Admittedly, it's intriguing. And it does have some very good uses; engineering certain birth defects out of the population is one example.
But sometimes it's not worth the price. The effects will be far worse than could justify any good that comes out of it. Consider:
1) First, the technique has to be perfected in humans. How many thousands, perhaps even millions, will suffer while that's going on? 2) The movie Gattaca shows a society rife with what it calls "genoism"; the belief that engineered people are superior to those who are non-engineered. 3) Is forcing a kid into what may very well be the wrong kind of body for that child, for no other reason than the parents' interests, really a Good Thing? I've never met anyone who could predict the future; you can't know what your child will be like. Parents who would "sculpt" their children into their own image are, quite frankly, among the most selfish bastards I know of. 4) Consider the problem of hate groups. Talk about adding more fuel to the flames. The most extreme are quite likely to engineer their children to be better "warriors for the race" or whatever. Worse, get these people into power and you really have trouble as engineering becomes mandated. 5) Speaking of warriors, I don't even want to know what sort of things governments are going to mandate. But very likely it won't be a pretty sight.
Genetically engineering children could have some truly remarkable benefits. But it may well not be worth the price. As I said, genetically engineering out birth defects is one thing, but it must be very strictly controlled if things aren't to get totally out of hand.
This is sad. Truly sad. So many people engaged in what has to be the most pointless argument of all time (evolution and creationism answer two entirely different questions; they don't conflict at all and it's quite possible that they could both be right or both be wrong).
I should also point out that people here are severely overreacting to the Kansas decision, mainly because of a rather key piece of misinformation: Kansas does not require schools to teach creationism. All the law does is say that evolution is not a requirement; no new requirements were set (therefore, most school curricula were not affected in the least, since most biology teachers prefer to teach evolution).
Look. In the end, both theories are technically myths (or theories; use whichever term you prefer but it applies equally to both) anyway. We're never going to be able to conclusively prove either one unless someone gets a time machine and goes back with a camera. Personally, I'd love to see both turn out right, if only because the looks on the militant creationists' and militant evolutionists' faces would be priceless. Until that happens, the only truly honest and fair way to teach is to tell it like it is: we don't really know how life got here, here are the major theories, here are the flaws and merits of each; you'll have to decide for yourself what you believe.
For the record, I believe both. Evolution answers how life got here but never touches on why. Creationism provides a reason why but never states exactly what happened ("God said 'Let there be light...' and there was light"; gee, how descriptive). That's the strange part of things; religion deals with cosmic purpose, science deals with cosmic order, yet somehow people have gotten it into their heads that two things which deal with completely different matters somehow conflict.
The major problem with the G4 is that LinuxPPC won't run on it yet. Soon, but not just yet.
Even when it does, I doubt AltiVec support is going to be in GCC for at least another year, and probably more like two, although now that Apple uses GCC to compile OSX it's quite possible that they'll contribute Velocity support themselves rather than wait for it to come "naturally." And they will contribute it if they write it; Steve Jobs is still reeling from his last skirmish with the FSF and I don't think he's willing to try closing modifications to GCC again.
This said, Icecast seems to be the way to go for a streaming server. QuickTime is your other major option, and while it works quite well there's the problem of the fact that there is no Linux QuickTime Streaming player, so you'll cut off a portion of your audience.
What I find off here is that no one has mentioned bandwidth, which is just as important as processor power. You probably already have significant bandwidth because of the Webserver, but you might want a separate connection for the new one (getting a 10Base-T on campus shouldn't be hard at all; of you're lucky you might be able to get 100Base-T). The college itself should have adequate bandwidth for your needs.
This man, unfortunately, has tenure at Princeton, so there's little use in demanding that he leave his field (they can't fire him and it's doubtful that he will resign). But to promote infanticide for selfish reasons: that's the mark of a mind that should be watched very carefully.
Who the hell does this man think he is that he can decide who is human and who is not? Let's take, for instance, Stephen Hawking. He wasn't born with Lou Gherig's disease, but let's say that he was found to be susceptible to it at birth. Furthermore, let's say his parents euthanized him because he would eventually "cramp their style" or someone else's. Think of what the world would have lost.
While we're at it, what about Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder, two men who became talented musicians, even though both were blind?
This man has no right whatsoever to decide that handicapped children have no potential. Every human does, even those with severe cases of brain damage in one form or another. To snuff out that potential, particularly when it's involuntary, to decrease the parents' "suffering" isn't simply inhumane; I think this one qualifies as inhuman.
While we're at it, I think it calls upon us to define what is human. to start, let's say that a two-year-old is human. Why? Because I don't think anyone will argue that it isn't, so we have a convenient baseline for comparison. Is a newborn human? Genetically, it certainly is. Morphologically, it's as human as a two-year-old (who, I remind you, is still not fully-developed). An infant carries on all of the same biological processes as a two-year-old (meaning all of the biological processes of an adult except those involved in reproduction; but since this isn't counted against a two-year-old's humanity then it's not fair to count it against an infant's). Granted, the average two-year-old is toilet-trained, but I don't think anyone here is going to say that toilet-training makes someone human. Its brain, while still maturing, has the capacity to learn, even if the child hasn't learned how to vocalize yet. Since people who are born mute for one reason or another are considered human, it's not fair to count the inability to speak against an infant. It can't survive on its own, but neither can a two-year-old (or most animals at a comparable stage of development) so that cannot be counted against it either. If you want to take the "parasite approach" then I must remind you that parasites are still considered alive, and that there are many full-grown adults who are just as parasitic yet still couunted as human. Does it have consciousness? I'd love to see how he proposes to test that question(assuming he's ever tried; I've found that many philosophers tend to go on convenient assumptions and leave the testing to others). Just when is this "magic moment" that the brain develops consciousness? I'm in the camp that believes the brain is pre-wired for consciousness, and has it as soon as it develops to the point where it could possibly posess it (which is probably, to be honest, still in the fetal stages; I don't claim to know exactly when).
