It's true that having unmanned, armed aircraft will remove some political impediments to war. The results of this are a mixed bag. Even in a morally justfified military action, war destroys sacred human life, and they scar the lives and lands of the survivors. On the other hand, the overt or implied threat of war can be a potent political tool. Lowering the cost (especially in lives) of waging war makes that tool more effective. A convincing and overwhelming threat of force can prevent wars from starting or avert human rights abuses.
More importantly, someone will develop the technology. World War II might have ended very differently had Nazi Germany survived long enough to build an atomic bomb before the Allies. I for one am glad the story ended as it did. Similarly, a nation that wants to secure a good and peaceful tomorrow had best be investing in these technologies today. Pilots and soldiers will become increasingly irrelevant in the wars to be waged in the coming century as engineers and software developers take on new importance to the military.
As with any tool, these new planes are not inherently good or evil. The people deciding how they are to be used will make all the difference. Pray that they will be good men and women, whatever country they belong to.
I think whether they do it or not has a lot to do with how much of an inroad Linux makes into the clueless desktop user market. The more lemmings use Linux, the more likely Microsoft is to do this.
To the contrary, I think Microsoft would be more likely to exercise this option if Linux fails to make substantial inroads into the desktop market. If Linux is turning up the heat, Microsoft needs exclusive.NET support as a key differentiator to keep people on Microsoft operating systems. However, if Linux doesn't make much of a splash, Microsoft can "safely" promote.NET support on Linux to try to project an image of being open, standards-compliant, and cross-platform. It's a low-cost PR move that could also help protect them from future legal troubles.
At least, that's what I'd be doing if I were Microsoft, and if I wanted to protect my OS monopoly as effectively as possible. Of course, I've heard that they get more revenue out of Office sales, so maybe they have a different take on the situation.
Want to overclock that hardware? Imagine running a bundle of cable through the skin of the craft so you could put your CPU out in space. A fan wouldn't do much for you there!
If the synopsis provided by this posting is accurate, the issue seems pretty clear-cut. Rather than waste my breath griping about it here, I'd like to know what the best method of protest is. Contact the patent office? My state Congressmen? Are there any electronic petitions going around?
The slogan "better, faster, cheaper" was ill-chosen. It would have been better without the "better". If you send up a bunch of cheap, thrown-together, unmanned missions, you're going to have more failures, by percentage and especially by count. However, you're playing the odds that the greater number of missions will more than compensate for the increased failure rate.
The "better" part of the slogan implied that they still expected to have a high success rate. The public expectations were set too high, and NASA's paying for it now. Best of luck to them, because I still think that using lots of small, cheap, unmanned craft is a good strategy.
On a separate note, Slashdot has a lot of space buffs and a lot of open source buffs. How many people would volunteer to review designs and mission plans for NASA as part of an open-mission-to-Mars project?
It's been a while since I looked at Mere Christianity, so your memory is probably better than mine. Unfortunately, I've built my faith around a lot of books, articles, and arguments over the years, and it's hard to remember what came from where.
Perhaps a better resource for critical thinkers is Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. I haven't read the whole thing, and I don't agree with all his arguments or conclusions, but there's plenty of meat to chew on. You really have to know a lot about the cultural context to make sense of certain passages, and knowing Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic would help.
The best thing to do is get a Bible with a thorough set of footnotes and cross-references, then read it straight through. That gives you at least some sense of the historical context and the way everything ties together. It's a big undertaking, but well worth it.
When all is said and done, it comes down to how you evaluate the plausibility of the historical death and resurrection of Christ. You have to ask what else would have motivated his frightened disciples to boldly emerge from hiding and stick to their story to the point of martyrdom.
As far as I'm concerned, religious institutions can stick to providing the masses with something to look forward to and stop telling people how to live their lives.
Many religious people, myself included, believe that how you live your life has a very concrete bearing on what you can expect after death. I'm not claiming that being a swell guy will get you into heaven, but the Bible contains several passages that say we will be rewarded according to what we do.
