Is this really new? I don't know where I first heard it, but I know that a "big crunch" has certainly been theorized. I've always thought that it seems likely that a big crunch might cause a big bang to follow. I don't know, maybe I was assuming something.
Be that as it may, one perhaps unusual bit of evidence I've always thought in favor of a cyclic universe is the existence of intelligence life on Earth. First of all, I'm pretty much of the belief that intelligent life is hugely, extremely, unbelievably unlikely. I have a feeling that if we inventoried the universe, we would find a small proportion of single cell life, some but almost nonexistent multicellular life, and higher life forms totally absent except for us.
If you look at the complexity of human beings, it's just crazy how many things have to go right to get intelligence. I mean, it took 2-3 BILLION years just to get us, and no other animal form is even close to us.
When you combine that with the fact that it only takes 2-3 million years to fill a galaxy once you have intelligent life even at sub-light speeds, that means it's probably never happened before in this galaxy.
So given that intelligence almost never happens, and it took about 1/7th - 1/4th the age of universe for it to happen here, I think that gives evidence that we needed a hell of a lot of universe cycles to get it to happen.
The Republicans are the party of Watergate and Iran/Contra.
Iran/Contra was not a crime. And once again, the Democrat brings up something from a quarter of a century ago.
Not to mention massive deficits from tax breaks for the rich.
You mean the tax breaks that eliminated taxes on the poor? You mean the tax breaks that eliminated tax shelters? You mean the tax breaks that doubled the revenues to the government during the 80s? You mean the massive deficits that were caused by the DEMOCRATS who were in power in congress at the time? Yes, congress creates the budgets.
After investigating Democrats for the last 8 years, the worst they came up with was a blow job!!
No one ever said Clinton wasn't smart. Of course, only Democrats believe that it's OK for the President of the United States to abuse his power to take advantage of interns.
Not to mention that he was found guilt of lying under oath. But hey, who cares if the guy whose in charge of enforcing the laws lies in court?
Daschle a liar? Can you come up with even ONE example of Daschle lying?
Oh, how about Daschle blaming the recession on Bush when it began before Bush was in office? He knows he's lying, but it sounds good. If you need more evidence, feel free to do a search on Google for "daschle lies". Lots of people document them.
And talk about rigging elections - this Republican president LOST THE ELECTION!
Uh, no, he didn't. He only loses the election if you shred the constitution and ignore the law. But hey -- Democracts have never minded ignoring the law, have they?
My cable service is about $30/month, and I regularly get 300KB (as in 2.4 Mbits) bandwidth. Reliability has been excellent. The only bummer is that they block incoming port 80 and 25, but otherwise it rocks.
So, if you want to stick your head in the sand, you can say the universe began when the previous one ended. But doesn't that leave us with the question of how this infinite sequence of expanding and contracting universes came to be?
Yes, but turn the argument around. If "something" caused the universe to come to be, it just pushes the question one level higher. What caused that "something" to be?
Therefore, there has to be some "final level" that simply has always existed. That "final level" may or may not be our current universe.
Just because you can go 12 MPH, doesn't mean you have to go 12 MPH. Since people are capable of running 12 MPH, does that mean that people should be limited to the bike lanes as well?
The difference between these things and a bike is that these are controlled very similarly to walking. You lean to go forward and to stop. That means that there is a natural tendency to go with the flow of walking traffic.
I'd argue that it was the French revolution that enabled the idea of personal freedom.
The French Revolution was in 1789, 2 years after the US constitution was ratified. The two years is not a coincidence. If I'm not mistaken (and I might be, my history is a little dusty), the F.R. came about as a direct result of being inspired by the US constitution, and of course the early writings of the Founding Fathers. That's not to say that there weren't others in Europe who were influential as well, but the reality of it all happening in the US gave the spark to a number of other governments.
It's one thing to write about Democracy and self-government, it's another thing to put it into practice with all the enormous challenges that go along with doing something that's never been done before.
and muses aloud whether the electronic computer or the forging of the United States Constitution has had the greatest impact.
Man, that has to be a joke. The constitution of the US revolutionized the concept of freedom throughout the world. It's hard to imagine how long it would have taken to get where we are if we hadn't had a "virgin land" to try the Great
Experiment in self-government by the people.
On the othe hand, the computer is certainly a significant invention, but with very few exceptions, there is almost nothing we can't do without computers by going back to index cards in filing cabinets. [there are certainly notable exceptions, like weather predictions, certain areas of scientific research, etc]. Computers have certainly made lives more efficient, but it's hard to argue that they have revolutionized anything.
