Contrary to your defensive posture in the your last paragraph, I'm not here to defend any sanctity of marriage argument; criticizing your argument does not confirm that I'm forwarding the opposite argument.
And as to the notion of hypocrites having no credibility, sometimes hypocrites have the *most* credibility. Who do you trust more when they tell you not to take methamphetamine: The guy with the million-dollar hair and a PhD in biochemistry or the guy with no hair, no teeth, and no life after 3 years on the pipe? This may or may not be one of those cases, so don't jump to conclusions again that I'm defending 'talking head' philanderers, but hypocrisy is *not* an automatic reason to ignore someone's arguments on a topic.
"Don't make the same mistake I made" seems like a pretty damn good argument to me, whether or not they're still making said mistake. If they are actively doing what they tell you not to do, then they are a hypocrite, and if they judge you harshly for simultaneously making those mistakes then they are, putting it kindly, a jerk...but their argument may still be 100% valid.
You should be able to marry your sister. And if genetic screenings say you won't make web footed duck babies, you should be able to have kids with her too
Actually, some geneticists and anthropologists are starting to wonder if genetic damage and recessive genes are really the underlying reason for the taboo on incestuous marriages. It might just be why we thought the taboo came about. Yes, there are several obvious cases of royal families screwing themselves to hell with inbreeding, but nevertheless inbreeding is not the near guarantee of massive birth defects people think it is. Not even close.
Ok, so the inverse square law applies. However, say you can just have a little power-beaming antennae under your desk and that's all it takes for your computer monitor, your cell phone, your main box, your laptop, your desk lamp, your paper shredder, your space heater, blah, blah, blah to receive power with no cords at all.
And all at a distance of less than 10 feet. So the inverse square law applies, but several of the most convenient, life-simplifying uses of the product aren't at long range: they're at extremely short ranges.
Once again, slashdot catching up with old news and making one company in the lagging position look like the frontrunner of a new technology. Fast Company, among other places, have already published on the several research teams who've had operational prototypes for at least a year, and with comparable benefits, challenges, and ineffeciencies to the unit described in this summary.
Usually primary residences are shielded from civil judgments.
The problem here, of course, arises when scammers and people filing bankruptcy own $3.5 million primary homes. Correct me if I'm wrong about your state or local area, but I've heard scammers and people filing bankruptcy frequently walk away with mega-mansions while failing to repay thousands or millions in stolen money and bad debt.
Despite its eternal popularity, this quote doesn't connote meekness or high hopes for scientific progress. When Newton spoke these words he did so not because he felt star-struck or humble, but so might he insult another scientist who happened to be a midget.
So stop quoting it like some sage wisdom out of scientific history. Please.
Just so slashdotters are aware, Norman Borlaug acted primarily as a humanitarian. His goals often intersected with common sense efforts in ecological preservation and education, but don't go off misinterpreting his "Green Revolution" as an environmental movement just because of the word Green. His greatest goals and achievements were the alleviation of human suffering and famine, and he typically pursued environmental goals as methods of achieving this, not as ends in themselves.
So people can't bother to read even the summary now?
From the summary:
[animals who experience this gene modification] don't have negative associations with pain, although they do react negatively to heat and pressure.
They're eliminating the component of pain which inspires psychological anguish, not building 4,000 pound animals without sensitivity to damaging physical stimuli. The cows will still respond to pain appropriately; if the project works out as planned, however, the "pain" won't hurt.
Unfortunately, these size and popluation density arguments are probably false. I've seen people cite numbers, in slashdot conversations about exactly this topic, showing several European countries to have population densities the same or lower than the US, despite their much smaller geographical areas.
I don't think having more land is likely to mean we will string more cable per user than another nation of the same population density, so the US being big doesn't excuse us having poor broadband, especially given that we have *way* more money per person served than these other countries.
P.S. A big thanks on behalf of the tens of millions of people who don't live on the east or west coast for calling their states and homes "a whole lot of nothing."
Re:Most people simply don't think about security
on
The Myths of Security
·
· Score: 1
Never, ever underestimate how stupid and petulent you look when you refer to Microsoft Corp. as "M$".
Many, many people who already hate Microsoft think you look like a whining fool; those who don't mind the company or don't know about the skeletons in the closet think you look like an absolute prick.