Jesus Christ offers unmerited salvation for the asking, so please pick up your "Get into Heaven Free" card before checking out. But that's not the end of the story. Be aware that we still answer for our actions in some respects. I'll be happy to push a broom in heaven, but I'd rather get a cushy desk job if I've got the option.
Some people have used religion purely as thin pretense for their crusades and petty causes. Others truly want the best for everybody, and want to make sure you get the information you need to make an informed decision. Please don't lump us together.
Since Christians believe that there are immortal souls on the line, you'll have to forgive us (the well-intentioned ones, anyway) for being pushy. You'd do the same for a friend on the railroad tracks who didn't see the train coming, and the stakes are much higher in this game.
In order to practice what I'm preaching, let me offer the quick-and-not-so-dirty path to salvation here. For those of you who will require more convincing (i.e., virtually all of the Slashdot audience that is not already Christian), let me recommend C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. It states the case for Christianity from a self-described "reluctant convert" to the cause. It's your eternal fate we're discussing here, so please take the time to investigate Christ's claims (and the claims of other religions, for that matter). Just don't end up in the smoking section because you were too busy writing code to be troubled with that whole religious debate thing.
P.S. My tone may seem a bit light, but this really is the most important issue in the world to me. Please give it some thought and do some research instead of rehashing the old bad-things-good-people-no-God argument. That's all I'm asking.
The present situation is one where the publishing industry is engaged in wholesale theft--first, theft of the works from their true authors; then theft of what should be in the public domain (and thus the property of all of us) from us as a society.
Er... most thieves don't financially remunerate their victims for what they have stolen. These folks do voluntarily enter into contracts, contrary to popular opinion. I don't mean to defend the current system in its entirety, but claims of theft are going a bit far.
Point well taken. I'll be the first to agree that media attention can make a mountain out of any molehill. Sensational news brings eyeballs, and solid reporting may not.
However, what's the old saw about lies, d**n lies, and statistics? The decrease in child/teen violence may be (and probably is) due to factors completely independent of video game usage - economic prosperity, prevention programs, better policing... It might even be explained, indirectly, by increased media attention.
A lot depends on the study you look at. Slashdot ran an article a while back that linked to a couple of studies. They used pretty objective measures to study how aggression relates to violent video games. They avoided the statistical problems that come with self-selecting groups. While the results don't go so far as to link violent video games to Columbine-style massacres, they do make a good case for causing heightened levels of aggression. Take it with a grain of salt, as always.
We've all seen where that led to. Have we? Sure, we've all seen reports of studies that link violent video games to violent behavior, but statistical correlation does not imply causality. For example, suppose that the number of churches in a community increases by 75% over a ten-year period, and the crime rate increases by 80% over the same period. Do churches lead to criminal behavior? Probably not. The more likely explanation is that the city's population increased over that period of time, increasing both the number of churches and the number of crimes.
As with most sociological issues, there are too many factors in play to objectively study the link between video game violence and real life violence. You just can't create the kind of controlled environment you would need to perform a truly scientific study.
Of course, I have to admit that I leap to the defense of violent video games because I like to play them. I cut my teeth on Doom, and I'd be playing Quake or Diablo 2 right now if I had more time. My point is that violent video games don't force anyone to be violent. I would guess that most of the correlation between animated and real life violence exists because "naturally" violent people are drawn to violent games. However, I grudgingly concede that violent video games, television shows, and movies probably do contribute to a lowered respect for human life, a glorification of violence, and may even push some teetering souls over the brink. Perhaps "rehearsing" in games allows some sick individuals to cross the line between disturbing fantasies and actually planning violence.
I'm not going to fuss at any adults who enjoy an occasional deathmatch. I won't look so favorably on those who have no reservations about letting their 5-year-olds do the same. Also, given a choice between two games with similar quality of gameplay, I'll happily pick the less violent of the two. For those of you who are really upset about this issue, vote with your wallets. Buy the non-violent alternatives for your kids and for yourself.
