Well, the bloat is all right, since it makes things pretty and shiny. I just wish there was a bit more content provided by all these "content providers". The next www bubble is fast approaching, as soon as people realize that just because a 13 year old girl's page uses AJAX and has a good color theme doesn't make it that different from a 13 year old girl's page on GeoCities that has a black background, frames, and GIF's that consist of nothing more than a picture and its mirrored version switching every 1 second. Oh, I forgot to mention that the page is made with FrontPage 2000, and thus is around 25 times larger than it could be.
I'm quite disappointed by that. That's only 1/30th of the month, or about 1/20th if you don't take into account sleep time. I probably spend 95% of my waking hours next to firefox. Of course I'm not always using it, I just keep it open so I feel less alone when I'm destroying my soul in java and matlab... But still, I do click on "Check mail now" in GMail once every 20 minutes or so.
Yeah, but I didn't say "control of industry bad", I sad "control of software bad".
If you're still not getting it, don't bother replying, since I'm not going to comment on this anymore. I've got to protect my brain cells from the extremely negative effects of arguing over the Internet.
I am claiming that my argument was valid in the specific context. Applying it to hospitals, airline companies, and branches of the military is not a "case", but a completely different statement.
I'd like to send a little message to the EU on behalf of MS, as well as all other software companies:
Stay off my lawn!
Software shouldn't be regulated like this. The Internet shouldn't be re-designed to be more secure. People shouldn't have to sign in with their passport numbers to GMail. Trolls on Slashdot shouldn't be legally prosecuted (as much as we'd all like to see that). MS should be allowed to bundle whatever the fuck it wants with its own product. Also, people who have absolutely no knowledge about computers shouldn't be making laws about them (otherwise the Internet might become a series of tubes).
Well, I disagree. Apple is actually much worse than MS. Think about it - every apple product is specifically designed to be used only with other apple products (I'm not talking about devices like the iphone or ipod, but about their computer software and hardware). Microsoft, on the other hand, is the reason why the computer hardware manufacturers have been able to compete with each other for the last 20 years - there was an OS which ran (or at least tried to run) on all of their hardware, didn't require you to buy an IBM mouse if you had an IBM floppy drive.
... you make it sound like it's the freaking elections or something. Campaigning for products is called advertising. Forcing a company to offer its competitors' products to their customers is called heresy (look that up, I'm sure you'll find that definition somewhere). I understand why competition is important, but if you ask me, they're regulating this to death. I mean, they're complaining that Microsoft is bundling Windows (an OS designed to be easy-to-use) with its own web browser? Of course they have to put some browser in there (otherwise how would Joe the Internet user check his email?), but offering other browsers to Windows users is just plain retarded from Microsoft's point of view, and they should never be forced to do anything so self-destructive. It's like telling a professional wrestler, "you're too strong, so you have to offer this knife to all of your opponents in case they want to cut off a few of your muscles". Get real.
That's not about evolution though, it's about every person alive today who's had the flu (or weaker forms thereof) many times during their lives, but still has no antibodies for the "general" version.
Or do I mean the common cold? I got confused...
Re:That's one way KDE/GNOME should emulate Windows
on
A Real Bill Gates Rant
·
· Score: 1
Still, when designing something like a desktop OS, it's not harmful to try to make it as universal as possible. Think of it this way: I have an abstract class, OS. I have implementations of it that might be called OSForWirelessNetworkResearcher, OSForAccountant, or OSForIdiotWhoOnlyChecksEmailAndUploadsPhotosToFacebook. The goal of Windows is to cover as many of these goals as possible. The goal of most Linux distros is to make sure they get it right for advanced users, and then dumbify it as much as possible (within their resources) without compromising that original goal. If you ask me, it seems like making OSes more modular is the only logical way to go about this.
If an OS maker doesn't want to limit itself to one particular market, and wants to be competitive among all different groups of potential users, then instead of releasing a 5GB piece of software, it should probably be modular enough to give to a user just what she needs. The alternative is to dump all the code you have on all your customers, and know that most of them are only going to use a small fraction of the features you gave them, and be frustrated by the uselessness (for them) of the rest.
Actually, you're wrong. Those marks were left from the time when the city was actually parked on the bottom of the Atlantic, before going back to the Pegasus. So the TV is right, but to is Google Maps.
*sigh* Good thing I came up with that theory. Otherwise I'd have to think that one of my two Gods had betrayed me...
Actually, that's not really the fault of scientists in general. There are good scientists, and bad scientists. The good ones would rather die than claim or conclude something that they haven't cross-checked with all available data 100 times. Bad scientists will say anything as long as it gets them attention and money. Conclusion: bad science is the fault of the media, the government, and private organizations that for various reasons fund it.