You will never help any anti-Microsoft cause one bit with the "M$" abbreviation.
This may be true, but it does the original F117-A Nighthawk stealth fighter a disservice to dismiss the term "stealth fighter" as a mere "term used by the media".
The F-117, at its debut in combat, had a radar signature the size of a 3/4" ball bearing floating around in the sky. It was truly invisible. F-22's and this new Indian fighter may be stealth-ish and stealth elemvents may be required of all combat planes these days, but don't forget some planes are *true* stealth fighters.
TFA sticks with the "economically viable" phrase and doesn't offer any numbers or details.
Plenty of things, including oil sands, arctic natural gas, and burning baby seal blubber can be "economically viable" in certain situations, but only when more traditional sources of crude oil reach a certain market price. This article doesn't even conjecture about when and where watermelon fuel could be "economically viable" compared to crude oil, and comparison with crude oil marks the only concrete method of making the comparison.
Naturally, using watermelons you've already grown for fuel might be viable at a pretty low return, compared with letting them rot, but the article doesn't prove that, either.
Your response would make sense, I suppose, save that I specifically did not mention any less than ubiquitous technologies. I didn't say just use an SD card or just slap it into an LS-120. I mentioned things that have already passed their test of time.
Hindsight is involved, but that doesn't mean it's self-righteous or presumptuous.
You guys do realize that 3.5 inch floppies have been publicly available for 22 years right? And the USB devices for 13 years? Even if you used a floppy it wouldn't be *that* hard to access in 16 years, and the USB standard isn't exactly on its way out at the moment.
It always amazes me how pretentious geeks can be, assuming all the technology of today will be some sort of arcane relic mere months or years from now.
At what I feel may be a very real risk of WHOOSH, I'll respond. This hate on "generalising" is totally irrational. Humans are habit forming, pattern matching biological machines who owe a large part of our success as a species to the ability to generalise.
Yes! Yes! A Thousand times yes!
I can't tell you how much it bothers me when people can't see this! I always think this when people complain about that dreaded evil of bigotry and cynicism: the stereotype. A stereotype represents nothing more than pattern recognition skills in action. Stereotypes literally separate humans from monkeys. They damage only when people force others into certain stereotypes rather than testing and observing them as individuals, but they otherwise make the entire world go around.
Developing complex stereotypes about everything from Hispanics to public libraries to Chevrolet automobiles makes complete sense; only the ways in which you apply those stereotypes and self-adjust them (or refuse to adjust them) can go wrong.
Except for the fact that if you're a slow/weak walker, you'd rather be seated than have to stand on this contraption.
You may be correct for some people, but not all. For those who stand easily but cannot walk swiftly enough, standing on the Segway for a few hours a day will increase their mobility and keep them in surprisingly good shape, especially compared to sitting down almost all the time in a power chair.
Keeping old or injured people more mobile and healthier seems like a pretty fantastic use to me, and a smart way to save a bundle on Medicare bills the now-standing patients won't incur for obesity and embolisms, yet you assume they're all too lazy to stand up rather than sit down.
If they had an actual monopoly, do you think the prices would still be low?
Monopoly is not the correct word here. Wal-Mart is not the only place for consumers to buy games, not by a long shot. The issue here is that Wal-Mart has enough power as a buyer of games, i.e. from their wholesalers, to unduly influence the market.
When the main issue concerns having just one buyer with an inordinate quantity of power, the correct word is monosopy.
Because clearly TFA included blatant references to intelligent design which you just had to refute.....quit trolling, buy a monkey-man hybrid costume, and go stand in front of a baptist church. You'll get way quicker results and you won't be wasting my time.
I agree with every other smart poster, by the way. The title and summary completely misrepresent the topic, as if the tree continuously evolves its defenses against a long-deceased threat, but TFA makes clear it simply retains defenses which remained current and useful until a mere 1500 years ago. Absolutely mundane and uninteresting. Might as well have a post screaming "Have we lost our place in evolution: Human beings still retain appendixes, tailbones, and armpit hair?"
...70% of mathematics Ph.D.s going to men; however that figure is down from 95% in the 1950s.
Nevermind that 95% of *all* PhD's went to men in the 1950s. This statistic might be useful about women and education in general, but it's completely misleading and pointless with regard to math.