Shares of PETsMART.com skyrocketed today on news of an unanticipated boom in birdseed sales.
House and Senate officials are reporting that they have received copies of a petition to mandate equal broadband access to, of all places, the Amazon basin. The petition has been signed by tens of thousands, but some have expressed suspicion over the frequency of the name "Polly," coupled with a marked absence of surnames.
An anonymous hacker has transferred over $100 million dollars from Microsoft accounts to the SPCA.
Actually, this concept has probably been around for more than a decade. I was in speech and debate in high school, and the topic for policy debate in the '90-'91 school year was space exploration. I can remember reading about this idea at the time.
I think it's premature to start blaming computers for our educational problems.
Most of the computer labs I've seen or heard about use obsolete hardware (arguably good or bad for educational purposes). The labs are staffed by people who aren't comfortable using the machines, much less supporting them or training others to use them (unarguably bad).
Educational software is a nascent discipline. It's still experimental, and we're still learning which approaches work best. I believe it's valuable to make learning fun when you can, but educational content takes a back seat to entertainment value in many of the current packages.
The article references the Internet several times. If turning kids loose on the Internet is the average teacher's idea of education, it's clear why the study did not reflect favorably upon computers in the classroom. True, kids need to learn how to do research on the Internet; that's a daily activity for many of us already, and that number's going to keep growing. However, computer education needs to make better use of software packages or particular Internet resources instead of throwing kids the whole ball of wax and expecting them to somehow learn something from it.
If I had my way, every child who graduates high school would know how to turn on a computer, move some files around, and write an essay, including simple graphics and charts. They should know how to browse the Web, and how to send and receive e-mail. I don't care what platform they learn on, they just need to be comfortable with those ideas.
To get from here to there, we need to invest not only in getting the hardware and Internet connections in place, but on training teachers and selecting well-designed software packages.
Computers are a great tool, but like any tool, you have to know how to use them before they become valuable to you.
In some ways, compressing audio is similar to generating 3D graphics in real time -- think Quake.
If you're building a 3D game, you have to live with finite processing power. You can't render anything nearly as complex as the real world, so you approximate. You throw together some geometric meshes, some textures, a lighting transformation or two, and see what you get. The important thing to note is that it doesn't matter whether or not your rendering is accurate -- whether it is a good approximation of real-world physics. It just has to be believable. It just has to look good. You tweak your models and your code based on what your eye tells you, not necessarily to make it more realistic.
The problem of compressing audio is similar. If you want accurate sound reproduction, you buy the CD. Assuming your speakers are good, it will play back sound that is as perfect as the human ear can detect. However, if you want to compress the audio, you strip out as much information as you can bear to improve the compression. If you can sweeten the sound by pulling some "fundamental harmonics" out of thin air, more power to you.
The point is, if you want accuracy, compression won't cut it. If you just want a pretty good sound, then go listen to a Kenwood-Supreme-Drive-compressed file and see what you think.
To quote from the address: Early in our history, people often had only one option when they needed the help of the national government. They had to visit a government office and stand in line.
So, likewise this should be the case on a larger scale - if we knew what weapons existed, we could better prepare ourselves against them.
I can only think of a few things that you need to know about nuclear weapons to defend against them:
size
shape
how fast they travel
what it takes to knock one out of the air
This assumes that you're "fortunate" enough to be faced with an airborn attack instead of a ground-transported terrorist detonation.
How having the detailed specs would to develop defenses, I don't know. I'm guessing that anyone with the resources to fabricate a warhead would have little difficulty coming up with the plans for at least a crude device, but I don't see why we'd want to make it any easier. The stakes are just too high.
I don't have it with me, but check out Tom Clancy's foreword (or was it an afterword?) in The Sum of All Fears for his reservations about providing any details about how these weapons of mass destruction are produced.
P.S. Although I'd like to be able to show more trust, we're a fallen race; I'm not arguing for disarmament. I just don't think it's wise to let more people arm themselves.
