What the submitter fails to mention in all that rhetoric is that these disks are the size of a US quarter, which I find pretty interesting.
All the other crap he spewed may or may not be true. It's hard to tell when it's obvious that he's biased against the device and fails to mention the positive points.
In short, once again the Slashdot editors don't bother to do any editing.
The author states that he didn't want his book to be riddled with footnotes so as not to confuse the reader, but that is obviously a stupid attitude for a book that is written to encourage people to embrace science.
Oh, well, "obviously". On the other hand, is it possible to just present science in an entertaining way that encourages people to do more research on their own without weighing it down to the point that it's unapproachable? Or to put it another way, should a book about dinosaurs for five year olds be fully annotated with long treatises on alternative dinosaur theories?
See also this story [earthisland.org] about PR efforts to discredit global warming,
The question about global warming is not weather the globe is, in fact, warming, but whether 1) mankind is the cause, 2) how much warming really matters, and 3) whether the earth has self-equilibrium processes that we don't understand.
By far, most of the "junk science" is on the global warming side. Only the most arrogant idiots or the biggest fools think we have even a remote understanding of climates. The biggest junk science factory today are computer climate models. They are worse than useless, because they mislead people into thinking that the models are "statements of fact" when they are just incredibly crude tools that may or may not help us find the truth.
Never has a title been more apropos as Trust Us, We're Experts! as it does with Global Warming.
but could a talented engineer homebuild a Pentium-based machine?
I think it would probably be possible. What makes computers so complex is making them fast, not making them at all. It probably wouldn't be hard to TTL yourself a simple microcode assembly language, which would implement the Pentium instruction set. Just don't expect any speed records.
You would probably also want to use standard I/O chips. It would probably would be pretty hard to implement a home-brew IDE controller, although it may not be as hard as I think if you will were willing to do some sort of software implementation on your home-brew CPU.
It would be an amusing project. I wonder why more people don't do it for the hell of it. Anyone know of any projects like this?
Sheesh, never use common sense economics when a conspiracy will do.
Did it ever occur to you that energy company X might just want to one-up their competition by tapping these new resources? Why keep drilling new oil wells (and maybe increase your market share by 1 or 2%) when you can possible drill new wells and open up an entirely new market?
This is known as Capitalism, my friend. It's a beautiful thing.
For example how much smarter than average do you really think Isaac Newton was? Einstein?
Way smarter. In fact, those are probably the two smartest people in the history of the human race. Actually, this reminds me of the web site for a Nova episode about Einstein that I found really interesting (almost moving, to be honest with you). In particular, one section that asks the question "How smart was he?" where he compares Einstein and Newton to other genuises: "But there are two figures who are simply off the charts. Isaac Newton is one. The other is Albert Einstein. If pressed, physicists give Newton pride of place, but it is a photo finish -- and no one else is in the race."
There's so much hype around Einstein that it's easy to forget that the guy was really, really phenominally smart, and his list of accomplishments are almost unbelievable.
You are thinking of a journey being a long distance traveled. a journey could also be a romantic/emotinal journey. or a quest to do such.
Perhaps, but that reduces to meaninglessness. Given that definition, I could eliminate "stranger coming to town" as just a plot element, like "coming of age" or "two enemy families connected by love story". It simply becomes "stranger comes to town, and the people begin a journey because of the stranger's interaction".
I mean, *every* plot is a metaphorical journey of some sort. This definition simply redefines the word plot *as* journey.
I believe it was John Updike who said there are only two stories: 1. The Journey 2. A Stranger Comes to Town
I don't know whether he or anyone really said that, but it's kind of a lame observation. What about Romeo and Juliet? No journey, no stranger coming to town.
I'm sure if I thought about it I could think of other examples.
OK, Mr. AC, then please tell me what is intrinsic to a trackball where you would have no-click buttons. That's the point. I didn't say that there doesn't exist a trackball anywhere with no-click buttons, only that the issue of buttons is orthogonal to the whether it's a trackball or not.
Now, just for once, the Reality Master should bend down to reality and realize he just isn't the smartest cookie on slashdot.
Nah, the Reality Master believes in honesty above all else.:)
The Amiga is stone dead, cold, buried in the ground, with maggots having consumed the carcass.
The "Amiga" that is "trying to recover" bears absolutely no resemblence to the original Amiga, except that the company purchased the rights to the name. It's basically a scam to gravy train the Amiga name.
