Essentially, any time anything is being executed on a system, and that thing has a known/knowable format, it's going to be vulnerable to viral infection.
It's just the single best tool for software development.
I have to disagree there. My experience is mainly in Java development, but I have done some VC++ and VC#. In my experience, VS.NET 2003 simply doesn't compare to the likes of JBuilder and Eclipse in terms of features (and neither of them are perfect by any means). I'm not saying that it's a *bad* IDE, but every time I use it the lack of refactoring and code inspection tools drives me batshit insane in pretty short order.
To be perfectly honest, if you truly consider it to be "the single best tool for software development", then I have to seriously question the quality of the other tools that you've used. (But then, I've done my share of using make and gdb, so I can see where you're coming from if that's your level of comparison)
What I'm trying to point out is that the abortion shouldn't happen just because it's an easier decision.
It's not an easier decision - at the time at which abortion is an option, if you don't want the kid then planning to give it away is no harder than planning to abort. The point is that by the time you actually *have* the kid, your attitude is very likely to have changed. You may well still know rationally that you can't care for and/or provide for it, but (usually) that simply won't matter. You'll have a deep psychological need to care for it. (I say usually as there are of course always exceptions)
It's not so much that abortion is easier than adoption, it's more that for the majority of people, by the time you actually have the kid, you are no longer able to give it up for adoption. That's why it's not uncommon for surrogate mothers to refuse to give up the baby once it's been delivered; they simply can't bring themselves to, despite that having been their honest intention at the outset.
Seriously, though, I don't think any intellectually honest Slashdotter out there would assert that the vaunted 'information wants to be free' catch phrase should be interpreted as 'free as in beer'.
I've lost count of the number of such arguments I've had with people here. Of course, I can't swear that those I was arguing with were intellectually honest, but I've certainly argued with people who claimed exactly that - that information should be available at zero cost.
The whole terrorist thing, IMHO, has far more to do with the fact that the poor & undeducated in the Mideast are unable to achieve our standard of living - and are rather resentful of the fact that we achive our lifestyle in part by drilling their land and supporting corrupt regimes, and resort to asymetric warfare because of said economic and military gap.
You do realise that the London bombers were all British, don't you?
+5 Insightful; where's the -1, Wrong mod when we need it?
No offence, but your premises (that time and space are infinite) are wrong and your maths and reasoning are flawed. (I'd also be interested in a citation for Hawking's apparent assertion that the universe and time are infinite; I wasn't aware that he disagreed with the big bang theory.)
SO, if you say, "It can't happen because statistically, it is too small...", you are still leaving the door open to it happening, and in an infinite universe, it will HAVE to happen.
That's your most fundamental mistake, and it displays a lack of understanding of independence in the statistical sense. Think of it this way - the odds of an unbiased coin toss turning up heads is 50% (and 50% for tails). Therefore, the odds of flipping a coin three times and getting three heads is (.5*.5*.5=) 0.125 or 12.5%
What are the odds of the next toss resulting in a head? Hint: it's not 6.75%
The likelyhood of getting a given result after X independent trials is unaffected by the results of the previous trials. That is the definition of independence in this context.
Unless the conditions and events required for human beings to be produced are not independent, and the conditions on one candidate planet can affect those on another candidate planet, then the extent and lifespan of the universe make no difference to the chances of human beings coming into existence. That 0.000000001% chance remains a 0.000000001% chance, and every single opportunity has a 0.000000001% chance of success.
Yes, you can reasonably expect to achieve success if you have enough attempts, but it is not guaranteed.
In this sense, evolution is "just a theory" the same way gravity is "just a theory."
Gravity is not a theory, gravity is a fact. Our explanations of why masses gravitate and how that force is transmitted, etc, is a theory - the theory of gravity.
Gravity itself, however, is not a theory, in the same way as light is not a theory.
"law" in a scientific sense means "theory which has stood up so well and so long that although it's possible to disprove it, that doesn't look likely to happen."
You are either not a scientist, or weren't paying attention in that lecture. A law describes what happens, a theory (attempts to) describes why it happens. The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain why there is such a diversity of species, and how the current species relate to those in the fossil records.
If we are to include Judeo-Christian-Islamic creation myths (both "young Earth" and "Intelligent Design" varieties) in science classes, why stop there?
