If they even so much as poke your check with a finger
I presume you intended to type cheek?
IANAL, but the law, as I was instructed in it, in British Columbia, Canada suggests that if you think someone is trespassing you should inform them they're trespassing. You can then place a hand on them to escort them off the property, if the resist, even to the point of simply slipping away from the hand you've place on them they can then be seen as having assaulted you.
Corporations and most lawyers use intimidation as a matter of course, as do government agencies. I'm of the considered opinion anyone who doesn't tell them to fuck off is a sucker and deserves to get used and abused by these assholes.
In case some of you haven't noticed the only game being played in any town, anywhere is that you press your case onward with the pedal to the metal and then let the courts sort it out. No corporation gives a flying fuck about your rights.
They spooked me a bit but then I'm a little claustrophobic. I was doing business with one a company who had developed one and I was given a tour. They also reminded me of the sort of thing William Gibson described in Neuromancer.
Yale uni has astr160 available Online. Professor Bayiln gives hot inner planets and black holes a good going over and folds them in with dark matter and dark energy to suggest whatever is cooking out there possibly ain't like noth'n we've been served before. It's a low maths, freshman course but doesn't shy away from anything. Professor Baylin is interesting, well spoken and easy to listen to. The production values on all the Yale courses are head and shoulders above that offered by mit and Berkeley, and, the Yale stuff comes with full html transcripts and added resources.
I recently finished an excellent set of Yale uni Online lectures by R Wyman titled "Global Population and Biological Development". In one of the later lectures Professor Wyman reported on first hand experiences of scientist working in China investigating birth control programmes both as to their implementation and efficacy. In an earlier lecture he made the point that the current Chinese government has been able to convince the general population that the Chinese state exists as a viable entity. This point is interesting in light of reports by people working in China reporting on various birth control programmes. The gist of the reports was that the central government made sweeping claims and policy implementations that when translated, implemented and reported by the various districts came out in the wash as markedly different from the original proclamations made by the central government. Locally people seem in large measure to implement such policies as they see fit and to colour reports back to the central government to placate central control agencies.
Chinese history is a history of warring states so much so that I'm not able to subscribe to Professor Wyman claim that China has attained unification. Taiwan stands out as a stark example in terms of how young the mainland state is. I recall the Chinese government is only about 60 years old and faces an economic reality that greatly flies in the face of it's communist posture. A central regime that broadcasts slogans like "Purity and Harmony" and implements draconian practices to influence it's population on the level of their sexual drive smacks of desperation.
I took a 4 year leave from/. (you're welcome) and came back (there's little you can do about it) after having taken a look at most of the prominent alternatives. There are two outstanding reasons I returned to Slashdot. First/. is a decent tech site that has a bias toward open source. I first came here in the late 90's to learn about Linux. Secondly the fine print still reads the same: All comments are owned by the poster. Slashdot remains a place where I can see the tech world through an Open Source lens, freely post my opinions and retain ownership and responsibility for said comments. And I appreciate/. such as it is.
This is/. the closest anybody on this forum has come to being in a store with a girl was when they walked out with the latest blowup model they just bought.;)
Another tick in this column is the huge market for makeup, sexy clothes, etc., for women; not so much for men. It would seem that men are looking specifically for visual stimulation on a level that women are not. And that women know it, because they certainly buy this stuff in large enough quantities without demanding comparable "peacock" performance from the male population
My ex made a remark on an evening we were playing dress up for some overblown event. She said women don't dress for men, they dress for other women. I don't think it's necessarily true for single women on a date with some guy they're interested in but I do think many women are engaged in a fashion war with their peers and in that war we men are just collateral damage.
just my loose change.
It's interesting to watch our species struggle with it's animal nature, especially our sexual nature. Is it a form of engineered evolution implemented at a cultural level? Or are we just kidding ourselves? Fun tho'
I just did a rewatch of Alien last week. It's one of those movies I revisit once every year or so, like Bladerunner. Bladerunner was said even by W. Gibson to be widely influential across a swath of cultural fields, but I think the artwork in Alien to have had a more lasting cultural wide influence. The artwork in Alien underlies and embues the artwork of almost every FPS game with a science fiction setting. The narrow, steam filled, water dripping innards of a space ship's mechanical works and bays hiding the alien threat was done best in Alien.
I'm nearly finished the Yale lectures on evolution, ecology and behavior. Professor Stearns addresses the RNA world theory of life origins. The Yale lecture series is really outstanding. If you're a Global Warming skeptic you'll be interested in Professor Stearns suggestion that human induced global warming has the potential for an extinction event on par with the one that drove the extinction of the dinosaurs. The production values in the Yale lectures is really good and the lectures offered give a sort of pocket edition of the human condition.