Sure it exists, I think they call it a "trackball" or "touchpad". Seriously, I've never had a non-broken mouse that didn't click.
Once again proving Michael is stupidest editor on Slashdot. Michael, it's THE BUTTONS that are clicking, NOT THE MOUSE BALL. Why do you think a trackball or touchpad would not have clicking buttons? Is there some intrinsic property to a very large ball that would cause it not to have clicking buttons?
Do you actually read what the people are asking before adding your inane comments?
Yes, this is Flamebait, go ahead and mark me down. But it's worth losing the 3 points to make this point.
For what it's worth, I recently downloaded the latest drivers for my old TNT2 card off of NVIDIA's web site (for JK/II), and it absolutely screwed my system. Then I went back and downloaded them off my manufacturer's web site (Guillemot), and they worked great.
Moral is that it's better to get them off your manufacturer's web site.
Forget any sort of whiny "it's my right to steal music" arguments. I think the best argument is this:
It's the entertainment industry's problem, not the tech industry's.
Keep repeating until they are enlightened. It's not fair to saddle tech companies, consumers and everyone else EXCEPT the entertainment industry with added expenses and inconvenience. If the entertainment industry wants copyright enforced, then let them use the laws that are already on the books. Let them sue the pirates. In other words, let them enforce it with their own money, not our money.
Bottom line, there is no need for this law, because copyright violations are ALREADY ILLEGAL. Let the entertainment industry figure out how to enforce it.
Why does Monster.com have a boilerplate policy [monster.com] which clearly states that their statements are not to be interpreted as legal advice? They're just a techie-oriented career site... why would they be worried?
Two reasons: 1) Legal paranoia to head off nusiance suits, and 2) Because they're not a techie-oriented career site; they are a career job searching site with original articles giving career advice. Since it's a career site, there is a reasonable expectation that advice on the site is given by experts in career counseling.
Exactly what sort of expert advice does one expect at Slashdot, a tech-oriented news digest?
Michael's statements are the exact sort of damning legal advice Monster is trying to protect itself from.
No, because there is no reasonable expectation of expert opinion at Slashdot. It's a news digest.
And expert opinion isn't even enough in most cases. Put it this way: If Tom Brokaw publishes a news editorial that it's his opinion that it's safe to travel in the middle east, and I go ahead and travel and am seriously injured, can I sue Brokaw for giving a bad opinion? That would be a big fat NO, even though there IS a reasonable expectation that he is an expert and would know these things. It's called freedom of speech.
Your statement was designed to inflame reasonable people who have a clue. Yes I call you a Troll, and you can giggle at me for replying all you want, ma'am.
Just because I'm smarter than you doesn't make me a troll.:)
The reason that major news organizations such as CNN, Newsweek, etc., all preface "Osama Bin Laden" with the phrase "alleged terrorist" instead of "terrorist" is that if you publish something you cannot prove, as a news organization, you can be held liable for the result.
Sort of. The reason they do that is to protect themselves from libel, as in calling someone a criminal who has yet to tried in court of law. That can be very damaging to someone's reputation.
When Slashdot publishes as fact the point that Celine Dion's CD is cause for a no-lose lawsuit against Sony, that could be a potentially bad situation. What's the source? Is it opinion? It's stated as fact!
There's a reason that they are called "legal opinions". There no such thing as a "legal fact".
Be that as it may, this is totally different from protecting oneself from libel. Guess what -- the first Amendment gives you the right to say just about anything you want, including factually untrue statements, as long as you are not damaging another person or entity. Is Michael representing himself as a lawyer? No, he is not. He's stating his opinion. Who is he damaging here? Someone might believe that he's a lawyer and file a lawsuit? Without getting any further legal advice from a real lawyer? Doubtful.
Yeah, I can just imagine that courtroom scene: "Your honor, I was visiting a geek web site, and one of the editors said that this was a no-lose case! Well, no, it isn't a web site about legal issues. Well, no, he wasn't a laywer. Well, no, I didn't talk to any qualified attorneys, I just filed the case myself. Well, yes, the site does have a history of posting editorials about various stories."
Slashdot Mirror
What the submitter fails to mention in all that rhetoric is that these disks are the size of a US quarter, which I find pretty interesting.
All the other crap he spewed may or may not be true. It's hard to tell when it's obvious that he's biased against the device and fails to mention the positive points.
In short, once again the Slashdot editors don't bother to do any editing.
