We have both Newtonian and Einsteinian math to solve problems in gravity, but we still wave our hands and mumble "gravitons" and "gravity waves" when we discuss the vector of this mysterious force. Obviously gravity is a tougher nut than the other physical forces that we have encountered. It didn't help that Newton actually devote a lot of time to the occult field of alchemy.
I think that education does overemphasize the "facts" of science and history at the expense of the process. I had a few classes in college that really opened my eyes to the holes in our knowledge of these fields. But we won't fix these holes by just waving our hands and mumbling "intelligent design". In fact ID is the EXACT equivalent of saying "we don't know how this works". That's not an explanation; it's a placeholder for further work. Our educational system just needs to work harder on saying "we're never really sure how everything works, but here's our best explanation so far."
Every time something unbelievably stupid happens in Kansas, or Texas, or Florida, I feel a little happier that I live in California. It's kind of like watching talk shows. Watching stupid, shallow people demonstrate their worthlessness in public gives you a smug feeling of accomplishment.
The Therac-25 error is quite famous. That's why it blows my mind that there is another lethal radiation therapy software error listed. You'd think that people would have learned from the first mistake.
I've been tracking video card reviews for years. Typically the performance of a GPU doesn't change much subsequent to its introduction. What would be the value in doing a subsequent review?
Most of the top review sites keep a generation or two of older chips in their comparisons. Some even compile regular guides on value and midstream priced parts. If you can't find information on cheaper video cards then you aren't looking hard enough.
So Indian movie production companies are an insider industry controlled by several families. Many crappy movies are produced, but the profits from just a few hits sustain those companies. And many of the so-called new talents are actually related to higher powers in the movie industry.
Luxury! Back when I was a student we couldn't afford Top Ramen, we had to settle for Maruchan. And only in bulk, with just two flavors, Brown and Radioactive Green - although the packaging mistakenly labeled them beef and chicken. I knew someone who was so extravagant he could afford Kung Fu noodles, even though they were a pricey 75 cents apiece.
Science rarely "proves" anything nontrivial. You are correct in your assertion that science cannot determine "The Truth". By studying the history of the application of the scientific method one can see that the scientific view of the world has changed drastically, especially in the last several hundred years. Religion doesn't have to worry about observations, so determining "The Truth" is possible. Or whatever "The Truth" was 2000 years ago anyway.
However I question your assertion regarding anti-anything-else. Let us take the example of evolution "vs." ID (intelligent design). The two theories do not necessarily conflict. Science has nothing to say about the origin of evolution. And only a fundamentalist interprets the Bible literally, which means that there is room in ID for evolution as a mechanism of implementation. However the proponents of ID have taken the fundamentalist view of things by insisting that ID is an alternative explanation, rather than a supplemental one. This is a directly confrontational stance.
Wow, talk about a rant coming out of left field. Neither Office nor MSN offer anything remotely "innovative". The executives responsible for these products are not contributing to the growth of the company. Why would anyone worry about their departure? MS would have something to worry about if this happened to one of their Longhorn-related development teams.
All the PDA's I've seen are too big to comfortably carry in my pocket. I am NOT going down the bat belt path - they are uncomfortable, and I'm a geek, not a dork. If I can't take it with me everywhere then it's useless.
The Nokia E70 looks like a truly killer smartphone. It has a full keyboard, 352 x 416 screen, 3G AND WLAN network connectivity, a 2 megapixel camera, and miniSD card compatibility. And it's no bigger than my current phone.
Arizona has a lot of gall just ignoring DST; same for those counties in Indiana. I wrote scheduling software at my last job, and it was a real pain trying to keep everyone happy when it came to time. One of the first quirks I learned was Arizona. Did you know Australia extended DST for a week by government decree when they last hosted the Olympics? Try accounting for that in software. Our corporate datebook software had very primitive timezone support. We used Java for our actual application, and the timezone code was a work in progress. We did end up changing some of our code to just use the timezone of the location being scheduled because our infrastructure wasn't reliable enough to handle more sophisticated logic.
