I don't know how many times Stephen Hawking has called trying to sell me a super collidor, a neutrino detector or some such thing. I keep telling him, "No, I don't have $5B! And stop calling me during dinner!"
Don't get me wrong, I think there's an incredible amount of science that can be accomplished using unmanned probes, landers, etc. but to not have any manned exploration would be a mistake.
And no matter how good we make the robots a real human being is infinitely more adaptable. As an example, one of the Mars rovers (I think it was Spirit) at one point had trouble keeping it's batteries charged due to the build up of dust on the solar panels reducing the efficiency. The unmanned rover couldn't do anything about it because it was not designed to handle that task. A human being on the other hand would simply brush off the dust. A seemingly simple task that even the most advanced robot can't do.
I think both manned and unmanned spaceflight have their place.
Though I don't know if sony puts any country limitations on their store.
Sony has a separate online store for each country in which it operates and the ebook reader is not available on all of them.
Also, If you happen to be out of your country and try to update your credit card information on your Sony bookstore account you're out of luck. They detect your IP and block the update so make sure you update your account or buy all your books before you leave. I know this because I'm in Thailand for 3 months (I bought the PRS-505 specifically for this trip) and the Sony bookstore for Canada blocked me. I can buy books just not update my credit card info.
It would be better to give scientology itself a page about themselves that only they can edit, that is labeled as such.
Of course, in the real world only 1 single viewpoint is correct. However, we do not know what that correct viewpoint is, so we'll have to make do with multiple and letting people judge for themselves. There are multiple viewpoints in this world, how about letting more than 1 be represented on wikipedia ?
That's what a real democraticized encyclopedia would do.
They already have that. It's called their own website which Wikipedia fairly provides a link to. What Wikimedia objects to is the content of that external website bleeding into Wikipedia in a continuous and deliberate attempt to turn Wikipedia into a sanitized promotion for the Church of Scientology.
In fact, the Church of Scientology is trying to do exactly what you accuse Wikimedia of doing. They are trying to silence all viewpoints except their one single viewpoint.
I say let them play alone in their own sandbox because they have made it clear they can not play with others.
I understand that many people consider Biblical stories to be allegorical. That's entirely the point. If you can take some of the stories as allegory and some as literal fact, you have to come up with some sort of rationalization for your decisions, beyond simply "this one seems true". Otherwise, there is no merit to the claim that the Bible has any literal truth and should be taken seriously.
If you actually took the time to read what I said rather than manipulate it to promote your own agenda, I stated I viewed the story of creation and the Garden of Eden as allegorical...not the entire bible.
And if you are looking for literal truth anywhere then I think faith is something that will forever elude you.
The Dead Sea scrolls were not the source of the Old Testament, by the way. We had the OT long before we found them in the 1800s.
I agree that I overstated this. The Old Testament of course existed prior to the Dead Sea scrolls but many modern bibles translated since their discovery, between 1947 and 1953 by the way not the 1800's, have used the scrolls as an essential source as they contain one of the earliest written copies of the Old Testament.
The point I was trying to make, which was clearly lost on you, was that as old as the scrolls are they are still much more recent than the stories they contain supporting my opinion that they are not accurate depictions of the events of creation or the Graden of Eden.
If you are a Christian, and you believe in evolution, you instantly invalidate the concept of original sin, thus making Jesus' crucifixion a meaningless slaughter.
The two are not compatible. And only one is supported by evidence.
Let's clear up one thing, in Christianity Jesus died for our sins not for Adam biting the apple. And if I'm not mistaken whether we evolved to where we are today or were poofed into existence that sacrifice is not "meaningless" as you put it.
You also assume that all Christians accept the story of the creation and the Garden of Eden as literal. Personally, and as a Christian, I see them as allegorical because at the time there was no one to document the events. In fact, the written record that is the source of the old testament, the Dead Sea scrolls date from about 150BC - 70BC which is long after the events they describe and in my opinion suggests that the original details, if they ever existed, were long gone after generations of telling and retelling before they were put to paper or parchment or papyrus.
Although many Christians view the old testament creation story as literal many do not. Who's to say that the 7 days of creation took place in 7 days, 7 millennia or 700 million years? Who's to say that the fossil record is not evidence of God's work? Who's to say that natural selection isn't God's hand choosing the direction of evolution that eventually led to the "first" man and woman?