I don't think that what he meant is that they're going to blatantly ignore any piece of information that doesn't fit in with their current model/hypothesis (even if this is actually what they would do). Probably what he meant is that the actual way in which final data is acquired from the newer sensors is sufficiently different from the old way that they would have to make a significant investment in order to combine or entirely switch to that method.
I understand that it's pleasant to make fun of/insult scientists, and jump to conclusions regarding their integrity. In many cases such accusations are true, but there is no need to be so hasty in claiming that someone is a charlatan and understands less about his/her job than you do.
Stop saying that everyone trusts everyone on the internet! This is not true, and it hasn't been for a while. I'm tired of hearing doomsday scenarios about how tomorrow some 13 year old kid in the Ukraine is going to bring down the whole internet. The way most networks are run today is actually very secure. We don't need a new design, we don't need to start from scratch. All we need is to shoot all the idiots who don't protect their computers and let them become a part of a botnet, because realistically that's by far the biggest danger for the Tubes right now.
If you ask me, instead of trying to create hybrids between the artificial and the natural, we should be looking to replace all of nature's functions by man-made processes.
Obviously there's no replacing the gulf stream, at least for the next 2000 years or so, but smaller things can be done.
For example, if we had ridiculously cheap energy, we could just extract CO2 from the air, get some other elements from other gases/rocks/*stuff*, and synthesize our own nutrients. Even though the energy requirements with our current state of chemistry would be mind-bogglingly immense, this still seems more practical that growing crops in skyscrapers.
Either way, we'll soon have to solve the problem of cheap, virtually infinite energy. Just think about how much energy Google's data centers will consume in some 50 years. Once that problem is solved, and maybe chemists come up with some catalysts/enzymes (or fungi. i love fungi) that make it easier to synthesize nutrients humans need, then there you have it. The entire world will be eating white goo. No more macdonalds, no more obese people (who'd want to get fat eating goo?), no more FDA (I mean the F part, not the D)... Basically, the matrix except without the plugs. Although, I wouldn't mind the plugs, either. That would probably be USB 4.0.
Sorry, got a little distracted there near the end.
As has probably been pointed out by slashdotters, as well as experts, concluding anything about the effect of a parent's environment to genes of the offspring is just plain dumb.
All they did was show that parents pass on what they have learned to their offspring. Don't know about you, but I already kind of realized this, as did the entire field of developmental psychology.
In order for me to conclude anything else, this is what the experiment must have looked like. There should be three groups of mice with the genetic defect, A B C. Group A should be the one "taught" to have better memory. Groups B and C should be left to develop normally. Fertilized eggs from group A should have been transplanted to females in group B. Group C should be left to reproduce naturally. Then, the offspring of groups B and C should be compared against each other. B's babies have any advantage over C's, then that is pretty much hard evidence that the genetic composition of the offspring of group A was somehow modified to reflect A's parents' development (without removing the original defect).
This would be hard evidence because A's offspring's environment would have had no chance to be affected by their parents, after birth OR in the womb.
I have to admit that I didn't make the effort to read the original article, and my comment is only a response to what some other commenters here seemed to conclude from it.
But there are several obstacles which I can't see being solved within the next decade or two (I'm being optimistic):
First of all, there's accuracy. You don't want your VIP actually walking to intercept the bullet.
Second, size. If your radar is so precise as to detect a bullet even 500 yards away, it's gotta be pretty big.
Related to this, there's energy. For an awesome radar (or anything else) like that, you'd need big-ass batteries, and/or to recharge every couple of hours. Especially in battle, this would be a no-go.
Finally, if they claim that this is really for VIP's under high risk of an assassination attempt, and not for military/police, then the device would probably have to be invisible. I don't think Obama or Bill Gates wants to walk around with a huge thingamajig on his head (remember "Child abduction is not funny"?).
Seriously, I don't know if it's a good idea to give somebody a patent for an idea if they haven't addressed so many key issues.
who cares anymore? the only reason i have an ipod shuffle is that it's the best product on the market of its kind. clearly this won't be the case for the iphone once android phones pick up, unless they make some BIG changes.
If we let them go extinct once not so long ago, what's the point of resurrecting them? Has our attitude towards animals (or other creations of the great Noodly One) changed so much over the last 9 years that we wouldn't let them go extinct again?
On the other hand, I suppose if there's a remote possibility that they'll learn something from these efforts that will one day make it possible to resurrect a raptor, then go for it!
There must be some reason why they're proposing this. I'm guessing they know about conservation of mass.
Maybe the astronauts need (or want) fresh food?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the bloat is all right, since it makes things pretty and shiny. I just wish there was a bit more content provided by all these "content providers". The next www bubble is fast approaching, as soon as people realize that just because a 13 year old girl's page uses AJAX and has a good color theme doesn't make it that different from a 13 year old girl's page on GeoCities that has a black background, frames, and GIF's that consist of nothing more than a picture and its mirrored version switching every 1 second. Oh, I forgot to mention that the page is made with FrontPage 2000, and thus is around 25 times larger than it could be.
