Killing people is per definition not humanitarian. A humanitarian is a person who believes in the goodness of man and that human life is precious. But I do see your point.
The humanitarian way of handling the situation would be to emprison (I think I tried 4 different spellings for emprison and none of them look right) the dope peddlers and keep them in jail until they're either reformed or too old to go back to their old ways.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Though the USA is a country with a lot of problems, it does have free speech and freedom of thought, something China lacks. I don't think you'll see too many peaceful protestors run over by tanks in the US, whatever might happen to their young in the ghettos.
China is a fascinating country with an amazing history and a rich tradition, but it's government is not the greatest in the world. But things are changing, who knows what is in the future? Perhaps one day people can move anywhere they want within it's borders, speak their thoughts freely and not worry about the consequences.
If you feel like attacking my home country now, sink your teeth in Sweden, because that's where I'm from.
If you read the article (which I did a second time to confirm something that I now remembered) it says that stepping down, resets the piston, which injects fuel into the piston where a tiny spark-plug combusts it, propelling you up and forward (depending on your stance I guess). This hardly sounds like a "equal force sustained over a longer distance" situation but rather as a short, strong impulse to send you off. He (the constructor) also says: "A person can move with significant jumps or strides" which means that it's not a case of normal forces but rather extraordinary forces that send you off the ground.
If it was the normal forces of a normal step over a longer distance you would not be able to jump higher, just take longer steps (faster).
This just makes me wonder what the heck that comment (the comment to the article that is) was about anyway. It's not like there isn't support for WMA in WinAmp already. The whole comment implied that we'd not be able to play mp3s the same way we used to. Sounded wierd to me, but I guess I didn't use my noggin'.
Good point. This experience taught me that I should examine the articles thoroughly. Have you checked out the CNET article? The facts in it could fit on the head of a bobby-pin, without any special technology, just an 8pt Courier font.
WAP, XML Schemas and Micro$tuff
on
WAP Under Fire
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· Score: 1
The article titles suggest that Microsoft has completely rejected WAP, something that is certainly possible, but unlikely since, as far as I know, they're still working with Ericsson here in Lund with some project. What it is, I don't know. Maybe they decided to drop it now. It is not my main point.
My main point is that, while WAP might seem like a good idea, early tests (like a few weeks ago, so they're not done a long time ago, but in the early stages of WAPs development) 50% of the phones worked with 50% of the WAP-adapted pages. The only realy conclusion you can make from this is that so far they've been very bad at telling web-companies how to make their WAP pages and that the different phones from the different companies do indeed work differently (something I knew would happen, just look at Netscape and Explorer, only difference is that now they'll have 5 different browsers to adapt to).
To say that WAP will evolve from a fairly primitive current state seems unlikely to me. What will happen is that someone (read Micro$ocks) will create an XML Schema that does everything that WAP does and about 150 million more things (apart from being completely extensible, since it is an XML Schema) which will in time chuck WAP out the window.
WAP is what we have now and phones will use it for a few years yet and people who like toys will love them. People who dislike mobile phones in general and browsing with a super-small screen in particular, will loathe them. In those years that the emergence of a new XML WAP Schema will appear, all our mobile phones will look like Palm-pilots anyway, and have the same functionality, so they will probably render XHTML and XSL anyway (in color).
There are a billion alternatives to WinAmp available. I've registered my version, a long time ago, so I'll just stop upgrading from now on. It's not like I don't have a fully functioning, 100% cool version of WinAmp already. Why the hell would I want to upgrade to a version that limits my choices? They're shooting themselves in the foot, and not even hitting it properly.
Try a higher bitrate. They rarely use less than 160kbit these days and I defy anyone to hear the difference between original and copy at 160kbit and more, encoded with a GOOD encoder.
I've even started using VBR at normal quality. Bitrate then hovers between 96 and 196 in most music and averages around 128kbit. You can hear a difference from the original at that level, but you save a few megs per file (on some kinds of music).
Rant mode on, feel free to disregard
I'm quite bored with audiophiles telling me "CDs sound cold" and "MP3 sounds lossy". Of course there has to be a downside to reducing data 10 times or more in size, but that doesn't mean you can hear it. I think the problem is that a lot of audiophiles buy really expensive audio equipment, equipment that amplifies all the errors in the music to an unbearable level. Buy a cheaper setup, then you can't hear the losses. After a while you won't hear the difference between your new bad stereo and the old great one, I promise. The ears adapt.
