Retard did you Read The Fine Article? This ruling was with respect to the Cobb County Board of Education, the body in charge of the PUBLIC, GOVERNMENT FUNDED, schools in Cobb County, GA.
Your theory would have humans being evolved from monkeys. Even worse, God made humans evolve from monkeys. If you examine the creationists arguments, they mostly come down to NOT WANTING TO BE RELATED TO MONKEYS.
If you can come up with a theory that doesn not involve monkeys maybe you'll have a chance at kicking creationists out of the way.
When you follow existing scientific theories down to the bottom, you get to the beginning of the Universe. The current main theory for the beginning of the Universe is the "Big Bang". Before the Big Bang science is stuck. Why the Big Bang occured is no longer physics, but meta-physics. This is why you'll hear people like Stephen Hawking talking about seeing into "the mind of God" when they are talking about really fundamental physics.
The difference between "intelligent design" and "evolution" is that "intelligent design" assumes a dumb-ass god who is not smart enough to have created all of the Universe and all of the things in it by starting from something as simple as the Big Bang. Instead, you want a god who's really just an old guy with a beard who pokes around and doesn't have any more imagination than you do. Oh, and you REALLY, REALLY don't want to be related to monkeys.
Consider the following sentence:
The universe is so complex that it could not have been created without intelligent design.
Now, is God more or less complex than the Universe? If more so, substitute God for "the universe" in that sentence and tell me why it's not true. Here, I'll do it for you:
God is so complex that it could not have been created without intelligent design.
If God is less complex, then what kind of God is that? Intelligent design simply pushes the problem one step further away because they want to hear the word "God" and they don't want to be related to monkeys.
The first post mentioned fractal compression algorithms which would be a different lossy algorithm than the one JPEG uses. This is a lossless algorithm designed to further compress JPEG's compressed with JPEG's lossy algorithm. It may or may not have prior art (prior art would have to cover the exact method used, not "compression").
If you read the whitepaper you will see that their algorithm is patent pending. The patent will almost certainly be granted, and, since no one else has done additional jpg compression before, it may even be deserved.
However, do we want to subject ourselves to a new tax on images? If they make it, we don't have to go! Just say NO to patented file formats!
Well, I don't consider myself a Firefox fanboy, but the last round of security holes in IE caused me to junk it finally and switch to Firefox. This is crap news for everyone who uses IE for any reason. If you haven't gotten off it yet and you're able to, you should!
When I was at Apple, if you were doing a demo in front of a large group and something crashed, the cry would come up from the audience "push-ups, push-ups!" with the presenter supposed to do push-ups on stage until the demo got fixed by the rest of the crew.
The best demo ever, though, was when the QuickTime crew was demoing some new stuff on Mac OS 7. They're going along, and suddenly the screen jumps into MacsBug (the old low-level debugger - this was what you got instead of the bomb screen if you had MacsBug installed). We all start yelling "push-ups, push-ups" and the presenter goes "Well, let's see if we can look a little deeper into this" and clicks the mouse. The MacsBug screen peels off and we get this video of guys banging around with hammers inside the machine. What a great setup.
Well, we (my wife and I) run a software business and we have a web server/online ordering system that runs 7/24 accepting orders, sending out registration codes, fulfilling info requests. We get an awful lot of business in the middle of the night that we wouldn't without an automated system.
Wow, this silly little comment elicited an amazing number of responses (though how we got on the subject of veggie burgers kind of confused me but they do seem to be popular). As usual moderation was NOT INSIGHTFUL - this was a JOKE. Well, it's more of an irony really, because there are a class of people with more money than brains (who my wife calls "stupid rich"), but I thought of the comment as "funny" not informative because if you haven't figured out that there are a lot of people with more money than brains you need a whole lot more clues than you're going to find on Slashdot.
(again, another Tom Clancy scenario in a book about using an ultra bright light to bring down an approaching airliner...just like in the same book a 747 pilot crashed his plane into the Capital building in Washington...but I digress......)
Maybe we should outlaw Tom Clancy books instead! Seems like they're just chock full of naughty ideas.
