At least Kelvin is nearly the same as celsius. x Kelvin == x - 273 Celsius. They only differ the point of zero degrees. For daily use celsius is kind of nice: water freezes at 0 degrees, water boils at 100 degrees. I've no idea what that is in Fahrenheit (I'm too lazy to look up the formulas). The problem with the anglosaxon system measuring stuff is that you always have these strange formulas to remember when you have to convert to the metric system. If you doing any serious calculations for instance in physics you don't want those messy formulas around.
It's funny that this discussion shows up here. The reason that America and the UK never switched to the metric system was that it was invented by the french (i.e. "not invented here" syndrome). I see the same happening here again with digital TV. You've got a standard that's known to be inferior to the european standard yet still it is pushed. My guess is that america won't drop it and that it either never really becomes a succes or it you will be stuck with it for the next thirty or so years
BTW. I think the european standard only exists on paper. At least I haven't seen digital tvs in the shop yet and I'm not aware of any digital broadcastings either.
Ultimately both standards will fail I think. It will be just a few years before most of us have fast enough internet connection to allow for streamed video. On the long term this will be the only option. If I take holland as an example, 9x% of our country has cable TV. Most cable companies are in the process of starting up cable internet services (available in the larger cities already). It will be just a few years before most dutch people have access to high speed internet connections. When that happens. Companies will start offering video on demand. From there its just a small step to abandon conventional TV all together.
There you have this strange soul issue again (now it is defined as subjective intelligence)
To deal with your first question: - the matter is not inert since it can be manipulated? - what exactly is a personal god? You actually make an intresting modification to a religios view here: universe creates god instead of the other way around.
Then question nr. 2 - science has not defined individual soul - hence it is not scientifically proven that there is such a thing as a soul - hence your question has no scientific meaning. Your real question is how can I make my concept of a soul consistent with reality. Judging from your first question you choose to adapt the definition of a soul. I choose to abandon the concept altogether.
If you took a computer that didn't work because the monitor was broken and the power supply blew bla bla
Interstingly you are already comparing cells to something mechanical (a computer). But that's beside the point. Of course a single string of DNA won't do very much. You'll need a host cell. A host cell contains all sorts of stuff ranging from energy producing units to enzyme destructing units (i forgot the exact biological terms).
If you insist on the computer analogy that is like creating a cpu and plugging it into a dead computer and reusing the periferals.
Second, this is not creation like God did. In order for God to have created life, He had to be outside the universe, because if He was in the universe He would be living and someone would have had to create Him, and if THAT someone was in the universe, he would have had to be created by someone... ad infinitum.
So there's something outside this univers. Where, show me. But seriously, this is all crap of course. I if we would have lived 500 years ago you probably would have claimed hE would be looking down on us through those little holes in the sky we otherwise refer to as stars. Since were living now you just claim hE is outside the universe but to Me that seems to fall in the same category of ignorant claims.
"This is all wrong. (Score:) by ForceOfWill on Sunday September 12, @06:21AM EDT (#) (User Info) First of all, this guy didn't do anything yet, and even if he did what his plan says, it wouldn't be creation of any sort. The article says his method calls for the use of dead cell parts. If you took a computer that didn't work because the monitor was broken and the power supply blew, and replaced the monitor and power supply, you didn't create it. Real creation is something from nothing or from things naturally occurring in an environment without life (as someone said, from dust).
Second, this is not creation like God did. In order for God to have created life, He had to be outside the universe, because if He was in the universe He would be living and someone would have had to create Him, and if THAT someone was in the universe, he would have had to be created by someone... ad infinitum.
Anyway, creation doesn't work when God is inside the universe. The guy in this article is definitely inside the universe, so what he's doing is not creation, it's merely perpetuation.
"Just my $/50", everything seems to be money related in the US
They're probably just satisfying their own curiosity. All this trouble to figure out how the universe is constructed and how live evolved seems a little bit overkill to disprove the halucinations of ancient goat keepers.