Not much to elaborate on really. A theory that some evolutionists have taken up is the idea that evolution has sometimes taken long jumps forward and made a lot of progress in one go. Thus there are no intermediary stages. Exactly how they motivate this I don't know, I only know about the theories, I don't know them.
As to if larger webbed hands/feet would be a hindrance and not an advantage you'd have to know the exact circumstances. Imagine a creature has adapted well to the trees, who have hands and feet that can grab very well on branches and so forth and it has webbed hands feet (though small right now).
Along comes another species of predators that learns to climb trees and finds this other species to be great food. If there are a lot of these predators, surviving for the first species would largely rest on whether they can escape their predators and not so much if they are a bit less able to climb or grab things.
Just looking around the world you'll find a lot of species with a lot of characteristics which are really hard to understand the advantage of. Many features of animals also get exaggerated because of sexuality. If a feature is attractive to the opposite sex, it is going to be inhanced by natural selection. Paradise birds have huge tail feathers, the use of which at least I fail to see, apart from attracting mates.
This is complicated stuff, I always hated biology at school (mostly because I hated having to learn all the names of plants and stuff, behavioural science and ecology and those subjects really are fascinating) so I don't know enough about the background.
Well, you may very well be right. I'd have to try them on to be sure. But even with the same forces, as you say, an increase in energy is produced. This energy will have to be transferred to the rest of the body via the legs. However you look at it, it will be more strain on joints and muscles. If its a short sudden burst of speed, it will be a short but very sharp impulse, if its a long sustained accelleration, it will be a smaller strain in the joints but in a longer period of time. The net sum is of course not equal, the latter is much better than the first, but neither of them would probably be approved these days in any work environment. (Consider for example how long it would take before a work hazard controllant would shut down a plant where all the workers have to squat to do their work (no, I don't mean to take a sh*t:) )
I know I'm probably stretching it a bit here (I just have to be right) but then again, people have gotten injuries from all kinds of activities you wouldn't think was harmful in any way.
As a matter of fact, when I read this I had to go back and take a look at the original post because I cut and paste that address so fast I actually couldn't say if I'd followed a link or not.
It's not the landing I'm worried about, it's the sudden takeoff. Tennis players ruin their knees just taking the jolts from their own body weight running back an forth. I think they need to make a metal exo-skeleton if they intend people to use it more than intermittantly.
Actually, I've thought about those for a long time. It's wierd that we don't have those "Aliens" robot lifters already. It wouldn't be hard to make the controls for them. Just put pressure sensors on the inside of a normal glove and shirt-arm, when you move your arm you pressure the sensors that control the motors in the exo-skeleton. More pressure, more speed and strength. We should've had it by now.
What worries me is that they probably put a lot of extra pressure on joints, specially the knees, that they where not constructed for. Olympic sprinters train their muscles to take the added hits and jolts of running at 23mph.
On the other hand, it says quite clearly that they're only supposed to be used for short periods of time (25 minutes was the gas limit) which hopfully will mean that people won't replace their bicycle with these shoes.
Well, there should be moderation in everything. All I'm saying is that you can't say "I'm tired of everyone saying we need equality" and claim that everything is hunky dory. There are lots of problems in the world and we do need to identify them before we can rectify them. The problem that the first poster (somewhere back in the lines:) pointed out was that sometimes what is percieved to be a problem in fact is no problem at all.
Personally I believe that any kind of polarization of any group is a Bad Thing(TM) since it tends to increase certain qualities in that group and decrease others.
An example would be species that have evolved in a very isolated environment. They tend to be very vournerable to outside intrution, ie introduction of a new species that has evolved under a lot more competition.
For humanity's, and society's sake we need to be as diverse as possible. We need all kinds of people in all kinds of places.
The now ever growing "tiredness" of Politically Corectness that we can see everywhere (the evolvement of Southpark being a prime example) is a result of a fundamental law of psychology. It is derived from physics where it goes something like this: "Every action requires an equal and opposite reaction." In psychology the reaction need not be equal or exactly opposite, but its there. Without fail.
