I went to college to do a CS degree about 15 years ago, and like you, I was into the technology but dreaded the threat of mathematics. I saw it as a necessary evil, gritted my teeth and got on with it.
What I found astonished me. The mathematics work I was being asked to do was actually pretty interesting, and could be applied directly to programming. The terrible, terrible calculus problems I'd struggled with in high school all went out of the window. Instead we were studying things like Graph Theory, basically a whole field of study hiding behind the travelling salesman problem; Infinite Set Theory, talking and learning about infinity is always cool especially in a logically rigourous fashion rather than just drunk in the pub; Group Theory, officially the study of symmetry which sounds boring and trivial (it's not) and it crops up all the time when studying algorithms.
None of this is relevant to my work now, because I eventually became a manager and the only computer-based work these days is e-mail and spreadsheets. Such is life.
I'd certainly recommend it. Pirsig tackles this bit early on, though his particular example is the "Law of Gravity" where we've been using "life", it's fundamentally the same argument and it's a theme that gets developed throughout the book. You need to be willing to pull apart your usual ways of thinking to get to the core of what he's saying, and this is one of the tools he deploys to help get you there.
Life obviously exist since we're having this debate - I doubt we could have it if we weren't alive.
You're confusing concepts with their labels.
He's not saying there's no such thing as life, which is easily falsified. He's saying the concept "life" is arbitrary, and that the boundaries of that concept are arbitrary: there are seven specific conditions you need to meet to be officially alive. Why those particular 7? What if we changed the list to 6 or 8?
Having dreamt up a classification called "alive" it's easy to demonstrate there are things that meet it. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that the classification exists outside our collective heads. Because we dreamt it up it.
Let's say we change the definition of "life", adding requirement number 8 "wings". Things that are "alive" have "wings". Therefore, you and I are not "alive" because we no longer meet the definition. BUT (this is where you got confused) we carry on exactly as we were, still reading Slashdot, still eating, moving around, excreting, etc, because we're only talking about labels, and not reality.
See Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you're struggling. It took me ages to get it.
I hope you people are willing to exercise your 2nd amendment rights in order to protect the 1st. But for some reason, I doubt it.
You are right to doubt it. When freedom dies history teaches us the mob are usually cheering the charismatic dictator that killed it. This is why the 2nd Amendment is irrelevant, only the incompetent would-be dictator would allow a revolution to form.
Government in the US, especially the federal government, has been expanding its powers steadily and continuously since the civil war.
Civil War?? Since the Articles of Confederation (1777 edition), more like.
Prior to that, the previous system of Government (the British) also had a record for trying to expand their powers, though not as successfully. I think some civil disturbance resulted, but I'm not sure of the details.
Now consider the effect of a huge population that for the most part has very little selective pressure.
OK, for sake of argument, only. My whole point was that civilisation still applies it's own selective pressures. They are different pressures than when only 50% of your kids make to 5 years old, but they are still there.
Logically, will it be faster or much slower than the isolated population? Of course it will be slower - without selective pressure, the changes will tend to average out.
This is a common misconception. If changes "averaged out", evolving complex, intellegent beings would be impossible. The children of the first individual to acquire a beneficial adaptation would get 50% of the benefit, the grandchildren would only get 25%. This was expressed in a, rather racist, counter-proposal to Darwin when his work was originally published. Imagine a white man shipwrecked amongst a black native population, they said. While his children would possibly be brown, his grand-children and great-grandchildren would certainly be black. The white man's more advanced features would quickly be lost, and therefore more advanced men can't arise by accident from primitive populations, they said.
They were wrong because genetic information is binary, you either have the gene or you don't. If a new mutation introduces a benefit, say it is particularly attractive to potential mates, then the recipient will have more offspring, and so will his descendants that get the gene. The new gene will sweep through the entire population without these survival pressures that you put so much store by even entering the equation. The level of civilasation that population possesses is irrelevent.
In other words, it's a dynamic equalibrium - changes come and go, but overall we stay the same. (Of course it's not *quite* equilibrium, but pretty damn close).
This is just ignorance. If you'd bothered to RTFA you would see it's all about recent changes in the human genome. Some of which, like Europeans evolving lighter skin to let in the vitamin D, are well-understood. They also talk about a brain-affecting gene SNTG1 which has been observed spreading rapidly in all the major populations they studied but no one know why or what benefit it offers.