It might not be trivial that the baby boomer generation, who more than any other generation sated themselves at an inestimable cost to future generations, are intent in keeping their children and grandchildren in suspended development. I recently finished an excellent set of lectures by R Wyman global population and biological development. The lectures are one of a number of an excellent series of Yale lectures with comparatively outstanding production values. I'm not suggesting Professor Wyman even hints at the subjugation of a younger generation by an older generation by enforcing a prolonged adolescence but his lectures on ape behaviour speak to behaviour in older males in terms of excluding others from resources. Thinking of the well being of children is sacrosanct and well intentioned but it's not uninteresting to view it as an unconscious ploy by a bloated, disproportionately over populated generation to control resources.
I remind everyone reading this that aside from the odd token law, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever restricting private companies from compiling and indexing whatever data they want internally.
I don't see any problem with any one person or group compiling information legally compiled, in fact, I think the more the merrier and the better for all. The dissemination of information is a good thing. Arguments can be brought to bear on how the information is collected and used, and, laws have to protect some personal information.
I've previously suggested a business plan be looked at that would have individuals and organizations sell/contract their "vital statistics" to a co-operatively held entity. The Information Age has made it clear the vital statistics and shopping, political, viewing habits of individuals are seen as valuable. If such information has value then it can be contracted for and bought, sold and licensed. If a co-operative held the rights to a large group of individuals information then the individuals would have considerably more control over that information and be able to contract for it's use and dissemination. I haven't looked into whether such as business would be commercially viable but I think it might be and might also make class action suits easier and more attractive to lawyers while giving the individuals involved more leverage over corporations and even government agencies seeking to aggregate and use such information.
OK, so before I get flamed, I'm not saying anything like Gates and Ballmer aren't building a DeathStar. I'm not saying anything like that but I've been running Vista 64 on an intel Core2 Quad with a so so vid card and a mere 4 gigs of ram hooked up to a ViewSonic 37" 720p and I'm not as deeply, bitterly disappointed in Vista as I initially was. I'm glad MS moved on and tried to bring out a better product in Win 7 but I think Vista was the result of a decision to effect major changes and get away from their bastard children that began with Windows 95. Win2K was a bit of a sweet spot but was more a product from the NT line so I think they had to make the decision to draw a line with Vista, and, many products and drivers couldn't feasibly make it across that line. To be a winner an OS needs good complimentary hardware and I don't think Vista, especially 64 had the peripherals on the shelf to help drive sales. Sure it boots glacially slow and if I overload it I still have to kill explorer.exe but overall Vista may turn out to be a good decision in terms of future products and it's not that bad. I recently, lazily dragged a ~52 gig, 3.5k files, folder from one partition on one drive into another folder on another partition and let it run while I watched a movie and hand a handful of other apps running and Vista chugged along without so much as a shrug, transfering the files in about 25 minutes. Not so bad. But, again, I know about the DeathStar and plans for Galactic domination, I've got extra pop and cookies in my mom's basement and I'm ready.:)
Sorry for the 2nd reply, "Moon's Origins" speaks to the moon's formation; again, IIRC, (I watch stuff like this for fun and without strict attention) it's the first episode of "The Miracle Planet" (4 parts) that talks about problems with the quantity and constitution of the earth's water.
I'm a deeply confirmed atheist, so much so that I can't imagine trolls at all, other than as pejorative labels for creationists. This linked article was the first handy bit I could find that speaks directly to my post./. has run a few stories about the problems with the earth's amount of water and it's origins. If you want a more lore based recounting, Captain Jean Luc Picard narrated a pbs special, titled, IIRC, "Moon's Origins". Picard's aka Patrick Stewart's pronunciation of a French name in a truculent, anglo-saxon accent is worth the time to hunt up a copy at your local library.
I've no background and little education in this area but I do have an off the wall question. I have some understanding of the theory describing the initial impact from which the moon is thought to have come, and, the attendant theory that the formation of the moon may have been one of the first, big contingent happenings that drove the development of life on earth. My question centres on the material that made up the body that smashed into the early earth, added much to the earth's "girth" and gave us the present moon. Is it possible the impacting body was composed of a lot of water? There's questions surrounding how earth came to have so much water. If the impacting body that gave us the moon contained a great amount of water, the impact, formation of the moon, water on earth and the early evolution of life comes into focus as a "just so" story.
It's based on government, businesses, and individuals each doing our part. Yes, government should not go too far in controlling businesses; but in return businesses have to back way off, as they've gone much too far in recent years into endeavoring to control government.