What is best is moderation. Critical thinking is always good. (The law of reactions is there for a reason, because polarization, as I stated before, is a Bad Thing(TM)).
P.S. I'm just presenting my personal Humble Opinion and Life Philosophy. These are not fundamental truths at all (even if they are presented that way) and should be very critically examined indeed.
You are right and you are wrong. Ultimately, the only thing that counts is your own life. I call anyone in control of their own life powerful.
Living a life completely cut off from the world and being in control of your own life is powerful in a way. But it is not influential. A teacher can be influential, which is another form of power. You are very right in calling some teachers powerful. But there are a lot of teachers who are unable to do their job (teach) because of the circumstances at their workplace (being full of weapons, lack of funds, whatever). These teachers are powerless.
In short, you are right when you say that influence over others is power. You are also wrong when you imply that influence is the only form of power.
Feeling in control of your life makes you feel powerful and secure about yourself. Certainly, this is more important than being able to control others. There are probably a huge number of CEO's and VP's of all kinds of companies around the world who feel an enormous lack of control over their own lives, but who are at the same time very influential. They make decisions concerning thousands of people's daily life every day, yet they can't just take time off whenever they want to play with their kids (or even be home at 6 to see them after work).
Important is not the same as powerful. Of course society would fall apart if all the cleaning-crews in the world would go on strike. They are a powerful group, if they act together. Problem is that it's hard for them to act together. Why? Because they don't have the time to make a world-wide network. They have so low wages that they have to work a lot to make ends meet (a lot of them anyway).
So, tell me, would you consider them a powerful group? If they where so powerful right now, they would be paid more. This is just an example picked out of a million similar examples.
The ability, opportunity and will to work together makes a powerful group. This group can be small, with huge assets (money, companies, land, governments) or a large group with small means (unions (not always poor), environmental groups) and so on.
Being powerful means being able to influence your own life. That is what makes poor people powerless, because they have very little means of changing their life.
What makes it important to make women interested in technology? It's purely survivalist in my book. I want diversity. I want every type of human being to participate in every part of society. This makes society sturdy, and more capable of handling extreme situations. Incorporating views of many different kinds of people into the creation of any product makes that product so much better.
What people want can be influenced and changed. What we need, is always the same: Power to affect our lives and time to enjoy it.
In Voyage by Stephen Baxter he writes about a last effort from NASA to send a manned mission to Mars. It's very interesting, since Baxter preceeded the book with a detailed study of NASAs history and succeeded it with a lot of proofreading from NASA scientists.
It tells of how we today essentially have little or no clue to how they made those old Saturn 5 rockets work. If we had to use them again today we'de basically would have to reinvent them. There is a lot of problems with making a stable burn at the center of the exhaust so that maximum thrust is produced but where the fuel doesn't build up into a bubble that explodes. I wouldn't want to go into those flow calculations. In the book they just take the test engines and make a lot of changes by heart (like they did in reality) changing the shapes of the bells, changing the rate of flow of coolant and fuel and so on...
Gateway reports problems with their 1GHz Thunderbird Systems
Simple, to the point and correct. I agree with the previous poster, the headline implies that there is a general problem with the Thunderbird systems, not that the problem lies with Gateway. That is, if you only read the headline.
Yeah, talk about bad layout. It's completely against all reason to put the text on the far right like that. I'm not kidding, it threw me right off. Picture on top, text below, that's the normal layout.
Don't know if you Americans remember this accident a few months back where a wearhouse with tonnes (metric) of fireworks blew up. The nasty part was that the wearhouse was in the middle of a town. They might as well have dropped a bomb in there, several blocks where just levelled to the ground. Now THAT is an accident with fireworks...
I only post this because it seems like people are finding a hard time coming up with something to reply to this story.:)
I'm not so sure, because gnutella s(_)cks! Right now, if I put up a Gnutella server my computer almost hangs with all the searches it must handle. 95% of those searches are "sex*.*" and "*.mpg"
Napster, on the other hand, though less versatile has central servers that take the load of answering searches off the individual clients. Gnutella is no replacement for Napster, though I really think they could evolve Gnutella a LOT so that it would be useful. By caching common searches for one thing...
