For example, I bought my car in NH, where there was no sales tax. When I registered it in MA, I had to pay the 5% sales tax.
My inlaws live in NH. They sold us their old car for way below blue book. But in order to register it in WA (where I lived at the time) I had to either prove that sales tax had been paid on it at one time (even by another purchaser) OR pay it myself at blue book value. When I explained that the original purchaser was in a no-sales-tax state, it cut no ice.
I realize that people pull "scams" (although I am less and less convinced of the immorality of this) to get around sales tax, but that doesn't mean that *I* should get screwed.
To put this post back on-topic: I would be in favor of a law that required every penny tax to have a clearly defined recipient (a department or project) AND to have a mandatory public vote every 5 years. I'm getting pretty sick of this entitlement crap: "Hey, we're losing dollars from sales tax!" "No kidding! You are also providing fewer services that need to be paid for: less land than a brick-n-mortar, less traffic, MORE USPS usage, etc". --
"Citibank.com Couldn't do my online banking without it. And maybe if you wanted to take advantage of the W3C DOM1 CORE STANDARD!"
Your logic and social skills are well-matched. You still have it backwards. When I ask "why do we need Java/Javascript" the answer is not "because sites use it". What NEED do these pieces of...software...fill?
"I'm the opposite; you need to raise your technology minimum. I'll never design/develop for the lowest common denominator.
Min vs. max makes no difference. Your argument boils down to "I think that the people I perceive as being the majority don't need X". Uh-huh--and if you think or perceive wrong or the majority is oppressive, then what happens?
For instance, if you and I were running a hardware company would you agree with me if I said "we don't need to develop drivers for Linux--who's gonna want to use our FrabJab under a hacker's OS?" --
"Explain to me how javascript is unnecessary, when it is the ONLY cross-browser/platform scripting language on the web.
You've got that the wrong way around. You are the one who needs to explain why we do need it. I keep mine turned off and I function just fine. Same for Flash, we've I've never even installed.
"ps. who's going to McDonalds.com on a 28.8 or going there at all, really..."
Ah, the old "we'll never need more than 640K" argument. You know what they say (or they will know): "Design for 'who's ever gonna' and the answer will be 'nobody'". --
I used to work in the IS dept at a bank in WA. They decided to setup a website so they could do what they called "online banking" (actually online form fillouts and by-mail and by-phone banking).
Because I was a "team leader" I was invited to ONE design session and I also participated in some of the in-house beta-testing (plus overhearing conversations among the real bigwigs).
I told them again and again that:
1) People hate "intro pages" that do nothing 2) Not everyone wants to spend time downloading graphics and java-crap--so make it optional at worst 3) The point of hyperlinks is to MOVE you around a site--not to popup new windows. I don't want the main page to be a "base station" from which other pages launch. 4) Not everyone has IE 5.x (and this was about 1.5 years ago--not everyone has IE 5.x NOW)--some people use Netscape (actually, they did finally listen to this one when USERS started calling in saying that they couldn't use the site)
But the marketing nitwit in charge of the web project (IS was only involved to purchase hardware and such) just stared blankly at all these objections. And the web people had no idea what I was talking about when I said "will I be able to view it in Lynx"? --
...not what we're looking for. We aren't looking for a statement that a human can't assert. We're looking for a statement that is true (a condition yours meets) but that a human can't know is true.
This maps to, for instance, number theory as follows: There are theorems that are true (that is, we know that they state things as they really are) but that can't be derived (i.e. proven) with the axioms and rules of number theory. This is true no matter what axioms you use: even if you add those theorems new ones are always "out there".
It's easy (well, relatively) to find these statements in other systems, but it may be logically impossible for US to find them in the human brain. Maybe aliens (or AI) will have to prove that Godel applies to us (and us to them).
Hey! That gives me an idea: Maybe "Godel's theorem applies to humans" is the human godel statement. --
The main flaw in Penrose's argument is that he gives no mechanism for the human brain to exploit quantum computation.
Of course, there are many other flaws, such as his assumption that humans aren't susceptible to "godelization". Sure we aren't susceptible to the SAME godel strings that number theory and turing machine are--that doesn't mean we are perfect.