Yes, not all of the Bible is independently verifiable
In fact none of the relevant stuff has been confirmed: - guys walking over water - virgin girls getting pregnant, yeah right (did anybody ever gave maria a thorough vaginal inspection) - seas parting, this would be a major geological event, where are the traces. - The entire planet got flouded, duh.
OK some of the facts have a place in history. This only proves that the guys who wrote the bible mixed reality with fiction.
Of course there are inconsistencies. That's what you get when you ix reality with fiction.
So indeed you cannot prove god existence with the bible. In fact I have yet to see a consistent god proof. I think some logicians actually proved (within their logical system) that this is impossible to prove/disprove. (sorry don't have a reference)
What you personally feel is of course irrelevant for this discussion. I hope you feel happy with whatever you are believing.
, why did evolution seem to have been contained in a straight line up untill bacteria
Who says it did. It's kind of hard to find DNA of species that got extinct billions of years ago. So its difficult to prove/disprove.
as that first 80% shared is extremely complex
I'm not a biologist but something tells me this is BS. Humans have way more genes and DNA than bacteria (this is the reason biologists started documenting the DNA of simpler organisms first).
Your assumptions all seem to be incorrect. I won't bother attacking the conclusions. I leave that as an excersise to the reader.
Technically we'll soon be able to it ourselves: find a nice planet. Engineer a nice sample of bacteria. Release them on the planet and leave them alone to do their stuff. Evolution will do the rest.
Of course the suggestion that that is how we were created is slightly rediculous but not impossible.
What makes you think you (or anyone else) is important enough to survive the mortal body. The only thing that is going to survive is molecules. They're simply reconfigured into new stuff.
All this bullshit about souls (if you insist on using that word please define it in a proper way). I think the soul is just the reflection of the egocentric wish of people to live forever. Some people just can't live with the idea that they will cease to exist some day.
People who are to lazy to fill in the forms for registration on this website should be the last to complain about moderation issues and preferences. It's not like rob is going to abuse the minimal information you leave behind.
Registering has all sorts of advantages: - you can say you are a slashdot member - you can quantify your karma - you get to pick your own combination of slashboxes - you can filter AC articles and flaimbait
There's probably more but this is the most important stuff from my point of view.
BTW I don't use filtering. I sort of enjoy reading lame posts. Hope you enjoyed mine:)
Not necessarily. The messages could also be inlined with the regular messages. After all its on the same site. I just don't see the point of having to browse two pages. Slashboxes are nice (I use 'em a lot) but I prefer a full featured website.
There is a Latex to HTML converter, which works resonable, and there is also a tex version that generates output in pdf format.... which seems the standard for web publishing.
- latex2html is not exactly what I mean when I say web publishing. I must admit it is some time I worked with it but last time I saw it it sucked. - pdf is nice for distributing printable documents (as an alternative for postsctipt)
The edit/compile cycle alows one to generate tex documents with other programs.
Sure you can. You could also generate HTML or XML or any other fileformat.
I'm not saying TeX isn't useful. It's very useful. It always got the job done for me. But lets face it web publishing from tex is not something you want. It's nice to have these tools if you have a pile of TeX files but otherwise stay awy from it.
What I am saying is that in most cases there are better alternatives. Unless of course you happen to like hacking awy at your text.
All depends on the kind of workprocessing. It is ideal for scientific word processing.
There's certainly something to say for that. Bibtex for instance is a nice thing. If you produce a lot of math stuff. TeX is probably the best alternative. For the rest of the world it isn't.
It would be nice to be able to select that you wish the YRO articles on the slashdot page in the preferences. Otherwise I would have to check two pages. Users that are not so interested in this topic could still filter the YRO messages from their page while news junkies like myself have everything in one place.
I have used TeX, Wordperfect, Word and I have been using Framemaker since about a year.
