My apologies; you are correct. I was misled by the "horribly simplified version" and misunderstood the context your post. Thanks for your gloss on the subject. I hadn't considered the ramifications of randomness alone. Sorry if I made you cross, please carry on the discourse.
I find it strange that the example envisioning the killing of "white"-skinned kids for an arbitrary number of years is in any way illustrating the concept of natural selection. I suggest Wikipedia or anything written by Richard Dawkins would reveal that evolution (in the Darwinian sense) is not easily distilled into a bumper sticker, slogan, or single image.
I would also be interested in having you expand on "nor does A evolve into B by pure chance." I thought that IS natural selection, long term.
Your comment reflects only the economic aspect of these countries' motivation. To buy anything from America is a political hot-potato for them, as showing their "independence" from the West is necessary to the "Arab street." (Forgive my verbal shorthand, please...)
Further, I think they like the ambiguity of having a home-grown system that they can refine in secret if they sense the need to do so. From what very little I know about the subject, light water reactors are not able to produce much weapons-grade material, making their "cost" a different calculation altogether.
I heard from Lou Dobbs on CNN that the Big Guys (corporations, lobbyists, think-tanks, etc.) are going to spring on us a "United States of North America" with Mexico, Canada, and the US comprising an economic entity to rival the European Union. All this without consulting the public or the Congress.
Perhaps this legislation, or at least the motive for it, is the probable insurrection of the American (and I hope) Canadian citizenry.
Further, I predict "W" will find a way to head up this new entity, thereby making the 2008 elections moot.
I can't believe I'm writing this; God, as a lapsed atheist, Please let me be wrong...
The "risk of a shuttle launch" exists whether or not the Hubble mission proceeds. We seem hell-bent on launching remaining shuttles on pointless round-trips to the ISS, anyway. The amount of real science and advancement of understanding of the cosmos by the Hubble array of instruments is worth the rest of the shuttle/ISS boondoggle anyway, IMHO. Surely a remaining mission flown by volunteers to extend Hubble's life is higher in the cost/benefit ratio than another routine launch.
Am using a Dell 233Mz w/ 64Mb RAM, 4 Gb SCSI disk running NT 4.0, service pack 6a. Has HP got anything that can beat that? I hate to get stuck on the upgrade treadmill, as you might notice...
Firefox, Notepad, & Popcorn are all I mostly use, anyhow.
You are correct in pointing out the irrelavancy of the stated disaster to the story. I suggest it is part of the overall erosion of intellectual discourse, which used to be about expressing ideas in order to further the discussion. Now we just talk, type, or hype by hijacking popular cultural memes, and the point of debate nowadays is to have your sound bite/sound-off byte grab the spotlight.
As for hydrogen and oxygen reacting strongly, don't forget that most of the world is covered with that happy combination. Just to dot the exclamation point, sodium and chlorine are dangerous elements apart, but paired up we have salt for our oceans and our tears.
My first reaction to the "no-ice" announcement was actually joy. I'm a science nut, but I can just envision the hordes of humans that might've otherwise arrived and wasted any handy resources for tourists and the like. I don't want to see a corporate logo appear on the moon's face, for instance.
I hope we don't infect the rest of the solar system until we're more responsible. This could mean just being good stewards of "our" own planet before we hope to know what to do with others.
Not a Luddite; robotic exploration gives the best bang for the buck, but we should have a double helping of humble pie before salivating over Pie-in-the-Sky.
I know my economic head is in the sand, but there's still lots of junk on Luna (and the European Space Agency just smacked it again !?!) and I wish humanity were wiser. This is not a troll, just a sentimental foo bar.
Don't they just do what they want unless they "lose" a legal case, then continue whilst appealing until the suit is moot? Or until a settlement is reached (money changes hands and minds)?
MS is such a juggernaut that it flows around or over obstacles, like an avalanche, tsunami, mud (fud?) slide, etc. If McAfee and company survive, they'll be the exception that makes the rule, imho.
IANAN (I am not a numerologist), but what little I've picked up suggests that "13" is not particularly interesting, save for the fact that the digits add up to 4. I've no clue as to the mystic value of four. Tarot fans can perhaps illuminate this arcane subject...
I don't know who thinks up these kinds of ideas--idealists, I suppose. But practically speaking, many hardware manufacturers no longer exist. This is likely to corelate highly with the percentage of obsolete equipment. Orphaned into a bureaucratic cul-de-sac...