Check out "Fabric of Reality" for a little more on this. There was another book I read recently that rebutted Penrose more effectively (and more thoroughly), unforunately I don't remember what it was. --
"It consists of artificial neurons that communicate with each other via synapses, or junctions where they connect, in a system that could lead to the development of computers that could perform perceptual tasks such as sight recognition."
That's absolutely incredible. Think of the power we now wield: We can transport scientists through time from the 1950's.
We are able to "carbon date" these scientists by means of the research they are doing. For instance, had they been attempting to determine the speed of the planet Earth through the "luminiferous ether" we would have known they came from before 1903. Had they stared in wonder at our televisions, we would have known they pre-dated the 1950's. However, their work on the then cutting-edge, now old-hat neural networks (implemented in hardware, no less) places them firmly in the 1950's. --
I'm not sure he's totally right about failures not being funny in the US, but it IS an interesting point.
Now if only we hadn't gotten so many "pan-galactic gargle-blaster" questions modded up to +5 we could have had a good interview going here. -- Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
"By your theory, there should be evolutionary pressure to die off as soon as possible."
"My theory" doesn't say anything like that. It says that the genetic benefit to being STERILE is (usually) overwhelmed by the genetic benefit to being able to reproduce. It says nothing about "clearing the way for future generations".
"As for insects, as far as I know biology doesn't recognize different "mathematics" of genetics and evolution."
Well then you don't know enough. Go read a book. Start with "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.
"Let's say I have a population of animals that gets separated into two different valleys. One gets a mutation that causes huge amounts of children to be born. It consumes food faster than it can be replenished through normal growing, and thus it dies out."
This is true as far as it goes. But look at it from an individual parent's point of view. The question is: "How many children should I have?" The answer is: "If I produce more than my enviro can support, I'm wasting my time because they'll just die." Note that the parent isn't considering environmental impact, just individual short-term gain. So your species WOULD die off--except those members that did the math correctly: they would form a species with different behavior.
"Environmental equilibrium is an important part of evolution."
Yes, but not for the reasons you obviously think. "Equilibrium" is the outcome of the sifting and sorting that evolution does. It's not constraint that needs to be "kept in mind"--it's automatically achieved by the mathematics of evolution.
I highly recommend "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins (some of his later books are OK, but not as good). -- Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Tune in next week when Emmett interviews Fox Mulder:
Slashdot: What is the most important thing in the Conspiracy community right now?
Fox Mulder: Being involved, I think. It's going to take a while for the Visitors to arrive on the planet, and it's pointless just sitting around and waiting for them to come. People need to be involved in promoting the Conspiracy. People need to start decoding, planning new projects, generally just getting involved. People really need to be active, they need to be out there, saying 'Look, we've got this brand new form of life coming out, and it has got powers that nothing else has. It's the best, we think it's the best, here try it.' The Conspiracy's got the best activists in the world."
Wayne Martin and Fox Mulder: They want to believe. -- Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
That's "outstanding" in the sense of missing, not in the sense of "good". We are missing at least one that I know of: Douglas Adams. Who else is out there? -- Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
Locate is great for finding files. Problem with it is threefold:
1) Let's say I install something, like LessTif. The LessTif rpm doesn't modify my ld.so.conf so I have to put the path to libXm in there myself. Where did the RPM put it? Can't use locate because I haven't yet run updatedb.
2) Not portable. Maybe there is a locate workalike on AIX or Tru64, but I haven't found it.
3) find has some great options. Like -exec, -owner, etc.
I generally use locate to find files (even if it means running updatedb manually first) and find to perform operations on them (grepping especially). -- Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
hard: The program accessing a file on a NFS mounted file system will hang when the server crashes. The process cannot be interrupted or killed unless you also specify intr. When the NFS server is back online the program will continue undisturbed from where it was. This is probably what you want.
soft This option allows the kernel to time out if the nfs server is not responding for some time. The time can be specified with timeo=time. This option might be useful if your nfs server sometimes doesn't respond or will be rebooted while some process tries to get a file from the server. Usually it just causes lots of trouble. -- Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
3) "But what happens when you want to distribute your code and it relies on the 'fixed' code?"
Put a workaround in your own code but use a fixed kernel if it exists. Eventually you can remove the workaround. Are you saying it would be better if you COULDN'T fix (or even see) the kernel code?
4) "Hey, some of us prefer a point-click-drag to 47 keystrokes."