In principle, I agree, but practically I think we're up against more intractable, fundamental problems requiring much effort and time to resolve. Historically there's endless material available to quote addressing the incompetence of government, greed and the lust for power, and, IMHO, it's profoundly based in our natures, but we're also up against a new storyline that's changing the way we think, evaluate and solve our problems. Humanism began, IIRC, in renaissance Italy, in a city state (Florence?) that wanted an education programme that would produce informed citizens able to competently participate in government of the city state. From Humanism to the Enlightenment the west developed a classically based education system that borrowed heavily from Greek and Roman sources. From the Enlightenment ideas came that informed our modern democracies; but modern science, also birthed during the enlightenment, has currently given us a fundamental shift in context and values that seems to have generated a sophist, relativists set of values challenging the historical, classical values inherent in Humanism and democracy.
In a way I'm becoming an apologist for the living generations because I've begun to think we are facing old problems with new values and new solution sets that will require considerable time and effort to implement within the tested structures of modern democracies. Modern science and it's findings are becoming a backbone for much of the policies of modern democracies but there are some serious repercussions. Modern science, inadvertently, challenges historical religious beliefs and to many seems to put in the place of religious morals a relativistic set of values that foster sophistry wherein morals and principles are replaced by political clout, statistics and media spin. Science in tandem with the principles of modern democracies have to address problems the marriage of science and democracy have in large part engendered.
Anthropology speaks of 3 generations as a window of sorts through which history can be viewed. 3 generations, spanning 90 years, allows for an immediacy and intimacy of contact between the generations that permits, for want of a better word, an empathy that might give greater insight and resolution to current problems. Currently the Boomers, those born in the 80's and their off spring are facing problems that require science and it's findings be given much weight but are also faced with a spectre of relativism that engenders less of the kind of individual responsibility the old value system carried with it.
Recently, in Vancouver, RCMP officers were publicly challenged for stopping known protesters to the upcoming Olympic winter games and asking them why they were against the games. I don't know the ins and outs of the whole episode but the criticism of the RCMP in the media seemed to centre on their stopping people in public places and questioning the reasons for their political opinions. A news broadcast carried the response from an RCMP public relations officer who used the term "due diligence" in defense of the RCMP's actions. Due diligence as I was schooled in the subject matter had to do only with commercial dealings wherein a party to a contract was expected to have scrutinized the terms of a pending contract to ensure they understood the value they would receive for their part in the contract. It may be that in law the term "due diligence" has a wider meaning, but, I think, the RCMP's use of the term is symptomatic of the use of law suits to resolve many issues in terms of monetary damages and contractual obligations that tacitly put aside principles that should invest more fundamental laws addressing vital issues like freedom of speech. There seems to be developing an adversarial, highly litigious approach to addressing issues that rightly belong to more sober venues.
Law enforcement agencies wield what should be illegal force. Force that necessarily must be used for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the infantile need among a high proportion of people to make the world in their image, but, if we take the core principles of democracy and subject them to remedies that belong in commercial enterprises then, I think, we run the risk of debasing those principles and turning democracy into a commercial venture wherein all principles and actions are arbitrated by monetary awards, and, the duties and responsibilites of persons with extraordinary powers are also simply monetized.
I'm a strong backer of the military and the police, the more so because I believe the current state of affairs places them collectively and individually in conflicts both individual and collective that subject them to more stress than their pay warrants and, perhaps, more stress than can be expected to be suffered without considerable negative consequences, but, I sure, this being/. many will disagree.
My best guess is news outlets that have deep links and high tech will win out. My best back of the envelope strategy would be to embed news stories in elective layers of deepening context. Readers would be able to elect to go ever deeper into a news story and link to information nodes that would shed light on how news events impact their neighbourhood, income level, etc. You should be able to enter a news story at a world wide level and exit at the neighbourhood mall. The problem would be how to allow for in depth news reporting without the content being lost in a jungle of links. National news outlets have the ability to provide just such coverage. The News_paper_ is dead, news reporting has morphed and the readership has morphed to meet the new coverage. The message is still strong, it's the medium that needs to change.
I'm sorry for the lack of specifics in what follows but if anyone cares to chase after it, it's not that hard to run down. IIRC the last segment of a "The Miracle Planet" and "The Brain's Big Bang" both address the supposed cultural explosion that took place ~50K ago. Steven Pinker, mit language theorist, suggested there might be many variables that came into play and that any one, or few, changes, either genetic or environmental, would probably not be adequate enough to substantiate the significant changes that archaeological evidence suggests. Although I've never come across anyone who baldly stated Neanderthals could interbred with our species the question has always hung in the air. What makes the question tantalizing is that our species is ~100k years old and the Neanderthals older. If our kind was +50K, even as much as +150K years old before said cultural revolution took place than something like interbreeding with a close species tends to look attractive. I'd go into how difficult it is to pick up an attractive partner when you don't speak the language but this is/. Take my word for it, you'd almost need to club somebody over the head and drag them home.
