It's as if these people didn't realize that change is the only thing consistent about our planets biological history. From snowball earth to tropics in the arctic our world has never had a 'normal'. We need to learn to balance ourselves against our planets inevitable future of change.
Nature can adapt readily to slow change. The dying off of a species to make way for a new one. But history shows that it does not deal well with rapid change. Nature does not have the time it needs to adapt to the changes that we are doing to this planet. Species are dying off at a catastrophic rate. If the eco system collapses, we go with it. Nature is strong and will survive, but we are just a tiny fragile part of the whole. Man has the capability of causing massive destructive change, to the point that we would not survive it.
Is eradicating malaria, West Nile, etc. really worth the risks? They may be highly threatening to humans, but ultimately we still have to live here after the mosquitoes are gone...
How about population decrease and not living in mosquito infested swamps? This planet will be one big sheath of steel and asphalt when we are done.
A friend from church mentioned to me a while ago that Zynga had been trying to recruit his son, a 16 year-old junior in high school.
Your friend is full of shit. There are so many coders/developers/producers out there with experience looking for jobs at any salary, and Zynga is so inundated with resumes, that they can't parse through them all. I have one friend who quit Zynga over the stock option fiasco, and several others trying to get in. I guarantee that they are not scouting out high schools for talent.
Indeed. From Wikipedia: "A 2005 survey published in Encyclopædia Britannica found that the non-religious made up about 11.9% of the world's population, and atheists about 2.3%. This figure did not include those who follow atheistic religions, such as some Buddhists." Here's the link.
This is probably another "percentage of people who when surveyed say X." That is very different from actual belief, since people are often compelled to say X due to cultural or social pressure. Getting numbers on what people truly believe is much harder to ascertain.
Well, gates has a false legacy all around him. For starters, he was not the one that picked DOS. IBM did. Later on, Gates bought the rights to Unix, merged it with DOS and then sold Xenix on 286s. When it had zero performance, it was others that pointed out how foolish he was. ANother set of employees had to convince him to stick with DOS and skip Xenix. Then gates ran around screaming that 640K was more than enough. The net we all know about. I mean it continues on and on and on. The man was NOT that bright. Just in the right places at the right time, with the right ppl.
Sadly, since MS has such a dearth of talent (esp. with that idiot balmer), they have to resort to illegal tactics.
This doesn't really jibe with the history that I remember.
Someone at IBM chose DOS over CP/M, but it was Gates who presented DOS as his product after quickly buying it from the real developer.
Gate's Unix failed not because of performance, but because MS changed focus to OS/2 instead. OS/2 was definitely merged with DOS, but I'm not sure that there was much if any DOS in their Unix.
The 640K quote is well known to be an urban myth, and anyway, would have been before the development of OS/2 anyway.
I despise just about everything that he accomplished, but he was definitely a brilliant business man. He used the existing powers against themselves and each other. He bought and sold politicians like he bought and sold companies. He really never understood where the business was heading, but he could recognize when another company was blazing a new trail, and would quickly buy up companies and crush the competition to control and own the new business. Ruthless, criminal, and probably autistic, but brilliant none the less. Balmer? He's nothing but a yes man and follower, and has none of Gates abilities.
There's absolutely no evidence that female leaders are less willing to go to war than male leaders. It is of course less common, but that has more to do with women being much less likely to be political and military leaders than men.
Or maybe that the few women leaders have had to be extra aggressive and "man-like" to make it to their positions of power. Sociopaths and psychopaths come in both sexes.
Let Hollywood do whatever they want and call if non-canon, like the Peter Cushing movies. They didn't destroy the franchise. Ignore it, and it never happened. Just like the Hitchhiker's Guide, Puppet Masters, Thunderbirds, and anything that claims to associated with that Star Trek series with Shatner.
If anything, a Hollywood movie will get people to watch the TV show when they realize how much better it is.
Composed of 251 adult citizens with college educations (5 from each state, 1 from DC) selected at random for 1 year terms. Each law after presidential signing or Congressional override must be read aloud and provided in writing to the branch. They vote on it in secret. If it does not get 60% of the votes, it dies.
Ah, now we get to the crux of the problem. Middle America would never accept graduates from our "LIBERAL!" education system. They all know that education is all a bunch of lies, and people should intuitively know what is right and wrong, true and false, based on their faith in their GOD-fearing leaders. That's why they are home schooling the next generation, so that they are never exposed to any of the "LIBERAL!" agenda, like science and philosophy. Your solution, although wonderful in concept, just adds another corrupt layer in an already corrupt system in practice.