Evolution involves the death of weaker individuals before they can breed. With soap (the yardstick of civilisation), surgery, rescue helicopters, dentistry, wheelchairs etc, weaker individuals aren't killed off so easily before they can breed.
This is a common misconception, evolution is not really about killing off the "weak" before they breed. Evolution involves two factors: changes to the genetic structure over time, and spreading those new genes as far as possible in the environment they inhabit.
The rate at which new changes are introduced is called the mutation rate and is independent of any level of civilisation we have acheived so far.
The second factor is spreading those new genes as far possible, that they be successful. But what determines a "successful" gene? The environment it finds itself in. When you move from a primitive environment to a civilised one the rules of the game change. A genetic hindrance in one environment may be neutral or beneficial in the other. For example, in it's original West African environment the gene that causes sickle-cell anemia is a beneficial one, offering a level of protection against malaria. In the people with this gene that were moved to the US, it just became a hindrance. In the absence of regular malaria epidemics the incidence of the sickle-cell gene has been observed slowly falling.
Favoured genes are not just about being stronger. Some genetic traits are highly successful because they are more sexually appealing to potential mates. The peacock's tail and the blue-eyed, blonde-haired northern European are both examples of this.
So evolution is alive and well, even for civilised beings. The mutation rate is constant and we are still adapting to our (civilised) environment.
How do I figure out either of those 2 strings that you mentioned?... I can very easily "google" the name of the video cards (I did), and follow the links for the driver, if I need to install it in any flavor of Windows.
Snap!
I can do that with any flavour of Linux. I've never used Gentoo, but I can find out those commands by typing "Gentoo Nvidia" into Google. I'm a Ubuntu user myself, so when I installed my new video card last weekend I searched on "ubuntu nvidia", and within minutes I had the particular sequence of steps for Ubuntu. As it was basically all package installation, 3 or 4 new ones, I could have done through the GUI if that was my preference.
I tend not to use Google for looking for new software, searching the packages available for download by APT nearly always meets my needs. I could have got to the same place with an "apt-cache search nvidia" and installing the likely candidates. (Or alternatively, searching on "nvidia" in Synaptic since you seem to think real computer users are scared of the keyboard).
There are still some frustrating things about Linux, but this really isn't one of them any longer.
This is what we call the tyranny of the majority, sometimes described as 3 wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Thomas Jefferson once said: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
You shouldn't feel bad because you think they are wrong and are prepared to back that conviction up with action (by running an anonymous proxy server to the benefit of that minority, in this case).
I work in the technical division of the largest financial groups in the world. Our upper management are big Linux fans. It can leap buildings in a single bound, write award winning operas, and is a cure for the common cold. Linux is to be used for everything except the desktop.
Consequently, our highly reliable RISC hardware has been ripped out at impressive speed, to be replaced by racks and racks of IBM blade servers. These things are basically vertically-aligned laptops and crash more or less continuously. Remember the old gag about how their were no French-made computers because they hadn't figured out how to make them leak oil? These ones do, from the hard-drive ball bearings.
In reality, the argument in favour was commoditisation. Replace the expensive, high-end hardware and software with off-the-shelf components that are nearly as good. This was sold to the management by IBM consultants. This is important, because it gives the management someone to pass the blame to. IBM can be blamed if the strategy is seen to fail.
Down the line I see the EU using regulation to hurt US businesses, and the US doing the same in retaliation. This is only going to lead to a pissing contest where everyone loses.
Down the line? What bubble are you living in? The EU and the US have these sort of pissing contests all the time. It rarely makes the front page, but it's the single most defining trait of the transatlantic relationship. Pick up any copy of the Economist to see what the latest one is. Typing "EU US trade disputes" into Google returns 4.2 million hits.
The same way as all courts enforce payment. They will confiscate however much of the offender's property they can get their hands on, and possibly sling their asses in jail for contempt of court if they continue to refuse.
Master Foo Discourses on the Graphical User Interface
One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful.
"The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward," he scoffed. "Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface."
Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master's hand.
"I don't understand you!" said the programmer.
Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window.
"What are you trying to tell me?" asked the programmer.
Master Foo pointed at the programmer's head. Then he pointed at a rock.
