Perhaps you can point me to the repeatable scientific double-blind experiment showing homeopathy to have an effect better than a placebo?
Nope. Although to be a fair study, it should also compare the effect of no placebo.
If both the placebo and homeopathy have a better effect than nothing at all, then you have your answer on why it works, and proof that it does work - if not for the reasons claimed.
I've always been a believer that your mental state can affect your health dramatically. Just believing in something has an effect, which is probably why praying also sometimes helps. (For the people that believe in it)
A few short years ago studies were proclaiming that EM fields from high voltage powerlines had no effect on our health. Now we know they cause Cancer. Give it another few decades, and who knows what'll be proven and disproven?
Maybe we'll have figured out that people emit faint energy fields, and when sick these fields change. Healthy people nearby can help right the fields just by devoting thought to the sick person, which alters their field to help the sick person's body heal itself.
It might sound ludicrous now, but in a few decades it could be science. That's usually how these things go - science fiction from 30-50 years ago is now reality, and in many cases we've even far surpassed what was imagined.
That, again, is wrong. Scientists are required to have a completely open mind when it comes to everything, even homeopathy. This is precisely why we have useful studies in which scientists tested the claims made by homeopathy and other "alternative" medicine. It's also why we know which of these things work, and which don't.
Somewhat true. Not all scientists are open-minded, but it'd be nice if they were.
The ones who don't have an open mind are the people who still believe homeopathy works. Their closed-mindedness makes them unable to accept the evidence.
What evidence? Studies paid for by pharmaceuticals?
I can point you to studies proclaiming no benefit to chiropractic, and extreme benefit from back surgeries - but now most of us realize that back problems are one thing Chiropractors can usually solve better.
Ditto. I frequently delay completion of tasks in many games just to finish some other non-task.
I've been playing King's Bounty, and I've become obsessed with not losing units. I don't really care if I lose some - ex: I lost one unit killing a cyclops the first time - but if the battle should've gone better, I repeat it, and do it better. Often just moving a stack of units around before battle, or fighting another enemy first, will mess up the random number generator enough that you can win something without any losses.
Why am I this way? Must be something psychological, triggered by seeing the hero stats in the main menu. It's not just scores, but stats like damage inflicted from spells, inflicted from your army, total army losses, etc.!
And I despise Slashdot's weird interactions with Firefox. Did you know that in this text edit box, I can only enter text in approximately 80% of it? The final 20% is obscured by what appears to be a fully transparent layer, which intercepts clicks, meaning I can't select/replace/delete that text without using the keyboard to get over to it.
Can you give any example of something being sped up significantly by reimplementing it in Java?
Jython? JRuby?
I wouldn't be shocked, as Java isn't an interpreted language. JIT compiler still produces native code. And back when there was no JIT, Java was slow.
It sure does JIT compile fast, though.
Apparently fully-interpreted Java implementations(Like JamVM w/ GNU Classpath) are faster than the fastest Python/Ruby implementations. I don't have any articles I can cite, but it was the opinion of a brilliant Scala (and C/C++/Java/Python/Ruby/Lisp/Haskell) developer I met.
Broader point: I'm sick and tired of these language designers not giving us enough features. For the last 20 years I've been waiting for a language that will allow me to redefine keywords. If that too much to ask? What if I don't happen to like "for", or "while", or "return"? Do you people lack vision, or competence, or both? Second thing on my must-have list is a pre-pre-processor. I'm tired of writing all these header files all the time. I want a way to generate them programmatically, at compile time. A small embedded scripting language would do fine, just make sure it has templates and operator overloading and multiple inheritance, so I can stretch my legs and get comfy with it. Come on people, start earning your paychecks and get some of this stuff done!
Oh man. You just outlined some of what I fleshed out for my "ideal language". Years ago I was talking with a bunch of other programmers, and rambling about what I'd like, and concluded that I wanted many of the things you just listed. Why? Well for one thing, I prefer Java keywords to C keywords. I also find the pre-processors in every single language abysmally weak, and templates require far too much syntax to be a big time saver.