Re:Affordable replacement for something paid for
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 1
Does anyone think China would want a military confrontation with any of its largest customers? Do people really think Russia is likely to rise again?
It took Germany fewer than 20 years to go from completely broke and in debt (post WWI) to military powerhouse. I don't think we need the plane either, but any country with people and resources can quickly catch up to the US military with the right application of "will."
They jumped it some time ago. Itunes making you have to go through Apple to do *anything* is not just a walled garden, it's a prison. Yes, consumers might put up with that shit, but businesses won't.
Ha ha ha, Office, ha ha ha. Just the opposite. Businesses want to be hand fed their technology, to the extent that the "cloud" is where the infrastructure is going. The people who don't like the "prisons" are the IT folks who want to implement their favorite solutions, for better or for worse.
Look, honestly, what are you going to do about it? Complaining doesn't matter. The TSA will be here forever, and, as much as we hate to admit it, there is nothing that can be done about it. There is too much money involved, and contractors have vast amounts of power, much more so than any collection of outraged stories and messages on the internet does.
Seriously, I hope the TSA is abolished tomorrow, or hell even five years from now. But honestly without fundamental, almost revolutionary changes to the way the US government works this simply will not happen. Money talks, national security lobbyists have TONS of money, and that's pretty much the end of it.
Not quite. The asshats will never go away, but we need to give them other channels for their corruption. At least start up a 1/4 trillion dollar education program, or fund NASA up to a reasonable level. Give them a few years warning, and they will gladly move their efforts over to that program.
Re:Strangely inspirational
on
The RMS Tour Rider
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
RMS gets a lot of mockery for this, but for all the eccentricity, it reveals him as a man who thinks really hard about what he does, and making sure it fits his moral code. How many of us would avoid long-distance trains, or ask conference organisers to use pseudonyms for hotel rooms, because we were so stubbornly committed to the idea of privacy? I'm too much of a pragmatist to put up with that sort of nonsense but I admire the integrity on display.
Not quite. It shows that he expects other people to go to extreme lengths to provide him with very trivial wants (not needs), things that he should be able to deal with like anyone else in society. People in power get there because they enjoy power, and they enjoy watching other people jump through flaming hoops for them. It's how they show their superiority. Compare this to Woz, who hangs out in line at the Apple store for the new phone just because he prefers to live a normal life, as opposed to pulling strings and having people cater to him.
If you are a competent programmer you'll indent your code consistently regardless of the language. So the left braces, right braces and semi colons serve only the purpose of making your compiler give you pages and pages of errors when you forget a brace. There is no confusion, there is only a superior language design. Adding hundreds of unnecessary braces and semi colons each day isn't a big deal, but significant white space is the better option.
Jesus Christ, Fortran 66 would be your wet dream then. What's old is new again, or learn from your mistakes. Hmmm.
Is a man who dedicates half his fortune to curing a major cause of death in the third world to establish his good name really any worse than the man who does same for purely altruistic reasons? The money's the same, after all.
It is no worse. It is just as bad. Isn't that reason enough? And no, there is no "altruism" involved. That implies some sense of compassion. It is just a standard foundation tax dodge to hide the money so that when he dies to pass the money on to his kids it can't be taxed. And yes I have a friend who married a trust fund baby who's family did this very thing.
It's a damn sight easier to eliminate a disease than to eliminate poverty. If they have more bodies available to work, then the economy will pick up. Baby steps.
You are assuming a 1st world economy where food is plentiful and jobs are based on services. Without enough good farmland, money to produce more (and destroy virgin forest in the process), and people to farm it to feed the young, there will be serious starvation. This has already happened over and over again.
You really find a lack of skepticism about global warming out there? Rather, despite more skepticism than about any other topic in current science, 98% of scientists with expertise in the field conclude that anthropogenic global warming is a major threat to our species.
The question I'd like to ask the OP is, what is your track record on these issues? Has your skepticism on these subjects proven to be founded in the past, or have you had to eat crow over and over again before you move on to your next conspiracy?
Perhaps the false positives at airports are OK? Rather than randomly choosing people for more attentive searchers, and the occasional grandma to give the facade of fairness and not profiling, we could focus on the 2% who are higher probability. Of course 2% are unfairly inconvenienced but isn't that better than 100% unfairly inconvenienced? Clearly a negative/negative decision.