"Why can't you make yourself clear?" demanded the programmer.
Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan.
As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him.
At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment.
Re:Sensationalist Journalism?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
I wasn't going to post this, but since this thread is pedant's corner today what the hell:
The OP was not saying that ~100% of people with AIDS die. He was saying ~100% of people with AIDS die of AIDS.
Unless they die of something else first. People with AIDS can still be hit by buses, shot, blown-up, stabbed, and all kinds of funky things that don't involve a compromised immune system.
What contributed to somebody's death is not as clear cut as you might think. That's why people with HIV have such a hard time getting life insurance, you can't just get a standard policy with an AIDS-exclusion clause on it. If, for example, they fall down the stairs and die, did their weakened state contribute to the fall?
Nor was there ever a "theory of the flat Earth" (in fact, no observations would support that conjecture, so it could never become a theory).
If you're an ancient Greek ship captain in 1000 BC, the current theory is a flat Earth surrounded by a rotating-sphere of fixed-stars. The observations support it and it's an entirely usable theory. You can use that knowledge to navigate around the Mediterranean. Like Newtonian mechanics, it's accurate enough for 99% of real-world cases. For our captain, a round-Earth concept is an unnecessary complication.
Consider this: how often do you navigate with a map in preference to a globe? That's an implicit acceptance that the ground beneath your feet is flat like the map, and not curved. The flat map is accurate enough, right? Your own observations are supporting a flat Earth model. You aren't observing to a high enough accuracy to detect the error.
The old flat Earth idea is a useful way to demonstrate how incorrect theories can still be supported by the evidence, and even used in real world applications.
Jingoistic? So the desire to protect America is extremely nationalistic?
Teaching geography via the Global War on Terror is certainly paranoid, I'm not sure it's jingoistic, exactly. It's no better than the demonization of commies in the 1950s.
He's a rule of thumb for you on the whole "terrorism" thing. Ask yourself this: If I change the word "terrorist" to "communist" and pretend it's happening during the fifties, do I laugh at the poor paranoid fools?
Let's try it.
"The story so far: You are an undercover CIA agent, in the 1950s, claiming to work for the fictitious "Brewster Jennings & Associates" company. You were just awoken at three in the morning by a phone call from The Chief telling you to report to your office immediately. From what he told you it looks like a communist attack is set for today and you are the country's last and only hope. Click 'Start New Game'. It's time to save America."
As Terry Pratchett said: Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of different directions.
Free Software gets pulled in all kinds of different directions, this is a natural consequence of the "Free" bit. We need to recognise this as a strength and stop trying to imitate the Tyrant and the Despot. Attempts to imitate them are probably doomed, anyway.
Yes, TCP/IP is an American invention, but so what? It's just a well-known protocol that everyone can agree on.
The most widespread (human) language is English. It's particularly well used as a third language between non-English speakers who would not otherwise understand each other. It's the human equivalent of TCP/IP. Should the UK government have a special role in human transactions just because the English language originated there? Of course not. The English language outgrown it's UK-only roots, just like TCP/IP has outgrown the US DoD.
The USA created the Internet as we know it today, it is their creation, from their tax payers money.
Don't be silly. The Internet "as we know it today" consists of cables laid by the world's telecoms companies; routers and servers installed by the world's ISPs; it was paid for by shareholders and customers from all over the world.
The world doesn't want the US government to have so much power over the network we've built together. It's time for them to step aside.
Deriving new words from acronyms is a 20th century invention. Far from being a neologism, fuck is actually one of several old Germanic words describing bodily functions that have been part of English since the very beginning.
You yourself have applied selective pressure in favor of whatever it was that attracted you to him/her, regardless of what the nature of the attraction was or whether you can even spell it out.
So the ancient Egyption invention of beer was a major evolutionary milestone?
One server? I've seen an email infrastructure that was designed for 1.5 million people and with scalability in mind. The authentication sub-system alone was a 6 server LDAP cluster.
Slashdot Mirror
I went to college to do a CS degree about 15 years ago, and like you, I was into the technology but dreaded the threat of mathematics. I saw it as a necessary evil, gritted my teeth and got on with it.