Because your country is nominally Christian, at least in so far as the "official religion" is Christianity.
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with teaching kids about ID, in a "and some people believe..." sort of way. What harm can it do?
Suggesting that we teach students "both sides of the controversy" sounds wonderfully reasonable, but it means you accept that there is a debate, and that there are two sides to discuss.
At the time of replying to you, there are more than 1800 comments on this story. Looks to me like there might be something to discuss after all.
How does that protect my bank account from unauthorised access? Sure, giving up my privacy would make it very much harder to blackmail me, but that's not generally what this sort of attack is about.
Why do you think homeless cats 'suffer'? is it becasue they aren't all neat and bathed so they can fit into your little mental box of how they should live?
People bathe their cats? Why? Unless they get coated in something they can't clean off themselves (which in my experience is pretty rare), there's no reason at all to bathe them (and several good reasons not to, not least of which is that it distresses them and tends to injure you...)
Yes they do. The Linux installer will detect your Windows installation and add an appropriate line in the bootloader config to boot Windows for you, but most certainly will overwrite the existing bootloader unless instructed not to do so. (In which case you'll need to boot from a floppy or similar, or add a line to your Windows boot.ini file to boot Linux).
Telling people how they should earn a living and telling a corporation what their profits should be is SOOOOO free market!
Hey, this is slashdot, where we believe in Freedom - the Freedom to subscribe to exactly the same ideologies as we do, or be vilified. Where the rich record companies should abandon their dying business model and move with the times, while techies should fight outsourcing tooth and nail to hang on to their highly-paid jobs.
The UK has bigger problems right now than worrying about a bunch of Spice Girl piratez.
Oh for fuck's sake, if I read or hear the Threat of Terror!!11! being used as an excuse for doing (or not doing) something one more time I'm going to throttle someone.
Bigger problems my arse. We survived 20+ years of IRA bombing campaigns, we'll survive these Johnny-come-latelys perfectly well thank you very much. We don't feel the need to fall to pieces and invade a couple of countries just because someone thinks they can intimidate us; they're not the first to try and fail, and I dare say they won't be the last.
And it's wrong. Music takes people time and effort to produce; while they're doing that, they're not using their time for anything else - earning money, building a career, spending time with friends and family, watching paint dry, whatever. That investment of time and talent deserves to be compensated (assuming someone likes their music enough to want to listen to it, of course).
Air is a natural resource that requires no investment of time or money to produce.
Support is way over rated. I have never ever gotten good support from any company that produced anything.
There are two aspects to support; actually getting support, so that your problems are fixed quickly and efficiently is one of them. The other, and often just as important to some people, is being able to point the finger at someone else.
It's arse-covering - being able to say "Yes, there's a problem, yes, I recommended the software, but it's not our fault, the support firm is dicking us about - we've paid them, they should fix it!" is a lot better than "Yes, there's a problem, yes, I recommended the software, we're doing our best - sorry"
Generally speaking, managers and clients don't want to hear that in the event of a problem there's a whole bunch of people on the internet who are bound to be able to help. They want to know that someone with the appropriate expertise is going to be dedicated to fixing the problem ASAP. Whether or not that's actually what happens is often beside the point. (Generally if it doesn't, it just means that next time you'll get support from someone else instead)
Slashdot Mirror
Where is the honor and dignity of journalism these days?
Since when was slashdot about journalism? It's a glorified blog, and always has been.
That was my first thought.
Essentially, any time anything is being executed on a system, and that thing has a known/knowable format, it's going to be vulnerable to viral infection.
It's just the single best tool for software development.
I have to disagree there. My experience is mainly in Java development, but I have done some VC++ and VC#. In my experience, VS.NET 2003 simply doesn't compare to the likes of JBuilder and Eclipse in terms of features (and neither of them are perfect by any means). I'm not saying that it's a *bad* IDE, but every time I use it the lack of refactoring and code inspection tools drives me batshit insane in pretty short order.
To be perfectly honest, if you truly consider it to be "the single best tool for software development", then I have to seriously question the quality of the other tools that you've used. (But then, I've done my share of using make and gdb, so I can see where you're coming from if that's your level of comparison)
What I'm trying to point out is that the abortion shouldn't happen just because it's an easier decision.