Maybe you're right. All I could think of was this example:
I've bought the worldwide rights to a TV-show. But it took almost all my money. So now that I'm going to put out a DVD of this series, I can only make one version. Regional coding prohibits me from competing on several markets with my DVD, since they only work for one region.
A very real problem if you consider DVDs for a series, which could amount to a lot of DVDs and a high cost for the maker.
Could this not be considered a hindrance to my ability to compete? (just an example)
Re:Bats and flying squirrels
on
Calculating God
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· Score: 1
Well, knowing what the bat looks like, this is very hard to see, so I gather that while webbed feet helped it fly a few millimeters further than it's peers, it probably had webbed feet to begin with. Then those with large hands/feet where able to fly further and where premiered. The rest, as they say, is evolution.:)
Exactly. This has always been the problem with the evolutional theory. It is very hard to prove. I don't hope to succeed where a world of paleanthologists (how the hell do you spell that!?) have failed.
One possible explanation is that though these where successful, they existed only a short while before evolving further. Short time would be compared to the span of earth's history. If it took, lets say 1000 years for the species to evolve past these stages, chances are there would be very little evidence of these creatures (keep in mind that some species have existed for 100 million years or more).
But as you say, it is a bit puzzling non the same. That's why the "evolutionary jump"-theory evolved.
You will see that the probability of Earth being the only planet with life in the Universe is less than 1E-12.
Considering that scientists are still looking for signs of any planets at all, this number seems a little premature. Sure, we have found planets, but only gas giants (which of course is what we're talking about.:)
No, I wasn't turning this into a religious discussion, I'm handling that elsewhere (in the book review of that book about god, whatever it was called, I posted 30 replies in that discussion alone).
I don't care what Christians do to justify their beliefs as long as they don't try to force them on me. It would be nice if I could understand them, sometimes I do, but mostly not.
Now, on the matter of microbes in space being better suited news for slashdot than the killing of human beings on Earth, I must say: Yes.
Harsh as it might seem, this is not a "general" news page. It's a page for news about computers and technology. If you want news about people dying in all sorts of horrid accidents and wars, just turn on the TV. I think that's covered enough in the rest of the media. This media right here is for news about nerds. Or nerdy stuff.:)
Slashdot Mirror
The humanitarian way of handling the situation would be to emprison (I think I tried 4 different spellings for emprison and none of them look right) the dope peddlers and keep them in jail until they're either reformed or too old to go back to their old ways.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Though the USA is a country with a lot of problems, it does have free speech and freedom of thought, something China lacks. I don't think you'll see too many peaceful protestors run over by tanks in the US, whatever might happen to their young in the ghettos.
China is a fascinating country with an amazing history and a rich tradition, but it's government is not the greatest in the world. But things are changing, who knows what is in the future? Perhaps one day people can move anywhere they want within it's borders, speak their thoughts freely and not worry about the consequences.
If you feel like attacking my home country now, sink your teeth in Sweden, because that's where I'm from.
Good for them. It's a great name. I'll check them out. Too bad you don't like my music.
If it was the normal forces of a normal step over a longer distance you would not be able to jump higher, just take longer steps (faster).
Energy that has to travel up through your legs to set your body in motion.
Good point. This experience taught me that I should examine the articles thoroughly. Have you checked out the CNET article? The facts in it could fit on the head of a bobby-pin, without any special technology, just an 8pt Courier font.
My main point is that, while WAP might seem like a good idea, early tests (like a few weeks ago, so they're not done a long time ago, but in the early stages of WAPs development) 50% of the phones worked with 50% of the WAP-adapted pages. The only realy conclusion you can make from this is that so far they've been very bad at telling web-companies how to make their WAP pages and that the different phones from the different companies do indeed work differently (something I knew would happen, just look at Netscape and Explorer, only difference is that now they'll have 5 different browsers to adapt to).
To say that WAP will evolve from a fairly primitive current state seems unlikely to me. What will happen is that someone (read Micro$ocks) will create an XML Schema that does everything that WAP does and about 150 million more things (apart from being completely extensible, since it is an XML Schema) which will in time chuck WAP out the window.
WAP is what we have now and phones will use it for a few years yet and people who like toys will love them. People who dislike mobile phones in general and browsing with a super-small screen in particular, will loathe them. In those years that the emergence of a new XML WAP Schema will appear, all our mobile phones will look like Palm-pilots anyway, and have the same functionality, so they will probably render XHTML and XSL anyway (in color).