Because wearing a false mustache or any of a thousand other things break the image recognition, so again the only people who are hassled are the innocent.
When I think of the Mars landers that were planned for 3 month mission and 1 may still be running *years* later, I am in awe of NASA.
The landers are amazing, but I fear you are falling for the Scottie Principle. They were built to last indefinitely. What NASA did was a great job of setting expectations. The three months was the absolute minimum that they decided they needed to justify the cost. Great project, but also great spin.
The real question is: what was the original purpose of the stock market? What problem is it trying to solve? I guarantee that letting people make money by micro-trading of stocks based on nothing but trends and volatility is not it. It's time to rethink the whole system, but wait, there's a trillion dollars and the stability of national economies at stake. We're stuck with it, short of some kind of (permanent) revolution.
1/3 of the US are literalists. That's not a small number. And they are motivated.
And they are telling you and me that we are going to Hell.
-- BMO
Not quite. It's actually worse than that. 1/3 of Americans feel that they must say that they believe the bible literally. They don't. They believe in this as much as they believe that professional wrestling is real and their local politicians are telling the truth. But they feel pressure to say that they do. They go to the community church and sing the blessings of Jesus, but could just as well be at a Nuremberg rally. The message doesn't matter so much. That is what is scary.
Now how many people in the vocal minority that spend tons of money getting out "the good word" actually believe what they are spewing? Very few. Anyone who is making money from the movement, from writers of books to TV evangelists to politicians are all suspect.
That does not mean that there aren't some people who actually truly believe these bible stories. But they are in a very small minority.
The first one was a box office flop and got generally unfavorable reviews. Get your facts straight. It stayed around as a cult film, and over time, especially with the release of the Director's Cut, the critics came around, and it made enough money in total to justify the sequel.
And, yes I get it. They are androids BTW, not replicants.
Slashdot Mirror
It's as if these people didn't realize that change is the only thing consistent about our planets biological history. From snowball earth to tropics in the arctic our world has never had a 'normal'. We need to learn to balance ourselves against our planets inevitable future of change.
Nature can adapt readily to slow change. The dying off of a species to make way for a new one. But history shows that it does not deal well with rapid change. Nature does not have the time it needs to adapt to the changes that we are doing to this planet. Species are dying off at a catastrophic rate. If the eco system collapses, we go with it. Nature is strong and will survive, but we are just a tiny fragile part of the whole. Man has the capability of causing massive destructive change, to the point that we would not survive it.
Is eradicating malaria, West Nile, etc. really worth the risks? They may be highly threatening to humans, but ultimately we still have to live here after the mosquitoes are gone...
How about population decrease and not living in mosquito infested swamps? This planet will be one big sheath of steel and asphalt when we are done.
A friend from church mentioned to me a while ago that Zynga had been trying to recruit his son, a 16 year-old junior in high school.
Your friend is full of shit. There are so many coders/developers/producers out there with experience looking for jobs at any salary, and Zynga is so inundated with resumes, that they can't parse through them all. I have one friend who quit Zynga over the stock option fiasco, and several others trying to get in. I guarantee that they are not scouting out high schools for talent.
Indeed. From Wikipedia: "A 2005 survey published in Encyclopædia Britannica found that the non-religious made up about 11.9% of the world's population, and atheists about 2.3%. This figure did not include those who follow atheistic religions, such as some Buddhists." Here's the link.
This is probably another "percentage of people who when surveyed say X." That is very different from actual belief, since people are often compelled to say X due to cultural or social pressure. Getting numbers on what people truly believe is much harder to ascertain.
Well, gates has a false legacy all around him. For starters, he was not the one that picked DOS. IBM did. Later on, Gates bought the rights to Unix, merged it with DOS and then sold Xenix on 286s. When it had zero performance, it was others that pointed out how foolish he was. ANother set of employees had to convince him to stick with DOS and skip Xenix. Then gates ran around screaming that 640K was more than enough. The net we all know about. I mean it continues on and on and on. The man was NOT that bright. Just in the right places at the right time, with the right ppl.
Sadly, since MS has such a dearth of talent (esp. with that idiot balmer), they have to resort to illegal tactics.
This doesn't really jibe with the history that I remember.
Someone at IBM chose DOS over CP/M, but it was Gates who presented DOS as his product after quickly buying it from the real developer.
Gate's Unix failed not because of performance, but because MS changed focus to OS/2 instead. OS/2 was definitely merged with DOS, but I'm not sure that there was much if any DOS in their Unix.