I don't agree with you discarding WYSIWYG as useless. I do agree with you that the way some wordprocessors implement this is highly annoying. This actually caused me to switch from word to Framemaker. I abbandoned TeX long before that. TeX is a nice set of typographic algoritms (arguably unriveled by other word processors) but I never understood why it has to be compiled. If it could be interpreted instead, TeX could be used in a WYSIWYG program and we wouldn't be discussing this. Sure a large LaTeX document takes some time to compile but most of the time seems to be IO time (reading files). If I'm wrong please point out where the error is. The main reason I and many other people don't like to program our text is that human beings are much better at processing graphical information than textual information. If there's a layout error in a printed/displayed page of text most people will be able to spot it in an eyeflash. Finding the same error in a LaTex file is a lot more troublesome. Basically when I was writing LaTeX documents I found myself executing a compile/xdiv/debug cycle (write some Latex code, see if it does what I expect it to do/ fix the errors), thus emulating WYSIWYG.
As I said I'm a reasonably happy Framemaker user now. I absolutely hate the userinterface but at least its better than having to edit the file directly and it manages to things more consistently than word does. It combines the structure you have with LaTex with the graphic feedback of a WYSIWYG system. Also the frames metaphore is a really nice way of modeling a document.
In case you are wondering, I'm a Ph D. student and I write scientific articles (i.e. higly structured documents with very tight layout requirements). Since I also have to submit those articles, I usually have to conform to different layout guidelines. LaTeX is a nightmare if it comes to changing the layout unless you know how to work on a really low level with TeX. In Framemaker this is really easy.
Also importing/exporting in framemaker is really easy. Unfortunately TeX is not supported but then what commercial wordprocessor bother to support TeX anyway.
I don't think TeX will be around much longer. If it comes to structure, there is XML and SGML. TeX can't compete in this area. If it comes to layout TeX is still competitive but not that much. If it comes to interoperability it sucks. Basically the only useful output is postscript. It's not really suitable for online publishing (i.e. HTML) and I have not seem any usable input/output filters for wordprocessors.
Framemaker certainly does a nice job at all of these things and it's not the only DTP system out there that does so. I think TeX will probably be used for some time by mathematical people since they seem to be a little conservative when it comes to changing software. But the rest of the world has already moved on.
BTW. I don't hate TeX. I really appreciate the quality of its output. I just think the concept of having to edit/compile/debug is not very suitable for wordprocessing.
In holland and sweden (where I live now)most bank cards are equiped with embedded chips. One of the applications of it is as an electronic wallet. i.e. you go to a bank machine, withdraw some money wich is then put on the chip in the form of credits. Then you go to a shop and pay by sticking the card into a machine that subtracts some credits from the amount on the card. (this is not the same as paying with an ATM card since there's no communication with the bank at the moment you pay) you can also use the card to phone in a telephone cell. In addition to that insurance companies can store some information on the chip as well.
One of the reasons this has never really worked well in Holland is the fact that there are two groups of banks in holland, each pushing their own smartcard, each requiring a different machine in the shops and each offering slightly different functionality. It took nearly three years for them to figure out the card would never become popular unless they started cooperating (which is what they are doing since a few months).
As a consumer I think, the chip cards don't really offer much value. The whole concept of taking your card to a machine and adding credit has always seemed a little rediculous to me and I can pay in a shop using my ATM card or my credit card.
The reason that banks push it anyway is that a chipcard is probably cheaper for the banks: ATM cards require communication to verify whether there's enough money on your account and credit cards require some other administration to be done which makes both of them unsuitable for small purchases (from the banks point of view). What's also nice for banks is the marketing info they can collect from payments done with the chip card.
This bank seems to be pushing the card for webpayments. Unless they manage to convince all other banks that their particular cardformat should be used for online payment it won't work. The card only works if the ecommerce websites have the software to deal with these cards and I don't see that happen just because one bank is pushing a card.
A second problem is that you can't just stick the card into your floppy drive: you'll need a cardreader.
BTW. For the same reason (no standardization) I don't see biometrics becoming popular anytime soon.