Although I'm on a Toshiba right now, I've had the privilege of being assigned three ThinkPads over the course of the last two years. They are far and away my favorite laptops.
It's not glamorous, but one of the most useful features of the ThinkPad line is the third "mouse" button. In its default configuration, it allows you to scroll windows vertically or horizontally by holding down the third button and moving the TrackPoint. It's great for those situations where you don't want to pound the Tab key a hundred times so you can use the arrow keys to scroll, and you don't want to mouse over to grab the scroll bar.
I assume that this feature will be supported in the new Linux boxes?
From the article: When the robot was presented with a number of light stimuli, its lamprey brain responded with a variety of behaviours, such as following the light, avoiding the light and moving in a circle.
Could you ask for clearer evidence that the lamprey brain was really responding to the light? Why, it followed the light, and it avoided the light! At this rate, there will be a cyborg dog retrieving my paper before the year's out.
The question is: can I find people who want to work on my open source project?
The open source movement has received a lot of press over the past couple of years, which is great. There are a lot of good open source projects that deserve recognition and adoption.
However, I think that there are a fairly limited number of people who are have enough passion for software development to work on projects for grins. As open source development models gain mind share, and as more projects are opened up, I'm guessing that there's going to be a shortfall of competent, willing participants. If you're the kind of person who would want to participate in that kind of project, you probably already are, and you're not likely to want to take on much more. The number of participants will continue to grow, but I'm guessing the number of projects will grow faster.
So before you press management to let you open your code, ask yourself if your project is useful enough or cool enough to draw people in.
I don't believe that the Internet will do much to change the message itself; people are much the same as they always have been, and will continue to respond to the same hot buttons. The exception, of course, is when the Internet becomes the political issue.
The Internet can, however, change the means by which the message is delivered. Savvy politicians (or politicians with techie volunteers or campaign staff) can better target specific audiences with the part of their message that is most relevant to each group.
The Internet can also be a great tool for organizing the campaign and helping potential volunteers find out where they can plug in and make a difference with their special skills. For example, see here.
Normally, if you're on a train moving at velocity V, and you walk forward at velocity W, you would think that your velocity relative to the ground would by V+W. Well, you'd be wrong.
This assumes that W is measured from your perspective, not from a position on the ground.
Slashdot Mirror
It's true that having unmanned, armed aircraft will remove some political impediments to war. The results of this are a mixed bag. Even in a morally justfified military action, war destroys sacred human life, and they scar the lives and lands of the survivors. On the other hand, the overt or implied threat of war can be a potent political tool. Lowering the cost (especially in lives) of waging war makes that tool more effective. A convincing and overwhelming threat of force can prevent wars from starting or avert human rights abuses.
More importantly, someone will develop the technology. World War II might have ended very differently had Nazi Germany survived long enough to build an atomic bomb before the Allies. I for one am glad the story ended as it did. Similarly, a nation that wants to secure a good and peaceful tomorrow had best be investing in these technologies today. Pilots and soldiers will become increasingly irrelevant in the wars to be waged in the coming century as engineers and software developers take on new importance to the military.
As with any tool, these new planes are not inherently good or evil. The people deciding how they are to be used will make all the difference. Pray that they will be good men and women, whatever country they belong to.
I think whether they do it or not has a lot to do with how much of an inroad Linux makes into the clueless desktop user market. The more lemmings use Linux, the more likely Microsoft is to do this.
To the contrary, I think Microsoft would be more likely to exercise this option if Linux fails to make substantial inroads into the desktop market. If Linux is turning up the heat, Microsoft needs exclusive .NET support as a key differentiator to keep people on Microsoft operating systems. However, if Linux doesn't make much of a splash, Microsoft can "safely" promote .NET support on Linux to try to project an image of being open, standards-compliant, and cross-platform. It's a low-cost PR move that could also help protect them from future legal troubles.