AMD and Intel have introduced multicore chips to the consumer market. It won't be too long now before there are millions of home computers with SMP class processing power. I suspect we'll start seeing games that take advantage of multiple processors by the end of next year. Whether they scale past 2 cores is an interesting question.
Unfortunately there are plenty of corporations that will take your suggestion to stop having ideas at heart. Why bother thinking up something new if you can't get paid for it?
Playing poker isn't illegal. I believe playing poker for money isn't illegal either, in an informal setting; I'm not sure about that though. Cheating while playing a game is crummy, but not illegal. Cheating while playing a game for money is fraud, and is most definitely illegal.
Player killing is legal in an online game, and cheating is crummy but also legal. However if cheating leads to financial gain then it is fraud, and is illegal. I wonder if this chain of logic can be used to discourage cheating in online games?
Who paid $199 for an NES? That was the mega-package with the robot that Nintendo put together to sneak their game console into stores that remembered The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. I bet most people bought the cheaper bundle; I know my NES console cost $80.
Journalism is an excellent analogy to simulations. The goal of both is to deliver a perfect copy of the actual event or situation. It is impossible to achieve this goal since both simulations and journalistic endeavors (such as newspaper articles and TV segments) must contain less info than the original event or situation. Reporters bias their output by deciding which facts are most important to their audience. Simulators bias their output similarly, by weighting factors that seem most relevant to their audience. Objectivity is only important if its appearance is a factor to the audience.
I had the "privilege" of using Sun 3/50's in our computer lab in school. We probably even had those damn laser mice. The Sun 3/50 was dog slow, even in black and white. Those early laser mice tracked poorly, and the special metal mousepads you had to use weren't very comfortable. The Sparcstations really blew the earlier Sun machines out of the water.
I don't have fond memories of the Sparcstation 2 either, mainly because by the time I was using one the Ultra 1 had already been released. Now that was workstation.
As usual no one bothered to RTFA and immediately started taking swings at a variety of straw men. Obviously Peter Jackson's contract wasn't that bad; he got $200 million, which isn't exactly chump change. The problem is that New Line is one of these media conglomerates, and gave itself all kinds of sweetheart deals on licensing, merchandising, etc. This reduced the total reported profits because NL didn't get competitive prices for these deals. This is a growing problem with vertically integrated media conglomerates.
I don't think Peter Jackson really needs the extra money. But this particular accounting trick does sound pretty slimy. If precedent is set then the media conglomerates might think twice before they screw less well known directors out of their fair share.
AMD has limited production facilities. These "fabs" produce all of their semiconductor products. The FX57 is currently the fastest chip they produce, and typically yields on faster processors are lower than slower chips. AMD already has commitments to clients to supply certain quantities of slower chips as well. Additionally AMD doesn't want to devalue their slower processors by flooding the market with the fastest chips. These factors all boil down to the single fact that AMD can only produce a limited number of FX57 processors.
The basic laws of supply and demand dictate that there is an inverse relationship between price and demand. If we assume that AMD has a fixed supply then their goal is to set a price that will match demand to supply as closely as possible. If the price is too high then some of their chips will go unsold, and AMD will either have to stockpile or cut the price. If the price is too low then AMD will lose profit and have a backlog of buyers.
I'm not saying the members of our military aren't smart, skilled, or able. They just don't need the same level of training as many civilian professionals.
Mexico, Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq never seriously threatened American security. We fought wars there for economic gain or political posturing.
Every war hawk brings up the Revolution and the World Wars to justify a strong military. I don't see those types of conflicts in today's world.
Businesses make a profit by keeping their customers happy. There are literally millions of potential customers out there that are not using IE. Implementing new web sites that work in most browsers isn't rocket science. And most companies end up redoing their websites every couple of years anyway. So why bother hacking up Firefox when a little advocacy could take care of the problem?
Slashdot Mirror
We have both Newtonian and Einsteinian math to solve problems in gravity, but we still wave our hands and mumble "gravitons" and "gravity waves" when we discuss the vector of this mysterious force. Obviously gravity is a tougher nut than the other physical forces that we have encountered. It didn't help that Newton actually devote a lot of time to the occult field of alchemy.