So in order for this to work: - banks will have to agree on a cardformat (preferably international) - banks will have to provide their clients with cardreaders (also standardized) for free because noone will be interested in buying one - there will have to be some added value for the card users (discounts?) - there will have to be some added value for ecommerce sites in order to get support for the card there
Basically this card doesn't fullfill the requirements listed above so its a guaranteed failure.
Of course the mindshift here is realizing that creating a word document or a spreadsheet is nothing else but entering data. I.e. there's no fundamental reason why any local processing would be needed to do so. SUN describes their terminal merely as pixel drawing device. I.e. all processing is done at the serverside. This device will probably be good enough for data entering type applications. I wonder whether performance will be good enough for graphics applications (quake?). Probably not unless they manage to squeeze 30+ fps through a 100 Mbit connection.
can you say MIME. That's what netscape and internet explorer use to implement what you're suggesting. You basically specify for each MIME type which plugin should take care of it.
The fact that you have to go through 'obscure procedures' to get them to use your applications only means that your applications are not smart enough that to figure out they should register themself for the mime type they handle.
BTW. I don't think this system is perfect. I think registering MIME types should be done on the OS level so that all applications can profit from it. A browser could of course still use its own list to override the default OS settings.
What most linux users who don't like this automatic launching of plugins seem to suggest to dump all registering all together and let the user figure out which pogram to use whenever a MIME type piece of data is encountered. I don't think that would be very satisfying for most users.
I agree. Netscape/mozilla is targeting a large group of people. Larger than us slashdotters. Normal users expect their browsers to offer any functionality they'll ever need because they are not skilled enough to select, download and install a custom application (they just install what their provider gives them).
Also Mozilla is extremely flexible. What I heard about this chat client is that it's all XUL and javascript (i.e. not a single line of c except for some networking code which is soon to be replaced).
Not only is it nice for mozilla to have a chat client, this also displays the powerful features mozilla has to offer. A full fledged chatclient implented with mozilla's scripting and XUL features.
If netscape/AOL have any understanding of the market they are operating in, they will make sure that a large number of plugins (flash, vrml, realaudio, java, quicktime, ftp, etc.) is available for netscape the day it is released. If they fail to do so the upgrade won't be compelling enough for most users to dump internet explorer.
This is a problem for which several solutions are available. The most obvious one using suns plugin. But you can also restrict yourself by not using the latest features. Most JDK 1.1 features for instance are available on most browsers by now.
But anyway, you seem to be under the impression that Java is only suitable for applet programming. I don't really know why I still bother to reply to such ignorant postings but here it comes: Java is used mainly on the serverside these days (and is pretty succesful). If you want a flashy website you can use.... tada: Macromedia flash.
But anyway lets talk about linux going the same way as Java. I really hope so. Java seems to be catching on quite nicely. The hangover of the initial hype is slowly fading away. People are starting to accept that Java indeed is a good solution in certain areas (ecommerce servers, webservers, etc.). Also Java performance has come a long way and will only get better in the next few years.
For Linux the same will apply. Right now a lot of people are flocking to linux as sheep. Some of them will inevitably be shocked by its complexity. Give it a few years and the right tools to easily use, administer and install linux will have been developed.
Do like me, keep a username password available for this type of sites. I'm registered for more sites that I can remember and I always use the same user/passwd combination (except the important ones:)). I also have a special email account (yahoo) for catching spam which I give whenever an email address is required. (I sometimes also use bla@bla.com if I'm really annoyed)
what I heard about the savage 2000 (http://rivaextreme.com/index.shtml#10), that's a pretty sweet chip too. Anyway at the following link you will find a story about why the new generation 3d cards won't live up to the hype http://fullon3d.com/opinionated/
Slashdot Mirror
At least Kelvin is nearly the same as celsius.
x Kelvin == x - 273 Celsius. They only differ the point of zero degrees. For daily use celsius is kind of nice: water freezes at 0 degrees, water boils at 100 degrees. I've no idea what that is in Fahrenheit (I'm too lazy to look up the formulas).