What I found astonished me. The mathematics work I was being asked to do was actually pretty interesting, and could be applied directly to programming. The terrible, terrible calculus problems I'd struggled with in high school all went out of the window. Instead we were studying things like Graph Theory, basically a whole field of study hiding behind the travelling salesman problem; Infinite Set Theory, talking and learning about infinity is always cool especially in a logically rigourous fashion rather than just drunk in the pub; Group Theory, officially the study of symmetry which sounds boring and trivial (it's not) and it crops up all the time when studying algorithms.
None of this is relevant to my work now, because I eventually became a manager and the only computer-based work these days is e-mail and spreadsheets. Such is life.
I'd certainly recommend it. Pirsig tackles this bit early on, though his particular example is the "Law of Gravity" where we've been using "life", it's fundamentally the same argument and it's a theme that gets developed throughout the book. You need to be willing to pull apart your usual ways of thinking to get to the core of what he's saying, and this is one of the tools he deploys to help get you there.
Life obviously exist since we're having this debate - I doubt we could have it if we weren't alive.
You're confusing concepts with their labels.
He's not saying there's no such thing as life, which is easily falsified. He's saying the concept "life" is arbitrary, and that the boundaries of that concept are arbitrary: there are seven specific conditions you need to meet to be officially alive. Why those particular 7? What if we changed the list to 6 or 8?
Having dreamt up a classification called "alive" it's easy to demonstrate there are things that meet it. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that the classification exists outside our collective heads. Because we dreamt it up it.
Let's say we change the definition of "life", adding requirement number 8 "wings". Things that are "alive" have "wings". Therefore, you and I are not "alive" because we no longer meet the definition. BUT (this is where you got confused) we carry on exactly as we were, still reading Slashdot, still eating, moving around, excreting, etc, because we're only talking about labels, and not reality.
See Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you're struggling. It took me ages to get it.
.... like most other european countries you are paying hefty taxes
Dude, that's Austria
I hope you people are willing to exercise your 2nd amendment rights in order to protect the 1st. But for some reason, I doubt it.
You are right to doubt it. When freedom dies history teaches us the mob are usually cheering the charismatic dictator that killed it. This is why the 2nd Amendment is irrelevant, only the incompetent would-be dictator would allow a revolution to form.
Government in the US, especially the federal government, has been expanding its powers steadily and continuously since the civil war.
Civil War?? Since the Articles of Confederation (1777 edition), more like.
Prior to that, the previous system of Government (the British) also had a record for trying to expand their powers, though not as successfully. I think some civil disturbance resulted, but I'm not sure of the details.
Now consider the effect of a huge population that for the most part has very little selective pressure.
OK, for sake of argument, only. My whole point was that civilisation still applies it's own selective pressures. They are different pressures than when only 50% of your kids make to 5 years old, but they are still there.
Logically, will it be faster or much slower than the isolated population? Of course it will be slower - without selective pressure, the changes will tend to average out.
This is a common misconception. If changes "averaged out", evolving complex, intellegent beings would be impossible. The children of the first individual to acquire a beneficial adaptation would get 50% of the benefit, the grandchildren would only get 25%. This was expressed in a, rather racist, counter-proposal to Darwin when his work was originally published. Imagine a white man shipwrecked amongst a black native population, they said. While his children would possibly be brown, his grand-children and great-grandchildren would certainly be black. The white man's more advanced features would quickly be lost, and therefore more advanced men can't arise by accident from primitive populations, they said.
They were wrong because genetic information is binary, you either have the gene or you don't. If a new mutation introduces a benefit, say it is particularly attractive to potential mates, then the recipient will have more offspring, and so will his descendants that get the gene. The new gene will sweep through the entire population without these survival pressures that you put so much store by even entering the equation. The level of civilasation that population possesses is irrelevent.
In other words, it's a dynamic equalibrium - changes come and go, but overall we stay the same. (Of course it's not *quite* equilibrium, but pretty damn close).
This is just ignorance. If you'd bothered to RTFA you would see it's all about recent changes in the human genome. Some of which, like Europeans evolving lighter skin to let in the vitamin D, are well-understood. They also talk about a brain-affecting gene SNTG1 which has been observed spreading rapidly in all the major populations they studied but no one know why or what benefit it offers.
Evolution involves the death of weaker individuals before they can breed. With soap (the yardstick of civilisation), surgery, rescue helicopters, dentistry, wheelchairs etc, weaker individuals aren't killed off so easily before they can breed.