Please tell me how to use an IDE to do the following: "Mark all files currently tagged V31-BETA2 with V31, other mark the head of the tree V31, skip files in the ldap directory and anything that ends with.m". That's one (fairly simple) command under Linux (using RCS anyway). -- Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
I agree that it's easy to find references to Windows API calls. But it is easier to find documentation on Unix system calls. Just take a system call and do a search on Google. You'll get back 5 tutorials, 4 online man pages (from 3 different implementations) and several mailing list discussions.
As for expensive books: *shrug* Which would you rather have? One expensive comprehensive book (like Stevens) or 15 "Windows Development Bibles" at $10 each? -- Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
I spent several years developing on Windows (3.1 and 95, mostly). The last 7 months have been on Linux (exclusively). Here's my opinion: I will quit my job before I will spend as much as a week coding on Windows again.
1) Multi-tasking: Booting into Windows makes me feel claustrophobic now. I can start multiple programs but if one of them hangs (like Exchange) they ALL do. If you are like me you like to be doing several things at once (emacs here, netscape there, news reader the other place, etc). This is harder (or even impossible to the extent I do it) under Windows.
2) Determinacy: It used to be that when a program crashed I'd try running it again. Then I'd reboot and try again. Under Linux if it crashes I KNOW it was the program that did it (or course there may be environmental factors, like config files).
3) Source code: In the course of just 7 months, I've had to inspect the kernel code twice (and change it once).
4) And then there's all the little things: DLLs. Installers. Command line tools. Now that I've learned how to use the "find" command...well, there's no superlative strong enough to get across how much I prefer Linux.
Here's what you do: Go back to your friend and find out what he hates most about developing under Windows. Then show him how that isn't an issue under Linux. "Linux, it has something for everyone." -- Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
Evolution IS subtle and I DID oversimplify. But it's even trickier than you've laid out here.
For instance, your hypothetical 10% sterile strain. Consider each potential mother in the pool: which mother does it benefit to be the one that bears the sterile offspring? None of them. For each mother, they are better off bearing an fertile child. Therefore there is pressure to do so. GIVEN a sterile child there is a way for that child to be useful and contribute to the gene POOL of the SPECIES--but selection happens on an individual (or lower) level. That's why we never see such a thing (except, as someone pointed out, in social insects--who have different mathematical genetics).
As for "don't have too many children or it will use up the resources": BZZT! Wrong! Genes don't do any long-range planning, let alone allowing for the offspring of other individuals. The effects you see are probably the result of a subtly different cause: The parent evaluates the amount of resources currently available (or likely to be available at birthing time) and has the maximum amount of children that those resources can support. Note that this is different from "don't exhaust the ecosystem" connotation that your "overuse of resources" gives. -- Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
"The problem that I've always seen is that humans have stopped evolving."
This is the foundation of your entire post--but you have not backed up this assertion. Cro-Magnon appeared, what, 25,000 years ago (can a paleontologist supply us with a real number, please)? Not much evolution happens in 25,000 years.
In any case, remember that evolution isn't really "survival of the fittest"--it's "reproduction of the survivors". It doesn't matter how long you live (due to glasses, neighbors, organ donors and other miracles of modern science). What matters is: Did you have any children? If not, the species "evolves away from you". If so, it "evolves towards you".
And there are plenty of modern-day factors that create "reproductive differentials": attractiveness, diseases that people survive but that leave them sterile, income (I realize you can't literally inherit wealth--but if wealth was biologically linked, like through racism, it might be/become a heritable characteristic), etc.
This is not to say that some species don't change very slowly or not at all over time--for instance the modern cockroach is nearly identical (or so the story goes) to it's ancient predecessor. But again, that just means that it is "evolving in place"--every time a cockroach is born that is different, it dies--current cockroach design is apparently optimal for it's niche.
In other words, no, there is no need to "evolve ourselves". There is no target we are trying to hit that we are getting behind on. Evolution is merely the process of fitting a species into a niche. If we fit, we're OK. -- Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
"...it does practically nothing to solve the problem, which is paper consumption."
Ah, here's the point of confusion. "The problem" is NOT paper consumption. Nor is it overflowing landfills. The problem is: People making decisions based on local and short-term rather global and long-term thinking. By pointing out examples of the problem that trend will eventually reverse itself.