This even gives a new chance to more vital features, such as polymorphic lambdas (understand lambdas were the types of the arguments is not given and which thus exhibit parametric polymorphism), to now being reconsidered.
Oh, you mean like in Javascript?
function add(a, b) { return a+b; }
add(2,3);// 5 add("Hello ", "Bob");// Hello Bob
Because when building some frameworks, if you could write code like that, it'd save you a lot of lines! I'm thinking back to when I was making a 2D SDL tile engine, and in C it was easily 3-4x longer than any other language.
Well, either you believe in static typing, or you don't. If you do, Java is a good choice. If you don't, Ruby is a good choice. C++, on the other hand, is static enough to be annoying, but not static enough to be safe.
I actually much prefer Objective-C to C++. Once again, the worse solution won.
I don't believe in static typing, but I much prefer Java to C. Half-baked implementations really irk me.
Whether being half-baked is useful is beside the point, because I'd sure find it useful to be able to treat any integer as a pointer or integer, on demand, as you can in assembly. That's even more lax, but according to C/C++ worshippers, that's too lax, while C/C++ isn't.
Yeah, but Java actually has clout. It's what I consider a "heavyweight" language. It's well designed, and efficient - so much so that you can implement other languages in it, to speed them up significantly.
C/C++, ASM, and Java are basically the big three that everything is built on top of. Many people would be shocked that an interpreted language could make the cut.
This isn't such a bad idea, to be honest. OpenGL shaders can be made using almost any language in existence, including(but not limited to) C/C++, Java, Python, Ruby, etc. etc.
I can see more problems with letting a website block keyboard presses and mouse buttons, and that doesn't seem to be hugely abused in Firefox.
I do hope there's some sort of filtering for malicious content. Up until now OpenGL has been run from "trusted" programs that already have full access to your computer. I remember a while back when I messed the order on some OGL calls, it completely froze the rendering thread. (by "design" - not a "bug":P )
A big part of that memory usage is probably caused by them. I bet you wouldn't leak to 2GB nearly as fast, if you disabled your addons. Mind you, your browsing experience would be degraded.
I remember when my computer got locked up because of Smooth Scrolling.
It was years ago, in Win98. An IE window had an endless loop pumping out new lines, and the browser was trying to scroll to the bottom. It locked up explorer, so I had to reboot.
I find it annoying how slowly pages load when flash is playing.
Opening a Youtube link takes a half second, and leaving the page takes about eight. That's because the video stream packets seem to be prioritized over regular http requests.:/
Sound was fine for me. Volume was on par with everything else(Ventrilo, videos, games, etc.)
The only thing way too loud is the old "find failed" sound in Firefox 2.x. Man, that thing was like a bullet going off. Easily 8x the volume of everything else.
Surely VLC [videolan.org] should have made this list? While it isn't exactly pretty it is very much FOSS, cross platform, and removes the need to download endless quantities of random codecs. Definitely better that Media Player classic in my book.
Well, yes, and no. VLC should've been included, but so should some other programs. I have a feeling I could list over 20 deserving freeware programs. Heck, I think MediaCoder should be on the list, too.
My personal opinion is that MPC is more useful - in part because of the hardware acceleration, and limitless amounts of DirectShow codecs available - and in part because MPC-HC includes quality enhancing GPU shaders.
VLC is an absolute must on many other platforms, but on Windows there's better solutions if you take the time to find them. (I say "better" from a codec compatibility, decode speed, and image quality standpoint)
Slashdot Mirror
Man, look at this headline:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/10/1840220/Scientists-Create-Artificial-Bones-From-Wood
Case in point: The dis-believable is suddenly science. :o
Perhaps you can point me to the repeatable scientific double-blind experiment showing homeopathy to have an effect better than a placebo?
Nope. Although to be a fair study, it should also compare the effect of no placebo.
If both the placebo and homeopathy have a better effect than nothing at all, then you have your answer on why it works, and proof that it does work - if not for the reasons claimed.
I've always been a believer that your mental state can affect your health dramatically. Just believing in something has an effect, which is probably why praying also sometimes helps. (For the people that believe in it)
A few short years ago studies were proclaiming that EM fields from high voltage powerlines had no effect on our health. Now we know they cause Cancer. Give it another few decades, and who knows what'll be proven and disproven?
