IT'S 11/9 NOT 9/11 IT'S 11/9 NOT 9/11 IT's 11/9 NO
on
Collateral Damage
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
I don't know if something noteworthy happened on the ninth of November, but if your talking about the day when a bunch of Islamic terrorists crashed a couple of planes in NY it reads 11/9!
How very interesting that people can build airplanes, bridges, houses, space shuttles, concert halls, particle accelerators etc. ad inf. then without walking around picking all those things apart in their spare time, as told to them by their mentors, dontyathink?
Cheesus. I wouldn't be able to make a less intelligent analogy if so my life depended on it.
Those X Quest games and Sierra is to me like apple pie and learning to ride your bike is to most other people. Playing them is one of my first happy memories.
Pathetic? Sure. Damn fun nonetheless.
Now I don't play them anymore. Arrogant as I was I considered being able to drag and drop and point and click cheating and stopped playing when this became the standard of all new Sierra games. This was very silly on my part, of course. But I would be lying if I said that I don't think of the good old days, when the real challenge in killing the dragon in the cave (King Quest I) was typing "throw knife at dragon" fast enough, with a smug feeling of superiority. Now that was real gaming!
I've already posted a similar comment in this thread, but since I formulated it rather bad and not too many people seemed to notice I'll make another try. And this time I'll cut and paste from this site.
One of the problems that the Drake Equation produces is that if you take reasonable (some would say optimistic) numbers for everything up to the average duration of technological civilizations, then you are left with three possibilities:
1. If such civilizations last a long time, "They" should be _here_ (leading either the the Flying Saucer hypothesis---they are here and we are seeing them, or the Zoo Hypothesis---they are here and are hiding in obedience to the Prime Directive, which they observe with far greater fiqdelity than Captain Kirk could ever muster). -or-
2. If such civilizations last a long time, and "They" are not "here" then it becomes necessary to explain why each and every technological civilization has consistently chosen not to build starships. The first civilization to build starships would spread across the entire Galaxy on a timescale that is short relative to the age of the Galaxy. Perhaps they lose interest in space flight and building starships because they are spending all their time surfing the net. (Think about it---the whole point of space flight is the proposition that there are privileged spatial locations, and the whole point of the net is that physical location is more or less irrelevant.) -or-
3. Such civilizations do not last a long time, and blow themselves up or otherwise fall apart pretty quickly (... film at 11). Thus the Drake Equation produces what is called the Fermi Paradox (i.e., "Where are They?"), in that the implications of #3 and #2 are not terribly encouraging to some folks, but the two flavors of #1 are kinda hard to come to grips with.
An alternate version of 2 is that interstellar travel is far more difficult than we think it is. Right now, it doesn't seem much beyond the boundaries of current technology to launch "generation ships," which power systems. An
alternative is robot probes with artificial intelligence; these don't seem so difficult either. The Milky Way galaxy is well under 10^5 light years in diameter and over 10^9 years old, so even travel beginning fairly recently in Galactic history and proceeding well under the speed of light ought to have filled the Galaxy by now. (Travel very near the speed of light still seems very hard, but such high speed isn't necessary to fill the Galaxy with life.) The paradox, then, is that we don't observe evidence of anybody besides us.
I can agree that all those are natural objections, as long as you presume that "they" are not too many. Otherwise, you may have a problem. The Fermi paradox could be said to be based on the following premise:
Either only Earth have a technologically advanced civilization, or many planets do.
It is, in other words, not the case that only "a few" planets have highly developed civilizations. By many is meant at least in the order of a billion or so. I'm sure you can figure out why this premise is not unreasonable for yourself. Now, the argument goes, maybe the objections you raise are valid for some of the civilizations, but it would incredibly naive to think that they (or, to be more precis, at least one) would be for all of them. Even if what you say would be the case for 99% of them, there would still be many millions left.
This is, however, an interesting debate, albeit an old one. Feel free to reply if you think something is seriously wrong with the line of reasoning outlined above.
...and deduce that there are quadrillion intelligent lifeforms out there, remember what Fermi said about all these fancy equations (and that has later become known as "The Fermi Paradox"):
If there are aliens, where are they?
Sounds silly? I agree. Sounds like "The Fermi Paradox" is too fancy a name for a natural objection? I agree on this too. However, when you think about it, it becomes fairly obvious that it really is the only argument in this debate that is somewhere between strong and very strong.
In the Real World, that is, outside Slashdot, AOL Time Warner is sometimes considered part of media. It is mostly in here we tend to think of them as some abstract nastyness which make our lives stink in vague undefined ways.
I have a number of friends in the business who have read that book. In summary:
1) It is good for biologists who wants to learn how to program
2) It is not good for programmers who want to learn biology
Obviously, my friends disagree with reviewer Babbage on this point. However, a quick look on Amazon reveals that most reviewers who found the book interesting are biologists with no programming experience instead of the other way round.
Ridiculous. Heidegger was a nazi, that is beyond all doubt. He was, for Christ's sake, even one of the few nazis who did never admit being mistaken. He stood firm till his death in 1974.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, was everything but a nazi. His ideas about the ubermensch are among the most misunderstood in the history of philosophy. Besides it was his sister who suited his philosophy to nazism long after his death.
