oh come now. The previous poster is not saying that we need to be constantly relativistic, he is only pointing out that nothing can be truly PROVEN in science, maybe this is why lots of people turn to religion. Scientists are CONVINCED that evolution is fact, and that the big bang is fact, but these ideas (and any others) cannot be proven. I'm convinced that there is no god, although this is mainly because the whole god thing just doesn't do it for me (this does), but this is different that being proven.
Actually, the ending makes perfect sense. All of the loose ends are tied up with regard to Thor, whatshername, and Odin and those ghastly people, and regarding the very last sentence: just think of what big improbable event has recently happened (involving a blue Mercedes) and at whose house it happened -- this would be front-page news, right? Think of what Dirk wants to do when he gets out of the hospital... and then he turns to the "front page" to see if there's any "interesting news"... it cracks me up everytime. I don't want to hear how loud he screams when he reads the story...
A day or 2 later, and NO COMMENTS on this story! I don't think it's sad (McAfee filing for an IPO, that is), in fact I think it's good that a small shareware company has grown into a huge success -- it means that business models that look risky (or looked risky before McAfee's success) can pay off bigtime.
As for Asimov, I really liked the way he chose to integrate the Robot novels with the Empire/Foundation series ("The Robots of Dawn" and "Robots and Empire" were great), although you're right that I wasn't totally thrilled with Foundation's Edge / F&E. But the Hari Seldon books (Prelude and Forward) were GREAT, probably his best real novels. Wish he was still around though...
Someone moderate this post up! I had the same feeling through Brin's silly puff-piece article. I think his main problem is in categorizing Star Wars as sf, when it's really fantasy, just an escape-tale. He also assumes that we MUST take life lessons from it, or that everyone who sees Star Wars will somehow "see" everything Brin thinks is there and it will turn all of us Americans in monarchists. He's reaching for points that aren't there and just generally making an ass of himself for no reason, much like the Village Voice did in their incredibly stupid "Jar Jar is Gay" article, in which they assume that everyone in America hates gays and use that to explain why people hate Jar Jar, and then use that to prove that everyone in America hates gays. (It's called Circular Reasoning).
Did you read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon? One of the sub-plots (there are many) is the creation of a 'data haven' on a tiny fictionalized island in the south Pacific. It could work...
Right on! And Windows users should check out CDex, which might soon become an open-source project and incorporates the LAME code! The sound is VERY close to the FhG encoder.
Yep, on the 1995 fall tour, a huge chessboard would drop out of the ceiling, and the band and the audience would each make a few moves. A chess player who was at one of the shows tells more about it here. I think it's the only time a rock (or jazz) band ever did this...;)
Perhaps I'll go down and get some Ben & Jerry's (TM) now, or perhaps not. Perhaps I'll go to the bathroom. Perhaps I'll spend another hour on Everything or watch a Seinfeld rerun. Perhaps...
you get the idea. Perhaps the embryo would be the next Hitler? And perhaps not.
I don't think that any of us here object to fighting for the basic rights of clones -- a right NOT to be a guinea pig and to be respected as a life form (most especially if it's a conscious life form, which is what a human clone would be). The problem is that religious fundamentalists have consistently tried to stop science from "knowing" what they think "Man was not meant to know", which is a pretty ridiculous phrase. Knowing how to make an atom bomb and using it are two different things, and while morality can tell us that using it to kill people is wrong (even in WWII, though it undoubtedly saved more lives), it cannot tell us "not to know" it.
...I like most anything that pisses people off.;) Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the breeding of human clone-slaves or the torture or anything living, because if we didn't have any ethics whatsoever we'd all be dead. But upsetting those religious kooks who think that the materials of life are 'special' and can't be put together by humans is just plain fun!
That the media mislabels groups of people is not surprising because it happens all the time. But the FBI does not arrest you if MSNBC calls you a hacker or a cracker, they arrest you if they have evidence that you maliciously attacked one of their servers -- which some members of gH apparently did do. So what's the problem?