You know, REI answered your letter (and it was a specific response; just because it's short doesn't make it a "form letter") and took your phone calls, but sounds to me like you won't be happy until they get involved in your legal case, which no business owner in their right mind would do.
Give REI a break, and quit acting pissy that their employees didn't jump in the middle of you getting arrested by a uniformed officer when they didn't know what was going on.
Many folks have debated Halo here, and I have to agree with almost all of them: it broke ground for consoles in some ways, yet Halo absolutely sucks compared to any quality PC shooter
The problem isn't even development quality, it's in development capacity. It's far easier building a fluidly navigable 3D environment, from the first-person perspective, when people have a highly responsive mechanism, and joysticks aren't *half* responsive enough. The same goes for using a keyboard, 3 button mouse, and a scroll wheel for menus versus using less than a dozen buttons on a joypad for navigating menus.
When it comes to any sort of visual quality, computers simply have more freedom to push the envelope. If your PC can't handle FEAR, it's your problem. If your 360 can't handle Halo, that becomes Microsoft's public relations disaster. Consoles have far greater obligations to remain compatible and developers to keep their titles playable on a platform up to eight years old.
This brings up, of course, the fact that a brand new game can be running on a system that is eight years old. Graphics will usually favor PCs, and it's not always a bad thing, but for a genre with a strong investment in immersive shininess, it's kind of a liability.
A perfect explanation of why a 'lost' sale doesn't always affect the company, and almost never affects the typical employee.
Do you guys remember those MPAA ads where they showed script girls and lighting technicians begging you not to take away their paychecks by pirating movies?
They were bullshit. Any product, including movies or software, that breaks even has paid every single hourly and almost all salaried employees *in full*. It's only when it *doesn't* break even and actually loses money up front that you can unequivocally argue piracy alters employment or social justice.
When you pirate a product that broke even in retail you harm executives and stockholders, not employees. In the long run, you can tell me that employees can own stock, you can argue about whether the economics of investment and the stock market squeeze out the company with the more-pirated product, you can argue all kinds of crap.
You cannot tell me, however, that pirating a successful product *ever* directly harms someone's ability to earn a salary coding or supporting that product.
Slashdot Mirror
Contrary to your defensive posture in the your last paragraph, I'm not here to defend any sanctity of marriage argument; criticizing your argument does not confirm that I'm forwarding the opposite argument.
And as to the notion of hypocrites having no credibility, sometimes hypocrites have the *most* credibility. Who do you trust more when they tell you not to take methamphetamine: The guy with the million-dollar hair and a PhD in biochemistry or the guy with no hair, no teeth, and no life after 3 years on the pipe? This may or may not be one of those cases, so don't jump to conclusions again that I'm defending 'talking head' philanderers, but hypocrisy is *not* an automatic reason to ignore someone's arguments on a topic.
"Don't make the same mistake I made" seems like a pretty damn good argument to me, whether or not they're still making said mistake. If they are actively doing what they tell you not to do, then they are a hypocrite, and if they judge you harshly for simultaneously making those mistakes then they are, putting it kindly, a jerk...but their argument may still be 100% valid.
You should be able to marry your sister. And if genetic screenings say you won't make web footed duck babies, you should be able to have kids with her too
Actually, some geneticists and anthropologists are starting to wonder if genetic damage and recessive genes are really the underlying reason for the taboo on incestuous marriages. It might just be why we thought the taboo came about. Yes, there are several obvious cases of royal families screwing themselves to hell with inbreeding, but nevertheless inbreeding is not the near guarantee of massive birth defects people think it is. Not even close.
Quit using the tired ad hominem that because some conservative bigots are philanderers no one can calmly or logically disagree with gay marriage.
Hypocrites are not always wrong, and not all who disagree with gay marriage are philandering hypocrites.
Ok, so the inverse square law applies. However, say you can just have a little power-beaming antennae under your desk and that's all it takes for your computer monitor, your cell phone, your main box, your laptop, your desk lamp, your paper shredder, your space heater, blah, blah, blah to receive power with no cords at all.
And all at a distance of less than 10 feet. So the inverse square law applies, but several of the most convenient, life-simplifying uses of the product aren't at long range: they're at extremely short ranges.
Once again, slashdot catching up with old news and making one company in the lagging position look like the frontrunner of a new technology. Fast Company, among other places, have already published on the several research teams who've had operational prototypes for at least a year, and with comparable benefits, challenges, and ineffeciencies to the unit described in this summary.
