, are christians. While all religions are silly, the fact that well-educated people who grew up in a secular western society still prefer self-delusion to truth, is more puzzling than that somebody less fortunate choose so. After all, humans have had religion since early prehistoric times, and unless you get some proper education, it's unlikely that you'd stop right now.
Maybe if you stopped your stupid stereotyping of religions and actually looked into any of them, you'd be surprised. But you won't do that
Most atheists know more about religion than most religious people. Which is why most people who don't give it much thought end up as religious. I am atheist because I've studied various religions, and have discovered that they are all bullshit!
I bet you'd never expect that from a Christian, would you
I still haven't heard of a church that wants married couples to avoid sex. I don't get it, do you believe christians shouldn't have kids either?
I've got a crap load of skepticism, and I for one, don't find anything scientific that satisfactorily explains how all this got here. I'm not saying that any particular religion has a better explanation, either, because there are serious holes in a lot of those, too.
I don't have a satisfactory explanation either. That doesn't mean I will accept a claim that it was all created by some supernatural being(s). As a matter of fact, I don't understand the financial crisis either, but I certainly don't blame God for it.
But you really need to start thinking for yourself, rather than mudslinging.
I'm sure the grandparent poster is capable of thinking for himself. He is even telling exactly why religions is not thinking for oneself. This is not mudslinging, and there's no reason to stop doing it.
Because "man" means "man", not "biped", "bird", "kangaroo", or "dinosaur". You could just as well question why people assume the standard meaning of any other word or phrase in the bible. Why not interpret "created" as "having sex with for the first time", and "God" as "Lola"?
That way "On the sixth day God created man" could be interpreted as "On the sixth day Lola had sex with kangaroos for the first time".
Huh? You didn't get instructions first time you voted?
Ok, maybe the instructions weren't given to you in written form, but I'm sure there was a written text somewhere explaining some people how to explain it to new voters.
Anything you haven't done before is hard. Anything you've done earlier enough times, is easy.
Huh? I've never seen an ATM do this. ATMs return the card first, then the money, and lastly the receipt. This is to avoid people forgetting their card in the machine. Since people are less likely to forget their money, this system works well.
People that live where it snows use tire chains, not some sort of "rock the wheels" technique. If you are driving a ford focus in the snow without tire chains, you have bigger things to worry about than the ability to turn traction control off.
I live in Norway. We have snow. Lots of it. Snow tires are mandatory during winter. But very few Norwegians even own a set of tire chains. They can't be used at high speed, they are noisy, they damage the road, and probably also the car after a while (especially newer cars who don't have enough space around the wheels to safely use them), and they are a hassle to put on and off. And we certainly use the "rock the wheels" technique, whenever we are in lots of snow, typically such as when the snow plow has made certain our parked car is buried in snow. And hey, Ford Focus and similar models from other manufacturers are fairly common here.
Typically, if you are stuck in snow, you would try to get loose by doing these things in this order
"Rock the wheels" technique
Ask someone to help push the car over the obstacle
Try to put something that gives traction on the ground in front of the wheels, such as sand, the rubber foot mats in the backseat, a towel, or something similar
Dig away some snow with a shovel
Ask some passing car to help pull you out with a rope
Call for help from a car rescue service
Tire chains is typically not on the list, although "quick chains" and "tire socks" (made out of some sort of fabric) which are used only for a short distances (typically a few meters) is somewhat common if you live in a more rural area and have this problem every morning. In which case you could put them in as an alternative in step 3. Or simply buy a 4x4, which for some strange reason also tends to work better in the snow. Oh yeah, trailers sometimes use tire chains. But that's different from driving a normal car anyway.
Perhaps the crackpots behind all those snake oil claims actually had a good idea, but lacked the scientific and engineering prowess to actually make it work? And now someone who does has actually done it now?
Perhaps the moon is made of yellow cheese. It's just that when NASA landed, they didn't dig deep enough into the dust. And know someone did.