What she objects to are Katz's generalizations about "geeks" (which is a stupid word anyway). The very idea that you can have some "litmus test" for being a geek is absurd, and that this test is whether you like The Matrix or not is downright ridiculous. She has a good point too about whether or not Katz can really believe in such things, especially after all those Hellmouth articles whose point was that people shouldn't and can't be categorized so easily!
Then explain this article
on
The KDE Future
·
· Score: 1
Either you've just forgotten that this positive-KDE article was just posted, or you're kidding. I hope you're kidding.
I stopped reading discworld after "Mort", which was really really really really really really bad. I wish Douglas Adams would get around to writing another Dirk Gently novel, now THERE is a proper series (i.e., 2 really really really really really really good books).
...but I went to a relatively progressive high school (Murrow in Brooklyn, NY). It's good that the 'Net is providing a sense of community for these kids, because if I see one more kid shooting article or how DOOM is bad I'm going to go live in a cave (with a Linux laptop of course).
Follow the manual installation procedure in the README file, but if you want to use it you'll have to load it manually with 'insmod -f sblive', I have it running right now under 2.2.7 and it's fine. I'm just going to put that in my rc.local... I'M SO HAPPY X11AMP WORKS!!!!
I actually fucked up and meant to say that they START wearing comfortable clothes and find out Haydn (not Beethoven, they'd have to graduate first to get him) is a pretty cool guy. Not to mention relaxing for chrissake...
I can't wait for the next semester when class sizes in my EE lectures will get down to the informal size, when it doesn't really feel like I'm going to school at all, but to a little club where my friends and I discuss the Universe.:)
Slashdot Mirror
oh come now. The previous poster is not saying that we need to be constantly relativistic, he is only pointing out that nothing can be truly PROVEN in science, maybe this is why lots of people turn to religion. Scientists are CONVINCED that evolution is fact, and that the big bang is fact, but these ideas (and any others) cannot be proven. I'm convinced that there is no god, although this is mainly because the whole god thing just doesn't do it for me (this does), but this is different that being proven.
Actually, the ending makes perfect sense. All of the loose ends are tied up with regard to Thor, whatshername, and Odin and those ghastly people, and regarding the very last sentence: just think of what big improbable event has recently happened (involving a blue Mercedes) and at whose house it happened -- this would be front-page news, right? Think of what Dirk wants to do when he gets out of the hospital... and then he turns to the "front page" to see if there's any "interesting news"... it cracks me up everytime. I don't want to hear how loud he screams when he reads the story...
A day or 2 later, and NO COMMENTS on this story! I don't think it's sad (McAfee filing for an IPO, that is), in fact I think it's good that a small shareware company has grown into a huge success -- it means that business models that look risky (or looked risky before McAfee's success) can pay off bigtime.
As for Asimov, I really liked the way he chose to integrate the Robot novels with the Empire/Foundation series ("The Robots of Dawn" and "Robots and Empire" were great), although you're right that I wasn't totally thrilled with Foundation's Edge / F&E. But the Hari Seldon books (Prelude and Forward) were GREAT, probably his best real novels. Wish he was still around though...
Someone moderate this post up! I had the same feeling through Brin's silly puff-piece article. I think his main problem is in categorizing Star Wars as sf, when it's really fantasy, just an escape-tale. He also assumes that we MUST take life lessons from it, or that everyone who sees Star Wars will somehow "see" everything Brin thinks is there and it will turn all of us Americans in monarchists. He's reaching for points that aren't there and just generally making an ass of himself for no reason, much like the Village Voice did in their incredibly stupid "Jar Jar is Gay" article, in which they assume that everyone in America hates gays and use that to explain why people hate Jar Jar, and then use that to prove that everyone in America hates gays. (It's called Circular Reasoning).
