Yeah, I think they might have more success if they could describe this is simple language.
Here's what I get from it, translated into English, and sprinkled with some object-oriented terms.
Start with some Java code. This thing lets you search through the classes for method calls. For example, you could search for methods whose name begins with "Draw". Using these tools, I can attach event handlers to every call to these methods. My event handlers can run before and after each method call.
An "Aspect" is like a class, except it has really confusing syntax. The Aspect tells the compiler which methods to look for and what events to attach to them. Besides methods, it can also look for things like constructors or property setters.
An "Aspect" can do some nifty things. For example, if a class B inherits from C, it tweak it so B inherits from D instead. Also, it can add things (methods, variables, etc.) to a class or interface. Or it could change what kind of exception a method throws.
Then he talks about a few more advanced things, like how many instances of an "Aspect" I create. It could be static so only one instance exists, or I could make a new instance for every method I attach to. Or something in between. Also, an "Aspect" can show warnings and errors at compile-time.
Isn't it interesting that cars and bikes underwent continual improvement throughout the last century, which is still ongoing?
These improvements have made cars and bikes much safer than even what our parents had. Today every major operating system, even Linux, is riddled with bugs of all sorts. Software is still a young field. When you use software, you take a calculated risk.
Yup. Good idea. Of course, to really be listened to you need a few million in soft money to contribute, but if we're lucky, pending legislation reduce that problem.
That's a cool idea. Maybe for driving practice, you could take a stretch of road, and wrap it around so the end of the road is connected back to the start, and you'd have a perpetual... uh, wait, never mind.
That's painful. I stay as far away from 95/98/ME as I can. 2000 and XP, on the other hand, are pretty nice. If you're going to squat on one version of Windows, you ought to at least consider one that's not going to torture you for the rest of your life.
Thanks for the well-reasoned response. By the way, I hope I didn't come across as confrontational. Also, I am about to be long winded, for which I apologize in advance.
could you elaborate on the idea of entropy in a closed system only being statistically probable?
Here's a little thought experiment: I have a box of black and red checkers. Most of the red ones are on one side of the box, and most of the black ones are on the other side of the box. This is a low-entropy, or highly ordered state. Now I shake up the box, the colors mix more and more until I have a very high entropy state. Fair enough. What if you were to open the box and find that the checkers were more organized than when you began shaking (red on one side; black on the other)? This is highly improbable, but not impossible. In fact, if you just shook the box once before opening it, after many repetitions, you might observe one where the entropy decreased.
However, I only make this point to show that entropy is not a law we can impose on everything we may potentially observe (Just like Newton's laws are only good up to some extreme point). But I agree that entropy is a viable model for nearly everything we observe. I read about someone's intelligent, but flawed attempt to prove there was a divine creator as follows: if entropy always increases, then at some point entropy was zero. Since you can't have negative entropy, then there must have been a creation at this point, and therefore there must be a creator. I think the proof is flawed because it attempts to assign conditions of the present world to conditions that would have existed under conditions much different from our own. If there was a big bang, what was there before it? God could be involved in there somewhere, but the law of entropy is not absolute enough to tell us for certain.
My collapsing universe question is one posed by Stephen Hawking in "A Brief History of Time". If the universe were expanding slowly enough that gravity would eventually make it shrink again, would the entropy of the universe begin to decrease? (He even goes so far as to wonder if time might begin to run backwards.)
I'm not sure what the context of Mr. Ross's comment is, so I can't say if I agree with him or not. However, my snow example provides an example of what I was saying. If you consider the scatteredness of the snow alone, then you might say its entropy is decreasing. Entropy is not decreasing, though. As the snow runs into the lake, with the help of the terrain, it is exchanging potential energy for a different kind of order.
When I build something out of Legos, the entropy of the Legos is decreasing, but if you include the energy my body is burning to think and act, we can assume the entropy will be inreasing. This is what I mean by a "closed system;" one where we try to isolate elements from other elements that may be having a real influence. The law of entropy does not necessarily apply to the snow, the Legos, or chemicals without also considering the myriad outside influences.