I think that education does overemphasize the "facts" of science and history at the expense of the process. I had a few classes in college that really opened my eyes to the holes in our knowledge of these fields. But we won't fix these holes by just waving our hands and mumbling "intelligent design". In fact ID is the EXACT equivalent of saying "we don't know how this works". That's not an explanation; it's a placeholder for further work. Our educational system just needs to work harder on saying "we're never really sure how everything works, but here's our best explanation so far."
Every time something unbelievably stupid happens in Kansas, or Texas, or Florida, I feel a little happier that I live in California. It's kind of like watching talk shows. Watching stupid, shallow people demonstrate their worthlessness in public gives you a smug feeling of accomplishment.
The Therac-25 error is quite famous. That's why it blows my mind that there is another lethal radiation therapy software error listed. You'd think that people would have learned from the first mistake.
I've been tracking video card reviews for years. Typically the performance of a GPU doesn't change much subsequent to its introduction. What would be the value in doing a subsequent review?
Most of the top review sites keep a generation or two of older chips in their comparisons. Some even compile regular guides on value and midstream priced parts. If you can't find information on cheaper video cards then you aren't looking hard enough.
So Indian movie production companies are an insider industry controlled by several families. Many crappy movies are produced, but the profits from just a few hits sustain those companies. And many of the so-called new talents are actually related to higher powers in the movie industry.
How is this different from Hollywoood?
Luxury! Back when I was a student we couldn't afford Top Ramen, we had to settle for Maruchan. And only in bulk, with just two flavors, Brown and Radioactive Green - although the packaging mistakenly labeled them beef and chicken. I knew someone who was so extravagant he could afford Kung Fu noodles, even though they were a pricey 75 cents apiece.
Science rarely "proves" anything nontrivial. You are correct in your assertion that science cannot determine "The Truth". By studying the history of the application of the scientific method one can see that the scientific view of the world has changed drastically, especially in the last several hundred years. Religion doesn't have to worry about observations, so determining "The Truth" is possible. Or whatever "The Truth" was 2000 years ago anyway.
However I question your assertion regarding anti-anything-else. Let us take the example of evolution "vs." ID (intelligent design). The two theories do not necessarily conflict. Science has nothing to say about the origin of evolution. And only a fundamentalist interprets the Bible literally, which means that there is room in ID for evolution as a mechanism of implementation. However the proponents of ID have taken the fundamentalist view of things by insisting that ID is an alternative explanation, rather than a supplemental one. This is a directly confrontational stance.
Wow, talk about a rant coming out of left field. Neither Office nor MSN offer anything remotely "innovative". The executives responsible for these products are not contributing to the growth of the company. Why would anyone worry about their departure? MS would have something to worry about if this happened to one of their Longhorn-related development teams.
All the PDA's I've seen are too big to comfortably carry in my pocket. I am NOT going down the bat belt path - they are uncomfortable, and I'm a geek, not a dork. If I can't take it with me everywhere then it's useless.
The Nokia E70 looks like a truly killer smartphone. It has a full keyboard, 352 x 416 screen, 3G AND WLAN network connectivity, a 2 megapixel camera, and miniSD card compatibility. And it's no bigger than my current phone.
Arizona has a lot of gall just ignoring DST; same for those counties in Indiana. I wrote scheduling software at my last job, and it was a real pain trying to keep everyone happy when it came to time. One of the first quirks I learned was Arizona. Did you know Australia extended DST for a week by government decree when they last hosted the Olympics? Try accounting for that in software. Our corporate datebook software had very primitive timezone support. We used Java for our actual application, and the timezone code was a work in progress. We did end up changing some of our code to just use the timezone of the location being scheduled because our infrastructure wasn't reliable enough to handle more sophisticated logic.
If Homer is a pig and drinks bacon, then isn't he in danger of drinking himself to death?