It's like racism and sexism: Prosecute each case and eventually the cases stop coming. -- Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
That's exactly why we need data. Forget homes, think businesses. Microsoft sells "license packs" separate from the software itself--but a lot of companies don't. Where I used to work we had ROOMS full of unopened cardboard boxes we had purchased in order to get the license contained therein.
You've got to stop thinking in (only) "percentage of total" ways. Sure, it might not be the biggest problem on the list. But it is A problem and one that is easily solved. I don't think we need your (hypocritical, btw) cynicism about "what difference will it make". -- Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
"It doesn't take that much more material to make a 2-inch-thick box over a 1 inch box (someone want to run a quick calculation? I guess about 5% more material).
Leaving aside for the moment the issue of "I'm only wasting a little bit" isn't really an excuse, your math leaves something to be desired. First, you need to know how big the sides of the box are. Let's assume they are 8.5x11. That's 187 in^2 for the front and back together. "1 inch thick" is then 39 in^2 for the 4 remaining sides. That's 226 in^2 total.
Now double the thickness, which doubles the in^2 for the 4 sides. That's 78 in^2 + 187 in^2 = 265 in^2. An increase of 17%. (Boxes with smaller faces would show a larger percent increase by thickening.) Since big companies routinely rethink manufacturing and packaging in order to save less than 1%, that's fairly sizable. Also keep in mind that we aren't comparing "1 inch thick" to "2 inches thick". We are comparing "box" to "no box".
As for your "0.001%" figure: Let's see some data. Let's also see some justification for your implicit claim that a small amount of the final total means the source should be ignored. -- Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
I wish Consumer Reports would put out a book consisting solely of items from the "Selling It" page. I'd buy it in a minute.
I actually tried to suggest this to them once, but I'll be damned if I can find an email address for them. I looked about 6 months ago--combed through the magazine, searched the online site: nothing. -- Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Slashdot Mirror
For example, I bought my car in NH, where there was no sales tax. When I registered it in MA, I had to pay the 5% sales tax.
My inlaws live in NH. They sold us their old car for way below blue book. But in order to register it in WA (where I lived at the time) I had to either prove that sales tax had been paid on it at one time (even by another purchaser) OR pay it myself at blue book value. When I explained that the original purchaser was in a no-sales-tax state, it cut no ice.
I realize that people pull "scams" (although I am less and less convinced of the immorality of this) to get around sales tax, but that doesn't mean that *I* should get screwed.
To put this post back on-topic: I would be in favor of a law that required every penny tax to have a clearly defined recipient (a department or project) AND to have a mandatory public vote every 5 years. I'm getting pretty sick of this entitlement crap: "Hey, we're losing dollars from sales tax!" "No kidding! You are also providing fewer services that need to be paid for: less land than a brick-n-mortar, less traffic, MORE USPS usage, etc".
--
"Citibank.com
Couldn't do my online banking without it.
And maybe if you wanted to take advantage of the
W3C DOM1 CORE STANDARD!"
Your logic and social skills are well-matched. You still have it backwards. When I ask "why do we need Java/Javascript" the answer is not "because sites use it". What NEED do these pieces of...software...fill?
"I'm the opposite; you need to raise your technology minimum. I'll never design/develop for the lowest common denominator.
Min vs. max makes no difference. Your argument boils down to "I think that the people I perceive as being the majority don't need X". Uh-huh--and if you think or perceive wrong or the majority is oppressive, then what happens?
For instance, if you and I were running a hardware company would you agree with me if I said "we don't need to develop drivers for Linux--who's gonna want to use our FrabJab under a hacker's OS?"
--
Is this a joke?
"Explain to me how javascript is unnecessary, when it is the ONLY cross-browser/platform scripting language on the web.
You've got that the wrong way around. You are the one who needs to explain why we do need it. I keep mine turned off and I function just fine. Same for Flash, we've I've never even installed.
"ps. who's going to McDonalds.com on a 28.8 or going there at all, really..."
Ah, the old "we'll never need more than 640K" argument. You know what they say (or they will know): "Design for 'who's ever gonna' and the answer will be 'nobody'".
--
I used to work in the IS dept at a bank in WA. They decided to setup a website so they could do what they called "online banking" (actually online form fillouts and by-mail and by-phone banking).