After all, how many of the hi-tech items we have now came from the minds of sci-fi writers who inspired future engineers to make it happen?
Let's see? CD-players? No. Microwave ovens? No. Computer GUIs? No. Multistage rockets? No. SMS messaging? No. Ok, this doesn't look too good. Let's try the other way, what technologies are predicted by scifi? time machines, space colonization, artificial intelligence, laser hand weapons, universal translators, guns that fire people safely to the moon, etc... Oops. Doesn't look that good either. I think we can conclude that most of the time, when science "imitates" scifi, it's either due to luck, coincidence, or because the scifi author limited himself to very small steps beyond current technology.
Tao appropriately demonstrated that a) application of an electric field does in fact reduce fuel droplet size
Translation: Tao claims that an electric field reduces fuel droplet size. Nowhere in the article do I find anything that indicates he actually demonstrated it. And most likely the claim is bogus. Gasoline isn't polar, and shouldn't react to an electric field. Nor should an electric field in a fluid continue to have any effect after the fluid has passed through it.
and b) there is significantly increased efficiency in laboratory measured horsepower
Again, I failed to see this claim in the article. In fact, the only experiment mentioned in the article consists of driving around for six months in a Mercedez Benz with no control group.
Tao provides a theoretical framework for explaining the results. The purpose of this paper was not to demonstrate that you get better driving mileage but that a reproducible effect exists at all.
Which paper? It is not listed on his faculty page. The article doesn't even suggest that such a paper exists, or that such an effect has been demonstrated.
With results this strong, any scientist or engineer worth his salt would then slap one in a car and see what happens; he did this and reported on it.
Which results? All I can see is that he slapped it in some car. Which proves nothing.
At no point does he claim that everyone using this device would see similar benefits. That is the subject of another study once the basic parameters for producing the effect (field strength and time duration) are established, which Tao points out have NOT been completely evaluated.
I see. This is the new kind of science, where you start by claiming the results you want as fact, and only much later conducts even a simple experiment.
Saying double blind studies are necessary at this point merely reflects your lack of understanding of the scientific method, research design and reporting. You are in fact free to obtain the funding to perform the double blind study yourself if you feel it's necessary. With research results as strong as Tao is presenting, you could be confident that your study would yield positive results.
Right. When you are a strong believer, you don't need science, or scientific rigority. All you need is a strong belief. Basically you are telling me that this device is based on faith, not science. I prefer science.
There are easier and more reproducible ways of measuring fuel efficiency than to drive around in a Mercedez-Benz (although I like driving a MB too...). One would be to hook up an engine to do a certain predefined amount of work (such as pump a predefined amount of water from a predefined height to another predefined height), and measure the fuel usage with and without the device, at different RPMs, etc... Those numbers would be much more useful for development, and also much more convincing when presented as a sales argument.
Choosing an "experiment" as ill-defined as driving around for six months in a car, is not particularly scientific, reproducible, or convincing. On the other hand, it is very likely to convince gullible people who would happily go along with any scam, as long as they thought it would save them some money. You, of course, are one of them.
Seriously folks, the guy isn't trying to sell you his device or asking you to invest in his company.
Actually, he has already sold the idea to some poor suckers. From the article: "a patent on this technology, which has been licensed to California-based Save The World Air Inc.", and further down: "According to Joe Dell, vice president of marketing for STWA, the company is currently working with a trucking company near Reading, Pa., to test the device on diesel-powered trucks". And all this without a single reproducible experiment, nor a plausible explanation for why it should work even in theory... I rest my case. This is definitely a scam.
It's far more likely that the person who wrote the code, wrote exactly what the specification said. When he asked why they didn't go for something more secure, he was told not to worry about it. The supervisors were promoted, since the project finished in less than double the time estimate. And nobody is banging their head against the wall, since they all knew this would happen sooner or later.
In any case, DRM without "trusted" computing, is security by obscurity, and even the top-level management have figured that out years ago.