AMD and Intel have introduced multicore chips to the consumer market. It won't be too long now before there are millions of home computers with SMP class processing power. I suspect we'll start seeing games that take advantage of multiple processors by the end of next year. Whether they scale past 2 cores is an interesting question.
Unfortunately there are plenty of corporations that will take your suggestion to stop having ideas at heart. Why bother thinking up something new if you can't get paid for it?
Playing poker isn't illegal. I believe playing poker for money isn't illegal either, in an informal setting; I'm not sure about that though. Cheating while playing a game is crummy, but not illegal. Cheating while playing a game for money is fraud, and is most definitely illegal.
Player killing is legal in an online game, and cheating is crummy but also legal. However if cheating leads to financial gain then it is fraud, and is illegal. I wonder if this chain of logic can be used to discourage cheating in online games?
The article doesn't mention the hidden backdoor command sequence to immediately gain root access:
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A
Who paid $199 for an NES? That was the mega-package with the robot that Nintendo put together to sneak their game console into stores that remembered The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. I bet most people bought the cheaper bundle; I know my NES console cost $80.
Journalism is an excellent analogy to simulations. The goal of both is to deliver a perfect copy of the actual event or situation. It is impossible to achieve this goal since both simulations and journalistic endeavors (such as newspaper articles and TV segments) must contain less info than the original event or situation. Reporters bias their output by deciding which facts are most important to their audience. Simulators bias their output similarly, by weighting factors that seem most relevant to their audience. Objectivity is only important if its appearance is a factor to the audience.
There's nothing gnu about his anger.
There is a real musician named Jah Wobble. I doubt any fictional name is going to beat that.
I had the "privilege" of using Sun 3/50's in our computer lab in school. We probably even had those damn laser mice. The Sun 3/50 was dog slow, even in black and white. Those early laser mice tracked poorly, and the special metal mousepads you had to use weren't very comfortable. The Sparcstations really blew the earlier Sun machines out of the water.
I don't have fond memories of the Sparcstation 2 either, mainly because by the time I was using one the Ultra 1 had already been released. Now that was workstation.
Force Choke is a DARK power, and I'm not going down that path!
As usual no one bothered to RTFA and immediately started taking swings at a variety of straw men. Obviously Peter Jackson's contract wasn't that bad; he got $200 million, which isn't exactly chump change. The problem is that New Line is one of these media conglomerates, and gave itself all kinds of sweetheart deals on licensing, merchandising, etc. This reduced the total reported profits because NL didn't get competitive prices for these deals. This is a growing problem with vertically integrated media conglomerates.
I don't think Peter Jackson really needs the extra money. But this particular accounting trick does sound pretty slimy. If precedent is set then the media conglomerates might think twice before they screw less well known directors out of their fair share.
AMD has limited production facilities. These "fabs" produce all of their semiconductor products. The FX57 is currently the fastest chip they produce, and typically yields on faster processors are lower than slower chips. AMD already has commitments to clients to supply certain quantities of slower chips as well. Additionally AMD doesn't want to devalue their slower processors by flooding the market with the fastest chips. These factors all boil down to the single fact that AMD can only produce a limited number of FX57 processors.
The basic laws of supply and demand dictate that there is an inverse relationship between price and demand. If we assume that AMD has a fixed supply then their goal is to set a price that will match demand to supply as closely as possible. If the price is too high then some of their chips will go unsold, and AMD will either have to stockpile or cut the price. If the price is too low then AMD will lose profit and have a backlog of buyers.
I'm not saying the members of our military aren't smart, skilled, or able. They just don't need the same level of training as many civilian professionals.
Mexico, Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq never seriously threatened American security. We fought wars there for economic gain or political posturing.
Every war hawk brings up the Revolution and the World Wars to justify a strong military. I don't see those types of conflicts in today's world.
Businesses make a profit by keeping their customers happy. There are literally millions of potential customers out there that are not using IE. Implementing new web sites that work in most browsers isn't rocket science. And most companies end up redoing their websites every couple of years anyway. So why bother hacking up Firefox when a little advocacy could take care of the problem?