As they say, WAP is too little too late.
Something like the new Sony 1.2Gb RW CD.
There are a billion alternatives to WinAmp available. I've registered my version, a long time ago, so I'll just stop upgrading from now on. It's not like I don't have a fully functioning, 100% cool version of WinAmp already. Why the hell would I want to upgrade to a version that limits my choices? They're shooting themselves in the foot, and not even hitting it properly.
Try a higher bitrate. They rarely use less than 160kbit these days and I defy anyone to hear the difference between original and copy at 160kbit and more, encoded with a GOOD encoder.
I've even started using VBR at normal quality. Bitrate then hovers between 96 and 196 in most music and averages around 128kbit. You can hear a difference from the original at that level, but you save a few megs per file (on some kinds of music).
Rant mode on, feel free to disregard
I'm quite bored with audiophiles telling me "CDs sound cold" and "MP3 sounds lossy". Of course there has to be a downside to reducing data 10 times or more in size, but that doesn't mean you can hear it. I think the problem is that a lot of audiophiles buy really expensive audio equipment, equipment that amplifies all the errors in the music to an unbearable level. Buy a cheaper setup, then you can't hear the losses. After a while you won't hear the difference between your new bad stereo and the old great one, I promise. The ears adapt.
Rant mode off
As to if larger webbed hands/feet would be a hindrance and not an advantage you'd have to know the exact circumstances. Imagine a creature has adapted well to the trees, who have hands and feet that can grab very well on branches and so forth and it has webbed hands feet (though small right now).
Along comes another species of predators that learns to climb trees and finds this other species to be great food. If there are a lot of these predators, surviving for the first species would largely rest on whether they can escape their predators and not so much if they are a bit less able to climb or grab things.
Just looking around the world you'll find a lot of species with a lot of characteristics which are really hard to understand the advantage of. Many features of animals also get exaggerated because of sexuality. If a feature is attractive to the opposite sex, it is going to be inhanced by natural selection. Paradise birds have huge tail feathers, the use of which at least I fail to see, apart from attracting mates.
This is complicated stuff, I always hated biology at school (mostly because I hated having to learn all the names of plants and stuff, behavioural science and ecology and those subjects really are fascinating) so I don't know enough about the background.
I know I'm probably stretching it a bit here (I just have to be right) but then again, people have gotten injuries from all kinds of activities you wouldn't think was harmful in any way.
Hate is a strong word.
Actually, I've thought about those for a long time. It's wierd that we don't have those "Aliens" robot lifters already. It wouldn't be hard to make the controls for them. Just put pressure sensors on the inside of a normal glove and shirt-arm, when you move your arm you pressure the sensors that control the motors in the exo-skeleton. More pressure, more speed and strength. We should've had it by now.
On the other hand, it says quite clearly that they're only supposed to be used for short periods of time (25 minutes was the gas limit) which hopfully will mean that people won't replace their bicycle with these shoes.
Personally I believe that any kind of polarization of any group is a Bad Thing(TM) since it tends to increase certain qualities in that group and decrease others.
An example would be species that have evolved in a very isolated environment. They tend to be very vournerable to outside intrution, ie introduction of a new species that has evolved under a lot more competition.
For humanity's, and society's sake we need to be as diverse as possible. We need all kinds of people in all kinds of places.
The now ever growing "tiredness" of Politically Corectness that we can see everywhere (the evolvement of Southpark being a prime example) is a result of a fundamental law of psychology. It is derived from physics where it goes something like this: "Every action requires an equal and opposite reaction." In psychology the reaction need not be equal or exactly opposite, but its there. Without fail.
What is best is moderation. Critical thinking is always good. (The law of reactions is there for a reason, because polarization, as I stated before, is a Bad Thing(TM)).
P.S. I'm just presenting my personal Humble Opinion and Life Philosophy. These are not fundamental truths at all (even if they are presented that way) and should be very critically examined indeed.
Living a life completely cut off from the world and being in control of your own life is powerful in a way. But it is not influential. A teacher can be influential, which is another form of power. You are very right in calling some teachers powerful. But there are a lot of teachers who are unable to do their job (teach) because of the circumstances at their workplace (being full of weapons, lack of funds, whatever). These teachers are powerless.