Opcodes? You can't seriously expect to understand how to optimize if you limit yourself to opcodes. Unless you can predict which ALU and at which step in the pipeline, the adding of the address and offset of the memory operand of a given opcode happens, you are doomed to poor performance.
Humans have always believed that death is not the end of life. Transhumanism is merely a variation of this, just like reincarnation, heaven, nirvana, ghosts, spirits, etc... AI, uploading, and similar technologies, is fiction. Sure, I find it more likely that we one day will master uploading, then that we one day will find ourself knocking at the door of St. Peter, but both ideas are still just wishful thinking.
If we get speech recognition down and that's what everyone uses 20 years from now, some of the UNIX filenames need to be renamed or the entire structure changed.
Seriously? Why? Do we need to change the spelling of english words as well? I mean, words like "enough" should use "f" not "gh", right?
But for the sake of argument, let's assume I agree that linux filesystem names and structure need to change. Why do we need to replace linux, just because some filenames are "wrong"? Do you seriously believe that it's easier to rewrite an entire operating system from scratch, than it is to rename a few files?
And sure, Linux will be usable in the same way that Windows is usable: using a legacy system to deal with today's technology.
Bah? What's your alternative? An OS needs to provide certain services to user-space programs. Both linux and windows offer mostly the same things: protected memory, multitasking, interprocess communication, networking, a global file-system, and lots of lots of device drivers. Unless your idea of a "new OS" deviates a lot from that, there's no reason to replace either with anything else. Linux (and unix) can adapt, and has done so many times in the past. Windows can adapt too, and today runs on everything from cell-phones to servers, just like linux (although linux currently scales better to bigger iron, such as supercomputers, clusters, etc...)
So lets hear it. There are lots of interesting ideas being thrown away as soon as someone in the OS research arena has written a thesis about it. Which one of those pet ideas do you think are so good that linux and windows will need to be obsoleted?
You are confusing two terms here. The two sides of the spectrum are theist and atheist. A strong theist would be an "active believer", e.g. a 100% convinced evangelical christian. A strong atheist would also be an "active disbeliever", someone who wouldn't believe in God even he announced himself. Both position are pretty rare, and it is as unfair for christians to assume most atheists are strong atheists, as it is for atheists to assume most christians are 100% convinced evangelical christians.
Agnosticism refers to strength of belief. For example, an agnostic theist doesn't claim to know that God exists, but still believes in it. An agnostic atheist is similar. Most people who would refer to them selves as theists (believers) or atheists (non-believers) would fall into one of these categories. Some people are strong agnosticists too, they believe the question of Gods existence is fundamentally unknowable. A weak agnosticist believes the question is unknowable now, but future evidence might help. And so on, people have discussed this for so long, that every position you can have, already have a name!
Anyway, very few people are actually agnosticists, sitting straight in the middle of choosing between reason and superstition. It is more useful to view agnosticist as a qualifier of the strength of you (non)belief, than as a position by itself.
I just don't get how people are stupid enough to fall for #1. A check is just a piece of paper until it's cashed. Offer to void it and send it back to them through the mail.
It is stupid to fall for #1, but it's not dishonest. And a lot of people really are not very smart. Or they have too positive a view of humanity to distrust someone who makes such a reasonable request.
It is dishonest. An honest person would throw the cheque away. Why would you even bother cashing the cheque if it wasn't your money? The only reason would be greed. Only people who want "something for nothing" are going to go for this kind of fraud. Exactly the same people who fall for the nigerian scam.
Where is the "positive view of humanity" in someone who is so greedy that they'd rather cash in $500 just because someone erroneously sent them a cheque, instead of just tearing it apart? I would describe such a person as "selfish" and "greedy", not "nice".