Because I was a "team leader" I was invited to ONE design session and I also participated in some of the in-house beta-testing (plus overhearing conversations among the real bigwigs).
I told them again and again that:
1) People hate "intro pages" that do nothing
2) Not everyone wants to spend time downloading graphics and java-crap--so make it optional at worst
3) The point of hyperlinks is to MOVE you around a site--not to popup new windows. I don't want the main page to be a "base station" from which other pages launch.
4) Not everyone has IE 5.x (and this was about 1.5 years ago--not everyone has IE 5.x NOW)--some people use Netscape (actually, they did finally listen to this one when USERS started calling in saying that they couldn't use the site)
But the marketing nitwit in charge of the web project (IS was only involved to purchase hardware and such) just stared blankly at all these objections. And the web people had no idea what I was talking about when I said "will I be able to view it in Lynx"?
--
...not what we're looking for. We aren't looking for a statement that a human can't assert. We're looking for a statement that is true (a condition yours meets) but that a human can't know is true.
This maps to, for instance, number theory as follows: There are theorems that are true (that is, we know that they state things as they really are) but that can't be derived (i.e. proven) with the axioms and rules of number theory. This is true no matter what axioms you use: even if you add those theorems new ones are always "out there".
It's easy (well, relatively) to find these statements in other systems, but it may be logically impossible for US to find them in the human brain. Maybe aliens (or AI) will have to prove that Godel applies to us (and us to them).
Hey! That gives me an idea: Maybe "Godel's theorem applies to humans" is the human godel statement.
--
The main flaw in Penrose's argument is that he gives no mechanism for the human brain to exploit quantum computation.
Of course, there are many other flaws, such as his assumption that humans aren't susceptible to "godelization". Sure we aren't susceptible to the SAME godel strings that number theory and turing machine are--that doesn't mean we are perfect.
Check out "Fabric of Reality" for a little more on this. There was another book I read recently that rebutted Penrose more effectively (and more thoroughly), unforunately I don't remember what it was.
--
"It consists of artificial neurons that communicate with each other via synapses, or junctions where they connect, in a system that could lead to the development of computers that could perform perceptual tasks such as sight recognition."
That's absolutely incredible. Think of the power we now wield: We can transport scientists through time from the 1950's.
We are able to "carbon date" these scientists by means of the research they are doing. For instance, had they been attempting to determine the speed of the planet Earth through the "luminiferous ether" we would have known they came from before 1903. Had they stared in wonder at our televisions, we would have known they pre-dated the 1950's. However, their work on the then cutting-edge, now old-hat neural networks (implemented in hardware, no less) places them firmly in the 1950's.
--
I'm not sure he's totally right about failures not being funny in the US, but it IS an interesting point.
Now if only we hadn't gotten so many "pan-galactic gargle-blaster" questions modded up to +5 we could have had a good interview going here.
--
Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
"By your theory, there should be evolutionary pressure to die off as soon as possible."
"My theory" doesn't say anything like that. It says that the genetic benefit to being STERILE is (usually) overwhelmed by the genetic benefit to being able to reproduce. It says nothing about "clearing the way for future generations".
"As for insects, as far as I know biology doesn't recognize different "mathematics" of genetics and evolution."
Well then you don't know enough. Go read a book. Start with "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.
"Let's say I have a population of animals that gets separated into two different valleys. One gets a mutation that causes huge amounts of children to be born. It consumes food faster than it can be replenished through normal growing, and thus it dies out."
This is true as far as it goes. But look at it from an individual parent's point of view. The question is: "How many children should I have?" The answer is: "If I produce more than my enviro can support, I'm wasting my time because they'll just die." Note that the parent isn't considering environmental impact, just individual short-term gain. So your species WOULD die off--except those members that did the math correctly: they would form a species with different behavior.
"Environmental equilibrium is an important part of evolution."
Yes, but not for the reasons you obviously think. "Equilibrium" is the outcome of the sifting and sorting that evolution does. It's not constraint that needs to be "kept in mind"--it's automatically achieved by the mathematics of evolution.
I highly recommend "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins (some of his later books are OK, but not as good).
--
Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Tune in next week when Emmett interviews Fox Mulder:
Slashdot: What is the most important thing in the Conspiracy community right now?