I think it's worth noting that the atomic bomb was created totally without computers (although they did have some primitive calculating machines. Again, efficiency, not necessity).
It's Best Buy's obligation to make sure their prices are accurate.
Once again, Michael posts bullshit that is totally wrong.
Stores are not legally responsible to honor typographical errors. Period. If there is some intentional fraud, then prove that. Otherwise, these people should grow up and live in the real world.
Herbert Schildt was in the C standardization committee, and his C books are almost always "NOT RECOMMENDED" by the ACCU.
An excellent example, although I have to admit to owning one Herbert Schildt book, The Annotated C Standard. For awhile there, it was the cheapest way to get a copy of the C Standard. You just have to ignore the annotations (many of which are wrong).:)
ROFL. I wrote a large portion of the CORBA specifications, as it happens,
There are a lot of people who write specifications who never do any significant implementations of anything themselves.
and was building OO systems in Smalltalk 12 years ago that can still put Java and Dotnet systems into the shade.
Oh, well, if you're a Smalltalk expert... yeah, there's a language that took the industry by storm. (not that it wasn't influential in its own way, of course).
But of course these developments are nothing compared to the revolution that would follow the introduction of unsigned ints to Java. Can't wait...
I never said that unsigned datatypes are "revolutionary". I only said that the language was brain damaged for the lack of them. I also said that, yes, you can code around them.
I'll keep it in mind if I find myself doing anything serious in my next 20 years in IT.
Maybe "serious" is the wrong word, but if you don't see the need for an unsigned data type, you have never done any complex or low-level programming. Sorry, but just because someone writes Cobol reports for 20 years doesn't mean they're qualified to discuss these issues. Or writes Java programs to move data from one database to another.
As has been pointed out countless times before, the CLR isn't really multilanguage - it just supports languages than are semantically equivalent to C# with a common set of types.
True in a sense, but the point is that it's MUCH better at multilanguage capability than Java. In fact, there are quite a number of functional languages targeted for the CLR. Is the CLR the ideal environment for a functional language? Obviously not, but it's certainly better than the JVM. MS decided early on that multilanguage was going to be a design feature.
Performance of Java 1.4...
Yeah, yeah, I know. Every release Java people say the same thing. Java 1.3 was the last one I used for an XML-heavy project. Using Sun's own software, the XML libraries were AT LEAST 100 times slower than equivalent C code. Java is absolutely atrocious when it comes to string processing, which is really processing that is heavy on iteration.
I don't feel like getting into a big treatise on why the JVM will never be fast, but trust me, it will never be fixed. It's intrinsic to the design that it will always be slow. This should be pretty obvious since they've had eight (?) years to get it right and they still haven't solved it. But hey, maybe I'm wrong -- maybe 1.4 is the "magic" version. I highly doubt it, though.
An unsigned datatype? Are you serious? This is utterly trivial.
Utterly trivial unless you're going to do anything serious. Yes, you can code around Java's lack of an unsigned type. But it's a pain in the ass and forces you to use larger (aka slower) datatypes.
Because Java has a significant amount of brain damage that will never be fixed:
1) Multi-language support is lacking. Just because something can be done doesn't make it practical.
2) Performance is SEVERELY lacking, and will never be fixed. While we don't know what the performance of.NET will be like, we can hope that MS paid much more attention to these issues.
3) The Java language is lacking in many important ways, such as a) an unsigned datatype (an unsigned type is not even supported in the JVM), b) the enforced directory structure for classes, and other things. Yes, you can work around all these things, but why should I have to?
4) Java is NOT an open standard, it is controlled by Sun.
By the way, this is not to say that Java is a horrible language or product. It isn't, and there are many things I like about Java. But the CLR and the CLI are very, very interesting technologies that go way beyond where Java tried to go.
Open Source != Free (beer) [...] Are you new to Open Source?
No, but apparently you are. Please review the Open Source Definition. You'll note that clause numero uno is free redistribution. In other words, Open Source == Free Beer.
Seriously. Most 'good' journalists end up writing a book or 5. Whenever this happens (certainly in the UK broadsheets) you tend to get a big spread, often in the Sunday edition, about the book. Usually accompanied by a "OUR JOURNO WRITES BOOK" headline.
Exactly. You know what you're getting -- a review of a book written by a journalist that works at the paper. There's no hidden agenda.