After reading the article, it seems like old wine in new bottles. They have coined "Collective Intellegence" (formerly the Center for Coordination Science) apparently for public relations purposes, and the information given reveals no new technology. The only project mentioned is a business-oriented book written wikipedia-style.
Is there more to this than groupware-on-steroids? Would like to hear the possible downside to this approach, since analog people don't mesh seamlessly with digital technology...
The article suggests that the Spamhaus Project is resisting that solution because of the "daunting" prospect of making such a change in all the systems that need a redirection to Spamhaus. Why this is so is beyond me, but that's their claim, anyway.
Are you really providing insight here? You start with a supposedly-humorous absurd premise, then use it as a springboard to what sounds suspiciously like "talking points" all wrapped up in pseudoscientific prose.
Outside of our insane insistence on business-as-usual, we fail to see that we are, by continuation of current engineering practices, conducting a planet-wide experiment with no escaping the unknown consequences. How does that fit with your plodding cadence into a reasonable future?
I agree that languange usage should be prescriptive, rather than descriptive. However, language evolves, and those that prefer strict rules usually insist on the ones they learned at a formative stage. This contributes to an unending conflict of whose rules have currency.
I used the example of brainstorming in general. I didn't say/. was such. Your point misconstrues my justification of an enthusiastic poster; he/she was more interested in the content rather than the form. If you don't want to read long blocks of text, so be it.
I'm not a fan of sloppy construction. However, I don't take the view that I'm being dissed if a poster happens not to *know* the rulz.
Further, since your user# is what it is, you may have not noticed that a good deal of posters here are not necessarily coders anymore, but they like to discuss other relevant topics as well.
Oh, well. I've gone off-topic for too long. (/rant)
I think your criticism is unwarranted. Slashdot is a place where people's ideas outrun their grammatical and paragraph structure awareness. This naturally produces some messy results. Would you want a brainstorming session to consist of complete sentences Only? Some documents would benefit from your prescription, for others it is just nitpicking.
Consider the context of the discussion before satirizing with mean spirit. I'll admit that your rejoinder was humorous--just a cheap shot, imho.
It is my humble understanding that one cannot moderate and post in the same discussion. You seem to imply that you modded a submission and then posted your reason why. Am I missing something? Are there editors and software to keep such things from occuring? -genuinely curious...
Decimation means reduce by one tenth. This is how the Roman Legions (the generals, anyway) kept the army motivated. If it was perceived that an army unit was dragging their heels, every tenth man was put to the sword.
People nowadays use "decimation" incorrectly, usually promoting it to "just short of annihilation". However, Everything is hyped to the max (/irony) so I'll get over it.
My Mom told me forty billion times not to exaggerate, so I'll leave it there.
Have to admit I'm clueless about "allowable" characters in an email address, but suppose a user happened to use the plus sign (+) in their username, but not in the context of the discussion. It would mean the spammer would possibly miss a target (by stripping everything after the +), which they'd avoid if possible, presumably. I guess most likely they'd spam every possible iteration since it costs them nothing to cover all bases.
Well said. Although stretching the topic, I heard today of an elderly lady still renting a rotary dial phone for $35/billing period. The phone co. has collected over $2000 so far from her and is willing to accept more. Relevance? Projecting the exponential growth of both hard- and software, all current "solutions" are obsolete when released. Trusting your provider is a bad idea.
Part of the excitement of living at the edge (of technology, anyway) is riding the wave, from which a wipeout is as illuminating as a nice run, and both situations are temporary episodes in one's personal saga.
A bit too far?-- It is only another example of NewSpeak, which is now a juggernaut jeopardizing everything from Advertising (Belly Fat is Not Your Fault) to Politics (We fight them there so we don't have to fight them here); the list of misleading euphemisms grows as our collective mental quotient declines...
Conflating spammers and hackers because they both use computers is like saying that crooks and cops are dangerous people because they carry guns. Bad example. You get the idea.
I recall a book about a skate-boarding heroine who had to dodge police armed with "Loogey Guns" that stuck to targets, rendering them immobile. This stuff sounds like a couple of viscosity levels from the same goop.
Slashdot Mirror
My apologies; you are correct. I was misled by the "horribly simplified version" and misunderstood the context your post. Thanks for your gloss on the subject. I hadn't considered the ramifications of randomness alone. Sorry if I made you cross, please carry on the discourse.