Neanderthals are now thought to have been far more widely spread around the old world then was previously thought. The squat, thick build of the northern European Neanderthal was complimented by less compact builds in southern and more mild climates. The outstanding anatomical difference between Neanderthals and us is the larynx. In our species the larynx makes a dangerous descent down the throat to a much lower position than that in Neanderthals and other primates. The lower position of the larynx makes choking on food more likely but allows for the clear pronunciation of sounds that enables our complex speech. It's thought our complex social behaviour tied to our compulsion for social communication is in large part what drove the development of our big brains. If language can be said to have driven our social development than it's possible Neanderthals with their much more restricted vocal apparatus were at best able to mimic our fast evolving, language driven culture.
While not being able to answer questions as to whether we could have interbred viably with Neanderthals the language issue does raise a Lamarkian question as to the hows and whys of an essential species trait, like language in our species, positions and predisposes the species to evolve outside of the descent with modification that informs genetic, neo Darwinian theory.
I was one of those quintessential brats in the back seat of my parent's car mindlessly chanting the eternal question, "Are we there yet?". When addressing questions that incorporate government oversight of national infrastructures that are run by near monopolies there are no destination solutions. There are tentative, context sensitive solutions. The answer isn't unregulated free enterprise, nor is it heavy handed government control. IMHO the answer is the solution offered by mature democracies that have in place the institutions and laws that permit tentative solutions to be put in place then publicly monitored and honed.
What works in our modern, mature democracies are the checks and balances, supplemented by free speech, and, government and business oversight, that allow us to find a workable middle ground. I'm a liberal but I'm always glad for the common sense conservatives who try to limit government interference. Solving social problems by way of democratic institutions is a messy, contentious affair but, I think, modern history has amply demonstrated that the current crop of mature democracies are the best way to go and it's the somewhat efficient functioning of our institutions that allow us succeed more so than does any other form of government. We succeed because we have in place institutions that allow for open debate and venues to address things when they go wrong. We aren't there yet, but then we aren't ever gonna be so we might as well enjoy the ride given that we've got the best vehicle on the road.
For anyone interested I'd suggest M. Wood's documentary, "In Search of Shakespeare". The four part documentary won't answer any of the more delicious and silly questions about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays but it will give as good an historical insight as is easily available. Thomas Kyd is best known for his play The Spanish Tragedy worth reading for the style. Christopher Marlowe and Kyd were the new kids on the block before Shakespeare made his mark. A famous critique of Shakespeare, mentioned in Wood's documentary attacks Shakespeare as unschooled and not an equal to "university wits" like Marlowe. The problem with attribution is that, likely, all authors of that period plagiarized, (by our standards) , one another. Shakespeare started out as an actor with a traveling company IIRC, the King's Men, who were basically a troupe of government propagandists. Theatre was a relatively new phenomenon and was used in the Elizabethan era as a propaganda tool during the conversion of England from Catholic to Protestantism. Shakespeare stole many of the best plots he studied as an actor with the King's Men. While Shakespeare was known to have co-authored plays with others, the missing play based on the first part of Cervantes Don Quxiote is the most notable example, I know of no evidence, though evidence of any kind is scant, that Shakespeare and Kyd worked together. Kyd and Marlowe were implicated as Catholic agents and Marlowe was likely murdered because he was catholic. IMHO neither Marlowe or Kyd can hold a candle to Shakespeare.
Not my bailiwick but, that aside, I just finished the Berkeley Webcast Bio 1A & 1B lecture series, (good stuff for an undergrad round up of general theory and findings). One of the lectures addressed ageing and the lecturer suggested that biological stresses such as dealing with bacterial infections are the main reason for ageing. IIRC he went on to incriminate biological stresses as being tied to DNA mutations, although how this would come about I'm not sure. He further suggested that cloning after a certain age would only act to transfer DNA mutations from the transfered nucleus and such mutations would significantly shorten the life of a clone. Not my area so I'll just leave it at a recommendation for the Berkeley Biology webcasts covering general biology, cell biology, human anatomy and nutrition. The lecture series on CogSci is also worth mention. Berkeley and MIT deserve kudos and donations for making that stuff available
Isn't that just the way it goes, you put up a great circle of stones, your house smartly in the middle; the missus, the kids and the in laws are all finally giving you the praise you deserve, and what does your neighbour go and do?
Slashdot Mirror
If they even so much as poke your check with a finger
I presume you intended to type cheek?