At least, that's what I'd be doing if I were Microsoft, and if I wanted to protect my OS monopoly as effectively as possible. Of course, I've heard that they get more revenue out of Office sales, so maybe they have a different take on the situation.
Want to overclock that hardware? Imagine running a bundle of cable through the skin of the craft so you could put your CPU out in space. A fan wouldn't do much for you there!
If the synopsis provided by this posting is accurate, the issue seems pretty clear-cut. Rather than waste my breath griping about it here, I'd like to know what the best method of protest is. Contact the patent office? My state Congressmen? Are there any electronic petitions going around?
The slogan "better, faster, cheaper" was ill-chosen. It would have been better without the "better". If you send up a bunch of cheap, thrown-together, unmanned missions, you're going to have more failures, by percentage and especially by count. However, you're playing the odds that the greater number of missions will more than compensate for the increased failure rate.
The "better" part of the slogan implied that they still expected to have a high success rate. The public expectations were set too high, and NASA's paying for it now. Best of luck to them, because I still think that using lots of small, cheap, unmanned craft is a good strategy.
On a separate note, Slashdot has a lot of space buffs and a lot of open source buffs. How many people would volunteer to review designs and mission plans for NASA as part of an open-mission-to-Mars project?
It's been a while since I looked at Mere Christianity, so your memory is probably better than mine. Unfortunately, I've built my faith around a lot of books, articles, and arguments over the years, and it's hard to remember what came from where.
Perhaps a better resource for critical thinkers is Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. I haven't read the whole thing, and I don't agree with all his arguments or conclusions, but there's plenty of meat to chew on. You really have to know a lot about the cultural context to make sense of certain passages, and knowing Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic would help.
The best thing to do is get a Bible with a thorough set of footnotes and cross-references, then read it straight through. That gives you at least some sense of the historical context and the way everything ties together. It's a big undertaking, but well worth it.
When all is said and done, it comes down to how you evaluate the plausibility of the historical death and resurrection of Christ. You have to ask what else would have motivated his frightened disciples to boldly emerge from hiding and stick to their story to the point of martyrdom.
As far as I'm concerned, religious institutions can stick to providing the masses with something to look forward to and stop telling people how to live their lives.
Many religious people, myself included, believe that how you live your life has a very concrete bearing on what you can expect after death. I'm not claiming that being a swell guy will get you into heaven, but the Bible contains several passages that say we will be rewarded according to what we do.
Jesus Christ offers unmerited salvation for the asking, so please pick up your "Get into Heaven Free" card before checking out. But that's not the end of the story. Be aware that we still answer for our actions in some respects. I'll be happy to push a broom in heaven, but I'd rather get a cushy desk job if I've got the option.
Some people have used religion purely as thin pretense for their crusades and petty causes. Others truly want the best for everybody, and want to make sure you get the information you need to make an informed decision. Please don't lump us together.
Since Christians believe that there are immortal souls on the line, you'll have to forgive us (the well-intentioned ones, anyway) for being pushy. You'd do the same for a friend on the railroad tracks who didn't see the train coming, and the stakes are much higher in this game.
In order to practice what I'm preaching, let me offer the quick-and-not-so-dirty path to salvation here. For those of you who will require more convincing (i.e., virtually all of the Slashdot audience that is not already Christian), let me recommend C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. It states the case for Christianity from a self-described "reluctant convert" to the cause. It's your eternal fate we're discussing here, so please take the time to investigate Christ's claims (and the claims of other religions, for that matter). Just don't end up in the smoking section because you were too busy writing code to be troubled with that whole religious debate thing.
P.S. My tone may seem a bit light, but this really is the most important issue in the world to me. Please give it some thought and do some research instead of rehashing the old bad-things-good-people-no-God argument. That's all I'm asking.
The present situation is one where the publishing industry is engaged in wholesale theft--first, theft of the works from their true authors; then theft of what should be in the public domain (and thus the property of all of us) from us as a society.