I'm quite disappointed by that. That's only 1/30th of the month, or about 1/20th if you don't take into account sleep time. I probably spend 95% of my waking hours next to firefox. Of course I'm not always using it, I just keep it open so I feel less alone when I'm destroying my soul in java and matlab... But still, I do click on "Check mail now" in GMail once every 20 minutes or so.
Yeah, but I didn't say "control of industry bad", I sad "control of software bad".
If you're still not getting it, don't bother replying, since I'm not going to comment on this anymore. I've got to protect my brain cells from the extremely negative effects of arguing over the Internet.
I am claiming that my argument was valid in the specific context. Applying it to hospitals, airline companies, and branches of the military is not a "case", but a completely different statement.
Exaggerating my statement until it becomes absurd is not a valid counterargument.
Yes, I suppose comparing Apple to MS really is comparing apples to oranges (I suppose I should say "apples to microsofts").
Thank you.
I'd like to send a little message to the EU on behalf of MS, as well as all other software companies:
Stay off my lawn!
Software shouldn't be regulated like this. The Internet shouldn't be re-designed to be more secure. People shouldn't have to sign in with their passport numbers to GMail. Trolls on Slashdot shouldn't be legally prosecuted (as much as we'd all like to see that). MS should be allowed to bundle whatever the fuck it wants with its own product. Also, people who have absolutely no knowledge about computers shouldn't be making laws about them (otherwise the Internet might become a series of tubes).
If by "flexing its muscles" you mean making decisions that go against every principle of the free market, then yes, I suppose you're right.
Seriously, those idiots are making me like the conservatives. I don't like liking the conservatives!
Well, I disagree. Apple is actually much worse than MS. Think about it - every apple product is specifically designed to be used only with other apple products (I'm not talking about devices like the iphone or ipod, but about their computer software and hardware). Microsoft, on the other hand, is the reason why the computer hardware manufacturers have been able to compete with each other for the last 20 years - there was an OS which ran (or at least tried to run) on all of their hardware, didn't require you to buy an IBM mouse if you had an IBM floppy drive.
... you make it sound like it's the freaking elections or something. Campaigning for products is called advertising. Forcing a company to offer its competitors' products to their customers is called heresy (look that up, I'm sure you'll find that definition somewhere). I understand why competition is important, but if you ask me, they're regulating this to death. I mean, they're complaining that Microsoft is bundling Windows (an OS designed to be easy-to-use) with its own web browser? Of course they have to put some browser in there (otherwise how would Joe the Internet user check his email?), but offering other browsers to Windows users is just plain retarded from Microsoft's point of view, and they should never be forced to do anything so self-destructive. It's like telling a professional wrestler, "you're too strong, so you have to offer this knife to all of your opponents in case they want to cut off a few of your muscles". Get real.
but that would be appropriate, since as a government spy i can assure you that BASH 4.1 will indeed have the code name skynet.
That's not about evolution though, it's about every person alive today who's had the flu (or weaker forms thereof) many times during their lives, but still has no antibodies for the "general" version.
Or do I mean the common cold? I got confused...
Still, when designing something like a desktop OS, it's not harmful to try to make it as universal as possible. Think of it this way: I have an abstract class, OS. I have implementations of it that might be called OSForWirelessNetworkResearcher, OSForAccountant, or OSForIdiotWhoOnlyChecksEmailAndUploadsPhotosToFacebook. The goal of Windows is to cover as many of these goals as possible. The goal of most Linux distros is to make sure they get it right for advanced users, and then dumbify it as much as possible (within their resources) without compromising that original goal. If you ask me, it seems like making OSes more modular is the only logical way to go about this.
If an OS maker doesn't want to limit itself to one particular market, and wants to be competitive among all different groups of potential users, then instead of releasing a 5GB piece of software, it should probably be modular enough to give to a user just what she needs. The alternative is to dump all the code you have on all your customers, and know that most of them are only going to use a small fraction of the features you gave them, and be frustrated by the uselessness (for them) of the rest.
Actually, you're wrong. Those marks were left from the time when the city was actually parked on the bottom of the Atlantic, before going back to the Pegasus. So the TV is right, but to is Google Maps.
*sigh* Good thing I came up with that theory. Otherwise I'd have to think that one of my two Gods had betrayed me...
I agree. See my comment to Shivetya's reply.
Actually, that's not really the fault of scientists in general. There are good scientists, and bad scientists. The good ones would rather die than claim or conclude something that they haven't cross-checked with all available data 100 times. Bad scientists will say anything as long as it gets them attention and money. Conclusion: bad science is the fault of the media, the government, and private organizations that for various reasons fund it.