Well, if you can find some volunteers to write nice documentation for FOSS code, more power to you. The reason it doesn't get done is because it is *HARD*.
I'll give you an example. When I was working at a large hardware manufacturer I was responsible for design and development of a major subsystem. I produced a ~70 page design document for internal usage. This was well-suited for the use of kernel developers. I worked with our tech writing staff (who were excellent) and they produced a 700 page manual over the course of 3-4 months working from my design spec as well as several multi-hour sessions with myself. The end result was not meant for the casual user either, but for systems developers and documented architecture and API's, not the internal workings of the code. Producing a document that could explain the code to people without a programming background would have been a massive undertaking.
Well, the traditional answer is "If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand".
The code tells you everything you need to know AND has the virtue of actually being what the computer will do. Comments are there for the tricky sections and to give a high level overview of what is happening or the "why" of what is happening, rather than the "how".
The problem that you typically have when reading code isn't figuring out what each line is doing, but building up the mental overview of how all the pieces parts interrelate. It's like looking at all of the individual blueprints for the pieces of an engine and trying to then visualize how they all fit together in your head. For an engine there will be an overview blueprint with all the parts in relation to each other. That overview is what the documentation and comments are for. Unfortunately we do not have good ways of visualizing large, complex systems.
As far as for making commentary so that unskilled people can understand what the code is doing, what's the point? If you're not skilled enough to read the code you're probably not skilled enough to add anything useful to the code or any discussion about it.
If Japan had any alternate routes to take that were viable. We drove from Tokyo down to Kakegawa yesterday to spend New Year's with my in-laws. 3 cm of snow fell which resulted in the Tomei Expressway (a large north-south toll road and major transportation link) being closed. The trip normally takes about 2-3 hours with plenty of time for stopping to let the 2 year old run around.
We wound up spending 12 hours in the car yesterday. All of the traffic diverted from the Tomei onto local roads combined with the snow and snow-clueless drivers made one massive traffic jam. We were averaging 2-3 km/hr for a large part of the day.
All of the other roads described in that story as leading up to the larger ones were also conveyor belt type "automated roadways". A major point to the story was that these had replaced automobiles because they were so much more convenient. In fact, without them being these large, mechanized conveyances serviced/controlled by a group of engineers there was no story as you can't shut down a regular highway from a central point.
I live in Tokyo and I've got 24Mbps downstream DSL right now. However, I'm within 500 meters of the central office. The greater Tokyo area also account for about 30% of Japan's population in an incredibly densely populated area which makes it much easier to roll out service here.
Supposedly in the US, now that the Bells have reasserted themseles as monopoly players, speeds will start going up. I've seen many references to fiber to the home being on the horizon.
Face it, the American industry is unable to compete on the merits of its products alone. European and Japanese companies design better products, and achieve a much better build quality. Chinese companies cannot be beaten on costs, and their quality is rapidly improving, too.
Oh, bullshit. Who is moderating this as insightful? This is flamebait pure and simple.
The U.S. is competitive in any number of fields - especially software. The only major non-US software I can think of is SAP. Certainly Japan (where I live and work - running a software company) is not a major player in the software business. Most of the software used here is imported from the U.S. except for those packages that require extreme attention to the local environment - mainly accounting software.
As far as engineers leading companies, they don't have especially better track records than lawyers and MBA's when they do not well understand the other aspects of the business besides engineering. Many companies in Japan are having difficulties and much of it has been blamed of late on management that is too engineering-oriented and does not understand finance, sales and marketing well.
Well, when you pony up $20 million to build a cool new spaceship you can do whatever you like with it afterwards. Allen ponied up the money and it's HIS.
Slashdot Mirror
They were standing in line OUTSIDE the courthouse.
You're very clever young man, but I know the answer. It's turtles, all the way down!
Retard did you Read The Fine Article? This ruling was with respect to the Cobb County Board of Education, the body in charge of the PUBLIC, GOVERNMENT FUNDED, schools in Cobb County, GA.