The problem with the anglosaxon system measuring stuff is that you always have these strange formulas to remember when you have to convert to the metric system. If you doing any serious calculations for instance in physics you don't want those messy formulas around.
It's funny that this discussion shows up here. The reason that America and the UK never switched to the metric system was that it was invented by the french (i.e. "not invented here" syndrome). I see the same happening here again with digital TV. You've got a standard that's known to be inferior to the european standard yet still it is pushed. My guess is that america won't drop it and that it either never really becomes a succes or it you will be stuck with it for the next thirty or so years
BTW. I think the european standard only exists on paper. At least I haven't seen digital tvs in the shop yet and I'm not aware of any digital broadcastings either.
Ultimately both standards will fail I think. It will be just a few years before most of us have fast enough internet connection to allow for streamed video. On the long term this will be the only option. If I take holland as an example, 9x% of our country has cable TV. Most cable companies are in the process of starting up cable internet services (available in the larger cities already). It will be just a few years before most dutch people have access to high speed internet connections. When that happens. Companies will start offering video on demand. From there its just a small step to abandon conventional TV all together.
I think your wrong but then again I'm not a biologist. So please post a reference to relevant literature when you make such claims.
There you have this strange soul issue again (now it is defined as subjective intelligence)
To deal with your first question:
- the matter is not inert since it can be manipulated?
- what exactly is a personal god? You actually make an intresting modification to a religios view here: universe creates god instead of the other way around.
Then question nr. 2
- science has not defined individual soul
- hence it is not scientifically proven that there is such a thing as a soul
- hence your question has no scientific meaning. Your real question is how can I make my concept of a soul consistent with reality. Judging from your first question you choose to adapt the definition of a soul. I choose to abandon the concept altogether.
So my PC has a soul. (it runs on electricity which is a form of energy). I'm glad you explained that to me.
so that's about a 100 years. After that nobody will remember you unless you did something so significant people remembered it.
first: who moderated this nutcase up
second: lets disect this posting
If you took a computer that didn't work because the monitor was broken and the power supply blew bla bla
Interstingly you are already comparing cells to something mechanical (a computer). But that's beside the point. Of course a single string of DNA won't do very much. You'll need a host cell. A host cell contains all sorts of stuff ranging from energy producing units to enzyme destructing units (i forgot the exact biological terms).
If you insist on the computer analogy that is like creating a cpu and plugging it into a dead computer and reusing the periferals.
Second, this is not creation like God did. In order for God to have created life, He had to be outside the universe, because if He was in the universe He would be living and someone would have had to create Him, and if THAT someone was in the universe, he would have had to be created by someone... ad infinitum.
So there's something outside this univers. Where, show me. But seriously, this is all crap of course. I if we would have lived 500 years ago you probably would have claimed hE would be looking down on us through those little holes in the sky we otherwise refer to as stars. Since were living now you just claim hE is outside the universe but to Me that seems to fall in the same category of ignorant claims.
"This is all wrong. (Score:)
by ForceOfWill on Sunday September 12, @06:21AM EDT (#)
(User Info)
First of all, this guy didn't do anything yet, and even if he did what his plan says, it wouldn't be creation of any sort. The article says his method calls for the use of dead cell parts. If you took a computer that didn't work because the monitor was broken and the power supply blew, and replaced the monitor and power supply, you didn't create it. Real creation is something from nothing or from things naturally occurring in an environment without life (as someone said, from dust).
Second, this is not creation like God did. In order for God to have created life, He had to be outside the universe, because if He was in the universe He would be living and someone would have had to create Him, and if THAT someone was in the universe, he would have had to be created by someone... ad infinitum.
Anyway, creation doesn't work when God is inside the universe. The guy in this article is definitely inside the universe, so what he's doing is not creation, it's merely perpetuation.
"Just my $/50", everything seems to be money related in the US
Those who try to take God out of the picture ...
They're probably just satisfying their own curiosity. All this trouble to figure out how the universe is constructed and how live evolved seems a little bit overkill to disprove the halucinations of ancient goat keepers.