I find it strange that the example envisioning the killing of "white"-skinned kids for an arbitrary number of years is in any way illustrating the concept of natural selection. I suggest Wikipedia or anything written by Richard Dawkins would reveal that evolution (in the Darwinian sense) is not easily distilled into a bumper sticker, slogan, or single image.
/.er(s)...
I would also be interested in having you expand on "nor does A evolve into B by pure chance." I thought that IS natural selection, long term.
Please enlighten me, fellow
Your comment reflects only the economic aspect of these countries' motivation. To buy anything from America is a political hot-potato for them, as showing their "independence" from the West is necessary to the "Arab street." (Forgive my verbal shorthand, please...)
Further, I think they like the ambiguity of having a home-grown system that they can refine in secret if they sense the need to do so. From what very little I know about the subject, light water reactors are not able to produce much weapons-grade material, making their "cost" a different calculation altogether.
I heard from Lou Dobbs on CNN that the Big Guys (corporations, lobbyists, think-tanks, etc.) are going to spring on us a "United States of North America" with Mexico, Canada, and the US comprising an economic entity to rival the European Union. All this without consulting the public or the Congress.
Perhaps this legislation, or at least the motive for it, is the probable insurrection of the American (and I hope) Canadian citizenry.
Further, I predict "W" will find a way to head up this new entity, thereby making the 2008 elections moot.
I can't believe I'm writing this; God, as a lapsed atheist, Please let me be wrong...
The "risk of a shuttle launch" exists whether or not the Hubble mission proceeds. We seem hell-bent on launching remaining shuttles on pointless round-trips to the ISS, anyway. The amount of real science and advancement of understanding of the cosmos by the Hubble array of instruments is worth the rest of the shuttle/ISS boondoggle anyway, IMHO. Surely a remaining mission flown by volunteers to extend Hubble's life is higher in the cost/benefit ratio than another routine launch.
Am using a Dell 233Mz w/ 64Mb RAM, 4 Gb SCSI disk running NT 4.0, service pack 6a. Has HP got anything that can beat that? I hate to get stuck on the upgrade treadmill, as you might notice...
Firefox, Notepad, & Popcorn are all I mostly use, anyhow.
You are correct in pointing out the irrelavancy of the stated disaster to the story. I suggest it is part of the overall erosion of intellectual discourse, which used to be about expressing ideas in order to further the discussion. Now we just talk, type, or hype by hijacking popular cultural memes, and the point of debate nowadays is to have your sound bite/sound-off byte grab the spotlight.
As for hydrogen and oxygen reacting strongly, don't forget that most of the world is covered with that happy combination. Just to dot the exclamation point, sodium and chlorine are dangerous elements apart, but paired up we have salt for our oceans and our tears.
My first reaction to the "no-ice" announcement was actually joy. I'm a science nut, but I can just envision the hordes of humans that might've otherwise arrived and wasted any handy resources for tourists and the like. I don't want to see a corporate logo appear on the moon's face, for instance.
I hope we don't infect the rest of the solar system until we're more responsible. This could mean just being good stewards of "our" own planet before we hope to know what to do with others.
Not a Luddite; robotic exploration gives the best bang for the buck, but we should have a double helping of humble pie before salivating over Pie-in-the-Sky.
I know my economic head is in the sand, but there's still lots of junk on Luna (and the European Space Agency just smacked it again !?!) and I wish humanity were wiser. This is not a troll, just a sentimental foo bar.
Don't they just do what they want unless they "lose" a legal case, then continue whilst appealing until the suit is moot? Or until a settlement is reached (money changes hands and minds)?
MS is such a juggernaut that it flows around or over obstacles, like an avalanche, tsunami, mud (fud?) slide, etc. If McAfee and company survive, they'll be the exception that makes the rule, imho.
IANAN (I am not a numerologist), but what little I've picked up suggests that "13" is not particularly interesting, save for the fact that the digits add up to 4. I've no clue as to the mystic value of four. Tarot fans can perhaps illuminate this arcane subject...
I don't know who thinks up these kinds of ideas--idealists, I suppose. But practically speaking, many hardware manufacturers no longer exist. This is likely to corelate highly with the percentage of obsolete equipment. Orphaned into a bureaucratic cul-de-sac...