It's not an easier decision - at the time at which abortion is an option, if you don't want the kid then planning to give it away is no harder than planning to abort. The point is that by the time you actually *have* the kid, your attitude is very likely to have changed. You may well still know rationally that you can't care for and/or provide for it, but (usually) that simply won't matter. You'll have a deep psychological need to care for it. (I say usually as there are of course always exceptions)
It's not so much that abortion is easier than adoption, it's more that for the majority of people, by the time you actually have the kid, you are no longer able to give it up for adoption. That's why it's not uncommon for surrogate mothers to refuse to give up the baby once it's been delivered; they simply can't bring themselves to, despite that having been their honest intention at the outset.
There are 1,000's of US citizen's (sorry for being US-centric)
Being US-centric is one thing, but that abuse of apostrophes is truly unforgivable...
But fetuses are guilty - guilty of the crime of trespassing in a woman's uterus, and of stealing resources from her body.
That's as may be, but I personally wouldn't support the death penalty for trespass or theft.
Not saying that I'm ant- or pro-abortion, just that your analogy sucks (but then, this is slashdot)
Seriously, though, I don't think any intellectually honest Slashdotter out there would assert that the vaunted 'information wants to be free' catch phrase should be interpreted as 'free as in beer'.
I've lost count of the number of such arguments I've had with people here. Of course, I can't swear that those I was arguing with were intellectually honest, but I've certainly argued with people who claimed exactly that - that information should be available at zero cost.
I naively put a P.O.S. internal water cooling kit and then learned how "little" a difference it makes
The point of water cooling isn't that it's more efficient (although it generally should be), but that it's quieter.
Which is nicely summed up as "don't use Internet Explorer".
The whole terrorist thing, IMHO, has far more to do with the fact that the poor & undeducated in the Mideast are unable to achieve our standard of living - and are rather resentful of the fact that we achive our lifestyle in part by drilling their land and supporting corrupt regimes, and resort to asymetric warfare because of said economic and military gap.
You do realise that the London bombers were all British, don't you?
+5 Insightful; where's the -1, Wrong mod when we need it?
No offence, but your premises (that time and space are infinite) are wrong and your maths and reasoning are flawed. (I'd also be interested in a citation for Hawking's apparent assertion that the universe and time are infinite; I wasn't aware that he disagreed with the big bang theory.)
SO, if you say, "It can't happen because statistically, it is too small...", you are still leaving the door open to it happening, and in an infinite universe, it will HAVE to happen.
That's your most fundamental mistake, and it displays a lack of understanding of independence in the statistical sense. Think of it this way - the odds of an unbiased coin toss turning up heads is 50% (and 50% for tails). Therefore, the odds of flipping a coin three times and getting three heads is (.5*.5*.5=) 0.125 or 12.5%
What are the odds of the next toss resulting in a head? Hint: it's not 6.75%
The likelyhood of getting a given result after X independent trials is unaffected by the results of the previous trials. That is the definition of independence in this context.
Unless the conditions and events required for human beings to be produced are not independent, and the conditions on one candidate planet can affect those on another candidate planet, then the extent and lifespan of the universe make no difference to the chances of human beings coming into existence. That 0.000000001% chance remains a 0.000000001% chance, and every single opportunity has a 0.000000001% chance of success.
Yes, you can reasonably expect to achieve success if you have enough attempts, but it is not guaranteed.
In this sense, evolution is "just a theory" the same way gravity is "just a theory."
Gravity is not a theory, gravity is a fact. Our explanations of why masses gravitate and how that force is transmitted, etc, is a theory - the theory of gravity.
Gravity itself, however, is not a theory, in the same way as light is not a theory.
"law" in a scientific sense means "theory which has stood up so well and so long that although it's possible to disprove it, that doesn't look likely to happen."
You are either not a scientist, or weren't paying attention in that lecture. A law describes what happens, a theory (attempts to) describes why it happens. The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain why there is such a diversity of species, and how the current species relate to those in the fossil records.
If we are to include Judeo-Christian-Islamic creation myths (both "young Earth" and "Intelligent Design" varieties) in science classes, why stop there?
Because your country is nominally Christian, at least in so far as the "official religion" is Christianity.