But only because the very discussion of the idea causes Ellison and McNealy to fall to the ground writhing with convulsions. :)
The author states that he didn't want his book to be riddled with footnotes so as not to confuse the reader, but that is obviously a stupid attitude for a book that is written to encourage people to embrace science.
Oh, well, "obviously". On the other hand, is it possible to just present science in an entertaining way that encourages people to do more research on their own without weighing it down to the point that it's unapproachable? Or to put it another way, should a book about dinosaurs for five year olds be fully annotated with long treatises on alternative dinosaur theories?
See also this story [earthisland.org] about PR efforts to discredit global warming,
The question about global warming is not weather the globe is, in fact, warming, but whether 1) mankind is the cause, 2) how much warming really matters, and 3) whether the earth has self-equilibrium processes that we don't understand.
By far, most of the "junk science" is on the global warming side. Only the most arrogant idiots or the biggest fools think we have even a remote understanding of climates. The biggest junk science factory today are computer climate models. They are worse than useless, because they mislead people into thinking that the models are "statements of fact" when they are just incredibly crude tools that may or may not help us find the truth.
Never has a title been more apropos as Trust Us, We're Experts! as it does with Global Warming.
but could a talented engineer homebuild a Pentium-based machine?
I think it would probably be possible. What makes computers so complex is making them fast, not making them at all. It probably wouldn't be hard to TTL yourself a simple microcode assembly language, which would implement the Pentium instruction set. Just don't expect any speed records.
You would probably also want to use standard I/O chips. It would probably would be pretty hard to implement a home-brew IDE controller, although it may not be as hard as I think if you will were willing to do some sort of software implementation on your home-brew CPU.
It would be an amusing project. I wonder why more people don't do it for the hell of it. Anyone know of any projects like this?
Sheesh, never use common sense economics when a conspiracy will do.
Did it ever occur to you that energy company X might just want to one-up their competition by tapping these new resources? Why keep drilling new oil wells (and maybe increase your market share by 1 or 2%) when you can possible drill new wells and open up an entirely new market?
This is known as Capitalism, my friend. It's a beautiful thing.
For example how much smarter than average do you really think Isaac Newton was? Einstein?
Way smarter. In fact, those are probably the two smartest people in the history of the human race. Actually, this reminds me of the web site for a Nova episode about Einstein that I found really interesting (almost moving, to be honest with you). In particular, one section that asks the question "How smart was he?" where he compares Einstein and Newton to other genuises: "But there are two figures who are simply off the charts. Isaac Newton is one. The other is Albert Einstein. If pressed, physicists give Newton pride of place, but it is a photo finish -- and no one else is in the race."
There's so much hype around Einstein that it's easy to forget that the guy was really, really phenominally smart, and his list of accomplishments are almost unbelievable.
You are thinking of a journey being a long distance traveled. a journey could also be a romantic/emotinal journey. or a quest to do such.
Perhaps, but that reduces to meaninglessness. Given that definition, I could eliminate "stranger coming to town" as just a plot element, like "coming of age" or "two enemy families connected by love story". It simply becomes "stranger comes to town, and the people begin a journey because of the stranger's interaction".
I mean, *every* plot is a metaphorical journey of some sort. This definition simply redefines the word plot *as* journey.
I believe it was John Updike who said there are only two stories: 1. The Journey 2. A Stranger Comes to Town
I don't know whether he or anyone really said that, but it's kind of a lame observation. What about Romeo and Juliet? No journey, no stranger coming to town.
I'm sure if I thought about it I could think of other examples.
Looks like there's a follow up to that article has well on his web site.
A good companion to this article is another Salon Article that ran in 1999 by David Brin. Excellent read on why Star Wars' morality sucks. :)
By the way, you're entrox, right?
OK, Mr. AC, then please tell me what is intrinsic to a trackball where you would have no-click buttons. That's the point. I didn't say that there doesn't exist a trackball anywhere with no-click buttons, only that the issue of buttons is orthogonal to the whether it's a trackball or not.
Now, just for once, the Reality Master should bend down to reality and realize he just isn't the smartest cookie on slashdot.
Nah, the Reality Master believes in honesty above all else. :)
Amiga (which is tring to recover).
The Amiga is stone dead, cold, buried in the ground, with maggots having consumed the carcass.
The "Amiga" that is "trying to recover" bears absolutely no resemblence to the original Amiga, except that the company purchased the rights to the name. It's basically a scam to gravy train the Amiga name.
Sure it exists, I think they call it a "trackball" or "touchpad". Seriously, I've never had a non-broken mouse that didn't click.