And that's only if you take original sin in it's literal form. For many Christians original sin merely refers to the general sinfulness of man rather than the man-woman-apple-snake incident. So no matter how you slice it the acceptance of evolution is not necessarily inconsistent with the story of creation or the concept of original sin.
It all depends on your interpretation and your faith.
Dartmouth BASIC in the 60's was arguably the first IDE.
Regardless, there may have been a few that did it before but Borland was the first one to really exploit the concept of the IDE. The low price, as you pointed out, also made it a winner.
Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds? They're all crap. I know they're only in Canada but Tim Hortons has better coffee than all three.
I'm currently in Thailand and even the local mom and pop restaurant has better coffee than any North American chain or stuck up coffeehouse that has a barista on staff. "Barista" is just a fancy way of saying "I'm going to charge you twice as much for coffee that's half as good".
You're only including countries that have large populations that speak English as a first language which is about 375M. If you also include countries that have large populations that speak English as a second (or even third language) then you're probably talking (pun intended) about another 470M to 1B depending on how literacy is defined. A pretty good sized target market for any advertiser. Add in subtitles which are easier than dubbing and you can reach most of the planet without too much difficulty.
The king doesn't have much political power so there's not much he can do to repeal the law or prevent people being changed under the law. However, he does have the power to pardon people once they have been convicted and routinely does so.
I think my old, ex-password is rather strange: "physicsastronomylover" - dates all the way back to my first BBS in 1987. My two favorite subjects in school.
I thought it was because you make love with a lever and a planetary body (insert joke here).
Parents put training wheels on a bike to keep their kids from falling over and hurting themselves until they get the experience to ride without them. I see this as a kind of "training wheel" for cars. It limits the range of behaviour of a car, in the same way as training wheels for a bicycle, until the driver gains the experience to understand the risks and drive responsibly.
When I was a teenager I did some pretty stupid things in the family car that looking back could so easily have gone terribly wrong killing me and my friends. It was only dumb luck that nothing happened.
Disclosure: I'm only 21, but I consistently get rated late-thirties in all of those stupid "real age" tests.
I believe you are the exception while I was the rule.
And my point was that unlike western farmers feeding sheep brains to cows, Chinese manufacturers did know at least by early 2007 that melamine was dangerous. I know this is Slashdot and you're only an AC but did you even try to take two minutes to read the article that I posted the link for. If you did you would see it is clear that Chinese manufacturers were absolutely, 100% aware of exactly what they were doing.
Also, if you took the time to read the article you would see there was harm and foul in early 2007. So why has the Chinese government done nothing about it? Because they are not accountable to anyone. You see in a democracy us "westerners", as you put it, have a way to make our governments do what is right. It doesn't always work but it's better than communist elites that live a life of luxury without having to answer to anyone.
And Chinese manufacturers didn't know the consequences of spiking milk with melamine -- they thought they were improving the milk. You're just a hypocrite if you think only China makes fatal mistakes.
Of course they knew exactly what they were doing. According to this article in April of 2007 from the New York Times it was an open "secret" that melamine could increase the appearance of protein in animal and human food products without adding any nutritional value.
"Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed," said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. "I don't know if there's a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says 'don't do it,' so everyone's doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren't they? If there's no accident, there won't be any regulation."
I'm amazed at how many apologists there are for these violations of public health by Chinese businesses and the lack of oversight by the Chinese government, a government that has no accountability to anyone. And because of how much China exports these corrupt business practices affect the health of people outside their borders.
I for one try, as much as possible, to avoid any products that come from China because I have no idea what I'm getting.
I think the issue there is that companies have to rewrite their legacy COBOL in new languages becuase they cannot find anyone who knows COBOL (or charges too much).
I don't think it's because they can't find anyone who knows COBOL. Any developer who is capable of learning C++ or Java is more than capable of learning COBOL. In fact, it's the ease with which someone can learn the language that is one of it's strengths. The problem is that developers who work with newer technologies don't want to learn it because they think they're too cool for COBOL.