Er... most thieves don't financially remunerate their victims for what they have stolen. These folks do voluntarily enter into contracts, contrary to popular opinion. I don't mean to defend the current system in its entirety, but claims of theft are going a bit far.
Point well taken. I'll be the first to agree that media attention can make a mountain out of any molehill. Sensational news brings eyeballs, and solid reporting may not.
However, what's the old saw about lies, d**n lies, and statistics? The decrease in child/teen violence may be (and probably is) due to factors completely independent of video game usage - economic prosperity, prevention programs, better policing... It might even be explained, indirectly, by increased media attention.
A lot depends on the study you look at. Slashdot ran an article a while back that linked to a couple of studies. They used pretty objective measures to study how aggression relates to violent video games. They avoided the statistical problems that come with self-selecting groups. While the results don't go so far as to link violent video games to Columbine-style massacres, they do make a good case for causing heightened levels of aggression. Take it with a grain of salt, as always.
We've all seen where that led to. Have we? Sure, we've all seen reports of studies that link violent video games to violent behavior, but statistical correlation does not imply causality. For example, suppose that the number of churches in a community increases by 75% over a ten-year period, and the crime rate increases by 80% over the same period. Do churches lead to criminal behavior? Probably not. The more likely explanation is that the city's population increased over that period of time, increasing both the number of churches and the number of crimes.
As with most sociological issues, there are too many factors in play to objectively study the link between video game violence and real life violence. You just can't create the kind of controlled environment you would need to perform a truly scientific study.
Of course, I have to admit that I leap to the defense of violent video games because I like to play them. I cut my teeth on Doom, and I'd be playing Quake or Diablo 2 right now if I had more time. My point is that violent video games don't force anyone to be violent. I would guess that most of the correlation between animated and real life violence exists because "naturally" violent people are drawn to violent games. However, I grudgingly concede that violent video games, television shows, and movies probably do contribute to a lowered respect for human life, a glorification of violence, and may even push some teetering souls over the brink. Perhaps "rehearsing" in games allows some sick individuals to cross the line between disturbing fantasies and actually planning violence.
I'm not going to fuss at any adults who enjoy an occasional deathmatch. I won't look so favorably on those who have no reservations about letting their 5-year-olds do the same. Also, given a choice between two games with similar quality of gameplay, I'll happily pick the less violent of the two. For those of you who are really upset about this issue, vote with your wallets. Buy the non-violent alternatives for your kids and for yourself.
Here are some of the stories we're working on:
Details at 10:00.
Go, go Gadget legs!
Actually, this concept has probably been around for more than a decade. I was in speech and debate in high school, and the topic for policy debate in the '90-'91 school year was space exploration. I can remember reading about this idea at the time.
I think it's premature to start blaming computers for our educational problems.
If I had my way, every child who graduates high school would know how to turn on a computer, move some files around, and write an essay, including simple graphics and charts. They should know how to browse the Web, and how to send and receive e-mail. I don't care what platform they learn on, they just need to be comfortable with those ideas.
To get from here to there, we need to invest not only in getting the hardware and Internet connections in place, but on training teachers and selecting well-designed software packages.
Computers are a great tool, but like any tool, you have to know how to use them before they become valuable to you.
In some ways, compressing audio is similar to generating 3D graphics in real time -- think Quake.
If you're building a 3D game, you have to live with finite processing power. You can't render anything nearly as complex as the real world, so you approximate. You throw together some geometric meshes, some textures, a lighting transformation or two, and see what you get. The important thing to note is that it doesn't matter whether or not your rendering is accurate -- whether it is a good approximation of real-world physics. It just has to be believable. It just has to look good. You tweak your models and your code based on what your eye tells you, not necessarily to make it more realistic.
The problem of compressing audio is similar. If you want accurate sound reproduction, you buy the CD. Assuming your speakers are good, it will play back sound that is as perfect as the human ear can detect. However, if you want to compress the audio, you strip out as much information as you can bear to improve the compression. If you can sweeten the sound by pulling some "fundamental harmonics" out of thin air, more power to you.