Make legislation that outlines procedures for handling privacy data that will be mandatory to follow
Make everyone handling privacy data require a certificate that proves they are licensed to do so
Make it illegal for somone to hire an unlicensed person to handle privacy data
Make it mandatory to document whatever you do to privacy data in paper documents or electronic equivalents
Enable a government bureau to periodically control these documents to see that procedures are followed
And also to periodically do other kinds of tests, to test security procedures, e.g. "social engineering tests"
Besides, I don't think it's "humanly" possible to transport this amount of information with absolutely no spillage at all.
Sure it is. You need proper procedures and regulations. Sure, if you put it on a laptop or memory-stick, and let your employees carry it around without any oversight, accidents will happen. But if you treat the information as valuables, all will be fine. Money-transports don't usually go around losing money.
The trouble is that there is no real accountability for losing data. If someone loses 4 million euros, they know somebody will be pretty unhappy. But losing the private records of 400 people, which given todays identity-theft-plagued society could easily result in damages of 4 million euros, is somehow not taken as seriously.
Well, sure, that's not bad....but I still question your analogy for 'atheist'. Perhaps it's just not a good analogy. It seems to ignore the active disbelieve or the belief in the non-existence of deity. I mean, a rose doesn't collect stamps either.
Different atheists might have different reasons and motives for being atheists. But "active disbelief" is a very strange term that can only come from somebody who is a theist. I not longer "actively disbelieve" the existence of God, than I "actively disbelieve" the existence of the tooth fairy, or the existence of santa Claus. I simply don't believe in God because I have found no evidence to suggest that God exists, apart from people claiming so, with no evidence themselves. If no-one had told me about God, I would still be an atheist, even if I wasn't "actively disbelieving" in him.
My point is: atheism is the default position. Only people who have been told about God, believe in it. Theism is an artifact of human society. But luckily, even if you are told about God, you don't have to suspend all disbelief at once. Even in our religious and superstitious society, some people prefer to use reason and sound judgement instead of superstition and group-think. Thus atheism still remains. And the rose certainly doesn't collect stamps, nor is it a theist
I don't have but a 2 seater sports car. I can't fit an old Sun 21" crt int he trunk, and while it might barely fit in the front seat...I'm not gonna lug that thing in there risking tearing my seats and scratching up my dash and door.
Don't you have friends that own bigger cars? How did you manage to get the fucking thing into your house? Or was that monitor already inside the house when you bought it? And what do you intend to do with it now then? Just leave it in the street? Stop complaining, and grow a fucking spine!
I'm not gonna collect cans and bottles in trash bags either to spend my few hours off on the weekends to haul all over town to where ever a recycle center is...
I very much agree with you. While I'm happy to do some recycling if it's convenient for me, I'm not looking for a new hobby, or a new way of wasting time. If the city haven't made it convenient for you to recycle, it probably means that it's not that important for them that you are recycling.
It's all about inertia, isn't it? When not moving, it's easier to let the junk remain at rest, but when it comes time to move, it's easier to toss it.
Only to a certain point. If you stay at the same place too long, you will eventually accumulate enough junk that you have trouble moving around inside parts of your house. The moment you stop washing behind your tech-equipment because you simply have accumulated too much of it for you to bother moving it away when washing, it's either time to falsify your inertia-theory, or move somewhere else...
It's a good idea. It would be even better implemented if the List-Unsubscribe header were to be checked even when the spam button is clicked, querying the user if unsubscribing is really what they intended. The spam button doesn't need to be very convenient.
This is a most silly idea. Perhaps the silliest ever. The SPAM button HAS to be convenient. There's no way I as a user would accept a mail client where I'd have to jump through hoops to mark something as spam.
Furthermore, just about all spam I receive includes a way to "unsubscribe". The trouble is, these "unsubscribe"-links marks my address as active at the spammer, which means he can now list my address as "verified" the next time he sells an email-address CD to other spammers. So in other words, making "unsubscribing" from email easier by adding support for it in the MUA is simply a recipe for even more spam.