Which leads to the more likely reason is that COBOL developers are too expensive. The reason they're expensive is that there are fewer and fewer COBOL developers as the years go on and the above mentioned "too cool for COBOL" developers. It's a simple case of supply and demand - a shrinking supply and a not so shrinking demand. COBOL developers are not expensive just because they feel like it, COBOL developers are expensive because companies will pay it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how many times Stephen Hawking has called trying to sell me a super collidor, a neutrino detector or some such thing. I keep telling him, "No, I don't have $5B! And stop calling me during dinner!"
Many of the NASA technologies on this list would not have been developed if it were an unmanned only operation.
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
Don't get me wrong, I think there's an incredible amount of science that can be accomplished using unmanned probes, landers, etc. but to not have any manned exploration would be a mistake.
And no matter how good we make the robots a real human being is infinitely more adaptable. As an example, one of the Mars rovers (I think it was Spirit) at one point had trouble keeping it's batteries charged due to the build up of dust on the solar panels reducing the efficiency. The unmanned rover couldn't do anything about it because it was not designed to handle that task. A human being on the other hand would simply brush off the dust. A seemingly simple task that even the most advanced robot can't do.
I think both manned and unmanned spaceflight have their place.
I'm sure this isn't a complete list but here are some of the technologies that have come out of the work that NASA does.
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
You mean LOXy moron.
Sony has a separate online store for each country in which it operates and the ebook reader is not available on all of them.
Also, If you happen to be out of your country and try to update your credit card information on your Sony bookstore account you're out of luck. They detect your IP and block the update so make sure you update your account or buy all your books before you leave. I know this because I'm in Thailand for 3 months (I bought the PRS-505 specifically for this trip) and the Sony bookstore for Canada blocked me. I can buy books just not update my credit card info.
They already have that. It's called their own website which Wikipedia fairly provides a link to. What Wikimedia objects to is the content of that external website bleeding into Wikipedia in a continuous and deliberate attempt to turn Wikipedia into a sanitized promotion for the Church of Scientology.
In fact, the Church of Scientology is trying to do exactly what you accuse Wikimedia of doing. They are trying to silence all viewpoints except their one single viewpoint.
I say let them play alone in their own sandbox because they have made it clear they can not play with others.
Actually I got the joke. I was just adding my 0.02.
I'd rather use an OS that doesn't have a security model that resemble Swiss cheese requiring that it ship with an anti-virus application.
If this is a gag then wouldn't it have been more ironic to put the pee-pee camera at the "Bush" airport?
If you actually took the time to read what I said rather than manipulate it to promote your own agenda, I stated I viewed the story of creation and the Garden of Eden as allegorical...not the entire bible.
And if you are looking for literal truth anywhere then I think faith is something that will forever elude you.
I agree that I overstated this. The Old Testament of course existed prior to the Dead Sea scrolls but many modern bibles translated since their discovery, between 1947 and 1953 by the way not the 1800's, have used the scrolls as an essential source as they contain one of the earliest written copies of the Old Testament.
The point I was trying to make, which was clearly lost on you, was that as old as the scrolls are they are still much more recent than the stories they contain supporting my opinion that they are not accurate depictions of the events of creation or the Graden of Eden.
Let's clear up one thing, in Christianity Jesus died for our sins not for Adam biting the apple. And if I'm not mistaken whether we evolved to where we are today or were poofed into existence that sacrifice is not "meaningless" as you put it.
You also assume that all Christians accept the story of the creation and the Garden of Eden as literal. Personally, and as a Christian, I see them as allegorical because at the time there was no one to document the events. In fact, the written record that is the source of the old testament, the Dead Sea scrolls date from about 150BC - 70BC which is long after the events they describe and in my opinion suggests that the original details, if they ever existed, were long gone after generations of telling and retelling before they were put to paper or parchment or papyrus.
Although many Christians view the old testament creation story as literal many do not. Who's to say that the 7 days of creation took place in 7 days, 7 millennia or 700 million years? Who's to say that the fossil record is not evidence of God's work? Who's to say that natural selection isn't God's hand choosing the direction of evolution that eventually led to the "first" man and woman?