Once again proving Michael is stupidest editor on Slashdot. Michael, it's THE BUTTONS that are clicking, NOT THE MOUSE BALL. Why do you think a trackball or touchpad would not have clicking buttons? Is there some intrinsic property to a very large ball that would cause it not to have clicking buttons?
Do you actually read what the people are asking before adding your inane comments?
Yes, this is Flamebait, go ahead and mark me down. But it's worth losing the 3 points to make this point.
Unfortunately, the link they gave on their page doesn't work. How about this one instead.
Anyone have the real etymology for this word?
Snopes has a page about this.
For what it's worth, I recently downloaded the latest drivers for my old TNT2 card off of NVIDIA's web site (for JK/II), and it absolutely screwed my system. Then I went back and downloaded them off my manufacturer's web site (Guillemot), and they worked great.
Moral is that it's better to get them off your manufacturer's web site.
Forget any sort of whiny "it's my right to steal music" arguments. I think the best argument is this:
It's the entertainment industry's problem, not the tech industry's.
Keep repeating until they are enlightened. It's not fair to saddle tech companies, consumers and everyone else EXCEPT the entertainment industry with added expenses and inconvenience. If the entertainment industry wants copyright enforced, then let them use the laws that are already on the books. Let them sue the pirates. In other words, let them enforce it with their own money, not our money.
Bottom line, there is no need for this law, because copyright violations are ALREADY ILLEGAL. Let the entertainment industry figure out how to enforce it.
FYI - My latest journal entry has RMS's official take on this.
FYI - My latest journal entry has RMS's official take on this.
FYI - My latest journal entry has RMS's official take on this.
FYI - My latest journal entry hash RMS's official take on this.
I think he means that techs are Einsteins "relative" to the management.
(sorry)
Why does Monster.com have a boilerplate policy [monster.com] which clearly states that their statements are not to be interpreted as legal advice? They're just a techie-oriented career site... why would they be worried?
Two reasons: 1) Legal paranoia to head off nusiance suits, and 2) Because they're not a techie-oriented career site; they are a career job searching site with original articles giving career advice. Since it's a career site, there is a reasonable expectation that advice on the site is given by experts in career counseling.
Exactly what sort of expert advice does one expect at Slashdot, a tech-oriented news digest?
Michael's statements are the exact sort of damning legal advice Monster is trying to protect itself from.
No, because there is no reasonable expectation of expert opinion at Slashdot. It's a news digest.
And expert opinion isn't even enough in most cases. Put it this way: If Tom Brokaw publishes a news editorial that it's his opinion that it's safe to travel in the middle east, and I go ahead and travel and am seriously injured, can I sue Brokaw for giving a bad opinion? That would be a big fat NO, even though there IS a reasonable expectation that he is an expert and would know these things. It's called freedom of speech.
Your statement was designed to inflame reasonable people who have a clue. Yes I call you a Troll, and you can giggle at me for replying all you want, ma'am.
Just because I'm smarter than you doesn't make me a troll. :)
The reason that major news organizations such as CNN, Newsweek, etc., all preface "Osama Bin Laden" with the phrase "alleged terrorist" instead of "terrorist" is that if you publish something you cannot prove, as a news organization, you can be held liable for the result.
Sort of. The reason they do that is to protect themselves from libel, as in calling someone a criminal who has yet to tried in court of law. That can be very damaging to someone's reputation.
When Slashdot publishes as fact the point that Celine Dion's CD is cause for a no-lose lawsuit against Sony, that could be a potentially bad situation. What's the source? Is it opinion? It's stated as fact!
There's a reason that they are called "legal opinions". There no such thing as a "legal fact".
Be that as it may, this is totally different from protecting oneself from libel. Guess what -- the first Amendment gives you the right to say just about anything you want, including factually untrue statements, as long as you are not damaging another person or entity. Is Michael representing himself as a lawyer? No, he is not. He's stating his opinion. Who is he damaging here? Someone might believe that he's a lawyer and file a lawsuit? Without getting any further legal advice from a real lawyer? Doubtful.
Yeah, I can just imagine that courtroom scene: "Your honor, I was visiting a geek web site, and one of the editors said that this was a no-lose case! Well, no, it isn't a web site about legal issues. Well, no, he wasn't a laywer. Well, no, I didn't talk to any qualified attorneys, I just filed the case myself. Well, yes, the site does have a history of posting editorials about various stories."
Sheesh, and you call me a troll.