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with teaching kids about ID, in a "and some people believe..." sort of way. What harm can it do?
Suggesting that we teach students "both sides of the controversy" sounds wonderfully reasonable, but it means you accept that there is a debate, and that there are two sides to discuss.
At the time of replying to you, there are more than 1800 comments on this story. Looks to me like there might be something to discuss after all.
How does that protect my bank account from unauthorised access? Sure, giving up my privacy would make it very much harder to blackmail me, but that's not generally what this sort of attack is about.
Why do you think homeless cats 'suffer'? is it becasue they aren't all neat and bathed so they can fit into your little mental box of how they should live?
People bathe their cats? Why? Unless they get coated in something they can't clean off themselves (which in my experience is pretty rare), there's no reason at all to bathe them (and several good reasons not to, not least of which is that it distresses them and tends to injure you...)
what's the console's excuse?
Easy - they sell the consoles themselves at a loss, and recoup the cost through the games.
Nolonger can you meet yourself after work and engage in an menasha-un
I think you mean a "ménage à un" (from ménage à trois), but it's kind of hard to tell...
(Not that that looks entirely right, but I've forgotten too much French to be able to work out what it would really be)
Add one line to the Windows boot.ini file and you can use the Windows bootloader to boot Linux.
No, the Windows installer won't/can't do it for you, but then it doesn't do it for other Windows installs you may have either.
Yes they do. The Linux installer will detect your Windows installation and add an appropriate line in the bootloader config to boot Windows for you, but most certainly will overwrite the existing bootloader unless instructed not to do so. (In which case you'll need to boot from a floppy or similar, or add a line to your Windows boot.ini file to boot Linux).
Telling people how they should earn a living and telling a corporation what their profits should be is SOOOOO free market!
Hey, this is slashdot, where we believe in Freedom - the Freedom to subscribe to exactly the same ideologies as we do, or be vilified. Where the rich record companies should abandon their dying business model and move with the times, while techies should fight outsourcing tooth and nail to hang on to their highly-paid jobs.
The UK has bigger problems right now than worrying about a bunch of Spice Girl piratez.
Oh for fuck's sake, if I read or hear the Threat of Terror!!11! being used as an excuse for doing (or not doing) something one more time I'm going to throttle someone.
Bigger problems my arse. We survived 20+ years of IRA bombing campaigns, we'll survive these Johnny-come-latelys perfectly well thank you very much. We don't feel the need to fall to pieces and invade a couple of countries just because someone thinks they can intimidate us; they're not the first to try and fail, and I dare say they won't be the last.
Yeah! Right on! I'm with you!
But first, could you point me to the statute(s) that allow for "ripping, rarring and torrenting" a CD under fair use?
For bonus points, as this is specifically about UK record companies, point out the UK statutes that do the same. (Hint: there aren't any)
You're exactly the kind of person who gives the anti-copyright-excess people a bad name, going too far in the other direction.
This is my opinion of course. :-)
And it's wrong. Music takes people time and effort to produce; while they're doing that, they're not using their time for anything else - earning money, building a career, spending time with friends and family, watching paint dry, whatever. That investment of time and talent deserves to be compensated (assuming someone likes their music enough to want to listen to it, of course).
Air is a natural resource that requires no investment of time or money to produce.
Other than that, a perfect analogy...
Might've been better if you hadn't obscurred the URL with the browser you were typing the post in to...
Support is way over rated. I have never ever gotten good support from any company that produced anything.
There are two aspects to support; actually getting support, so that your problems are fixed quickly and efficiently is one of them. The other, and often just as important to some people, is being able to point the finger at someone else.
It's arse-covering - being able to say "Yes, there's a problem, yes, I recommended the software, but it's not our fault, the support firm is dicking us about - we've paid them, they should fix it!" is a lot better than "Yes, there's a problem, yes, I recommended the software, we're doing our best - sorry"
Generally speaking, managers and clients don't want to hear that in the event of a problem there's a whole bunch of people on the internet who are bound to be able to help. They want to know that someone with the appropriate expertise is going to be dedicated to fixing the problem ASAP. Whether or not that's actually what happens is often beside the point. (Generally if it doesn't, it just means that next time you'll get support from someone else instead)