Yes, not all of the Bible is independently verifiable
In fact none of the relevant stuff has been confirmed:
- guys walking over water
- virgin girls getting pregnant, yeah right (did anybody ever gave maria a thorough vaginal inspection)
- seas parting, this would be a major geological event, where are the traces.
- The entire planet got flouded, duh.
OK some of the facts have a place in history. This only proves that the guys who wrote the bible mixed reality with fiction.
Of course there are inconsistencies. That's what you get when you ix reality with fiction.
So indeed you cannot prove god existence with the bible. In fact I have yet to see a consistent god proof. I think some logicians actually proved (within their logical system) that this is impossible to prove/disprove. (sorry don't have a reference)
What you personally feel is of course irrelevant for this discussion. I hope you feel happy with whatever you are believing.
, why did evolution seem to have been contained in a straight line up untill bacteria
Who says it did. It's kind of hard to find DNA of species that got extinct billions of years ago. So its difficult to prove/disprove.
as that first 80% shared is extremely complex
I'm not a biologist but something tells me this is BS. Humans have way more genes and DNA than bacteria (this is the reason biologists started documenting the DNA of simpler organisms first).
Your assumptions all seem to be incorrect. I won't bother attacking the conclusions. I leave that as an excersise to the reader.
Technically we'll soon be able to it ourselves: find a nice planet. Engineer a nice sample of bacteria. Release them on the planet and leave them alone to do their stuff. Evolution will do the rest.
Of course the suggestion that that is how we were created is slightly rediculous but not impossible.
dream on.
What makes you think you (or anyone else) is important enough to survive the mortal body. The only thing that is going to survive is molecules. They're simply reconfigured into new stuff.
All this bullshit about souls (if you insist on using that word please define it in a proper way). I think the soul is just the reflection of the egocentric wish of people to live forever. Some people just can't live with the idea that they will cease to exist some day.
People who are to lazy to fill in the forms for registration on this website should be the last to complain about moderation issues and preferences. It's not like rob is going to abuse the minimal information you leave behind.
:)
Registering has all sorts of advantages:
- you can say you are a slashdot member
- you can quantify your karma
- you get to pick your own combination of slashboxes
- you can filter AC articles and flaimbait
There's probably more but this is the most important stuff from my point of view.
BTW I don't use filtering. I sort of enjoy reading lame posts. Hope you enjoyed mine
Not necessarily. The messages could also be inlined with the regular messages. After all its on the same site. I just don't see the point of having to browse two pages. Slashboxes are nice (I use 'em a lot) but I prefer a full featured website.
There is a Latex to HTML converter, which works resonable, and there is also a tex version that generates output in pdf format.... which seems the standard for web publishing.
- latex2html is not exactly what I mean when I say web publishing. I must admit it is some time I worked with it but last time I saw it it sucked.
- pdf is nice for distributing printable documents (as an alternative for postsctipt)
The edit/compile cycle alows one to generate tex documents with other programs.
Sure you can. You could also generate HTML or XML or any other fileformat.
I'm not saying TeX isn't useful. It's very useful. It always got the job done for me. But lets face it web publishing from tex is not something you want. It's nice to have these tools if you have a pile of TeX files but otherwise stay awy from it.
What I am saying is that in most cases there are better alternatives. Unless of course you happen to like hacking awy at your text.
All depends on the kind of workprocessing. It is ideal for scientific word processing.
There's certainly something to say for that. Bibtex for instance is a nice thing. If you produce a lot of math stuff. TeX is probably the best alternative. For the rest of the world it isn't.
It would be nice to be able to select that you wish the YRO articles on the slashdot page in the preferences. Otherwise I would have to check two pages. Users that are not so interested in this topic could still filter the YRO messages from their page while news junkies like myself have everything in one place.
I have used TeX, Wordperfect, Word and I have been using Framemaker since about a year.