The only way to fix this is for Yahoo to revise their policy, either by increasing the threshold for publicly marked spam well above 20%, or by actually doing something when people complain. Remember, it's Yahoo who has done something wrong here, they made the policy, not their users. Alternatively, their users need to move elsewhere.
I disagree. First I disagree that this discussion is about finding "TEH BEST!!!!" design. It was about developing free software whose usability sucks less. Secondly, I disagree that discussing how free software can suck less in terms of usability is stupid. Thirdly, I disagree with your notion that nothing is absolute in this world.
Most free software suck. But that's ok, because most everything else suck as well. But when it comes to usability, free software generally sucks more than non-free software suck. This, I think, is a problem. While we will never have "TEH BEST" interface, we can certainly improve them. And most certainly, some of these changes will be better, objectively better, unless of course your purpose is to confuse and alienate users. So yeah, maybe you're right, there's nothing absolute in this world.
It's not so much anti-science as it is pro-electric-universe, which is a theory favoured by a bunch of kooks.
Yep. A bunch of kooks called "electrical engineers".
Even if some electric universe proponents are electrical engineers, they are called kooks for a reason. But most are just kooks. Anyway, I would rather learn about electrical engineering from electrical engineers, and cosmology from cosmologists.
Electric universe-proponents are not interested in science. What they are interested in is to prove that there exists a conspiracy against them, by established scientists. Which is true. Established scientists dislike people who lie.
What I see in the electric universe detractors is the blatant technique of IGNORING the connection between electric current and magnetism.
Ridiculous. People who care enough about science to bother ridiculing electric universe proponents generally know about "F=qv x B".
As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle
That might be the usual case when rational people debate things for which no objective solution can be found, such as whether it's best to be purely communist, or purely free-market idealist. In science however, we have objective truth. Either you are right, or you are wrong. And most of the time, the kooks are wrong. Especially when they spend more of their time complaining about conspiracies against them than creating useful theories.
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So how is corporate welfare for small innovative companies any different than corporate welfare for big traditional companies? If Tesla motors suddenly was handed the "manufacturing infrastructure" of "Ford, Chrysler, and GM", they would, in order to be able to manage it, need to incorporate the management structure of Ford, Chrysler and GM too. Which would mean that the plan failed.
While you make a good point, there's another reason to blame the victim here. The nigerian scam is basically asking you to participate in a money laundering scheme, for your own personal profit. Had it not been a scam, it would have been illegal. The "victims" deserve what they get, and in my opinion should be prosecuted for attempted money laundering as well.
Another good reason would be that most religious people he/she knows personally, are christians. While all religions are silly, the fact that well-educated people who grew up in a secular western society still prefer self-delusion to truth, is more puzzling than that somebody less fortunate choose so. After all, humans have had religion since early prehistoric times, and unless you get some proper education, it's unlikely that you'd stop right now.
Most atheists know more about religion than most religious people. Which is why most people who don't give it much thought end up as religious. I am atheist because I've studied various religions, and have discovered that they are all bullshit!
I still haven't heard of a church that wants married couples to avoid sex. I don't get it, do you believe christians shouldn't have kids either?
I don't have a satisfactory explanation either. That doesn't mean I will accept a claim that it was all created by some supernatural being(s). As a matter of fact, I don't understand the financial crisis either, but I certainly don't blame God for it.
I'm sure the grandparent poster is capable of thinking for himself. He is even telling exactly why religions is not thinking for oneself. This is not mudslinging, and there's no reason to stop doing it.
That way "On the sixth day God created man" could be interpreted as "On the sixth day Lola had sex with kangaroos for the first time".
Huh? You didn't get instructions first time you voted?
Ok, maybe the instructions weren't given to you in written form, but I'm sure there was a written text somewhere explaining some people how to explain it to new voters.
Anything you haven't done before is hard. Anything you've done earlier enough times, is easy.
Huh? I've never seen an ATM do this. ATMs return the card first, then the money, and lastly the receipt. This is to avoid people forgetting their card in the machine. Since people are less likely to forget their money, this system works well.