Maybe we'll have figured out that people emit faint energy fields, and when sick these fields change. Healthy people nearby can help right the fields just by devoting thought to the sick person, which alters their field to help the sick person's body heal itself.
It might sound ludicrous now, but in a few decades it could be science. That's usually how these things go - science fiction from 30-50 years ago is now reality, and in many cases we've even far surpassed what was imagined.
As you first mentioned - keep an open mind.
That, again, is wrong. Scientists are required to have a completely open mind when it comes to everything, even homeopathy. This is precisely why we have useful studies in which scientists tested the claims made by homeopathy and other "alternative" medicine. It's also why we know which of these things work, and which don't.
Somewhat true. Not all scientists are open-minded, but it'd be nice if they were.
The ones who don't have an open mind are the people who still believe homeopathy works. Their closed-mindedness makes them unable to accept the evidence.
What evidence? Studies paid for by pharmaceuticals?
I can point you to studies proclaiming no benefit to chiropractic, and extreme benefit from back surgeries - but now most of us realize that back problems are one thing Chiropractors can usually solve better.
Give it 20 years...
But a 12" netbook has a really nice resolution on it, and is magnitudes cheaper than most other 12" notebooks.
The niche is 12" in $400-500
Ditto. I frequently delay completion of tasks in many games just to finish some other non-task.
I've been playing King's Bounty, and I've become obsessed with not losing units. I don't really care if I lose some - ex: I lost one unit killing a cyclops the first time - but if the battle should've gone better, I repeat it, and do it better. Often just moving a stack of units around before battle, or fighting another enemy first, will mess up the random number generator enough that you can win something without any losses.
Why am I this way? Must be something psychological, triggered by seeing the hero stats in the main menu. It's not just scores, but stats like damage inflicted from spells, inflicted from your army, total army losses, etc.!
And I despise Slashdot's weird interactions with Firefox. Did you know that in this text edit box, I can only enter text in approximately 80% of it? The final 20% is obscured by what appears to be a fully transparent layer, which intercepts clicks, meaning I can't select/replace/delete that text without using the keyboard to get over to it.
This is why both username and password need to be changeable by admins.
root and admin are never root or admin on my boxes.
Can you give any example of something being sped up significantly by reimplementing it in Java?
Jython? JRuby?
I wouldn't be shocked, as Java isn't an interpreted language. JIT compiler still produces native code. And back when there was no JIT, Java was slow.
It sure does JIT compile fast, though.
Apparently fully-interpreted Java implementations(Like JamVM w/ GNU Classpath) are faster than the fastest Python/Ruby implementations. I don't have any articles I can cite, but it was the opinion of a brilliant Scala (and C/C++/Java/Python/Ruby/Lisp/Haskell) developer I met.
This same data is collected by every single search engine?
Plus more? I mean, at least they're not storing it in a big database, tied to your IP.
Broader point: I'm sick and tired of these language designers not giving us enough features. For the last 20 years I've been waiting for a language that will allow me to redefine keywords. If that too much to ask? What if I don't happen to like "for", or "while", or "return"? Do you people lack vision, or competence, or both? Second thing on my must-have list is a pre-pre-processor. I'm tired of writing all these header files all the time. I want a way to generate them programmatically, at compile time. A small embedded scripting language would do fine, just make sure it has templates and operator overloading and multiple inheritance, so I can stretch my legs and get comfy with it. Come on people, start earning your paychecks and get some of this stuff done!
Oh man. You just outlined some of what I fleshed out for my "ideal language". Years ago I was talking with a bunch of other programmers, and rambling about what I'd like, and concluded that I wanted many of the things you just listed. Why? Well for one thing, I prefer Java keywords to C keywords. I also find the pre-processors in every single language abysmally weak, and templates require far too much syntax to be a big time saver.
This even gives a new chance to more vital features, such as polymorphic lambdas (understand lambdas were the types of the arguments is not given and which thus exhibit parametric polymorphism), to now being reconsidered.