I don't agree with you discarding WYSIWYG as useless. I do agree with you that the way some wordprocessors implement this is highly annoying. This actually caused me to switch from word to Framemaker. I abbandoned TeX long before that. TeX is a nice set of typographic algoritms (arguably unriveled by other word processors) but I never understood why it has to be compiled. If it could be interpreted instead, TeX could be used in a WYSIWYG program and we wouldn't be discussing this. Sure a large LaTeX document takes some time to compile but most of the time seems to be IO time (reading files). If I'm wrong please point out where the error is.
The main reason I and many other people don't like to program our text is that human beings are much better at processing graphical information than textual information. If there's a layout error in a printed/displayed page of text most people will be able to spot it in an eyeflash. Finding the same error in a LaTex file is a lot more troublesome.
Basically when I was writing LaTeX documents I found myself executing a compile/xdiv/debug cycle (write some Latex code, see if it does what I expect it to do/ fix the errors), thus emulating WYSIWYG.
As I said I'm a reasonably happy Framemaker user now. I absolutely hate the userinterface but at least its better than having to edit the file directly and it manages to things more consistently than word does. It combines the structure you have with LaTex with the graphic feedback of a WYSIWYG system. Also the frames metaphore is a really nice way of modeling a document.
In case you are wondering, I'm a Ph D. student and I write scientific articles (i.e. higly structured documents with very tight layout requirements). Since I also have to submit those articles, I usually have to conform to different layout guidelines. LaTeX is a nightmare if it comes to changing the layout unless you know how to work on a really low level with TeX. In Framemaker this is really easy.
Also importing/exporting in framemaker is really easy. Unfortunately TeX is not supported but then what commercial wordprocessor bother to support TeX anyway.
I don't think TeX will be around much longer. If it comes to structure, there is XML and SGML. TeX can't compete in this area. If it comes to layout TeX is still competitive but not that much. If it comes to interoperability it sucks. Basically the only useful output is postscript. It's not really suitable for online publishing (i.e. HTML) and I have not seem any usable input/output filters for wordprocessors.
Framemaker certainly does a nice job at all of these things and it's not the only DTP system out there that does so. I think TeX will probably be used for some time by mathematical people since they seem to be a little conservative when it comes to changing software. But the rest of the world has already moved on.
BTW. I don't hate TeX. I really appreciate the quality of its output. I just think the concept of having to edit/compile/debug is not very suitable for wordprocessing.
the guy was wrong about the poet too: Piet Hein is definately not Danish but Dutch
Anyway this is a minor detail, it only annoys me because I'm dutch.
In holland and sweden (where I live now)most bank cards are equiped with embedded chips. One of the applications of it is as an electronic wallet.
i.e. you go to a bank machine, withdraw some money wich is then put on the chip in the form of credits. Then you go to a shop and pay by sticking the card into a machine that subtracts some credits from the amount on the card. (this is not the same as paying with an ATM card since there's no communication with the bank at the moment you pay) you can also use the card to phone in a telephone cell. In addition to that insurance companies can store some information on the chip as well.
One of the reasons this has never really worked well in Holland is the fact that there are two groups of banks in holland, each pushing their own smartcard, each requiring a different machine in the shops and each offering slightly different functionality. It took nearly three years for them to figure out the card would never become popular unless they started cooperating (which is what they are doing since a few months).
As a consumer I think, the chip cards don't really offer much value. The whole concept of taking your card to a machine and adding credit has always seemed a little rediculous to me and I can pay in a shop using my ATM card or my credit card.
The reason that banks push it anyway is that a chipcard is probably cheaper for the banks: ATM cards require communication to verify whether there's enough money on your account and credit cards require some other administration to be done which makes both of them unsuitable for small purchases (from the banks point of view). What's also nice for banks is the marketing info they can collect from payments done with the chip card.
This bank seems to be pushing the card for webpayments. Unless they manage to convince all other banks that their particular cardformat should be used for online payment it won't work. The card only works if the ecommerce websites have the software to deal with these cards and I don't see that happen just because one bank is pushing a card.