IANAL, but the law, as I was instructed in it, in British Columbia, Canada suggests that if you think someone is trespassing you should inform them they're trespassing. You can then place a hand on them to escort them off the property, if the resist, even to the point of simply slipping away from the hand you've place on them they can then be seen as having assaulted you.
Corporations and most lawyers use intimidation as a matter of course, as do government agencies. I'm of the considered opinion anyone who doesn't tell them to fuck off is a sucker and deserves to get used and abused by these assholes.
In case some of you haven't noticed the only game being played in any town, anywhere is that you press your case onward with the pedal to the metal and then let the courts sort it out. No corporation gives a flying fuck about your rights.
at a site called Puka
That was no meteorite, that's where Harvey's spaceship touched down.
They spooked me a bit but then I'm a little claustrophobic. I was doing business with one a company who had developed one and I was given a tour. They also reminded me of the sort of thing William Gibson described in Neuromancer.
Yale uni has astr160 available Online. Professor Bayiln gives hot inner planets and black holes a good going over and folds them in with dark matter and dark energy to suggest whatever is cooking out there possibly ain't like noth'n we've been served before. It's a low maths, freshman course but doesn't shy away from anything. Professor Baylin is interesting, well spoken and easy to listen to. The production values on all the Yale courses are head and shoulders above that offered by mit and Berkeley, and, the Yale stuff comes with full html transcripts and added resources.
I recently finished an excellent set of Yale uni Online lectures by R Wyman titled "Global Population and Biological Development". In one of the later lectures Professor Wyman reported on first hand experiences of scientist working in China investigating birth control programmes both as to their implementation and efficacy. In an earlier lecture he made the point that the current Chinese government has been able to convince the general population that the Chinese state exists as a viable entity. This point is interesting in light of reports by people working in China reporting on various birth control programmes. The gist of the reports was that the central government made sweeping claims and policy implementations that when translated, implemented and reported by the various districts came out in the wash as markedly different from the original proclamations made by the central government. Locally people seem in large measure to implement such policies as they see fit and to colour reports back to the central government to placate central control agencies.
Chinese history is a history of warring states so much so that I'm not able to subscribe to Professor Wyman claim that China has attained unification. Taiwan stands out as a stark example in terms of how young the mainland state is. I recall the Chinese government is only about 60 years old and faces an economic reality that greatly flies in the face of it's communist posture. A central regime that broadcasts slogans like "Purity and Harmony" and implements draconian practices to influence it's population on the level of their sexual drive smacks of desperation.
I took a 4 year leave from /. (you're welcome) and came back (there's little you can do about it) after having taken a look at most of the prominent alternatives. There are two outstanding reasons I returned to Slashdot. First /. is a decent tech site that has a bias toward open source. I first came here in the late 90's to learn about Linux. Secondly the fine print still reads the same: All comments are owned by the poster. Slashdot remains a place where I can see the tech world through an Open Source lens, freely post my opinions and retain ownership and responsibility for said comments. And I appreciate /. such as it is.
Have you ever been in a store with a girl?
This is /. the closest anybody on this forum has come to being in a store with a girl was when they walked out with the latest blowup model they just bought. ;)
Another tick in this column is the huge market for makeup, sexy clothes, etc., for women; not so much for men. It would seem that men are looking specifically for visual stimulation on a level that women are not. And that women know it, because they certainly buy this stuff in large enough quantities without demanding comparable "peacock" performance from the male population
My ex made a remark on an evening we were playing dress up for some overblown event. She said women don't dress for men, they dress for other women. I don't think it's necessarily true for single women on a date with some guy they're interested in but I do think many women are engaged in a fashion war with their peers and in that war we men are just collateral damage.
just my loose change.
It's interesting to watch our species struggle with it's animal nature, especially our sexual nature. Is it a form of engineered evolution implemented at a cultural level? Or are we just kidding ourselves? Fun tho'
I just did a rewatch of Alien last week. It's one of those movies I revisit once every year or so, like Bladerunner. Bladerunner was said even by W. Gibson to be widely influential across a swath of cultural fields, but I think the artwork in Alien to have had a more lasting cultural wide influence. The artwork in Alien underlies and embues the artwork of almost every FPS game with a science fiction setting. The narrow, steam filled, water dripping innards of a space ship's mechanical works and bays hiding the alien threat was done best in Alien.
I'm nearly finished the Yale lectures on evolution, ecology and behavior. Professor Stearns addresses the RNA world theory of life origins. The Yale lecture series is really outstanding. If you're a Global Warming skeptic you'll be interested in Professor Stearns suggestion that human induced global warming has the potential for an extinction event on par with the one that drove the extinction of the dinosaurs. The production values in the Yale lectures is really good and the lectures offered give a sort of pocket edition of the human condition.
