You could just as easily argue that women who look at cute catpics and stupid youtube cats/dogs/makeup videos are also becoming "socially inept". Why is it always the "guy side" that is "doing it wrong"? --------------
Believe me, women get just as much criticism for "doing it wrong" as men, if not more. Body-weight and mothering style alone are the topic of enough daily public criticism to drive any woman mad, let alone "rules of appropriate sexual behavior", which many people seem to think is the public's business more than the woman's.
We just don't notice because (a) articles like mostly that appear in women's forums, less so on Slashdot, and (b) when they do appear, you (and I) tend not to pay much attention to them, since it isn't us they are criticizing.
Worse yet. The groups who will be shooting won't have chips or will be listed as citizens but will still have guns shooting at you.
Worse even than that. The groups who don't have the right chips (for whatever value of "right" you care to use) will be coming after you with their pocket knives to 'liberate' yours.
How about the identical twins, triplets, quadruplets?
Your post's title is correct -- that is indeed a teeny tiny problem. There aren't very many identical twins, triplets, or quadruplets. (at least, not until human cloning becomes popular) And for the people that are identical twins (about 0.2% of the population), the world will just have to live with the fact that there is some ambiguity there.
We really need to stop giving Greenpeace press. They just make things worse.
Unless you think that getting Apple to move to 100% renewable power is making things worse, it's hard to see how you arrived at the above conclusion from this article. It seems to me that this was a win all around.
Yes, sadly, we are this close to finally segmenting Apple users from the rest of the technological universe; and when that is done, nothing of value will be lost.
I think that's a bit harsh -- the Linux users are still useful to have around, if only to keep the web servers running.
Any way you slice it, this is unethical. Restricting usage of an API to developers who sell through your platform (and thus give you 30%), giving your own private cloud service filesystem level integration... Imagine if Microsoft made either of these moves.
Is it access to the API that Apple is restricting, or access to Apple's servers?
If it's the latter, then I don't see an issue... the server's are Apple's property, and so they can allow or deny access to their servers based on whatever terms they care to come up with.
What Adobe needs to do is completely overhaul Flash. And by overhaul, I mean throw it away and create a brand new Flash player from scratch that fulfills the specifications. And if the specifications lead to security holes, then change the specifications. But Adobe is either unable to do this, or too scared to do it.
Isn't this more or less what Apple is attempting to do, except they call the overhauled version "HTML 5"?
To be clear, my argument wasn't that space exploration is worthless, only that if we are going to explore space using public dollars, we need to do so by practical means -- not put humans into space simply because it is "romantic" to have them there, as the previous poster suggested.
I feel the same way about manned spaceflight today--the only good reason to explore the universe is for the adventure, because it's exciting, interesting, inspiring, and enlightening. In short, because it makes us better. And I see no better way to meet that objective than through manned spaceflight.
It's fine to feel that way -- just don't expect other people to spend their money to fund your emotional well-being.
Symbolism, romance and sword-rattling are not acceptable answers.
Why not?
Because if those things are what you want, you can get them quite effectively from a paperback book.
If you are hyper-rich and want to spend tens of billions of dollars on your own space program, of course, then you are welcome to do it however you like -- but if you are spending other peoples' tax money, then you need to be accountable and spend that money in a wise and cost-effective manner, at the very least. Your sense of adventure does not entitle you to waste their money.
... and as is so often the case, Douglas Adams predicted it decades in advance:
------
"Well," [Richard] said, "it's to do with the project which first made the software incarnation of the company profitable. It was called Reason, and in its own way it was sensational."
"What was it?"
"Well, it was a kind of back-to-front program. It's funny how many of the best ideas are just an old idea back-to-front. You see there have already been several programs written that help you to arrive at decisions by properly ordering and analysing all the relevant facts so that they then point naturally towards the right decision. The drawback with these is that the decision which all the properly ordered and analysed facts point to is not necessarily the one you want."
"Yeeess..." said Reg's voice from the kitchen.
"Well, Gordon's great insight was to design a program which allowed you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and only then to give it all the facts. The program's task, which it was able to accomplish with consumate ease, was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion.
"And I have to say that it worked brilliantly. Gordon was able to buy himself a Porsche almost immediately despite being completely broke and a hopeless driver. Even his bank manager was unable to find fault with his reasoning. Even when Gordon wrote it off three weeks later."
"Heavens. And did the program sell very well?"
"No. We never sold a single copy."
"You astonish me. It sounds like a real winner to me."
"It was," said Richard hesitantly. "The entire project was bought up, lock, stock, and barrel, by the Pentagon. The deal put WayForward on a very sound financial foundation. Its moral foundation, on the other hand, is not something I would want to trust my weight to. I've recently been analysing a lot of the arguments put forward in favour of the Star Wars project, and if you know what you're looking for, the pattern of the algorithms is very clear.
"So much so, in fact, that looking at Pentagon policies over the last couple of years, I think I can be fairly sure that the US Navy is using version 2.00 of the program, while the Air Force for some reason only has the beta-test version of 1.5. Odd that."
"Do you have a copy?"