I wish I could claim to understand all these influences. One could presume that God is immune to the law of entropy, and therefore would be a viable candidate for creating such order.
Back to evolution: If antibiotics today help breed stronger (better organized) bacteria, then don't we need to somehow include these antibiotics in the entropy equation? What sorts of factors would have played this kind of role early in the devlopment of life, from an evolutionist point of view? I don't think our understanding of entropy is complex enough to be certain about these issues.
Now, regarding God. I do find it very interesting that in Genesis, God commanded the waters to bring forth life. Evolutionists and creationists seem to share the belief that life originated in the water, and that simpler kinds of life preceded more complex types.
I would like to think there is a God, a being endowed with perfectness in power and goodness, and who decided to create the universe and populate it. The question of God is very interesting, and very important, in my opinion. In the end, I agree with you that "Evolutionists (and creationists) bring some rather large assumptions to the table." It's a tough problem, isn't it?
By the same kind of reasoning, you could argue that snow melting off the mountains and flowing into a lake is decreasing entropy, since what was scattered all over is now in one simple body.
Entropy only applies to a closed system (i.e. with no outside interaction). And even then, it is statistically probable, not absolute. Furthermore, it could be that entropy does not always increase (even probabilistically). What will happen if the universe collapses on itself and becomes a singularity?
This has already been done, in a very technical sense.
Take the experiments with flying an atomic clock around the world at high speeds, after which their time was a little different, offering evidence for relatively. We have thus expended energy to travel forward in time (faster than normal).
Travelling backward in time, well that's an interesting one.
Exactly. In his prediction is the underlying assumption that 1) someone will create such a lifeform, and that 2) we will decide it is a sentient being with rights.
Perhaps in the process of #1, we will become able to answer the questions for #2.
It's a fascinating subject, but his timeline for this is way too short. Give it 30-40 years, and we'll see...
Yup. I think the Register has been smoking something serious:
"If one morally questionable teenie can successfully generate one operational key by leaving their home PC running overnight, then Redmond has quite clearly blundered."
Microsoft made it known long before Windows XP ever came out that the keys were only meant to prevent "casual piracy."
--------
"If you can't find any news, make some up."
This is an issue the appeals court pointed out that the lower court had completely missed the ball on.
In the past, there have been many instances of bundling that were actually good for the consumer. One example the appeals court cited was that, at one time, people bought a car and a starter from separate companies. Then the car companies starting selling their cars with starters, and because of major savings in the distribution channels, it ended up saving people money. A second example was when carpet companies began selling carpet with stain protection built in. They argued that this was good for the consumers, because the combined cost was much lower.
The appeals court found the lower court's ruling unsatisfactory, pointing out in part, that the lower court had not even addressed this possibility.
They also pointed out that just about every OS ships with a browser--Mac, BE, etc.
Also consider:
OSes have a long history of replacing programs that had been sold separately.
When the Mac came out, it came bundled with a calculator and all sorts of little apps that previously had to be acquired separately. Even third party text editors get threatened by OSes that bundle things like Notepad.
Twenty years ago kids developed all sorts of physical and mental skills playing baseball in vacant lots. Today, they develop highly coordinated thumbs and A.D.D. playing ever-more-life-like baseball video games.
Yeah. The logo was just to get customers to trust CDs. Now that that's done, the logo serves no point to the RIAA. They certainly wouldn't use it to undermine their own scheme. Nope, the only protection for consumers would be a big database of CDs to avoid and a few million people who paid attention to it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I think they might have more success if they could describe this is simple language.
Here's what I get from it, translated into English, and sprinkled with some object-oriented terms.
Start with some Java code. This thing lets you search through the classes for method calls. For example, you could search for methods whose name begins with "Draw". Using these tools, I can attach event handlers to every call to these methods. My event handlers can run before and after each method call.
An "Aspect" is like a class, except it has really confusing syntax. The Aspect tells the compiler which methods to look for and what events to attach to them. Besides methods, it can also look for things like constructors or property setters.