It might not be trivial that the baby boomer generation, who more than any other generation sated themselves at an inestimable cost to future generations, are intent in keeping their children and grandchildren in suspended development. I recently finished an excellent set of lectures by R Wyman global population and biological development. The lectures are one of a number of an excellent series of Yale lectures with comparatively outstanding production values. I'm not suggesting Professor Wyman even hints at the subjugation of a younger generation by an older generation by enforcing a prolonged adolescence but his lectures on ape behaviour speak to behaviour in older males in terms of excluding others from resources. Thinking of the well being of children is sacrosanct and well intentioned but it's not uninteresting to view it as an unconscious ploy by a bloated, disproportionately over populated generation to control resources.
I remind everyone reading this that aside from the odd token law, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever restricting private companies from compiling and indexing whatever data they want internally.
I don't see any problem with any one person or group compiling information legally compiled, in fact, I think the more the merrier and the better for all. The dissemination of information is a good thing. Arguments can be brought to bear on how the information is collected and used, and, laws have to protect some personal information.
I've previously suggested a business plan be looked at that would have individuals and organizations sell/contract their "vital statistics" to a co-operatively held entity. The Information Age has made it clear the vital statistics and shopping, political, viewing habits of individuals are seen as valuable. If such information has value then it can be contracted for and bought, sold and licensed. If a co-operative held the rights to a large group of individuals information then the individuals would have considerably more control over that information and be able to contract for it's use and dissemination. I haven't looked into whether such as business would be commercially viable but I think it might be and might also make class action suits easier and more attractive to lawyers while giving the individuals involved more leverage over corporations and even government agencies seeking to aggregate and use such information.
OK, so before I get flamed, I'm not saying anything like Gates and Ballmer aren't building a DeathStar. I'm not saying anything like that but I've been running Vista 64 on an intel Core2 Quad with a so so vid card and a mere 4 gigs of ram hooked up to a ViewSonic 37" 720p and I'm not as deeply, bitterly disappointed in Vista as I initially was. I'm glad MS moved on and tried to bring out a better product in Win 7 but I think Vista was the result of a decision to effect major changes and get away from their bastard children that began with Windows 95. Win2K was a bit of a sweet spot but was more a product from the NT line so I think they had to make the decision to draw a line with Vista, and, many products and drivers couldn't feasibly make it across that line. To be a winner an OS needs good complimentary hardware and I don't think Vista, especially 64 had the peripherals on the shelf to help drive sales. Sure it boots glacially slow and if I overload it I still have to kill explorer.exe but overall Vista may turn out to be a good decision in terms of future products and it's not that bad. I recently, lazily dragged a ~52 gig, 3.5k files, folder from one partition on one drive into another folder on another partition and let it run while I watched a movie and hand a handful of other apps running and Vista chugged along without so much as a shrug, transfering the files in about 25 minutes. Not so bad. But, again, I know about the DeathStar and plans for Galactic domination, I've got extra pop and cookies in my mom's basement and I'm ready. :)
Sorry for the 2nd reply, "Moon's Origins" speaks to the moon's formation; again, IIRC, (I watch stuff like this for fun and without strict attention) it's the first episode of "The Miracle Planet" (4 parts) that talks about problems with the quantity and constitution of the earth's water.
Or are you a creationist troll ?
I'm a deeply confirmed atheist, so much so that I can't imagine trolls at all, other than as pejorative labels for creationists. This linked article was the first handy bit I could find that speaks directly to my post. /. has run a few stories about the problems with the earth's amount of water and it's origins. If you want a more lore based recounting, Captain Jean Luc Picard narrated a pbs special, titled, IIRC, "Moon's Origins". Picard's aka Patrick Stewart's pronunciation of a French name in a truculent, anglo-saxon accent is worth the time to hunt up a copy at your local library.
I've no background and little education in this area but I do have an off the wall question. I have some understanding of the theory describing the initial impact from which the moon is thought to have come, and, the attendant theory that the formation of the moon may have been one of the first, big contingent happenings that drove the development of life on earth. My question centres on the material that made up the body that smashed into the early earth, added much to the earth's "girth" and gave us the present moon. Is it possible the impacting body was composed of a lot of water? There's questions surrounding how earth came to have so much water. If the impacting body that gave us the moon contained a great amount of water, the impact, formation of the moon, water on earth and the early evolution of life comes into focus as a "just so" story.
just my loose change
It's based on government, businesses, and individuals each doing our part. Yes, government should not go too far in controlling businesses; but in return businesses have to back way off, as they've gone much too far in recent years into endeavoring to control government.