Your theory would have humans being evolved from monkeys. Even worse, God made humans evolve from monkeys. If you examine the creationists arguments, they mostly come down to NOT WANTING TO BE RELATED TO MONKEYS.
If you can come up with a theory that doesn not involve monkeys maybe you'll have a chance at kicking creationists out of the way.
When you follow existing scientific theories down to the bottom, you get to the beginning of the Universe. The current main theory for the beginning of the Universe is the "Big Bang". Before the Big Bang science is stuck. Why the Big Bang occured is no longer physics, but meta-physics. This is why you'll hear people like Stephen Hawking talking about seeing into "the mind of God" when they are talking about really fundamental physics.
The difference between "intelligent design" and "evolution" is that "intelligent design" assumes a dumb-ass god who is not smart enough to have created all of the Universe and all of the things in it by starting from something as simple as the Big Bang. Instead, you want a god who's really just an old guy with a beard who pokes around and doesn't have any more imagination than you do. Oh, and you REALLY, REALLY don't want to be related to monkeys.
Consider the following sentence:
The universe is so complex that it could not have been created without intelligent design.
Now, is God more or less complex than the Universe? If more so, substitute God for "the universe" in that sentence and tell me why it's not true. Here, I'll do it for you:
God is so complex that it could not have been created without intelligent design.
If God is less complex, then what kind of God is that? Intelligent design simply pushes the problem one step further away because they want to hear the word "God" and they don't want to be related to monkeys.
I don't think the technique is what is at issue here...
It is if you want to talk about prior art and patentability.
The first post mentioned fractal compression algorithms which would be a different lossy algorithm than the one JPEG uses. This is a lossless algorithm designed to further compress JPEG's compressed with JPEG's lossy algorithm. It may or may not have prior art (prior art would have to cover the exact method used, not "compression").
If you read the whitepaper you will see that their algorithm is patent pending. The patent will almost certainly be granted, and, since no one else has done additional jpg compression before, it may even be deserved.
However, do we want to subject ourselves to a new tax on images? If they make it, we don't have to go! Just say NO to patented file formats!
Well, I don't consider myself a Firefox fanboy, but the last round of security holes in IE caused me to junk it finally and switch to Firefox. This is crap news for everyone who uses IE for any reason. If you haven't gotten off it yet and you're able to, you should!
When I was at Apple, if you were doing a demo in front of a large group and something crashed, the cry would come up from the audience "push-ups, push-ups!" with the presenter supposed to do push-ups on stage until the demo got fixed by the rest of the crew.
The best demo ever, though, was when the QuickTime crew was demoing some new stuff on Mac OS 7. They're going along, and suddenly the screen jumps into MacsBug (the old low-level debugger - this was what you got instead of the bomb screen if you had MacsBug installed). We all start yelling "push-ups, push-ups" and the presenter goes "Well, let's see if we can look a little deeper into this" and clicks the mouse. The MacsBug screen peels off and we get this video of guys banging around with hammers inside the machine. What a great setup.
How many robots do I own that do things for me?
Well, we (my wife and I) run a software business and we have a web server/online ordering system that runs 7/24 accepting orders, sending out registration codes, fulfilling info requests. We get an awful lot of business in the middle of the night that we wouldn't without an automated system.
Why would you want to work for a big corporation?
Wow, this silly little comment elicited an amazing number of responses (though how we got on the subject of veggie burgers kind of confused me but they do seem to be popular). As usual moderation was NOT INSIGHTFUL - this was a JOKE. Well, it's more of an irony really, because there are a class of people with more money than brains (who my wife calls "stupid rich"), but I thought of the comment as "funny" not informative because if you haven't figured out that there are a lot of people with more money than brains you need a whole lot more clues than you're going to find on Slashdot.
My wife does marketing and likes to label this class of people as "stupid rich".
(again, another Tom Clancy scenario in a book about using an ultra bright light to bring down an approaching airliner...just like in the same book a 747 pilot crashed his plane into the Capital building in Washington...but I digress......)
Maybe we should outlaw Tom Clancy books instead! Seems like they're just chock full of naughty ideas.