What you won't see is some article written by that journalist in the first section of the paper supposedly about the publishing industry, but the main focus is his own book.
I expected this reponse, of course, but you are missing something..like the point of the site.
The "point" of the site (if it has one) are links to articles that Taco and the editors find interesting, and discussing them. "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters".
But be that as it may, my particular problem with your article is that it's primary point seems to be to advertise your book, and not to make points about self-publishing. Even the subject references your book!
I realize it's a fine line between writing about your personal experiences, and selling your personal wares. But maybe you should read over your article and ask yourself what the primary focus is. Is the primary focus your trial and tribulations of self-marketing or a plug for your new book? To my reading, it looks like a plug with a small amount of discussion tacked on.
If the point had really been about your experiences with self publishing, you could have written a much more in-depth article without ever mentioning your book, or just having a small link to a page about it. But you didn't choose that route. You wrote a very short, shallow article that only half-tried to make a point about self publishing.
Sorry, but I'm just not buying it. Ironically, I probably would have had less of a problem with it if you HAD just an article that said, "Hey! I have a new book being published. Apologies for abusing the site in this way. Thanks for reading, bye!". At least then you are being honest and not trying to disguise the plug for the book.
I'm not one of those people who get worked up when Taco et al reviews some product and people complain that it's some sort of advertisement.
But this is a little much.
Is there a story here? I'm actually kind of curious to hear if Taco approves of this blatant use of the web site to advertise Katz' book for free. Did Katz get permission before posting this "story"?
Even if everyone is on board, I find this really, really, really classless.
Can I just put in a word that I would NOT mind Flash ads? Not everyone is a raving, drooling anti-Flash lunatic out here, and in fact, Flash ads are often much smaller than regular GIF or JPG ads.
I want you guys to make money, and I have no problem with reasonable advertising (and to me, Flash is reasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this really new? I don't know where I first heard it, but I know that a "big crunch" has certainly been theorized. I've always thought that it seems likely that a big crunch might cause a big bang to follow. I don't know, maybe I was assuming something.
Be that as it may, one perhaps unusual bit of evidence I've always thought in favor of a cyclic universe is the existence of intelligence life on Earth. First of all, I'm pretty much of the belief that intelligent life is hugely, extremely, unbelievably unlikely. I have a feeling that if we inventoried the universe, we would find a small proportion of single cell life, some but almost nonexistent multicellular life, and higher life forms totally absent except for us.
If you look at the complexity of human beings, it's just crazy how many things have to go right to get intelligence. I mean, it took 2-3 BILLION years just to get us, and no other animal form is even close to us.
When you combine that with the fact that it only takes 2-3 million years to fill a galaxy once you have intelligent life even at sub-light speeds, that means it's probably never happened before in this galaxy.
So given that intelligence almost never happens, and it took about 1/7th - 1/4th the age of universe for it to happen here, I think that gives evidence that we needed a hell of a lot of universe cycles to get it to happen.
The Republicans are the party of Watergate and Iran/Contra.
Iran/Contra was not a crime. And once again, the Democrat brings up something from a quarter of a century ago.
Not to mention massive deficits from tax breaks for the rich.
You mean the tax breaks that eliminated taxes on the poor? You mean the tax breaks that eliminated tax shelters? You mean the tax breaks that doubled the revenues to the government during the 80s? You mean the massive deficits that were caused by the DEMOCRATS who were in power in congress at the time? Yes, congress creates the budgets.
After investigating Democrats for the last 8 years, the worst they came up with was a blow job!!
No one ever said Clinton wasn't smart. Of course, only Democrats believe that it's OK for the President of the United States to abuse his power to take advantage of interns.
Not to mention that he was found guilt of lying under oath. But hey, who cares if the guy whose in charge of enforcing the laws lies in court?
Daschle a liar? Can you come up with even ONE example of Daschle lying?
Oh, how about Daschle blaming the recession on Bush when it began before Bush was in office? He knows he's lying, but it sounds good. If you need more evidence, feel free to do a search on Google for "daschle lies". Lots of people document them.
And talk about rigging elections - this Republican president LOST THE ELECTION!
Uh, no, he didn't. He only loses the election if you shred the constitution and ignore the law. But hey -- Democracts have never minded ignoring the law, have they?
cue the rim-shot!
So if an Alzheimer's patient is cured with stem cells, does that mean they'll go from being senile to being fatheads?
So what does that make bugs in open source software, "documented features" since the source is open?