"Certainly not," said Richard. "I wouldn't have anything to do with it."
Bah! Just modify the firmware on your access point to boost the transmit power and drown out all the other APs! If you do it right, you won't be able to see any other APs. And you may even be able to warm food on it, to boot.:)
Alas, the neighbors have already done that trick. Now I get Moire patterns on my retinas whenever I enter the kitchen.
"The authorities" [...] can't seem to see the urgency in chasing after the less dangerous to society entities such as the Russian Mafia.
There's a bit of jurisdiction issue there, unless you are referring to the Russian authorities... who are probably getting paid more by the Russian Mafia than they are by the Russian government.:^(
As I always say: the level of your charity is defined by how much you have left when you're done. A poor man with two dollars who gives one is far more generous than a rich man with 40 billion who gives 39 billion.
On the other hand, one dollar isn't enough to buy a single cup of coffee these days, whereas 39 billion dollars could improve the lives of a substantial number of people.
Your definition of generosity might be useful for deciding who gets in to Heaven, but it doesn't have much to say about who is making a difference in the world.
as in ONLY reason to get married is to get a child
Absolutely incorrect.
Lots of people get married without any intention (or even any ability) to have a child.
Lots of people have children without getting married.
so i do not understand really a reason for having a gay marriage (or any other kind of marriage without kids)
That's okay, you don't have to understand the reason. What's important is that you don't get to deny marriage to people simply because you don't understand their reasons.
BTW, they can't make us have homosexual marriages because that isn't what a marriage is. Having a homosexual marriage is like having dry water.
... and it wasn't so long ago that having an inter-racial marriage was "like having dry water" as well. That was changed, and the world is better for it.
Societal conventions change over time. Our society has realized (or is in the process of realizing, depending on where you live) that the arbitrary denial of marriage rights to homosexuals is hurtful and unnecessary.
It's still less stupid than, say, the record for most hot dogs eaten in an hour. If you're going to complain about other people's achievements, why not start there?
Slashdot Mirror
You could just as easily argue that women who look at cute catpics and stupid youtube cats/dogs/makeup videos are also becoming "socially inept". Why is it always the "guy side" that is "doing it wrong"? --------------
Believe me, women get just as much criticism for "doing it wrong" as men, if not more. Body-weight and mothering style alone are the topic of enough daily public criticism to drive any woman mad, let alone "rules of appropriate sexual behavior", which many people seem to think is the public's business more than the woman's.
We just don't notice because (a) articles like mostly that appear in women's forums, less so on Slashdot, and (b) when they do appear, you (and I) tend not to pay much attention to them, since it isn't us they are criticizing.
Why wouldn't there be any women?
Worse yet. The groups who will be shooting won't have chips or will be listed as citizens but will still have guns shooting at you.
Worse even than that. The groups who don't have the right chips (for whatever value of "right" you care to use) will be coming after you with their pocket knives to 'liberate' yours.
How about the identical twins, triplets, quadruplets?
Your post's title is correct -- that is indeed a teeny tiny problem. There aren't very many identical twins, triplets, or quadruplets. (at least, not until human cloning becomes popular) And for the people that are identical twins (about 0.2% of the population), the world will just have to live with the fact that there is some ambiguity there.
It will be after the revolution, comrade.
Sounds cool -- all you need to do is convince the military that it can also be useful as a weapon, and you'll get funding ;)
We really need to stop giving Greenpeace press. They just make things worse.
Unless you think that getting Apple to move to 100% renewable power is making things worse, it's hard to see how you arrived at the above conclusion from this article. It seems to me that this was a win all around.
Yes, sadly, we are this close to finally segmenting Apple users from the rest of the technological universe; and when that is done, nothing of value will be lost.
I think that's a bit harsh -- the Linux users are still useful to have around, if only to keep the web servers running.
(ducks)
Any way you slice it, this is unethical. Restricting usage of an API to developers who sell through your platform (and thus give you 30%), giving your own private cloud service filesystem level integration... Imagine if Microsoft made either of these moves.
Is it access to the API that Apple is restricting, or access to Apple's servers?
If it's the latter, then I don't see an issue... the server's are Apple's property, and so they can allow or deny access to their servers based on whatever terms they care to come up with.
What Adobe needs to do is completely overhaul Flash. And by overhaul, I mean throw it away and create a brand new Flash player from scratch that fulfills the specifications. And if the specifications lead to security holes, then change the specifications. But Adobe is either unable to do this, or too scared to do it.
Isn't this more or less what Apple is attempting to do, except they call the overhauled version "HTML 5"?
To be clear, my argument wasn't that space exploration is worthless, only that if we are going to explore space using public dollars, we need to do so by practical means -- not put humans into space simply because it is "romantic" to have them there, as the previous poster suggested.
I feel the same way about manned spaceflight today--the only good reason to explore the universe is for the adventure, because it's exciting, interesting, inspiring, and enlightening. In short, because it makes us better. And I see no better way to meet that objective than through manned spaceflight.
It's fine to feel that way -- just don't expect other people to spend their money to fund your emotional well-being.