An "Aspect" can do some nifty things. For example, if a class B inherits from C, it tweak it so B inherits from D instead. Also, it can add things (methods, variables, etc.) to a class or interface. Or it could change what kind of exception a method throws.
Then he talks about a few more advanced things, like how many instances of an "Aspect" I create. It could be static so only one instance exists, or I could make a new instance for every method I attach to. Or something in between. Also, an "Aspect" can show warnings and errors at compile-time.
"Just like", huh?
Isn't it interesting that cars and bikes underwent continual improvement throughout the last century, which is still ongoing?
These improvements have made cars and bikes much safer than even what our parents had. Today every major operating system, even Linux, is riddled with bugs of all sorts. Software is still a young field. When you use software, you take a calculated risk.
Yup. Good idea. Of course, to really be listened to you need a few million in soft money to contribute, but if we're lucky, pending legislation reduce that problem.
Now I'll be able to change the channel and turn the volume down at the same time.
Stuff that... (yawn)
That's a cool idea. Maybe for driving practice, you could take a stretch of road, and wrap it around so the end of the road is connected back to the start, and you'd have a perpetual... uh, wait, never mind.
My TV already came with a remote control.
all this insane, conspiracy bumbling I'm doing might just be alcohol induced paranoia.
You ought to consider submitting a few stories yourself.
You'd think sitting on a shelf for 3 years would take care of any such worries.
And you'd think CNN could at least post a link to the video or something, instead of just telling you it's really cool.
Thanks for the plug. Have some Karma.
1 + 1 = 3
p.s. What about those sand people on Star Wars? They seem to be ok with breathing sand.
Since we're on a roll, we also want to break it to everyone that Santa Claus isn't real either.
I will not upgrade past this point (WinME).
That's painful. I stay as far away from 95/98/ME as I can. 2000 and XP, on the other hand, are pretty nice. If you're going to squat on one version of Windows, you ought to at least consider one that's not going to torture you for the rest of your life.
Thanks for the well-reasoned response. By the way, I hope I didn't come across as confrontational. Also, I am about to be long winded, for which I apologize in advance.
could you elaborate on the idea of entropy in a closed system only being statistically probable?
Here's a little thought experiment: I have a box of black and red checkers. Most of the red ones are on one side of the box, and most of the black ones are on the other side of the box. This is a low-entropy, or highly ordered state. Now I shake up the box, the colors mix more and more until I have a very high entropy state. Fair enough. What if you were to open the box and find that the checkers were more organized than when you began shaking (red on one side; black on the other)? This is highly improbable, but not impossible. In fact, if you just shook the box once before opening it, after many repetitions, you might observe one where the entropy decreased.
However, I only make this point to show that entropy is not a law we can impose on everything we may potentially observe (Just like Newton's laws are only good up to some extreme point). But I agree that entropy is a viable model for nearly everything we observe. I read about someone's intelligent, but flawed attempt to prove there was a divine creator as follows: if entropy always increases, then at some point entropy was zero. Since you can't have negative entropy, then there must have been a creation at this point, and therefore there must be a creator. I think the proof is flawed because it attempts to assign conditions of the present world to conditions that would have existed under conditions much different from our own. If there was a big bang, what was there before it? God could be involved in there somewhere, but the law of entropy is not absolute enough to tell us for certain.
My collapsing universe question is one posed by Stephen Hawking in "A Brief History of Time". If the universe were expanding slowly enough that gravity would eventually make it shrink again, would the entropy of the universe begin to decrease? (He even goes so far as to wonder if time might begin to run backwards.)
I'm not sure what the context of Mr. Ross's comment is, so I can't say if I agree with him or not. However, my snow example provides an example of what I was saying. If you consider the scatteredness of the snow alone, then you might say its entropy is decreasing. Entropy is not decreasing, though. As the snow runs into the lake, with the help of the terrain, it is exchanging potential energy for a different kind of order.