Correction: $35/month. It's so cheap I don't even remember what it costs. :)
My cable service is about $30/month, and I regularly get 300KB (as in 2.4 Mbits) bandwidth. Reliability has been excellent. The only bummer is that they block incoming port 80 and 25, but otherwise it rocks.
Indeed. Which makes Looney Tunes all the more remarkable... even after 50 years, they are still damn funny to children and adults alike.
So, if you want to stick your head in the sand, you can say the universe began when the previous one ended. But doesn't that leave us with the question of how this infinite sequence of expanding and contracting universes came to be?
Yes, but turn the argument around. If "something" caused the universe to come to be, it just pushes the question one level higher. What caused that "something" to be?
Therefore, there has to be some "final level" that simply has always existed. That "final level" may or may not be our current universe.
Just because you can go 12 MPH, doesn't mean you have to go 12 MPH. Since people are capable of running 12 MPH, does that mean that people should be limited to the bike lanes as well?
The difference between these things and a bike is that these are controlled very similarly to walking. You lean to go forward and to stop. That means that there is a natural tendency to go with the flow of walking traffic.
I'd argue that it was the French revolution that enabled the idea of personal freedom.
The French Revolution was in 1789, 2 years after the US constitution was ratified. The two years is not a coincidence. If I'm not mistaken (and I might be, my history is a little dusty), the F.R. came about as a direct result of being inspired by the US constitution, and of course the early writings of the Founding Fathers. That's not to say that there weren't others in Europe who were influential as well, but the reality of it all happening in the US gave the spark to a number of other governments.
It's one thing to write about Democracy and self-government, it's another thing to put it into practice with all the enormous challenges that go along with doing something that's never been done before.
and muses aloud whether the electronic computer or the forging of the United States Constitution has had the greatest impact.
Man, that has to be a joke. The constitution of the US revolutionized the concept of freedom throughout the world. It's hard to imagine how long it would have taken to get where we are if we hadn't had a "virgin land" to try the Great Experiment in self-government by the people.
On the othe hand, the computer is certainly a significant invention, but with very few exceptions, there is almost nothing we can't do without computers by going back to index cards in filing cabinets. [there are certainly notable exceptions, like weather predictions, certain areas of scientific research, etc]. Computers have certainly made lives more efficient, but it's hard to argue that they have revolutionized anything.
I think it's worth noting that the atomic bomb was created totally without computers (although they did have some primitive calculating machines. Again, efficiency, not necessity).
It's Best Buy's obligation to make sure their prices are accurate.
Once again, Michael posts bullshit that is totally wrong.
Stores are not legally responsible to honor typographical errors. Period. If there is some intentional fraud, then prove that. Otherwise, these people should grow up and live in the real world.
It doesn't seem to me that these people are travelling around that much!
Half the fun of Vegas is visiting all the hotels with the various themes. If you've never been there, there's really no place like it.
Herbert Schildt was in the C standardization committee, and his C books are almost always "NOT RECOMMENDED" by the ACCU.
An excellent example, although I have to admit to owning one Herbert Schildt book, The Annotated C Standard. For awhile there, it was the cheapest way to get a copy of the C Standard. You just have to ignore the annotations (many of which are wrong). :)
ROFL. I wrote a large portion of the CORBA specifications, as it happens,
There are a lot of people who write specifications who never do any significant implementations of anything themselves.
and was building OO systems in Smalltalk 12 years ago that can still put Java and Dotnet systems into the shade.
Oh, well, if you're a Smalltalk expert... yeah, there's a language that took the industry by storm. (not that it wasn't influential in its own way, of course).
But of course these developments are nothing compared to the revolution that would follow the introduction of unsigned ints to Java. Can't wait...
I never said that unsigned datatypes are "revolutionary". I only said that the language was brain damaged for the lack of them. I also said that, yes, you can code around them.
I'll keep it in mind if I find myself doing anything serious in my next 20 years in IT.
Maybe "serious" is the wrong word, but if you don't see the need for an unsigned data type, you have never done any complex or low-level programming. Sorry, but just because someone writes Cobol reports for 20 years doesn't mean they're qualified to discuss these issues. Or writes Java programs to move data from one database to another.
As has been pointed out countless times before, the CLR isn't really multilanguage - it just supports languages than are semantically equivalent to C# with a common set of types.
True in a sense, but the point is that it's MUCH better at multilanguage capability than Java. In fact, there are quite a number of functional languages targeted for the CLR. Is the CLR the ideal environment for a functional language? Obviously not, but it's certainly better than the JVM. MS decided early on that multilanguage was going to be a design feature.