Besides, I don't buy your crap about taking "Heideggier" as "Heidegger" was already taken. Why not? You obviously couln't spell N-I-E-T-Z-S-C-H-E either.
you phrased it the wrong way pal
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
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· Score: 2, Funny
I would like to know what non-MP3 codecs people are using out there
Sounds like a euphamism for gnomes to me, which would be appropriate.
This is a good observation, and you are propably correct. However, it is still a bizarre name - long and very difficult (I suppose, but cannot tell for sure, since I am a Swede myself) - for non-Swedes. Why is this? Are there unproportionally many Swedes working on this? Are these people in love with the Swedish language? What is going on here?
This might seem seriously off topic, but I'm honestly quite interested.
There are color screens already. I can't recall the name of the phone, but my father's got one so I can assure you it's for real. And, believe me, it's damn cool too.
To make matters even more interesting, Microsoft has had several
well published security exploits. Only the dimmest of dim bulbs is going to trust Microsoft with their billing information
I'm sure this will come as a big shock for you, but Joe Sixpack and Aunt Annie don't read about even well published security exploits.
Why is this such a widespread belief? Has it been proven somehow? Has everything in the world that could possibly be hacked been hacked?
The deduction seems to me the following: everything that has been hacked is hackable => therefore everything is hackable. Where's the logic in that?
We don't walk around saying that 10 miles high building cannot be built because we have never built one, do we?
I don't want to come off like a troll, but I'm getting a bit weary of the conclusion that just because noone have proved the existence of an unhackable system no such system can exist.
You're probably the only person in the world who did not understand that the parent was a sarcastic post. Oh, sorry, I forgot about the guy who modded you "Insightful". How he's got mod points to spare at all is beyond me.
Start your journey by reading The Art Of War. I can't emphasize enough how important this is in corporate culture: look weak when you're strong, and look strong when you're weak. Nothing impresses bosses more than an employee who gets the war of corporate culture, and knows how to pick battles.
AOF is a great book, but it does not always apply to everything. Allow me to repeat that: AOF does not always apply to everything.
Everybody's talking about it. Especially here on Slashdot, and if I'm not mistaken, especially you. But the office is not a warzone. You should not pretend to be strong when your weak and the other way round. You should not view your co-workers as enemies. The view of the office as a battleground, if anything, is contributing to the sort of atmosphere this very discussion is concerned with getting rid of.
As some poster already mentioned, 1984 has had influences on technology all right, but negative such. Or in other words: The world we live in would be much more like the world in 1984 had Orwell never written it.
This is the case with most good science fiction books: they tell of a future that we don't want. Hopefully we'll get scared, and try to avoid it. This is something you need to focus on in addition to your other efforts.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if something noteworthy happened on the ninth of November, but if your talking about the day when a bunch of Islamic terrorists crashed a couple of planes in NY it reads 11/9!
Cheesus. I wouldn't be able to make a less intelligent analogy if so my life depended on it.
Pathetic? Sure. Damn fun nonetheless.
Now I don't play them anymore. Arrogant as I was I considered being able to drag and drop and point and click cheating and stopped playing when this became the standard of all new Sierra games. This was very silly on my part, of course. But I would be lying if I said that I don't think of the good old days, when the real challenge in killing the dragon in the cave (King Quest I) was typing "throw knife at dragon" fast enough, with a smug feeling of superiority. Now that was real gaming!
Kids nowadays. Blah!
Too bad discussions on Slashdot die so quick. This one could have been fun!
I've already posted a similar comment in this thread, but since I formulated it rather bad and not too many people seemed to notice I'll make another try. And this time I'll cut and paste from this site.
One of the problems that the Drake Equation produces is that if you take reasonable (some would say optimistic) numbers for everything up to the average duration of technological civilizations, then you are left with three possibilities:
1. If such civilizations last a long time, "They" should be _here_ (leading either the the Flying Saucer hypothesis---they are here and we are seeing them, or the Zoo Hypothesis---they are here and are hiding in obedience to the Prime Directive, which they observe with far greater fiqdelity than Captain Kirk could ever muster). -or-
2. If such civilizations last a long time, and "They" are not "here" then it becomes necessary to explain why each and every technological civilization has consistently chosen not to build starships. The first civilization to build starships would spread across the entire Galaxy on a timescale that is short relative to the age of the Galaxy. Perhaps they lose interest in space flight and building starships because they are spending all their time surfing the net. (Think about it---the whole point of space flight is the proposition that there are privileged spatial locations, and the whole point of the net is that physical location is more or less irrelevant.) -or-
3. Such civilizations do not last a long time, and blow themselves up or otherwise fall apart pretty quickly (... film at 11). Thus the Drake Equation produces what is called the Fermi Paradox (i.e., "Where are They?"), in that the implications of #3 and #2 are not terribly encouraging to some folks, but the two flavors of #1 are kinda hard to come to grips with.