Strangely, AC is right. We're paying about $30/mo for 24Mbps here in Tokyo. In $/Mbps this is pretty close to Indian prices.
Well, if you can find some volunteers to write nice documentation for FOSS code, more power to you. The reason it doesn't get done is because it is *HARD*.
I'll give you an example. When I was working at a large hardware manufacturer I was responsible for design and development of a major subsystem. I produced a ~70 page design document for internal usage. This was well-suited for the use of kernel developers. I worked with our tech writing staff (who were excellent) and they produced a 700 page manual over the course of 3-4 months working from my design spec as well as several multi-hour sessions with myself. The end result was not meant for the casual user either, but for systems developers and documented architecture and API's, not the internal workings of the code. Producing a document that could explain the code to people without a programming background would have been a massive undertaking.
Well, the traditional answer is "If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand".
The code tells you everything you need to know AND has the virtue of actually being what the computer will do. Comments are there for the tricky sections and to give a high level overview of what is happening or the "why" of what is happening, rather than the "how".
The problem that you typically have when reading code isn't figuring out what each line is doing, but building up the mental overview of how all the pieces parts interrelate. It's like looking at all of the individual blueprints for the pieces of an engine and trying to then visualize how they all fit together in your head. For an engine there will be an overview blueprint with all the parts in relation to each other. That overview is what the documentation and comments are for. Unfortunately we do not have good ways of visualizing large, complex systems.
As far as for making commentary so that unskilled people can understand what the code is doing, what's the point? If you're not skilled enough to read the code you're probably not skilled enough to add anything useful to the code or any discussion about it.
If Japan had any alternate routes to take that were viable. We drove from Tokyo down to Kakegawa yesterday to spend New Year's with my in-laws. 3 cm of snow fell which resulted in the Tomei Expressway (a large north-south toll road and major transportation link) being closed. The trip normally takes about 2-3 hours with plenty of time for stopping to let the 2 year old run around.
We wound up spending 12 hours in the car yesterday. All of the traffic diverted from the Tomei onto local roads combined with the snow and snow-clueless drivers made one massive traffic jam. We were averaging 2-3 km/hr for a large part of the day.
All of the other roads described in that story as leading up to the larger ones were also conveyor belt type "automated roadways". A major point to the story was that these had replaced automobiles because they were so much more convenient. In fact, without them being these large, mechanized conveyances serviced/controlled by a group of engineers there was no story as you can't shut down a regular highway from a central point.
Ummmm...hello? Have you read "The Roads Must Roll"? The road Heinlein described was a suped-up conveyor belt, not a roadway.
Middle mouse button? What useful feature does that have in Windows.
Gives you a place to rest your middle finger when it is being shaken at the screen.
I live in Tokyo and I've got 24Mbps downstream DSL right now. However, I'm within 500 meters of the central office. The greater Tokyo area also account for about 30% of Japan's population in an incredibly densely populated area which makes it much easier to roll out service here.
Supposedly in the US, now that the Bells have reasserted themseles as monopoly players, speeds will start going up. I've seen many references to fiber to the home being on the horizon.
Face it, the American industry is unable to compete on the merits of its products alone. European and Japanese companies design better products, and achieve a much better build quality. Chinese companies cannot be beaten on costs, and their quality is rapidly improving, too.
Oh, bullshit. Who is moderating this as insightful? This is flamebait pure and simple.
The U.S. is competitive in any number of fields - especially software. The only major non-US software I can think of is SAP. Certainly Japan (where I live and work - running a software company) is not a major player in the software business. Most of the software used here is imported from the U.S. except for those packages that require extreme attention to the local environment - mainly accounting software.
As far as engineers leading companies, they don't have especially better track records than lawyers and MBA's when they do not well understand the other aspects of the business besides engineering. Many companies in Japan are having difficulties and much of it has been blamed of late on management that is too engineering-oriented and does not understand finance, sales and marketing well.
Well, when you pony up $20 million to build a cool new spaceship you can do whatever you like with it afterwards. Allen ponied up the money and it's HIS.
I want beer in self-cooling cans!