This is a common misconception, evolution is not really about killing off the "weak" before they breed. Evolution involves two factors: changes to the genetic structure over time, and spreading those new genes as far as possible in the environment they inhabit.
The rate at which new changes are introduced is called the mutation rate and is independent of any level of civilisation we have acheived so far.
The second factor is spreading those new genes as far possible, that they be successful. But what determines a "successful" gene? The environment it finds itself in. When you move from a primitive environment to a civilised one the rules of the game change. A genetic hindrance in one environment may be neutral or beneficial in the other. For example, in it's original West African environment the gene that causes sickle-cell anemia is a beneficial one, offering a level of protection against malaria. In the people with this gene that were moved to the US, it just became a hindrance. In the absence of regular malaria epidemics the incidence of the sickle-cell gene has been observed slowly falling.
Favoured genes are not just about being stronger. Some genetic traits are highly successful because they are more sexually appealing to potential mates. The peacock's tail and the blue-eyed, blonde-haired northern European are both examples of this.
So evolution is alive and well, even for civilised beings. The mutation rate is constant and we are still adapting to our (civilised) environment.
How do I figure out either of those 2 strings that you mentioned? ...
I can very easily "google" the name of the video cards (I did), and follow the links for the driver, if I need to install it in any flavor of Windows.
Snap!
I can do that with any flavour of Linux. I've never used Gentoo, but I can find out those commands by typing "Gentoo Nvidia" into Google. I'm a Ubuntu user myself, so when I installed my new video card last weekend I searched on "ubuntu nvidia", and within minutes I had the particular sequence of steps for Ubuntu. As it was basically all package installation, 3 or 4 new ones, I could have done through the GUI if that was my preference.
I tend not to use Google for looking for new software, searching the packages available for download by APT nearly always meets my needs. I could have got to the same place with an "apt-cache search nvidia" and installing the likely candidates. (Or alternatively, searching on "nvidia" in Synaptic since you seem to think real computer users are scared of the keyboard).
There are still some frustrating things about Linux, but this really isn't one of them any longer.
most Chinese support censorship
This is what we call the tyranny of the majority, sometimes described as 3 wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Thomas Jefferson once said: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
You shouldn't feel bad because you think they are wrong and are prepared to back that conviction up with action (by running an anonymous proxy server to the benefit of that minority, in this case).
I work in the technical division of the largest financial groups in the world. Our upper management are big Linux fans. It can leap buildings in a single bound, write award winning operas, and is a cure for the common cold. Linux is to be used for everything except the desktop.
Consequently, our highly reliable RISC hardware has been ripped out at impressive speed, to be replaced by racks and racks of IBM blade servers. These things are basically vertically-aligned laptops and crash more or less continuously. Remember the old gag about how their were no French-made computers because they hadn't figured out how to make them leak oil? These ones do, from the hard-drive ball bearings.
In reality, the argument in favour was commoditisation. Replace the expensive, high-end hardware and software with off-the-shelf components that are nearly as good. This was sold to the management by IBM consultants. This is important, because it gives the management someone to pass the blame to. IBM can be blamed if the strategy is seen to fail.
Down the line I see the EU using regulation to hurt US businesses, and the US doing the same in retaliation. This is only going to lead to a pissing contest where everyone loses.
Down the line? What bubble are you living in? The EU and the US have these sort of pissing contests all the time. It rarely makes the front page, but it's the single most defining trait of the transatlantic relationship. Pick up any copy of the Economist to see what the latest one is. Typing "EU US trade disputes" into Google returns 4.2 million hits.
Just how can the EU make Microsoft pay this?
The same way as all courts enforce payment. They will confiscate however much of the offender's property they can get their hands on, and possibly sling their asses in jail for contempt of court if they continue to refuse.
Master Foo Discourses on the Graphical User Interface
One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful.
"The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward," he scoffed. "Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface."
Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master's hand.
"I don't understand you!" said the programmer.
Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window.
"What are you trying to tell me?" asked the programmer.
Master Foo pointed at the programmer's head. Then he pointed at a rock.
"Why can't you make yourself clear?" demanded the programmer.
Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan.
As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him.
At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment.