Yeah, I bet that told them off!
Who cares? Put the text into a picture. Now you can use both ideas.
I live in Norway. We have snow. Lots of it. Snow tires are mandatory during winter. But very few Norwegians even own a set of tire chains. They can't be used at high speed, they are noisy, they damage the road, and probably also the car after a while (especially newer cars who don't have enough space around the wheels to safely use them), and they are a hassle to put on and off. And we certainly use the "rock the wheels" technique, whenever we are in lots of snow, typically such as when the snow plow has made certain our parked car is buried in snow. And hey, Ford Focus and similar models from other manufacturers are fairly common here.
Typically, if you are stuck in snow, you would try to get loose by doing these things in this order
Tire chains is typically not on the list, although "quick chains" and "tire socks" (made out of some sort of fabric) which are used only for a short distances (typically a few meters) is somewhat common if you live in a more rural area and have this problem every morning. In which case you could put them in as an alternative in step 3. Or simply buy a 4x4, which for some strange reason also tends to work better in the snow. Oh yeah, trailers sometimes use tire chains. But that's different from driving a normal car anyway.
Perhaps the moon is made of yellow cheese. It's just that when NASA landed, they didn't dig deep enough into the dust. And know someone did.
Let's see? CD-players? No. Microwave ovens? No. Computer GUIs? No. Multistage rockets? No. SMS messaging? No. Ok, this doesn't look too good. Let's try the other way, what technologies are predicted by scifi? time machines, space colonization, artificial intelligence, laser hand weapons, universal translators, guns that fire people safely to the moon, etc... Oops. Doesn't look that good either. I think we can conclude that most of the time, when science "imitates" scifi, it's either due to luck, coincidence, or because the scifi author limited himself to very small steps beyond current technology.
Translation: Tao claims that an electric field reduces fuel droplet size. Nowhere in the article do I find anything that indicates he actually demonstrated it. And most likely the claim is bogus. Gasoline isn't polar, and shouldn't react to an electric field. Nor should an electric field in a fluid continue to have any effect after the fluid has passed through it.
Again, I failed to see this claim in the article. In fact, the only experiment mentioned in the article consists of driving around for six months in a Mercedez Benz with no control group.
Which paper? It is not listed on his faculty page. The article doesn't even suggest that such a paper exists, or that such an effect has been demonstrated.
Which results? All I can see is that he slapped it in some car. Which proves nothing.
I see. This is the new kind of science, where you start by claiming the results you want as fact, and only much later conducts even a simple experiment.
Right. When you are a strong believer, you don't need science, or scientific rigority. All you need is a strong belief. Basically you are telling me that this device is based on faith, not science. I prefer science.
There are easier and more reproducible ways of measuring fuel efficiency than to drive around in a Mercedez-Benz (although I like driving a MB too...). One would be to hook up an engine to do a certain predefined amount of work (such as pump a predefined amount of water from a predefined height to another predefined height), and measure the fuel usage with and without the device, at different RPMs, etc... Those numbers would be much more useful for development, and also much more convincing when presented as a sales argument.
Choosing an "experiment" as ill-defined as driving around for six months in a car, is not particularly scientific, reproducible, or convincing. On the other hand, it is very likely to convince gullible people who would happily go along with any scam, as long as they thought it would save them some money. You, of course, are one of them.
Actually, he has already sold the idea to some poor suckers. From the article: "a patent on this technology, which has been licensed to California-based Save The World Air Inc.", and further down: "According to Joe Dell, vice president of marketing for STWA, the company is currently working with a trucking company near Reading, Pa., to test the device on diesel-powered trucks". And all this without a single reproducible experiment, nor a plausible explanation for why it should work even in theory... I rest my case. This is definitely a scam.