And that's only if you take original sin in it's literal form. For many Christians original sin merely refers to the general sinfulness of man rather than the man-woman-apple-snake incident. So no matter how you slice it the acceptance of evolution is not necessarily inconsistent with the story of creation or the concept of original sin.
It all depends on your interpretation and your faith.
Dartmouth BASIC in the 60's was arguably the first IDE.
Regardless, there may have been a few that did it before but Borland was the first one to really exploit the concept of the IDE. The low price, as you pointed out, also made it a winner.
Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds? They're all crap. I know they're only in Canada but Tim Hortons has better coffee than all three.
I'm currently in Thailand and even the local mom and pop restaurant has better coffee than any North American chain or stuck up coffeehouse that has a barista on staff. "Barista" is just a fancy way of saying "I'm going to charge you twice as much for coffee that's half as good".
Don't be making fun of our porn. We have the hottest porn stars...once you get them out of their snow suits.
I for one will eagerly welcome our government subsidized Canadian porn star overlords.
You're only including countries that have large populations that speak English as a first language which is about 375M. If you also include countries that have large populations that speak English as a second (or even third language) then you're probably talking (pun intended) about another 470M to 1B depending on how literacy is defined. A pretty good sized target market for any advertiser. Add in subtitles which are easier than dubbing and you can reach most of the planet without too much difficulty.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Geographical_distribution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
The king doesn't have much political power so there's not much he can do to repeal the law or prevent people being changed under the law. However, he does have the power to pardon people once they have been convicted and routinely does so.
That's a reasonable and well thought out approach to the issue of DRM.
Hold on...reasonable and well thought out? What are you doing on Slashdot?
I thought it was because you make love with a lever and a planetary body (insert joke here).
Maybe it was the Martian government trying to protect local jobs from foreign workers.
How about the first sentence:
Bit rot, or bit decay, is a colloquial computing term used either to describe gradual decay of storage media...
The article describes a phenomenon that applies to many types of storage media of which hard drives are one.
You mean 'religion'. Oooops, did I say that out loud?
Parents put training wheels on a bike to keep their kids from falling over and hurting themselves until they get the experience to ride without them. I see this as a kind of "training wheel" for cars. It limits the range of behaviour of a car, in the same way as training wheels for a bicycle, until the driver gains the experience to understand the risks and drive responsibly.
When I was a teenager I did some pretty stupid things in the family car that looking back could so easily have gone terribly wrong killing me and my friends. It was only dumb luck that nothing happened.
I believe you are the exception while I was the rule.
And my point was that unlike western farmers feeding sheep brains to cows, Chinese manufacturers did know at least by early 2007 that melamine was dangerous. I know this is Slashdot and you're only an AC but did you even try to take two minutes to read the article that I posted the link for. If you did you would see it is clear that Chinese manufacturers were absolutely, 100% aware of exactly what they were doing.
Also, if you took the time to read the article you would see there was harm and foul in early 2007. So why has the Chinese government done nothing about it? Because they are not accountable to anyone. You see in a democracy us "westerners", as you put it, have a way to make our governments do what is right. It doesn't always work but it's better than communist elites that live a life of luxury without having to answer to anyone.
Of course they knew exactly what they were doing. According to this article in April of 2007 from the New York Times it was an open "secret" that melamine could increase the appearance of protein in animal and human food products without adding any nutritional value.
I'm amazed at how many apologists there are for these violations of public health by Chinese businesses and the lack of oversight by the Chinese government, a government that has no accountability to anyone. And because of how much China exports these corrupt business practices affect the health of people outside their borders.
I for one try, as much as possible, to avoid any products that come from China because I have no idea what I'm getting.
I don't think it's because they can't find anyone who knows COBOL. Any developer who is capable of learning C++ or Java is more than capable of learning COBOL. In fact, it's the ease with which someone can learn the language that is one of it's strengths. The problem is that developers who work with newer technologies don't want to learn it because they think they're too cool for COBOL.
Which leads to the more likely reason is that COBOL developers are too expensive. The reason they're expensive is that there are fewer and fewer COBOL developers as the years go on and the above mentioned "too cool for COBOL" developers. It's a simple case of supply and demand - a shrinking supply and a not so shrinking demand. COBOL developers are not expensive just because they feel like it, COBOL developers are expensive because companies will pay it.