When I build something out of Legos, the entropy of the Legos is decreasing, but if you include the energy my body is burning to think and act, we can assume the entropy will be inreasing. This is what I mean by a "closed system;" one where we try to isolate elements from other elements that may be having a real influence. The law of entropy does not necessarily apply to the snow, the Legos, or chemicals without also considering the myriad outside influences.
I wish I could claim to understand all these influences. One could presume that God is immune to the law of entropy, and therefore would be a viable candidate for creating such order.
Back to evolution: If antibiotics today help breed stronger (better organized) bacteria, then don't we need to somehow include these antibiotics in the entropy equation? What sorts of factors would have played this kind of role early in the devlopment of life, from an evolutionist point of view? I don't think our understanding of entropy is complex enough to be certain about these issues.
Now, regarding God. I do find it very interesting that in Genesis, God commanded the waters to bring forth life. Evolutionists and creationists seem to share the belief that life originated in the water, and that simpler kinds of life preceded more complex types.
I would like to think there is a God, a being endowed with perfectness in power and goodness, and who decided to create the universe and populate it. The question of God is very interesting, and very important, in my opinion. In the end, I agree with you that "Evolutionists (and creationists) bring some rather large assumptions to the table." It's a tough problem, isn't it?
Actually, fair use allows you to quote from the book. IANAL, but I think as long as it's not a full chapter or 10% of the book, you're fine.
By the same kind of reasoning, you could argue that snow melting off the mountains and flowing into a lake is decreasing entropy, since what was scattered all over is now in one simple body.
Entropy only applies to a closed system (i.e. with no outside interaction). And even then, it is statistically probable, not absolute. Furthermore, it could be that entropy does not always increase (even probabilistically). What will happen if the universe collapses on itself and becomes a singularity?
No, that would be cooling the Earth...
Time travel invented ... 2075
This has already been done, in a very technical sense.
Take the experiments with flying an atomic clock around the world at high speeds, after which their time was a little different, offering evidence for relatively. We have thus expended energy to travel forward in time (faster than normal).
Travelling backward in time, well that's an interesting one.
Ok, how do we determine the lifeform is one?
Exactly. In his prediction is the underlying assumption that 1) someone will create such a lifeform, and that 2) we will decide it is a sentient being with rights.
Perhaps in the process of #1, we will become able to answer the questions for #2.
It's a fascinating subject, but his timeline for this is way too short. Give it 30-40 years, and we'll see...
I think they'll find that WinXP embedded has almost nothing in common with the full Windows OS. What would this prove?
Yup. I think the Register has been smoking something serious:
"If one morally questionable teenie can successfully generate one operational key by leaving their home PC running overnight, then Redmond has quite clearly blundered."
Microsoft made it known long before Windows XP ever came out that the keys were only meant to prevent "casual piracy."
--------
"If you can't find any news, make some up."
This is an issue the appeals court pointed out that the lower court had completely missed the ball on.
In the past, there have been many instances of bundling that were actually good for the consumer. One example the appeals court cited was that, at one time, people bought a car and a starter from separate companies. Then the car companies starting selling their cars with starters, and because of major savings in the distribution channels, it ended up saving people money. A second example was when carpet companies began selling carpet with stain protection built in. They argued that this was good for the consumers, because the combined cost was much lower.
The appeals court found the lower court's ruling unsatisfactory, pointing out in part, that the lower court had not even addressed this possibility.
They also pointed out that just about every OS ships with a browser--Mac, BE, etc.
Also consider:
OSes have a long history of replacing programs that had been sold separately.
When the Mac came out, it came bundled with a calculator and all sorts of little apps that previously had to be acquired separately. Even third party text editors get threatened by OSes that bundle things like Notepad.
Twenty years ago kids developed all sorts of physical and mental skills playing baseball in vacant lots. Today, they develop highly coordinated thumbs and A.D.D. playing ever-more-life-like baseball video games.
Yeah. The logo was just to get customers to trust CDs. Now that that's done, the logo serves no point to the RIAA. They certainly wouldn't use it to undermine their own scheme. Nope, the only protection for consumers would be a big database of CDs to avoid and a few million people who paid attention to it.