In principle, I agree, but practically I think we're up against more intractable, fundamental problems requiring much effort and time to resolve. Historically there's endless material available to quote addressing the incompetence of government, greed and the lust for power, and, IMHO, it's profoundly based in our natures, but we're also up against a new storyline that's changing the way we think, evaluate and solve our problems. Humanism began, IIRC, in renaissance Italy, in a city state (Florence?) that wanted an education programme that would produce informed citizens able to competently participate in government of the city state. From Humanism to the Enlightenment the west developed a classically based education system that borrowed heavily from Greek and Roman sources. From the Enlightenment ideas came that informed our modern democracies; but modern science, also birthed during the enlightenment, has currently given us a fundamental shift in context and values that seems to have generated a sophist, relativists set of values challenging the historical, classical values inherent in Humanism and democracy.
In a way I'm becoming an apologist for the living generations because I've begun to think we are facing old problems with new values and new solution sets that will require considerable time and effort to implement within the tested structures of modern democracies. Modern science and it's findings are becoming a backbone for much of the policies of modern democracies but there are some serious repercussions. Modern science, inadvertently, challenges historical religious beliefs and to many seems to put in the place of religious morals a relativistic set of values that foster sophistry wherein morals and principles are replaced by political clout, statistics and media spin. Science in tandem with the principles of modern democracies have to address problems the marriage of science and democracy have in large part engendered.
Anthropology speaks of 3 generations as a window of sorts through which history can be viewed. 3 generations, spanning 90 years, allows for an immediacy and intimacy of contact between the generations that permits, for want of a better word, an empathy that might give greater insight and resolution to current problems. Currently the Boomers, those born in the 80's and their off spring are facing problems that require science and it's findings be given much weight but are also faced with a spectre of relativism that engenders less of the kind of individual responsibility the old value system carried with it.
Recently, in Vancouver, RCMP officers were publicly challenged for stopping known protesters to the upcoming Olympic winter games and asking them why they were against the games. I don't know the ins and outs of the whole episode but the criticism of the RCMP in the media seemed to centre on their stopping people in public places and questioning the reasons for their political opinions. A news broadcast carried the response from an RCMP public relations officer who used the term "due diligence" in defense of the RCMP's actions. Due diligence as I was schooled in the subject matter had to do only with commercial dealings wherein a party to a contract was expected to have scrutinized the terms of a pending contract to ensure they understood the value they would receive for their part in the contract. It may be that in law the term "due diligence" has a wider meaning, but, I think, the RCMP's use of the term is symptomatic of the use of law suits to resolve many issues in terms of monetary damages and contractual obligations that tacitly put aside principles that should invest more fundamental laws addressing vital issues like freedom of speech. There seems to be developing an adversarial, highly litigious approach to addressing issues that rightly belong to more sober venues.
Law enforcement agencies wield what should be illegal force. Force that necessarily must be used for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the infantile need among a high proportion of people to make the world in their image, but, if we take the core principles of democracy and subject them to remedies that belong in commercial enterprises then, I think, we run the risk of debasing those principles and turning democracy into a commercial venture wherein all principles and actions are arbitrated by monetary awards, and, the duties and responsibilites of persons with extraordinary powers are also simply monetized.
I'm a strong backer of the military and the police, the more so because I believe the current state of affairs places them collectively and individually in conflicts both individual and collective that subject them to more stress than their pay warrants and, perhaps, more stress than can be expected to be suffered without considerable negative consequences, but, I sure, this being /. many will disagree.
My best guess is news outlets that have deep links and high tech will win out. My best back of the envelope strategy would be to embed news stories in elective layers of deepening context. Readers would be able to elect to go ever deeper into a news story and link to information nodes that would shed light on how news events impact their neighbourhood, income level, etc. You should be able to enter a news story at a world wide level and exit at the neighbourhood mall. The problem would be how to allow for in depth news reporting without the content being lost in a jungle of links. National news outlets have the ability to provide just such coverage. The News_paper_ is dead, news reporting has morphed and the readership has morphed to meet the new coverage. The message is still strong, it's the medium that needs to change.
I'm sorry for the lack of specifics in what follows but if anyone cares to chase after it, it's not that hard to run down. IIRC the last segment of a "The Miracle Planet" and "The Brain's Big Bang" both address the supposed cultural explosion that took place ~50K ago. Steven Pinker, mit language theorist, suggested there might be many variables that came into play and that any one, or few, changes, either genetic or environmental, would probably not be adequate enough to substantiate the significant changes that archaeological evidence suggests. Although I've never come across anyone who baldly stated Neanderthals could interbred with our species the question has always hung in the air. What makes the question tantalizing is that our species is ~100k years old and the Neanderthals older. If our kind was +50K, even as much as +150K years old before said cultural revolution took place than something like interbreeding with a close species tends to look attractive. I'd go into how difficult it is to pick up an attractive partner when you don't speak the language but this is /. Take my word for it, you'd almost need to club somebody over the head and drag them home.