Oh, you mean like in Javascript?
function add(a, b) { return a+b; }
add(2,3); // 5 // Hello Bob
add("Hello ", "Bob");
Because when building some frameworks, if you could write code like that, it'd save you a lot of lines! I'm thinking back to when I was making a 2D SDL tile engine, and in C it was easily 3-4x longer than any other language.
Well, either you believe in static typing, or you don't. If you do, Java is a good choice. If you don't, Ruby is a good choice. C++, on the other hand, is static enough to be annoying, but not static enough to be safe.
I actually much prefer Objective-C to C++. Once again, the worse solution won.
I don't believe in static typing, but I much prefer Java to C. Half-baked implementations really irk me.
Whether being half-baked is useful is beside the point, because I'd sure find it useful to be able to treat any integer as a pointer or integer, on demand, as you can in assembly. That's even more lax, but according to C/C++ worshippers, that's too lax, while C/C++ isn't.
So I definitely prefer too strict to "too lax".
Yeah, but Java actually has clout. It's what I consider a "heavyweight" language. It's well designed, and efficient - so much so that you can implement other languages in it, to speed them up significantly.
C/C++, ASM, and Java are basically the big three that everything is built on top of. Many people would be shocked that an interpreted language could make the cut.
This isn't such a bad idea, to be honest. OpenGL shaders can be made using almost any language in existence, including(but not limited to) C/C++, Java, Python, Ruby, etc. etc.
I can see more problems with letting a website block keyboard presses and mouse buttons, and that doesn't seem to be hugely abused in Firefox.
I do hope there's some sort of filtering for malicious content. Up until now OpenGL has been run from "trusted" programs that already have full access to your computer. I remember a while back when I messed the order on some OGL calls, it completely froze the rendering thread. (by "design" - not a "bug" :P )
You should mod up as underrated. That way it keeps the troll tag, but more people will see it. :P
And I was serious - it was just a couple days ago!
Haha! And I got modded troll for saying 30 page articles are common and make me want to throttle someone. ;)
Both of those addons leak memory like crazy.
A big part of that memory usage is probably caused by them. I bet you wouldn't leak to 2GB nearly as fast, if you disabled your addons. Mind you, your browsing experience would be degraded.
I remember when my computer got locked up because of Smooth Scrolling.
It was years ago, in Win98. An IE window had an endless loop pumping out new lines, and the browser was trying to scroll to the bottom. It locked up explorer, so I had to reboot.
Thankfully that isn't possible in Win2k and up.
Maybe you're asking a little too much from Google. Remember that a significant share of their revenue comes from web advertising...
They could add an Adblock with the following criteria:
-Blocks flash ads.
-Blocks ads when they take up a large percentage of the page(say, over 10%)
This would eliminate ads on most other sites and search engines, without interfering with them.
I find it annoying how slowly pages load when flash is playing.
Opening a Youtube link takes a half second, and leaving the page takes about eight. That's because the video stream packets seem to be prioritized over regular http requests. :/
Five? I've seen many split into 15-20...
http://ajaxian.com/archives/canvas-reflectionjs
Or canvas reflection?
Sound was fine for me. Volume was on par with everything else(Ventrilo, videos, games, etc.)
The only thing way too loud is the old "find failed" sound in Firefox 2.x. Man, that thing was like a bullet going off. Easily 8x the volume of everything else.
Works fine on my old Athlon XP running Windows 2000 with 1GB of RAM and a 7800GS.
Surely VLC [videolan.org] should have made this list? While it isn't exactly pretty it is very much FOSS, cross platform, and removes the need to download endless quantities of random codecs. Definitely better that Media Player classic in my book.
Well, yes, and no. VLC should've been included, but so should some other programs. I have a feeling I could list over 20 deserving freeware programs. Heck, I think MediaCoder should be on the list, too.
My personal opinion is that MPC is more useful - in part because of the hardware acceleration, and limitless amounts of DirectShow codecs available - and in part because MPC-HC includes quality enhancing GPU shaders.
VLC is an absolute must on many other platforms, but on Windows there's better solutions if you take the time to find them. (I say "better" from a codec compatibility, decode speed, and image quality standpoint)