The 640K quote is well known to be an urban myth, and anyway, would have been before the development of OS/2 anyway.
I despise just about everything that he accomplished, but he was definitely a brilliant business man. He used the existing powers against themselves and each other. He bought and sold politicians like he bought and sold companies. He really never understood where the business was heading, but he could recognize when another company was blazing a new trail, and would quickly buy up companies and crush the competition to control and own the new business. Ruthless, criminal, and probably autistic, but brilliant none the less. Balmer? He's nothing but a yes man and follower, and has none of Gates abilities.
Do you think that maybe, just maybe, it might help to have more women in positions of power?
Hmmm, I really don't think so.
There's absolutely no evidence that female leaders are less willing to go to war than male leaders. It is of course less common, but that has more to do with women being much less likely to be political and military leaders than men.
Or maybe that the few women leaders have had to be extra aggressive and "man-like" to make it to their positions of power. Sociopaths and psychopaths come in both sexes.
Let Hollywood do whatever they want and call if non-canon, like the Peter Cushing movies. They didn't destroy the franchise. Ignore it, and it never happened. Just like the Hitchhiker's Guide, Puppet Masters, Thunderbirds, and anything that claims to associated with that Star Trek series with Shatner.
If anything, a Hollywood movie will get people to watch the TV show when they realize how much better it is.
The Sanity Check Branch.
Composed of 251 adult citizens with college educations (5 from each state, 1 from DC) selected at random for 1 year terms. Each law after presidential signing or Congressional override must be read aloud and provided in writing to the branch. They vote on it in secret. If it does not get 60% of the votes, it dies.
Ah, now we get to the crux of the problem. Middle America would never accept graduates from our "LIBERAL!" education system. They all know that education is all a bunch of lies, and people should intuitively know what is right and wrong, true and false, based on their faith in their GOD-fearing leaders. That's why they are home schooling the next generation, so that they are never exposed to any of the "LIBERAL!" agenda, like science and philosophy. Your solution, although wonderful in concept, just adds another corrupt layer in an already corrupt system in practice.
Does anyone think China would want a military confrontation with any of its largest customers? Do people really think Russia is likely to rise again?
It took Germany fewer than 20 years to go from completely broke and in debt (post WWI) to military powerhouse. I don't think we need the plane either, but any country with people and resources can quickly catch up to the US military with the right application of "will."
They jumped it some time ago. Itunes making you have to go through Apple to do *anything* is not just a walled garden, it's a prison. Yes, consumers might put up with that shit, but businesses won't.
Ha ha ha, Office, ha ha ha. Just the opposite. Businesses want to be hand fed their technology, to the extent that the "cloud" is where the infrastructure is going. The people who don't like the "prisons" are the IT folks who want to implement their favorite solutions, for better or for worse.
Look, honestly, what are you going to do about it? Complaining doesn't matter. The TSA will be here forever, and, as much as we hate to admit it, there is nothing that can be done about it. There is too much money involved, and contractors have vast amounts of power, much more so than any collection of outraged stories and messages on the internet does.
Seriously, I hope the TSA is abolished tomorrow, or hell even five years from now. But honestly without fundamental, almost revolutionary changes to the way the US government works this simply will not happen. Money talks, national security lobbyists have TONS of money, and that's pretty much the end of it.
Not quite. The asshats will never go away, but we need to give them other channels for their corruption. At least start up a 1/4 trillion dollar education program, or fund NASA up to a reasonable level. Give them a few years warning, and they will gladly move their efforts over to that program.
RMS gets a lot of mockery for this, but for all the eccentricity, it reveals him as a man who thinks really hard about what he does, and making sure it fits his moral code. How many of us would avoid long-distance trains, or ask conference organisers to use pseudonyms for hotel rooms, because we were so stubbornly committed to the idea of privacy? I'm too much of a pragmatist to put up with that sort of nonsense but I admire the integrity on display.
Not quite. It shows that he expects other people to go to extreme lengths to provide him with very trivial wants (not needs), things that he should be able to deal with like anyone else in society. People in power get there because they enjoy power, and they enjoy watching other people jump through flaming hoops for them. It's how they show their superiority. Compare this to Woz, who hangs out in line at the Apple store for the new phone just because he prefers to live a normal life, as opposed to pulling strings and having people cater to him.
If you are a competent programmer you'll indent your code consistently regardless of the language. So the left braces, right braces and semi colons serve only the purpose of making your compiler give you pages and pages of errors when you forget a brace. There is no confusion, there is only a superior language design. Adding hundreds of unnecessary braces and semi colons each day isn't a big deal, but significant white space is the better option.