The point is, if you want accuracy, compression won't cut it. If you just want a pretty good sound, then go listen to a Kenwood-Supreme-Drive-compressed file and see what you think.
To quote from the address: Early in our history, people often had only one option when they needed the help of the national government. They had to visit a government office and stand in line.
Looks like Bill's been lurking on Slashdot.
It's almost as if there's a bunch of geeks in Vegas betting on when each development release of what kernel will be released.
There are, and I just lost my shirt over this one. Now where will I hang my pocket protector?
Now I can finally get that third arm I've been griping about all these years. Or maybe I really will get those eyes in the back of my head!
So, likewise this should be the case on a larger scale - if we knew what weapons existed, we could better prepare ourselves against them.
I can only think of a few things that you need to know about nuclear weapons to defend against them:
This assumes that you're "fortunate" enough to be faced with an airborn attack instead of a ground-transported terrorist detonation.
How having the detailed specs would to develop defenses, I don't know. I'm guessing that anyone with the resources to fabricate a warhead would have little difficulty coming up with the plans for at least a crude device, but I don't see why we'd want to make it any easier. The stakes are just too high.
I don't have it with me, but check out Tom Clancy's foreword (or was it an afterword?) in The Sum of All Fears for his reservations about providing any details about how these weapons of mass destruction are produced.
P.S. Although I'd like to be able to show more trust, we're a fallen race; I'm not arguing for disarmament. I just don't think it's wise to let more people arm themselves.
Although I'm on a Toshiba right now, I've had the privilege of being assigned three ThinkPads over the course of the last two years. They are far and away my favorite laptops.
It's not glamorous, but one of the most useful features of the ThinkPad line is the third "mouse" button. In its default configuration, it allows you to scroll windows vertically or horizontally by holding down the third button and moving the TrackPoint. It's great for those situations where you don't want to pound the Tab key a hundred times so you can use the arrow keys to scroll, and you don't want to mouse over to grab the scroll bar.
I assume that this feature will be supported in the new Linux boxes?
In a way, many of us have already been cyborgs for quite a while now. Know anybody with a pacemaker? Defibrillator?
The question is, at what point does the substitution of engineered parts for natural parts turn man into something other than man?
From the article: When the robot was presented with a number of light stimuli, its lamprey brain responded with a variety of behaviours, such as following the light, avoiding the light and moving in a circle.
Could you ask for clearer evidence that the lamprey brain was really responding to the light? Why, it followed the light, and it avoided the light! At this rate, there will be a cyborg dog retrieving my paper before the year's out.
The question is: can I find people who want to work on my open source project?
The open source movement has received a lot of press over the past couple of years, which is great. There are a lot of good open source projects that deserve recognition and adoption.
However, I think that there are a fairly limited number of people who are have enough passion for software development to work on projects for grins. As open source development models gain mind share, and as more projects are opened up, I'm guessing that there's going to be a shortfall of competent, willing participants. If you're the kind of person who would want to participate in that kind of project, you probably already are, and you're not likely to want to take on much more. The number of participants will continue to grow, but I'm guessing the number of projects will grow faster.
So before you press management to let you open your code, ask yourself if your project is useful enough or cool enough to draw people in.
I don't believe that the Internet will do much to change the message itself; people are much the same as they always have been, and will continue to respond to the same hot buttons. The exception, of course, is when the Internet becomes the political issue.
The Internet can, however, change the means by which the message is delivered. Savvy politicians (or politicians with techie volunteers or campaign staff) can better target specific audiences with the part of their message that is most relevant to each group.
The Internet can also be a great tool for organizing the campaign and helping potential volunteers find out where they can plug in and make a difference with their special skills. For example, see here.
Normally, if you're on a train moving at velocity V, and you walk forward at velocity W, you would think that your velocity relative to the ground would by V+W. Well, you'd be wrong.
This assumes that W is measured from your perspective, not from a position on the ground.