Fox Mulder: Being involved, I think. It's going to take a while for the Visitors to arrive on the planet, and it's pointless just sitting around and waiting for them to come. People need to be involved in promoting the Conspiracy. People need to start decoding, planning new projects, generally just getting involved. People really need to be active, they need to be out there, saying 'Look, we've got this brand new form of life coming out, and it has got powers that nothing else has. It's the best, we think it's the best, here try it.' The Conspiracy's got the best activists in the world."
Wayne Martin and Fox Mulder: They want to believe.
--
Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
That's "outstanding" in the sense of missing, not in the sense of "good". We are missing at least one that I know of: Douglas Adams. Who else is out there?
--
Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
Locate is great for finding files. Problem with it is threefold:
1) Let's say I install something, like LessTif. The LessTif rpm doesn't modify my ld.so.conf so I have to put the path to libXm in there myself. Where did the RPM put it? Can't use locate because I haven't yet run updatedb.
2) Not portable. Maybe there is a locate workalike on AIX or Tru64, but I haven't found it.
3) find has some great options. Like -exec, -owner, etc.
I generally use locate to find files (even if it means running updatedb manually first) and find to perform operations on them (grepping especially).
--
Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
man mount:
hard: The program accessing a file on a NFS mounted file system will hang when the server crashes. The process cannot be interrupted or killed unless you also specify intr. When the NFS server is back online the program will continue undisturbed from where it was. This is probably what you want.
soft This option allows the kernel to time out if the nfs server is not responding for some time. The time can be specified with timeo=time. This option might be useful if your nfs server sometimes doesn't respond or will be rebooted while some process tries to get a file from the server. Usually it just causes lots of trouble.
--
Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
3) "But what happens when you want to distribute your code and it relies on the 'fixed' code?"
.m". That's one (fairly simple) command under Linux (using RCS anyway).
Put a workaround in your own code but use a fixed kernel if it exists. Eventually you can remove the workaround. Are you saying it would be better if you COULDN'T fix (or even see) the kernel code?
4) "Hey, some of us prefer a point-click-drag to 47 keystrokes."
Please tell me how to use an IDE to do the following: "Mark all files currently tagged V31-BETA2 with V31, other mark the head of the tree V31, skip files in the ldap directory and anything that ends with
--
Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
"Unix it is simply not documentated as much."
I agree that it's easy to find references to Windows API calls. But it is easier to find documentation on Unix system calls. Just take a system call and do a search on Google. You'll get back 5 tutorials, 4 online man pages (from 3 different implementations) and several mailing list discussions.
As for expensive books: *shrug* Which would you rather have? One expensive comprehensive book (like Stevens) or 15 "Windows Development Bibles" at $10 each?
--
Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
I spent several years developing on Windows (3.1 and 95, mostly). The last 7 months have been on Linux (exclusively). Here's my opinion: I will quit my job before I will spend as much as a week coding on Windows again.
1) Multi-tasking: Booting into Windows makes me feel claustrophobic now. I can start multiple programs but if one of them hangs (like Exchange) they ALL do. If you are like me you like to be doing several things at once (emacs here, netscape there, news reader the other place, etc). This is harder (or even impossible to the extent I do it) under Windows.
2) Determinacy: It used to be that when a program crashed I'd try running it again. Then I'd reboot and try again. Under Linux if it crashes I KNOW it was the program that did it (or course there may be environmental factors, like config files).
3) Source code: In the course of just 7 months, I've had to inspect the kernel code twice (and change it once).
4) And then there's all the little things: DLLs. Installers. Command line tools. Now that I've learned how to use the "find" command...well, there's no superlative strong enough to get across how much I prefer Linux.
Here's what you do: Go back to your friend and find out what he hates most about developing under Windows. Then show him how that isn't an issue under Linux. "Linux, it has something for everyone."
--
Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
Water on Mars... Sugar in interstellar clouds...
The Universe is an enormous hummingbird feeder!
--
Less money, less admin, less machine--more power
Evolution IS subtle and I DID oversimplify. But it's even trickier than you've laid out here.