A second problem is that you can't just stick the card into your floppy drive: you'll need a cardreader.
BTW. For the same reason (no standardization) I don't see biometrics becoming popular anytime soon.
So in order for this to work:
- banks will have to agree on a cardformat (preferably international)
- banks will have to provide their clients with cardreaders (also standardized) for free because noone will be interested in buying one
- there will have to be some added value for the card users (discounts?)
- there will have to be some added value for ecommerce sites in order to get support for the card there
Basically this card doesn't fullfill the requirements listed above so its a guaranteed failure.
Evolution is reproducable. Hell its all about reproduction
Of course the mindshift here is realizing that creating a word document or a spreadsheet is nothing else but entering data. I.e. there's no fundamental reason why any local processing would be needed to do so.
SUN describes their terminal merely as pixel drawing device. I.e. all processing is done at the serverside. This device will probably be good enough for data entering type applications. I wonder whether performance will be good enough for graphics applications (quake?). Probably not unless they manage to squeeze 30+ fps through a 100 Mbit connection.
can you say MIME. That's what netscape and internet explorer use to implement what you're suggesting. You basically specify for each MIME type which plugin should take care of it.
The fact that you have to go through 'obscure procedures' to get them to use your applications only means that your applications are not smart enough that to figure out they should register themself for the mime type they handle.
BTW. I don't think this system is perfect. I think registering MIME types should be done on the OS level so that all applications can profit from it. A browser could of course still use its own list to override the default OS settings.
What most linux users who don't like this automatic launching of plugins seem to suggest to dump all registering all together and let the user figure out which pogram to use whenever a MIME type piece of data is encountered. I don't think that would be very satisfying for most users.
I agree. Netscape/mozilla is targeting a large group of people. Larger than us slashdotters. Normal users expect their browsers to offer any functionality they'll ever need because they are not skilled enough to select, download and install a custom application (they just install what their provider gives them).
Also Mozilla is extremely flexible. What I heard about this chat client is that it's all XUL and javascript (i.e. not a single line of c except for some networking code which is soon to be replaced).
Not only is it nice for mozilla to have a chat client, this also displays the powerful features mozilla has to offer. A full fledged chatclient implented with mozilla's scripting and XUL features.
If netscape/AOL have any understanding of the market they are operating in, they will make sure that a large number of plugins (flash, vrml, realaudio, java, quicktime, ftp, etc.) is available for netscape the day it is released. If they fail to do so the upgrade won't be compelling enough for most users to dump internet explorer.
This is a problem for which several solutions are available. The most obvious one using suns plugin. But you can also restrict yourself by not using the latest features. Most JDK 1.1 features for instance are available on most browsers by now.
.... tada: Macromedia flash.
But anyway, you seem to be under the impression that Java is only suitable for applet programming. I don't really know why I still bother to reply to such ignorant postings but here it comes: Java is used mainly on the serverside these days (and is pretty succesful). If you want a flashy website you can use
But anyway lets talk about linux going the same way as Java. I really hope so. Java seems to be catching on quite nicely. The hangover of the initial hype is slowly fading away. People are starting to accept that Java indeed is a good solution in certain areas (ecommerce servers, webservers, etc.). Also Java performance has come a long way and will only get better in the next few years.
For Linux the same will apply. Right now a lot of people are flocking to linux as sheep. Some of them will inevitably be shocked by its complexity. Give it a few years and the right tools to easily use, administer and install linux will have been developed.
Greetings, Jilles
Do like me, keep a username password available for this type of sites. I'm registered for more sites that I can remember and I always use the same user/passwd combination (except the important ones :)). I also have a special email account (yahoo) for catching spam which I give whenever an email address is required. (I sometimes also use bla@bla.com if I'm really annoyed)
what I heard about the savage 2000 (http://rivaextreme.com/index.shtml#10), that's a pretty sweet chip too. Anyway at the following link you will find a story about why the new generation 3d cards won't live up to the hype
http://fullon3d.com/opinionated/