After reading the article, it seems like old wine in new bottles. They have coined "Collective Intellegence" (formerly the Center for Coordination Science) apparently for public relations purposes, and the information given reveals no new technology. The only project mentioned is a business-oriented book written wikipedia-style.
Is there more to this than groupware-on-steroids? Would like to hear the possible downside to this approach, since analog people don't mesh seamlessly with digital technology...
The article suggests that the Spamhaus Project is resisting that solution because of the "daunting" prospect of making such a change in all the systems that need a redirection to Spamhaus. Why this is so is beyond me, but that's their claim, anyway.
Are you really providing insight here? You start with a supposedly-humorous absurd premise, then use it as a springboard to what sounds suspiciously like "talking points" all wrapped up in pseudoscientific prose.
Outside of our insane insistence on business-as-usual, we fail to see that we are, by continuation of current engineering practices, conducting a planet-wide experiment with no escaping the unknown consequences. How does that fit with your plodding cadence into a reasonable future?
I agree that languange usage should be prescriptive, rather than descriptive. However, language evolves, and those that prefer strict rules usually insist on the ones they learned at a formative stage. This contributes to an unending conflict of whose rules have currency.
/. was such. Your point misconstrues my justification of an enthusiastic poster; he/she was more interested in the content rather than the form. If you don't want to read long blocks of text, so be it.
I used the example of brainstorming in general. I didn't say
I'm not a fan of sloppy construction. However, I don't take the view that I'm being dissed if a poster happens not to *know* the rulz.
Further, since your user# is what it is, you may have not noticed that a good deal of posters here are not necessarily coders anymore, but they like to discuss other relevant topics as well.
Oh, well. I've gone off-topic for too long. (/rant)
I think your criticism is unwarranted. Slashdot is a place where people's ideas outrun their grammatical and paragraph structure awareness. This naturally produces some messy results. Would you want a brainstorming session to consist of complete sentences Only? Some documents would benefit from your prescription, for others it is just nitpicking.
Consider the context of the discussion before satirizing with mean spirit. I'll admit that your rejoinder was humorous--just a cheap shot, imho.
It is my humble understanding that one cannot moderate and post in the same discussion. You seem to imply that you modded a submission and then posted your reason why. Am I missing something? Are there editors and software to keep such things from occuring? -genuinely curious...
Decimation means reduce by one tenth. This is how the Roman Legions (the generals, anyway) kept the army motivated. If it was perceived that an army unit was dragging their heels, every tenth man was put to the sword.
People nowadays use "decimation" incorrectly, usually promoting it to "just short of annihilation".
However, Everything is hyped to the max (/irony) so I'll get over it.
My Mom told me forty billion times not to exaggerate, so I'll leave it there.
Have to admit I'm clueless about "allowable" characters in an email address, but suppose a user happened to use the plus sign (+) in their username, but not in the context of the discussion. It would mean the spammer would possibly miss a target (by stripping everything after the +), which they'd avoid if possible, presumably. I guess most likely they'd spam every possible iteration since it costs them nothing to cover all bases.
Well said. Although stretching the topic, I heard today of an elderly lady still renting a rotary dial phone for $35/billing period. The phone co. has collected over $2000 so far from her and is willing to accept more. Relevance? Projecting the exponential growth of both hard- and software, all current "solutions" are obsolete when released. Trusting your provider is a bad idea.
Part of the excitement of living at the edge (of technology, anyway) is riding the wave, from which a wipeout is as illuminating as a nice run, and both situations are temporary episodes in one's personal saga.
The metaphor crashed upon the sure...
A bit too far?-- It is only another example of NewSpeak, which is now a juggernaut jeopardizing everything from Advertising (Belly Fat is Not Your Fault) to Politics (We fight them there so we don't have to fight them here); the list of misleading euphemisms grows as our collective mental quotient declines...
Conflating spammers and hackers because they both use computers is like saying that crooks and cops are dangerous people because they carry guns. Bad example. You get the idea.
Everyone's talking about microwaves...How about a low-tech approach. like a sledgehammer? Works as a doorstop, too!
Does that make us all Bourne-again Crustaceans?
I recall a book about a skate-boarding heroine who had to dodge police armed with "Loogey Guns" that stuck to targets, rendering them immobile. This stuff sounds like a couple of viscosity levels from the same goop.
Wait'll they develop Heilein's Tanglefoot Web!