I don't think that what he meant is that they're going to blatantly ignore any piece of information that doesn't fit in with their current model/hypothesis (even if this is actually what they would do). Probably what he meant is that the actual way in which final data is acquired from the newer sensors is sufficiently different from the old way that they would have to make a significant investment in order to combine or entirely switch to that method.
I understand that it's pleasant to make fun of/insult scientists, and jump to conclusions regarding their integrity. In many cases such accusations are true, but there is no need to be so hasty in claiming that someone is a charlatan and understands less about his/her job than you do.
NO, NO, NO!
Stop saying that everyone trusts everyone on the internet! This is not true, and it hasn't been for a while. I'm tired of hearing doomsday scenarios about how tomorrow some 13 year old kid in the Ukraine is going to bring down the whole internet. The way most networks are run today is actually very secure. We don't need a new design, we don't need to start from scratch. All we need is to shoot all the idiots who don't protect their computers and let them become a part of a botnet, because realistically that's by far the biggest danger for the Tubes right now.
If you ask me, instead of trying to create hybrids between the artificial and the natural, we should be looking to replace all of nature's functions by man-made processes.
Obviously there's no replacing the gulf stream, at least for the next 2000 years or so, but smaller things can be done.
For example, if we had ridiculously cheap energy, we could just extract CO2 from the air, get some other elements from other gases/rocks/*stuff*, and synthesize our own nutrients. Even though the energy requirements with our current state of chemistry would be mind-bogglingly immense, this still seems more practical that growing crops in skyscrapers.
Either way, we'll soon have to solve the problem of cheap, virtually infinite energy. Just think about how much energy Google's data centers will consume in some 50 years. Once that problem is solved, and maybe chemists come up with some catalysts/enzymes (or fungi. i love fungi) that make it easier to synthesize nutrients humans need, then there you have it. The entire world will be eating white goo. No more macdonalds, no more obese people (who'd want to get fat eating goo?), no more FDA (I mean the F part, not the D)... Basically, the matrix except without the plugs. Although, I wouldn't mind the plugs, either. That would probably be USB 4.0.
Sorry, got a little distracted there near the end.
As has probably been pointed out by slashdotters, as well as experts, concluding anything about the effect of a parent's environment to genes of the offspring is just plain dumb.
All they did was show that parents pass on what they have learned to their offspring. Don't know about you, but I already kind of realized this, as did the entire field of developmental psychology.
In order for me to conclude anything else, this is what the experiment must have looked like. There should be three groups of mice with the genetic defect, A B C. Group A should be the one "taught" to have better memory. Groups B and C should be left to develop normally. Fertilized eggs from group A should have been transplanted to females in group B. Group C should be left to reproduce naturally. Then, the offspring of groups B and C should be compared against each other. B's babies have any advantage over C's, then that is pretty much hard evidence that the genetic composition of the offspring of group A was somehow modified to reflect A's parents' development (without removing the original defect).
This would be hard evidence because A's offspring's environment would have had no chance to be affected by their parents, after birth OR in the womb.
I have to admit that I didn't make the effort to read the original article, and my comment is only a response to what some other commenters here seemed to conclude from it.
But there are several obstacles which I can't see being solved within the next decade or two (I'm being optimistic):
First of all, there's accuracy. You don't want your VIP actually walking to intercept the bullet.
Second, size. If your radar is so precise as to detect a bullet even 500 yards away, it's gotta be pretty big.
Related to this, there's energy. For an awesome radar (or anything else) like that, you'd need big-ass batteries, and/or to recharge every couple of hours. Especially in battle, this would be a no-go.
Finally, if they claim that this is really for VIP's under high risk of an assassination attempt, and not for military/police, then the device would probably have to be invisible. I don't think Obama or Bill Gates wants to walk around with a huge thingamajig on his head (remember "Child abduction is not funny"?).
Seriously, I don't know if it's a good idea to give somebody a patent for an idea if they haven't addressed so many key issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Android#Forthcoming
who cares anymore? the only reason i have an ipod shuffle is that it's the best product on the market of its kind. clearly this won't be the case for the iphone once android phones pick up, unless they make some BIG changes.
If we let them go extinct once not so long ago, what's the point of resurrecting them? Has our attitude towards animals (or other creations of the great Noodly One) changed so much over the last 9 years that we wouldn't let them go extinct again? On the other hand, I suppose if there's a remote possibility that they'll learn something from these efforts that will one day make it possible to resurrect a raptor, then go for it!
NOT a feature!
There must be some reason why they're proposing this. I'm guessing they know about conservation of mass. Maybe the astronauts need (or want) fresh food?