Would you claim it is just instinct that causes cats to lurk on stairs, and they're not planning for when a person walks by?
Pak chooie meow?
Symbolism, romance and sword-rattling are not acceptable answers.
Why not?
Because if those things are what you want, you can get them quite effectively from a paperback book.
If you are hyper-rich and want to spend tens of billions of dollars on your own space program, of course, then you are welcome to do it however you like -- but if you are spending other peoples' tax money, then you need to be accountable and spend that money in a wise and cost-effective manner, at the very least. Your sense of adventure does not entitle you to waste their money.
... and as is so often the case, Douglas Adams predicted it decades in advance:
------
"Well," [Richard] said, "it's to do with the project which first made the software incarnation of the company profitable. It was called Reason, and in its own way it was sensational."
"What was it?"
"Well, it was a kind of back-to-front program. It's funny how many of the best ideas are just an old idea back-to-front. You see there have already been several programs written that help you to arrive at decisions by properly ordering and analysing all the relevant facts so that they then point naturally towards the right decision. The drawback with these is that the decision which all the properly ordered and analysed facts point to is not necessarily the one you want."
"Yeeess ..." said Reg's voice from the kitchen.
"Well, Gordon's great insight was to design a program which allowed you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and only then to give it all the facts. The program's task, which it was able to accomplish with consumate ease, was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion.
"And I have to say that it worked brilliantly. Gordon was able to buy himself a Porsche almost immediately despite being completely broke and a hopeless driver. Even his bank manager was unable to find fault with his reasoning. Even when Gordon wrote it off three weeks later."
"Heavens. And did the program sell very well?"
"No. We never sold a single copy."
"You astonish me. It sounds like a real winner to me."
"It was," said Richard hesitantly. "The entire project was bought up, lock, stock, and barrel, by the Pentagon. The deal put WayForward on a very sound financial foundation. Its moral foundation, on the other hand, is not something I would want to trust my weight to. I've recently been analysing a lot of the arguments put forward in favour of the Star Wars project, and if you know what you're looking for, the pattern of the algorithms is very clear.
"So much so, in fact, that looking at Pentagon policies over the last couple of years, I think I can be fairly sure that the US Navy is using version 2.00 of the program, while the Air Force for some reason only has the beta-test version of 1.5. Odd that."
"Do you have a copy?"
"Certainly not," said Richard. "I wouldn't have anything to do with it."
Bah! Just modify the firmware on your access point to boost the transmit power and drown out all the other APs! If you do it right, you won't be able to see any other APs. And you may even be able to warm food on it, to boot. :)
Alas, the neighbors have already done that trick. Now I get Moire patterns on my retinas whenever I enter the kitchen.
Maybe. No. Yes. No. Yes.
Nyes.
"The authorities" [...] can't seem to see the urgency in chasing after the less dangerous to society entities such as the Russian Mafia.
There's a bit of jurisdiction issue there, unless you are referring to the Russian authorities... who are probably getting paid more by the Russian Mafia than they are by the Russian government. :^(
As I always say: the level of your charity is defined by how much you have left when you're done.
A poor man with two dollars who gives one is far more generous than a rich man with 40 billion who gives 39 billion.
On the other hand, one dollar isn't enough to buy a single cup of coffee these days, whereas 39 billion dollars could improve the lives of a substantial number of people.
Your definition of generosity might be useful for deciding who gets in to Heaven, but it doesn't have much to say about who is making a difference in the world.
Okay. That means somebody else (us maybe) has to cut back on their pollution to offset Microsoft's pollution credits.
Yup, but it also means that Microsoft will (indirectly) be paying for that improvement. It's hard to see that as a bad thing.
as in ONLY reason to get married is to get a child
Absolutely incorrect.
Lots of people get married without any intention (or even any ability) to have a child.
Lots of people have children without getting married.
so i do not understand really a reason for having a gay marriage (or any other kind of marriage without kids)
That's okay, you don't have to understand the reason. What's important is that you don't get to deny marriage to people simply because you don't understand their reasons.
My 40,000 years of human ancestry from sitting around the fire like the 2700K warm & "yellow" light!
My 27+ years of disco clubbing demands electric red and blue light! Preferably reflected by rotating, faceted spheres.
So, they got together with the ant-industrial "environmentalists"* to get a law passed to eliminate some of their competition.
So the anti-industrialists were promoting their cause by collaborating with the industrialists? Sneaky!
BTW, they can't make us have homosexual marriages because that isn't what a marriage is. Having a homosexual marriage is like having dry water.
... and it wasn't so long ago that having an inter-racial marriage was "like having dry water" as well. That was changed, and the world is better for it.
Societal conventions change over time. Our society has realized (or is in the process of realizing, depending on where you live) that the arbitrary denial of marriage rights to homosexuals is hurtful and unnecessary.
It's still less stupid than, say, the record for most hot dogs eaten in an hour. If you're going to complain about other people's achievements, why not start there?
the one technology that worries [Exxon], is batteries
Don't feel too sorry for them -- even if the entire world somehow stopped using gasoline as fuel, there's still a great future in plastics.