For instance, your hypothetical 10% sterile strain. Consider each potential mother in the pool: which mother does it benefit to be the one that bears the sterile offspring? None of them. For each mother, they are better off bearing an fertile child. Therefore there is pressure to do so. GIVEN a sterile child there is a way for that child to be useful and contribute to the gene POOL of the SPECIES--but selection happens on an individual (or lower) level. That's why we never see such a thing (except, as someone pointed out, in social insects--who have different mathematical genetics).
As for "don't have too many children or it will use up the resources": BZZT! Wrong! Genes don't do any long-range planning, let alone allowing for the offspring of other individuals. The effects you see are probably the result of a subtly different cause: The parent evaluates the amount of resources currently available (or likely to be available at birthing time) and has the maximum amount of children that those resources can support. Note that this is different from "don't exhaust the ecosystem" connotation that your "overuse of resources" gives.
--
Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
"The problem that I've always seen is that humans have stopped evolving."
This is the foundation of your entire post--but you have not backed up this assertion. Cro-Magnon appeared, what, 25,000 years ago (can a paleontologist supply us with a real number, please)? Not much evolution happens in 25,000 years.
In any case, remember that evolution isn't really "survival of the fittest"--it's "reproduction of the survivors". It doesn't matter how long you live (due to glasses, neighbors, organ donors and other miracles of modern science). What matters is: Did you have any children? If not, the species "evolves away from you". If so, it "evolves towards you".
And there are plenty of modern-day factors that create "reproductive differentials": attractiveness, diseases that people survive but that leave them sterile, income (I realize you can't literally inherit wealth--but if wealth was biologically linked, like through racism, it might be/become a heritable characteristic), etc.
This is not to say that some species don't change very slowly or not at all over time--for instance the modern cockroach is nearly identical (or so the story goes) to it's ancient predecessor. But again, that just means that it is "evolving in place"--every time a cockroach is born that is different, it dies--current cockroach design is apparently optimal for it's niche.
In other words, no, there is no need to "evolve ourselves". There is no target we are trying to hit that we are getting behind on. Evolution is merely the process of fitting a species into a niche. If we fit, we're OK.
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
"...it does practically nothing to solve the problem, which is paper consumption."
Ah, here's the point of confusion. "The problem" is NOT paper consumption. Nor is it overflowing landfills. The problem is: People making decisions based on local and short-term rather global and long-term thinking. By pointing out examples of the problem that trend will eventually reverse itself.
It's like racism and sexism: Prosecute each case and eventually the cases stop coming.
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
"I don't know about your house, but..."
That's exactly why we need data. Forget homes, think businesses. Microsoft sells "license packs" separate from the software itself--but a lot of companies don't. Where I used to work we had ROOMS full of unopened cardboard boxes we had purchased in order to get the license contained therein.
You've got to stop thinking in (only) "percentage of total" ways. Sure, it might not be the biggest problem on the list. But it is A problem and one that is easily solved. I don't think we need your (hypocritical, btw) cynicism about "what difference will it make".
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
"It doesn't take that much more material to make a 2-inch-thick box over a 1 inch box (someone want to run a quick calculation? I guess about 5% more material).
Leaving aside for the moment the issue of "I'm only wasting a little bit" isn't really an excuse, your math leaves something to be desired. First, you need to know how big the sides of the box are. Let's assume they are 8.5x11. That's 187 in^2 for the front and back together. "1 inch thick" is then 39 in^2 for the 4 remaining sides. That's 226 in^2 total.
Now double the thickness, which doubles the in^2 for the 4 sides. That's 78 in^2 + 187 in^2 = 265 in^2. An increase of 17%. (Boxes with smaller faces would show a larger percent increase by thickening.) Since big companies routinely rethink manufacturing and packaging in order to save less than 1%, that's fairly sizable. Also keep in mind that we aren't comparing "1 inch thick" to "2 inches thick". We are comparing "box" to "no box".
As for your "0.001%" figure: Let's see some data. Let's also see some justification for your implicit claim that a small amount of the final total means the source should be ignored.
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
The babes dig a man with a big, hard...drive.
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
I wish Consumer Reports would put out a book consisting solely of items from the "Selling It" page. I'd buy it in a minute.
I actually tried to suggest this to them once, but I'll be damned if I can find an email address for them. I looked about 6 months ago--combed through the magazine, searched the online site: nothing.
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
You are right, it isn't every month. I was intending to imply that it was handed out more than once a year.
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?