Did you read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon? One of the sub-plots (there are many) is the creation of a 'data haven' on a tiny fictionalized island in the south Pacific. It could work...
Right on! And Windows users should check out CDex, which might soon become an open-source project and incorporates the LAME code! The sound is VERY close to the FhG encoder.
Yep, on the 1995 fall tour, a huge chessboard would drop out of the ceiling, and the band and the audience would each make a few moves. A chess player who was at one of the shows tells more about it here. I think it's the only time a rock (or jazz) band ever did this...;)
Perhaps I'll go down and get some Ben & Jerry's (TM) now, or perhaps not. Perhaps I'll go to the bathroom. Perhaps I'll spend another hour on Everything or watch a Seinfeld rerun. Perhaps...
you get the idea. Perhaps the embryo would be the next Hitler? And perhaps not.
I don't think that any of us here object to fighting for the basic rights of clones -- a right NOT to be a guinea pig and to be respected as a life form (most especially if it's a conscious life form, which is what a human clone would be).
The problem is that religious fundamentalists have consistently tried to stop science from "knowing" what they think "Man was not meant to know", which is a pretty ridiculous phrase. Knowing how to make an atom bomb and using it are two different things, and while morality can tell us that using it to kill people is wrong (even in WWII, though it undoubtedly saved more lives), it cannot tell us "not to know" it.
...I like most anything that pisses people off. ;) Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the breeding of human clone-slaves or the torture or anything living, because if we didn't have any ethics whatsoever we'd all be dead. But upsetting those religious kooks who think that the materials of life are 'special' and can't be put together by humans is just plain fun!
Although most or all /.'ers had a healthy hatred for spam before this, it just gets more meaningful when it hits home.
KILL KILL KILL!!!
That the media mislabels groups of people is not surprising because it happens all the time. But the FBI does not arrest you if MSNBC calls you a hacker or a cracker, they arrest you if they have evidence that you maliciously attacked one of their servers -- which some members of gH apparently did do. So what's the problem?
What she objects to are Katz's generalizations about "geeks" (which is a stupid word anyway). The very idea that you can have some "litmus test" for being a geek is absurd, and that this test is whether you like The Matrix or not is downright ridiculous. She has a good point too about whether or not Katz can really believe in such things, especially after all those Hellmouth articles whose point was that people shouldn't and can't be categorized so easily!
Either you've just forgotten that this positive-KDE article was just posted, or you're kidding. I hope you're kidding.
Alright, nobody tell him about the Campaq thing. :) He works too hard for all of us!
Thank you.
I stopped reading discworld after "Mort", which was really really really really really really bad. I wish Douglas Adams would get around to writing another Dirk Gently novel, now THERE is a proper series (i.e., 2 really really really really really really good books).
Sony can rot in hell. I'm not a free-software nut, but I don't buy proprietary formats.
...from the "old days" of the 1930s and HP Lovecraft. :)
...but I went to a relatively progressive high school (Murrow in Brooklyn, NY). It's good that the 'Net is providing a sense of community for these kids, because if I see one more kid shooting article or how DOOM is bad I'm going to go live in a cave (with a Linux laptop of course).
Follow the manual installation procedure in the README file, but if you want to use it you'll have to load it manually with 'insmod -f sblive', I have it running right now under 2.2.7 and it's fine. I'm just going to put that in my rc.local... I'M SO HAPPY X11AMP WORKS!!!!
I actually fucked up and meant to say that they START wearing comfortable clothes and find out Haydn (not Beethoven, they'd have to graduate first to get him) is a pretty cool guy. Not to mention relaxing for chrissake...
They stop listening to crap and trying to be "cool" and wear comfortable clothes and realized that Haydn is a pretty cool guy.
I can't wait for the next semester when class sizes in my EE lectures will get down to the informal size, when it doesn't really feel like I'm going to school at all, but to a little club where my friends and I discuss the Universe. :)
Don't forget to e-mail it to at least five other people while you're at lunch!