Jesus Christ, Fortran 66 would be your wet dream then. What's old is new again, or learn from your mistakes. Hmmm.
VOLUNTARY family planning. When has that EVER worked in a poor heavily Catholic or Muslim country?
Is a man who dedicates half his fortune to curing a major cause of death in the third world to establish his good name really any worse than the man who does same for purely altruistic reasons? The money's the same, after all.
It is no worse. It is just as bad. Isn't that reason enough? And no, there is no "altruism" involved. That implies some sense of compassion. It is just a standard foundation tax dodge to hide the money so that when he dies to pass the money on to his kids it can't be taxed. And yes I have a friend who married a trust fund baby who's family did this very thing.
It's a damn sight easier to eliminate a disease than to eliminate poverty. If they have more bodies available to work, then the economy will pick up. Baby steps.
You are assuming a 1st world economy where food is plentiful and jobs are based on services. Without enough good farmland, money to produce more (and destroy virgin forest in the process), and people to farm it to feed the young, there will be serious starvation. This has already happened over and over again.
So he has 2 phones being delivered to his home, but he wants a 3rd one for his wife?
Is the second phone for his lover? His wifes lover? A pet? All of the above?
He's an engineer. One to take apart, and one to keep and use. He's waiting in line because his wife reminded him that she would like one too. :-)
Some people are already doing things like that, but they don't try to profit from it. Why not join in on the fun.
http://www.thescambaiter.com/
You really find a lack of skepticism about global warming out there? Rather, despite more skepticism than about any other topic in current science, 98% of scientists with expertise in the field conclude that anthropogenic global warming is a major threat to our species.
The question I'd like to ask the OP is, what is your track record on these issues? Has your skepticism on these subjects proven to be founded in the past, or have you had to eat crow over and over again before you move on to your next conspiracy?
"We're not being attacked, we just are totally incompetent and can't keep our site up under normal conditions"
I know someone who used to be a tech manager in their web hosting infrastructure, and that's pretty accurate.
Perhaps the false positives at airports are OK? Rather than randomly choosing people for more attentive searchers, and the occasional grandma to give the facade of fairness and not profiling, we could focus on the 2% who are higher probability. Of course 2% are unfairly inconvenienced but isn't that better than 100% unfairly inconvenienced? Clearly a negative/negative decision.
Because wearing a false mustache or any of a thousand other things break the image recognition, so again the only people who are hassled are the innocent.
When I think of the Mars landers that were planned for 3 month mission and 1 may still be running *years* later, I am in awe of NASA.
The landers are amazing, but I fear you are falling for the Scottie Principle. They were built to last indefinitely. What NASA did was a great job of setting expectations. The three months was the absolute minimum that they decided they needed to justify the cost. Great project, but also great spin.
The real question is: what was the original purpose of the stock market? What problem is it trying to solve? I guarantee that letting people make money by micro-trading of stocks based on nothing but trends and volatility is not it. It's time to rethink the whole system, but wait, there's a trillion dollars and the stability of national economies at stake. We're stuck with it, short of some kind of (permanent) revolution.
Time to go read more Trotsky.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/27682/onethird-americans-believe-bible-literally-true.aspx
1/3 of the US are literalists. That's not a small number. And they are motivated.
And they are telling you and me that we are going to Hell.
--
BMO
Not quite. It's actually worse than that. 1/3 of Americans feel that they must say that they believe the bible literally. They don't. They believe in this as much as they believe that professional wrestling is real and their local politicians are telling the truth. But they feel pressure to say that they do. They go to the community church and sing the blessings of Jesus, but could just as well be at a Nuremberg rally. The message doesn't matter so much. That is what is scary.
Now how many people in the vocal minority that spend tons of money getting out "the good word" actually believe what they are spewing? Very few. Anyone who is making money from the movement, from writers of books to TV evangelists to politicians are all suspect.
That does not mean that there aren't some people who actually truly believe these bible stories. But they are in a very small minority.
Of the first one
Haha get it
The first one was a box office flop and got generally unfavorable reviews. Get your facts straight. It stayed around as a cult film, and over time, especially with the release of the Director's Cut, the critics came around, and it made enough money in total to justify the sequel.
And, yes I get it. They are androids BTW, not replicants.
It is a well respected newspaper, certainly in the same league as major daily papers such as the NY Times and Washington Post,
Faint praise indeed.