An alternate version of 2 is that interstellar travel is far more difficult than we think it is. Right now, it doesn't seem much beyond the boundaries of current technology to launch "generation ships," which power systems. An
alternative is robot probes with artificial intelligence; these don't seem so difficult either. The Milky Way galaxy is well under 10^5 light years in diameter and over 10^9 years old, so even travel beginning fairly recently in Galactic history and proceeding well under the speed of light ought to have filled the Galaxy by now. (Travel very near the speed of light still seems very hard, but such high speed isn't necessary to fill the Galaxy with life.) The paradox, then, is that we don't observe evidence of anybody besides us.
Either only Earth have a technologically advanced civilization, or many planets do.
It is, in other words, not the case that only "a few" planets have highly developed civilizations. By many is meant at least in the order of a billion or so. I'm sure you can figure out why this premise is not unreasonable for yourself. Now, the argument goes, maybe the objections you raise are valid for some of the civilizations, but it would incredibly naive to think that they (or, to be more precis, at least one) would be for all of them. Even if what you say would be the case for 99% of them, there would still be many millions left.
This is, however, an interesting debate, albeit an old one. Feel free to reply if you think something is seriously wrong with the line of reasoning outlined above.
If there are aliens, where are they?
Sounds silly? I agree. Sounds like "The Fermi Paradox" is too fancy a name for a natural objection? I agree on this too. However, when you think about it, it becomes fairly obvious that it really is the only argument in this debate that is somewhere between strong and very strong.
In the Real World, that is, outside Slashdot, AOL Time Warner is sometimes considered part of media. It is mostly in here we tend to think of them as some abstract nastyness which make our lives stink in vague undefined ways.
After all, winning a case like this could prove difficult when you're not allowed in the courtroom.
Algorithms on Strings, Trees, and Sequences: Computer Science and Computational Biology by Dan Gusfield is usually very liked for people with a computer science background. And it's not only of use if you want to go into bioinformatics: most algorithms on strings are usable in everyday coding too.
1) It is good for biologists who wants to learn how to program
2) It is not good for programmers who want to learn biology
Obviously, my friends disagree with reviewer Babbage on this point. However, a quick look on Amazon reveals that most reviewers who found the book interesting are biologists with no programming experience instead of the other way round.
It's been quite a trip, but I can assure you it's not a very unsual one. There's a red line. Or, if you wish, an eternal golden braid.
Ridiculous. Heidegger was a nazi, that is beyond all doubt. He was, for Christ's sake, even one of the few nazis who did never admit being mistaken. He stood firm till his death in 1974. Nietzsche, on the other hand, was everything but a nazi. His ideas about the ubermensch are among the most misunderstood in the history of philosophy. Besides it was his sister who suited his philosophy to nazism long after his death.
Besides, I don't buy your crap about taking "Heideggier" as "Heidegger" was already taken. Why not? You obviously couln't spell N-I-E-T-Z-S-C-H-E either.
I'd like to know if they are using them.
This is a good observation, and you are propably correct. However, it is still a bizarre name - long and very difficult (I suppose, but cannot tell for sure, since I am a Swede myself) - for non-Swedes. Why is this? Are there unproportionally many Swedes working on this? Are these people in love with the Swedish language? What is going on here?
This might seem seriously off topic, but I'm honestly quite interested.
10 posts from people translating "Rolig liten hattgubbe" (I'm one of them)
"Rolig liten hattgubbe" is Swedish and translates to "Funny little hat-man" (yes, it sounds ridiculous in my language too).
There are color screens already. I can't recall the name of the phone, but my father's got one so I can assure you it's for real. And, believe me, it's damn cool too.
I'm sure this will come as a big shock for you, but Joe Sixpack and Aunt Annie don't read about even well published security exploits.
Why is this such a widespread belief? Has it been proven somehow? Has everything in the world that could possibly be hacked been hacked?
The deduction seems to me the following: everything that has been hacked is hackable => therefore everything is hackable. Where's the logic in that? We don't walk around saying that 10 miles high building cannot be built because we have never built one, do we?
I don't want to come off like a troll, but I'm getting a bit weary of the conclusion that just because noone have proved the existence of an unhackable system no such system can exist.
must have been tired
You're probably the only person in the world who did not understand that the parent was a sarcastic post. Oh, sorry, I forgot about the guy who modded you "Insightful". How he's got mod points to spare at all is beyond me.
AOF is a great book, but it does not always apply to everything. Allow me to repeat that: AOF does not always apply to everything.
Everybody's talking about it. Especially here on Slashdot, and if I'm not mistaken, especially you. But the office is not a warzone. You should not pretend to be strong when your weak and the other way round. You should not view your co-workers as enemies. The view of the office as a battleground, if anything, is contributing to the sort of atmosphere this very discussion is concerned with getting rid of.
Sheesh.
Yep, I'd say it is. But of course, that's just my opinion.. =)
This is the case with most good science fiction books: they tell of a future that we don't want. Hopefully we'll get scared, and try to avoid it. This is something you need to focus on in addition to your other efforts.