Courtesy of the Rootless Root
I wasn't going to post this, but since this thread is pedant's corner today what the hell:
The OP was not saying that ~100% of people with AIDS die. He was saying ~100% of people with AIDS die of AIDS.
Unless they die of something else first. People with AIDS can still be hit by buses, shot, blown-up, stabbed, and all kinds of funky things that don't involve a compromised immune system.
What contributed to somebody's death is not as clear cut as you might think. That's why people with HIV have such a hard time getting life insurance, you can't just get a standard policy with an AIDS-exclusion clause on it. If, for example, they fall down the stairs and die, did their weakened state contribute to the fall?
Nor was there ever a "theory of the flat Earth" (in fact, no observations would support that conjecture, so it could never become a theory).
If you're an ancient Greek ship captain in 1000 BC, the current theory is a flat Earth surrounded by a rotating-sphere of fixed-stars. The observations support it and it's an entirely usable theory. You can use that knowledge to navigate around the Mediterranean. Like Newtonian mechanics, it's accurate enough for 99% of real-world cases. For our captain, a round-Earth concept is an unnecessary complication.
Consider this: how often do you navigate with a map in preference to a globe? That's an implicit acceptance that the ground beneath your feet is flat like the map, and not curved. The flat map is accurate enough, right? Your own observations are supporting a flat Earth model. You aren't observing to a high enough accuracy to detect the error.
The old flat Earth idea is a useful way to demonstrate how incorrect theories can still be supported by the evidence, and even used in real world applications.
Jingoistic? So the desire to protect America is extremely nationalistic?
Teaching geography via the Global War on Terror is certainly paranoid, I'm not sure it's jingoistic, exactly. It's no better than the demonization of commies in the 1950s.
He's a rule of thumb for you on the whole "terrorism" thing. Ask yourself this: If I change the word "terrorist" to "communist" and pretend it's happening during the fifties, do I laugh at the poor paranoid fools?
Let's try it.
"The story so far: You are an undercover CIA agent, in the 1950s, claiming to work for the fictitious "Brewster Jennings & Associates" company. You were just awoken at three in the morning by a phone call from The Chief telling you to report to your office immediately. From what he told you it looks like a communist attack is set for today and you are the country's last and only hope. Click 'Start New Game'. It's time to save America."
Yup, out loud.
As Terry Pratchett said: Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of different directions.
Free Software gets pulled in all kinds of different directions, this is a natural consequence of the "Free" bit. We need to recognise this as a strength and stop trying to imitate the Tyrant and the Despot. Attempts to imitate them are probably doomed, anyway.
Yes, TCP/IP is an American invention, but so what? It's just a well-known protocol that everyone can agree on.
The most widespread (human) language is English. It's particularly well used as a third language between non-English speakers who would not otherwise understand each other. It's the human equivalent of TCP/IP. Should the UK government have a special role in human transactions just because the English language originated there? Of course not. The English language outgrown it's UK-only roots, just like TCP/IP has outgrown the US DoD.
The USA created the Internet as we know it today, it is their creation, from their tax payers money.
Don't be silly. The Internet "as we know it today" consists of cables laid by the world's telecoms companies; routers and servers installed by the world's ISPs; it was paid for by shareholders and customers from all over the world.
The world doesn't want the US government to have so much power over the network we've built together. It's time for them to step aside.
Having said that I don't think CS is a science.
... check. Political science ... check. Domestic science ... check. Social science ... check. Rocket science ... er, damn.
Yes, any subject with 'Science' in the title isn't. I forget where I heard it, but it is a useful rule of thumb.
Computer science
Deriving new words from acronyms is a 20th century invention. Far from being a neologism, fuck is actually one of several old Germanic words describing bodily functions that have been part of English since the very beginning.
You yourself have applied selective pressure in favor of whatever it was that attracted you to him/her, regardless of what the nature of the attraction was or whether you can even spell it out.
So the ancient Egyption invention of beer was a major evolutionary milestone?
One server? I've seen an email infrastructure that was designed for 1.5 million people and with scalability in mind. The authentication sub-system alone was a 6 server LDAP cluster.
I can't speak for anybody else, but I'm unlikely to play a game I have to reboot my computer for.
Same here. My PC is theoretically dual boot, so that I can still play Windows games. In practice, I find I rarely bother.