It's far more likely that the person who wrote the code, wrote exactly what the specification said. When he asked why they didn't go for something more secure, he was told not to worry about it. The supervisors were promoted, since the project finished in less than double the time estimate. And nobody is banging their head against the wall, since they all knew this would happen sooner or later.
In any case, DRM without "trusted" computing, is security by obscurity, and even the top-level management have figured that out years ago.
Opcodes? You can't seriously expect to understand how to optimize if you limit yourself to opcodes. Unless you can predict which ALU and at which step in the pipeline, the adding of the address and offset of the memory operand of a given opcode happens, you are doomed to poor performance.
Humans have always believed that death is not the end of life. Transhumanism is merely a variation of this, just like reincarnation, heaven, nirvana, ghosts, spirits, etc... AI, uploading, and similar technologies, is fiction. Sure, I find it more likely that we one day will master uploading, then that we one day will find ourself knocking at the door of St. Peter, but both ideas are still just wishful thinking.
Seriously? Why? Do we need to change the spelling of english words as well? I mean, words like "enough" should use "f" not "gh", right?
But for the sake of argument, let's assume I agree that linux filesystem names and structure need to change. Why do we need to replace linux, just because some filenames are "wrong"? Do you seriously believe that it's easier to rewrite an entire operating system from scratch, than it is to rename a few files?
Bah? What's your alternative? An OS needs to provide certain services to user-space programs. Both linux and windows offer mostly the same things: protected memory, multitasking, interprocess communication, networking, a global file-system, and lots of lots of device drivers. Unless your idea of a "new OS" deviates a lot from that, there's no reason to replace either with anything else. Linux (and unix) can adapt, and has done so many times in the past. Windows can adapt too, and today runs on everything from cell-phones to servers, just like linux (although linux currently scales better to bigger iron, such as supercomputers, clusters, etc...)
So lets hear it. There are lots of interesting ideas being thrown away as soon as someone in the OS research arena has written a thesis about it. Which one of those pet ideas do you think are so good that linux and windows will need to be obsoleted?
You are confusing two terms here. The two sides of the spectrum are theist and atheist. A strong theist would be an "active believer", e.g. a 100% convinced evangelical christian. A strong atheist would also be an "active disbeliever", someone who wouldn't believe in God even he announced himself. Both position are pretty rare, and it is as unfair for christians to assume most atheists are strong atheists, as it is for atheists to assume most christians are 100% convinced evangelical christians.
Agnosticism refers to strength of belief. For example, an agnostic theist doesn't claim to know that God exists, but still believes in it. An agnostic atheist is similar. Most people who would refer to them selves as theists (believers) or atheists (non-believers) would fall into one of these categories. Some people are strong agnosticists too, they believe the question of Gods existence is fundamentally unknowable. A weak agnosticist believes the question is unknowable now, but future evidence might help. And so on, people have discussed this for so long, that every position you can have, already have a name!
Anyway, very few people are actually agnosticists, sitting straight in the middle of choosing between reason and superstition. It is more useful to view agnosticist as a qualifier of the strength of you (non)belief, than as a position by itself.
It is dishonest. An honest person would throw the cheque away. Why would you even bother cashing the cheque if it wasn't your money? The only reason would be greed. Only people who want "something for nothing" are going to go for this kind of fraud. Exactly the same people who fall for the nigerian scam.
Where is the "positive view of humanity" in someone who is so greedy that they'd rather cash in $500 just because someone erroneously sent them a cheque, instead of just tearing it apart? I would describe such a person as "selfish" and "greedy", not "nice".
One suggestion would be to
Sure it is. You need proper procedures and regulations. Sure, if you put it on a laptop or memory-stick, and let your employees carry it around without any oversight, accidents will happen. But if you treat the information as valuables, all will be fine. Money-transports don't usually go around losing money.
The trouble is that there is no real accountability for losing data. If someone loses 4 million euros, they know somebody will be pretty unhappy. But losing the private records of 400 people, which given todays identity-theft-plagued society could easily result in damages of 4 million euros, is somehow not taken as seriously.