Performance of Java 1.4...
Yeah, yeah, I know. Every release Java people say the same thing. Java 1.3 was the last one I used for an XML-heavy project. Using Sun's own software, the XML libraries were AT LEAST 100 times slower than equivalent C code. Java is absolutely atrocious when it comes to string processing, which is really processing that is heavy on iteration.
I don't feel like getting into a big treatise on why the JVM will never be fast, but trust me, it will never be fixed. It's intrinsic to the design that it will always be slow. This should be pretty obvious since they've had eight (?) years to get it right and they still haven't solved it. But hey, maybe I'm wrong -- maybe 1.4 is the "magic" version. I highly doubt it, though.
An unsigned datatype? Are you serious? This is utterly trivial.
Utterly trivial unless you're going to do anything serious. Yes, you can code around Java's lack of an unsigned type. But it's a pain in the ass and forces you to use larger (aka slower) datatypes.
Java is controlled by the JCP.
Uh huh.
More important than Java? If so, why?
Because Java has a significant amount of brain damage that will never be fixed:
1) Multi-language support is lacking. Just because something can be done doesn't make it practical.
2) Performance is SEVERELY lacking, and will never be fixed. While we don't know what the performance of .NET will be like, we can hope that MS paid much more attention to these issues.
3) The Java language is lacking in many important ways, such as a) an unsigned datatype (an unsigned type is not even supported in the JVM), b) the enforced directory structure for classes, and other things. Yes, you can work around all these things, but why should I have to?
4) Java is NOT an open standard, it is controlled by Sun.
By the way, this is not to say that Java is a horrible language or product. It isn't, and there are many things I like about Java. But the CLR and the CLI are very, very interesting technologies that go way beyond where Java tried to go.
I usually call things like that "source available" rather than open source, since the latter term has a specific definition.
Open Source != Free (beer) [...] Are you new to Open Source?
No, but apparently you are. Please review the Open Source Definition. You'll note that clause numero uno is free redistribution. In other words, Open Source == Free Beer.
Tell you what, if you would be interested in paying for such a thing, send email to sales@ximian.com and let us know. :-)
You're new to the Open Source scene, aren't you, partner? :)
Seriously. Most 'good' journalists end up writing a book or 5. Whenever this happens (certainly in the UK broadsheets) you tend to get a big spread, often in the Sunday edition, about the book. Usually accompanied by a "OUR JOURNO WRITES BOOK" headline.
Exactly. You know what you're getting -- a review of a book written by a journalist that works at the paper. There's no hidden agenda.
What you won't see is some article written by that journalist in the first section of the paper supposedly about the publishing industry, but the main focus is his own book.
I expected this reponse, of course, but you are missing something..like the point of the site.
The "point" of the site (if it has one) are links to articles that Taco and the editors find interesting, and discussing them. "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters".
But be that as it may, my particular problem with your article is that it's primary point seems to be to advertise your book, and not to make points about self-publishing. Even the subject references your book!
I realize it's a fine line between writing about your personal experiences, and selling your personal wares. But maybe you should read over your article and ask yourself what the primary focus is. Is the primary focus your trial and tribulations of self-marketing or a plug for your new book? To my reading, it looks like a plug with a small amount of discussion tacked on.
If the point had really been about your experiences with self publishing, you could have written a much more in-depth article without ever mentioning your book, or just having a small link to a page about it. But you didn't choose that route. You wrote a very short, shallow article that only half-tried to make a point about self publishing.
Sorry, but I'm just not buying it. Ironically, I probably would have had less of a problem with it if you HAD just an article that said, "Hey! I have a new book being published. Apologies for abusing the site in this way. Thanks for reading, bye!". At least then you are being honest and not trying to disguise the plug for the book.
I'm not one of those people who get worked up when Taco et al reviews some product and people complain that it's some sort of advertisement.
But this is a little much.
Is there a story here? I'm actually kind of curious to hear if Taco approves of this blatant use of the web site to advertise Katz' book for free. Did Katz get permission before posting this "story"?
Even if everyone is on board, I find this really, really, really classless.
Can I just put in a word that I would NOT mind Flash ads? Not everyone is a raving, drooling anti-Flash lunatic out here, and in fact, Flash ads are often much smaller than regular GIF or JPG ads.
I want you guys to make money, and I have no problem with reasonable advertising (and to me, Flash is reasonable.