See "Wireless Electricity Is Here, Seriously", Fast Company, Jan. 2009.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/brilliant.html
Usually primary residences are shielded from civil judgments.
The problem here, of course, arises when scammers and people filing bankruptcy own $3.5 million primary homes. Correct me if I'm wrong about your state or local area, but I've heard scammers and people filing bankruptcy frequently walk away with mega-mansions while failing to repay thousands or millions in stolen money and bad debt.
stand on the shoulders of giants
Despite its eternal popularity, this quote doesn't connote meekness or high hopes for scientific progress. When Newton spoke these words he did so not because he felt star-struck or humble, but so might he insult another scientist who happened to be a midget.
So stop quoting it like some sage wisdom out of scientific history. Please.
Just so slashdotters are aware, Norman Borlaug acted primarily as a humanitarian. His goals often intersected with common sense efforts in ecological preservation and education, but don't go off misinterpreting his "Green Revolution" as an environmental movement just because of the word Green. His greatest goals and achievements were the alleviation of human suffering and famine, and he typically pursued environmental goals as methods of achieving this, not as ends in themselves.
From the summary:
[animals who experience this gene modification] don't have negative associations with pain, although they do react negatively to heat and pressure.
They're eliminating the component of pain which inspires psychological anguish, not building 4,000 pound animals without sensitivity to damaging physical stimuli. The cows will still respond to pain appropriately; if the project works out as planned, however, the "pain" won't hurt.
Unfortunately, these size and popluation density arguments are probably false. I've seen people cite numbers, in slashdot conversations about exactly this topic, showing several European countries to have population densities the same or lower than the US, despite their much smaller geographical areas.
I don't think having more land is likely to mean we will string more cable per user than another nation of the same population density, so the US being big doesn't excuse us having poor broadband, especially given that we have *way* more money per person served than these other countries.
P.S. A big thanks on behalf of the tens of millions of people who don't live on the east or west coast for calling their states and homes "a whole lot of nothing."
Never, ever underestimate how stupid and petulent you look when you refer to Microsoft Corp. as "M$".
Many, many people who already hate Microsoft think you look like a whining fool; those who don't mind the company or don't know about the skeletons in the closet think you look like an absolute prick.
You will never help any anti-Microsoft cause one bit with the "M$" abbreviation.
This may be true, but it does the original F117-A Nighthawk stealth fighter a disservice to dismiss the term "stealth fighter" as a mere "term used by the media".
The F-117, at its debut in combat, had a radar signature the size of a 3/4" ball bearing floating around in the sky. It was truly invisible. F-22's and this new Indian fighter may be stealth-ish and stealth elemvents may be required of all combat planes these days, but don't forget some planes are *true* stealth fighters.
TFA sticks with the "economically viable" phrase and doesn't offer any numbers or details.
Plenty of things, including oil sands, arctic natural gas, and burning baby seal blubber can be "economically viable" in certain situations, but only when more traditional sources of crude oil reach a certain market price. This article doesn't even conjecture about when and where watermelon fuel could be "economically viable" compared to crude oil, and comparison with crude oil marks the only concrete method of making the comparison.
Naturally, using watermelons you've already grown for fuel might be viable at a pretty low return, compared with letting them rot, but the article doesn't prove that, either.
Your response would make sense, I suppose, save that I specifically did not mention any less than ubiquitous technologies. I didn't say just use an SD card or just slap it into an LS-120. I mentioned things that have already passed their test of time.
Hindsight is involved, but that doesn't mean it's self-righteous or presumptuous.
You guys do realize that 3.5 inch floppies have been publicly available for 22 years right? And the USB devices for 13 years? Even if you used a floppy it wouldn't be *that* hard to access in 16 years, and the USB standard isn't exactly on its way out at the moment.
It always amazes me how pretentious geeks can be, assuming all the technology of today will be some sort of arcane relic mere months or years from now.
At what I feel may be a very real risk of WHOOSH, I'll respond. This hate on "generalising" is totally irrational. Humans are habit forming, pattern matching biological machines who owe a large part of our success as a species to the ability to generalise.
Yes! Yes! A Thousand times yes!