Neanderthals are now thought to have been far more widely spread around the old world then was previously thought. The squat, thick build of the northern European Neanderthal was complimented by less compact builds in southern and more mild climates. The outstanding anatomical difference between Neanderthals and us is the larynx. In our species the larynx makes a dangerous descent down the throat to a much lower position than that in Neanderthals and other primates. The lower position of the larynx makes choking on food more likely but allows for the clear pronunciation of sounds that enables our complex speech. It's thought our complex social behaviour tied to our compulsion for social communication is in large part what drove the development of our big brains. If language can be said to have driven our social development than it's possible Neanderthals with their much more restricted vocal apparatus were at best able to mimic our fast evolving, language driven culture.
While not being able to answer questions as to whether we could have interbred viably with Neanderthals the language issue does raise a Lamarkian question as to the hows and whys of an essential species trait, like language in our species, positions and predisposes the species to evolve outside of the descent with modification that informs genetic, neo Darwinian theory.
I was one of those quintessential brats in the back seat of my parent's car mindlessly chanting the eternal question, "Are we there yet?". When addressing questions that incorporate government oversight of national infrastructures that are run by near monopolies there are no destination solutions. There are tentative, context sensitive solutions. The answer isn't unregulated free enterprise, nor is it heavy handed government control. IMHO the answer is the solution offered by mature democracies that have in place the institutions and laws that permit tentative solutions to be put in place then publicly monitored and honed.
What works in our modern, mature democracies are the checks and balances, supplemented by free speech, and, government and business oversight, that allow us to find a workable middle ground. I'm a liberal but I'm always glad for the common sense conservatives who try to limit government interference. Solving social problems by way of democratic institutions is a messy, contentious affair but, I think, modern history has amply demonstrated that the current crop of mature democracies are the best way to go and it's the somewhat efficient functioning of our institutions that allow us succeed more so than does any other form of government. We succeed because we have in place institutions that allow for open debate and venues to address things when they go wrong. We aren't there yet, but then we aren't ever gonna be so we might as well enjoy the ride given that we've got the best vehicle on the road.
just my loose change in a contentious debate
For anyone interested I'd suggest M. Wood's documentary, "In Search of Shakespeare". The four part documentary won't answer any of the more delicious and silly questions about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays but it will give as good an historical insight as is easily available. Thomas Kyd is best known for his play The Spanish Tragedy worth reading for the style. Christopher Marlowe and Kyd were the new kids on the block before Shakespeare made his mark. A famous critique of Shakespeare, mentioned in Wood's documentary attacks Shakespeare as unschooled and not an equal to "university wits" like Marlowe. The problem with attribution is that, likely, all authors of that period plagiarized, (by our standards) , one another. Shakespeare started out as an actor with a traveling company IIRC, the King's Men, who were basically a troupe of government propagandists. Theatre was a relatively new phenomenon and was used in the Elizabethan era as a propaganda tool during the conversion of England from Catholic to Protestantism. Shakespeare stole many of the best plots he studied as an actor with the King's Men. While Shakespeare was known to have co-authored plays with others, the missing play based on the first part of Cervantes Don Quxiote is the most notable example, I know of no evidence, though evidence of any kind is scant, that Shakespeare and Kyd worked together. Kyd and Marlowe were implicated as Catholic agents and Marlowe was likely murdered because he was catholic. IMHO neither Marlowe or Kyd can hold a candle to Shakespeare.
Not my bailiwick but, that aside, I just finished the Berkeley Webcast Bio 1A & 1B lecture series, (good stuff for an undergrad round up of general theory and findings). One of the lectures addressed ageing and the lecturer suggested that biological stresses such as dealing with bacterial infections are the main reason for ageing. IIRC he went on to incriminate biological stresses as being tied to DNA mutations, although how this would come about I'm not sure. He further suggested that cloning after a certain age would only act to transfer DNA mutations from the transfered nucleus and such mutations would significantly shorten the life of a clone. Not my area so I'll just leave it at a recommendation for the Berkeley Biology webcasts covering general biology, cell biology, human anatomy and nutrition. The lecture series on CogSci is also worth mention. Berkeley and MIT deserve kudos and donations for making that stuff available
Isn't that just the way it goes, you put up a great circle of stones, your house smartly in the middle; the missus, the kids and the in laws are all finally giving you the praise you deserve, and what does your neighbour go and do?
ok, so while the first cup of coffee kicks in, i'll guess my statements 1 atm and at sea level are equivalent. sorry 'bout that.