Different atheists might have different reasons and motives for being atheists. But "active disbelief" is a very strange term that can only come from somebody who is a theist. I not longer "actively disbelieve" the existence of God, than I "actively disbelieve" the existence of the tooth fairy, or the existence of santa Claus. I simply don't believe in God because I have found no evidence to suggest that God exists, apart from people claiming so, with no evidence themselves. If no-one had told me about God, I would still be an atheist, even if I wasn't "actively disbelieving" in him.
My point is: atheism is the default position. Only people who have been told about God, believe in it. Theism is an artifact of human society. But luckily, even if you are told about God, you don't have to suspend all disbelief at once. Even in our religious and superstitious society, some people prefer to use reason and sound judgement instead of superstition and group-think. Thus atheism still remains. And the rose certainly doesn't collect stamps, nor is it a theist
Don't you have friends that own bigger cars? How did you manage to get the fucking thing into your house? Or was that monitor already inside the house when you bought it? And what do you intend to do with it now then? Just leave it in the street? Stop complaining, and grow a fucking spine!
I very much agree with you. While I'm happy to do some recycling if it's convenient for me, I'm not looking for a new hobby, or a new way of wasting time. If the city haven't made it convenient for you to recycle, it probably means that it's not that important for them that you are recycling.
It's all about inertia, isn't it? When not moving, it's easier to let the junk remain at rest, but when it comes time to move, it's easier to toss it.
Only to a certain point. If you stay at the same place too long, you will eventually accumulate enough junk that you have trouble moving around inside parts of your house. The moment you stop washing behind your tech-equipment because you simply have accumulated too much of it for you to bother moving it away when washing, it's either time to falsify your inertia-theory, or move somewhere else...
This is a most silly idea. Perhaps the silliest ever. The SPAM button HAS to be convenient. There's no way I as a user would accept a mail client where I'd have to jump through hoops to mark something as spam.
Furthermore, just about all spam I receive includes a way to "unsubscribe". The trouble is, these "unsubscribe"-links marks my address as active at the spammer, which means he can now list my address as "verified" the next time he sells an email-address CD to other spammers. So in other words, making "unsubscribing" from email easier by adding support for it in the MUA is simply a recipe for even more spam.
The only way to fix this is for Yahoo to revise their policy, either by increasing the threshold for publicly marked spam well above 20%, or by actually doing something when people complain. Remember, it's Yahoo who has done something wrong here, they made the policy, not their users. Alternatively, their users need to move elsewhere.
I disagree. First I disagree that this discussion is about finding "TEH BEST!!!!" design. It was about developing free software whose usability sucks less. Secondly, I disagree that discussing how free software can suck less in terms of usability is stupid. Thirdly, I disagree with your notion that nothing is absolute in this world.
Most free software suck. But that's ok, because most everything else suck as well. But when it comes to usability, free software generally sucks more than non-free software suck. This, I think, is a problem. While we will never have "TEH BEST" interface, we can certainly improve them. And most certainly, some of these changes will be better, objectively better, unless of course your purpose is to confuse and alienate users. So yeah, maybe you're right, there's nothing absolute in this world.
Even if some electric universe proponents are electrical engineers, they are called kooks for a reason. But most are just kooks. Anyway, I would rather learn about electrical engineering from electrical engineers, and cosmology from cosmologists.
Electric universe-proponents are not interested in science. What they are interested in is to prove that there exists a conspiracy against them, by established scientists. Which is true. Established scientists dislike people who lie.
Ridiculous. People who care enough about science to bother ridiculing electric universe proponents generally know about "F=qv x B".
That might be the usual case when rational people debate things for which no objective solution can be found, such as whether it's best to be purely communist, or purely free-market idealist. In science however, we have objective truth. Either you are right, or you are wrong. And most of the time, the kooks are wrong. Especially when they spend more of their time complaining about conspiracies against them than creating useful theories.