I can't tell you how much it bothers me when people can't see this! I always think this when people complain about that dreaded evil of bigotry and cynicism: the stereotype. A stereotype represents nothing more than pattern recognition skills in action. Stereotypes literally separate humans from monkeys. They damage only when people force others into certain stereotypes rather than testing and observing them as individuals, but they otherwise make the entire world go around.
Developing complex stereotypes about everything from Hispanics to public libraries to Chevrolet automobiles makes complete sense; only the ways in which you apply those stereotypes and self-adjust them (or refuse to adjust them) can go wrong.
Except for the fact that if you're a slow/weak walker, you'd rather be seated than have to stand on this contraption.
You may be correct for some people, but not all. For those who stand easily but cannot walk swiftly enough, standing on the Segway for a few hours a day will increase their mobility and keep them in surprisingly good shape, especially compared to sitting down almost all the time in a power chair.
Keeping old or injured people more mobile and healthier seems like a pretty fantastic use to me, and a smart way to save a bundle on Medicare bills the now-standing patients won't incur for obesity and embolisms, yet you assume they're all too lazy to stand up rather than sit down.
If they had an actual monopoly, do you think the prices would still be low?
Monopoly is not the correct word here. Wal-Mart is not the only place for consumers to buy games, not by a long shot. The issue here is that Wal-Mart has enough power as a buyer of games, i.e. from their wholesalers, to unduly influence the market.
When the main issue concerns having just one buyer with an inordinate quantity of power, the correct word is monosopy.
Because clearly TFA included blatant references to intelligent design which you just had to refute.....quit trolling, buy a monkey-man hybrid costume, and go stand in front of a baptist church. You'll get way quicker results and you won't be wasting my time.
I agree with every other smart poster, by the way. The title and summary completely misrepresent the topic, as if the tree continuously evolves its defenses against a long-deceased threat, but TFA makes clear it simply retains defenses which remained current and useful until a mere 1500 years ago. Absolutely mundane and uninteresting. Might as well have a post screaming "Have we lost our place in evolution: Human beings still retain appendixes, tailbones, and armpit hair?"
Nevermind that 95% of *all* PhD's went to men in the 1950s. This statistic might be useful about women and education in general, but it's completely misleading and pointless with regard to math.
You know, REI answered your letter (and it was a specific response; just because it's short doesn't make it a "form letter") and took your phone calls, but sounds to me like you won't be happy until they get involved in your legal case, which no business owner in their right mind would do. Give REI a break, and quit acting pissy that their employees didn't jump in the middle of you getting arrested by a uniformed officer when they didn't know what was going on.
Many folks have debated Halo here, and I have to agree with almost all of them: it broke ground for consoles in some ways, yet Halo absolutely sucks compared to any quality PC shooter
The problem isn't even development quality, it's in development capacity. It's far easier building a fluidly navigable 3D environment, from the first-person perspective, when people have a highly responsive mechanism, and joysticks aren't *half* responsive enough. The same goes for using a keyboard, 3 button mouse, and a scroll wheel for menus versus using less than a dozen buttons on a joypad for navigating menus.
When it comes to any sort of visual quality, computers simply have more freedom to push the envelope. If your PC can't handle FEAR, it's your problem. If your 360 can't handle Halo, that becomes Microsoft's public relations disaster. Consoles have far greater obligations to remain compatible and developers to keep their titles playable on a platform up to eight years old.
This brings up, of course, the fact that a brand new game can be running on a system that is eight years old. Graphics will usually favor PCs, and it's not always a bad thing, but for a genre with a strong investment in immersive shininess, it's kind of a liability.
A perfect explanation of why a 'lost' sale doesn't always affect the company, and almost never affects the typical employee.
Do you guys remember those MPAA ads where they showed script girls and lighting technicians begging you not to take away their paychecks by pirating movies? They were bullshit. Any product, including movies or software, that breaks even has paid every single hourly and almost all salaried employees *in full*. It's only when it *doesn't* break even and actually loses money up front that you can unequivocally argue piracy alters employment or social justice.
When you pirate a product that broke even in retail you harm executives and stockholders, not employees. In the long run, you can tell me that employees can own stock, you can argue about whether the economics of investment and the stock market squeeze out the company with the more-pirated product, you can argue all kinds of crap.
You cannot tell me, however, that pirating a successful product *ever* directly harms someone's ability to earn a salary coding or supporting that product.