In short, you are right when you say that influence over others is power. You are also wrong when you imply that influence is the only form of power.
Feeling in control of your life makes you feel powerful and secure about yourself. Certainly, this is more important than being able to control others. There are probably a huge number of CEO's and VP's of all kinds of companies around the world who feel an enormous lack of control over their own lives, but who are at the same time very influential. They make decisions concerning thousands of people's daily life every day, yet they can't just take time off whenever they want to play with their kids (or even be home at 6 to see them after work).
There is power and there is power.
Though my example was only one word longer than the original, and a short word at that. Just use H2 instead of H1 and you're there. :)
So, tell me, would you consider them a powerful group? If they where so powerful right now, they would be paid more. This is just an example picked out of a million similar examples.
The ability, opportunity and will to work together makes a powerful group. This group can be small, with huge assets (money, companies, land, governments) or a large group with small means (unions (not always poor), environmental groups) and so on.
Being powerful means being able to influence your own life. That is what makes poor people powerless, because they have very little means of changing their life.
What makes it important to make women interested in technology? It's purely survivalist in my book. I want diversity. I want every type of human being to participate in every part of society. This makes society sturdy, and more capable of handling extreme situations. Incorporating views of many different kinds of people into the creation of any product makes that product so much better.
What people want can be influenced and changed. What we need, is always the same: Power to affect our lives and time to enjoy it.
It tells of how we today essentially have little or no clue to how they made those old Saturn 5 rockets work. If we had to use them again today we'de basically would have to reinvent them. There is a lot of problems with making a stable burn at the center of the exhaust so that maximum thrust is produced but where the fuel doesn't build up into a bubble that explodes. I wouldn't want to go into those flow calculations. In the book they just take the test engines and make a lot of changes by heart (like they did in reality) changing the shapes of the bells, changing the rate of flow of coolant and fuel and so on...
Very little science and a lot of engineering. :)
Simple, to the point and correct. I agree with the previous poster, the headline implies that there is a general problem with the Thunderbird systems, not that the problem lies with Gateway. That is, if you only read the headline.
Yeah, talk about bad layout. It's completely against all reason to put the text on the far right like that. I'm not kidding, it threw me right off. Picture on top, text below, that's the normal layout.
I only post this because it seems like people are finding a hard time coming up with something to reply to this story. :)
Napster, on the other hand, though less versatile has central servers that take the load of answering searches off the individual clients. Gnutella is no replacement for Napster, though I really think they could evolve Gnutella a LOT so that it would be useful. By caching common searches for one thing...
I've bought the worldwide rights to a TV-show. But it took almost all my money. So now that I'm going to put out a DVD of this series, I can only make one version. Regional coding prohibits me from competing on several markets with my DVD, since they only work for one region.
A very real problem if you consider DVDs for a series, which could amount to a lot of DVDs and a high cost for the maker.
Could this not be considered a hindrance to my ability to compete? (just an example)
Exactly. This has always been the problem with the evolutional theory. It is very hard to prove. I don't hope to succeed where a world of paleanthologists (how the hell do you spell that!?) have failed.
One possible explanation is that though these where successful, they existed only a short while before evolving further. Short time would be compared to the span of earth's history. If it took, lets say 1000 years for the species to evolve past these stages, chances are there would be very little evidence of these creatures (keep in mind that some species have existed for 100 million years or more).
But as you say, it is a bit puzzling non the same. That's why the "evolutionary jump"-theory evolved.
No, I wasn't turning this into a religious discussion, I'm handling that elsewhere (in the book review of that book about god, whatever it was called, I posted 30 replies in that discussion alone).
I don't care what Christians do to justify their beliefs as long as they don't try to force them on me. It would be nice if I could understand them, sometimes I do, but mostly not.
Now, on the matter of microbes in space being better suited news for slashdot than the killing of human beings on Earth, I must say: Yes.
Harsh as it might seem, this is not a "general" news page. It's a page for news about computers and technology. If you want news about people dying in all sorts of horrid accidents and wars, just turn on the TV. I think that's covered enough in the rest of the media. This media right here is for news about nerds. Or nerdy stuff. :)