Oh, and let's get to the "suffering" bit, while we're at it. Who, exactly, suffers? I do quite a lot of work with Down's Syndrome children (my uncle had one of the more severe cases on record, in case you're wondering how I got started in this). The children don't seem to be suffering; they make the best of the situation. And the parents... well, the parents of the children are frankly among the happiest people I've ever seen; they aren't suffering either. Yes, it's an extra burden; I never argued that it wasn't. But it's pure selfishness to reject a child because of something which will mean an extra burden for yourself. There are risks involved in having a child. When you decide to have a child, you accept those risks. To remove the risk... that's a grey area at best; it reduces burdens, but at what cost? Perhaps a disrespect for human life? I see something of that in this professor.
But enough of this rant. I don't agree with this guy. I'll respect his right to say it, but I don't believe it should be from the professorial position he currently enjoys. There's nothing that can be done about it, of course (he has tenure, after all). And as long as he teaches this as only one philosophy out of many, that's one thing. But if this man starts indoctrinating his students, that's quite another.
I seem to remember that Zummy was fooling a lot of reporters (they thought that the 'bot was actually a Linux technician). Perhaps the maintainer should try and submit that?
Keep in mind: these benchmarks are meant to compare the iMac to other computers in its class (meaning concumer computers in this case).
Therefore, the benchmarks are revealing on two levels: first of all that this machine has the best technology in its class, and that it's faster than anything else in its class. Part of the point is that PC manufacturers tend to scrimp big time when it comes to their underpowered "consumer" models. The iMac, while it's no G4, is hardly scrimping in any aspect.
How can you possibly judge something to be a failure when it hasn't even been available for a month yet? The only failure I've seen on Apple's part concerning the iBook is the failure to make as many iBooks as people are buying... that's hardly a failure on the iBook's part (if anything it's a great success for the iBook).
Both desktop environments claim toolkit-agnosticity (Gnome prefers GTK, KDE prefers Qt, but neither one requires a specific toolkit). The problem, of course, is that you'll have to write a lot of things twice and use #defines to figure out which to use.
I wonder if there's an abstraction toolkit in the works which could compile for either environment (sort of like wxWindows for desktop environments instead of operating systems)?
I'd rate this Flamebait or Troll, but better to actually say why (I really wish you could mod and post in the same discussion).
You ask why all the most advanced games are closed-source. There are two reasons for this. First, you forget that the eventual goal of the Open-Source movement is to create an entire software platform which is Open-Source. This is a very big job, and it involves far more than just the OS. All sorts of other work has to be done, and a lot (such as office productivity software) isn't done at this point in time. When it comes to coding, games are a pretty low priority to Open-Source developers (playing is another matter entirely).
Second, Open-Source does have one major disadvantage: initial development times are extremely slow. This is a tradeoff; you often get better code, but you pay for it in spades time-wise. I would point you to Golgotha's site of an example of a highly-advanced Open-Source game in development, but unfortunately I've forgotten where the site is (can someone help me out here?)
I should also point out that the slowness of Open-Source development time is regained in bugfixing time later.
Look, for once the government might actually have a point. I suppose it depends on their definition of "hacking" and exactly what they plan to teach in these assemblies. But is this going to be brainwashing? Probably not, no more than pro-safety or anti-drug assemblies are at any rate; having been to many of these over the course of my childhood I can say I wasn't brainwashed.
Let's wait and see what these assemblies actually involve before passing judgement. Hell, who knows, perhaps they might actually teach the kids some online manners. I do hope they get the hacker/cracker distinction right (they probably won't though). I agree that this sort of thing isn't the government's job, but in an age where the vast majority of parents are too damn lazy and/or selfish to even teach their kids right from wrong (and spend time with the kids), someone has to do it. The government's far from the ideal choice, indeed they're the last choice I'd make for someone to teach people right from wrong, but until we get a generation of parents who care (I'm hoping the next one will have more sense than this one) I really see no other alternative.
It wouldn't help if they were trying to clone a female either. Actually, this isn't going to work out at all, even if they bring one or two back, you can't bring back a whole species without a lot of samples (and I doubt that enough samples of mammoth DNA that are still suitable for cloning are still in existence).
Otherwise, you get massive inbreeding. That would be even more destrictuve to the mammoths than unrestricted hunting would.
It's not a sign that the government is collapsing; it isn't. But they're afraid that crypto could very easily pave the way for their collapse, and they have a damn good reason to fear that.
The government claims that criminals will use encryption to hide their plans from the poice. Interesting theory, and true in some aspects, but they forget two things: 1) Most criminals don't know how to use encryption. Hell, most people don't know how to use it; encryption software is not known for its ease of use. 2) Those who would use it are going to use it anyway. Most criminals already get their stuff by illegal means; legal ones are too easy to trace (guns are a big example of this, and it's why I don't believe gun control works).
Now, I do find it interesting that even the loosened export restrictions bar the posting of crypto source online. In other words, US citizens still won't be able to work on Open-Source crypto (or any other crypto with even one person on the team who's not in the US, because the only practical way to get the source to that person is via the Net). The government sure knows how to make enemies out of the very people it's trying to court...
Even the GPL allows you to contact the author and attempt to make an alternate licensing arrangement (the author can, of course, refuse). The DSFG, last I checked, allows for this. So CUPS doesn't fail DSFG after all.
Actually, it looks as though this thing doesn't understand language better than humans (if at all). All it can do is pick out the sounds and form them into words. It still does not know what the words mean.
In essence, what was created is little more than a super-hearing-aid. Certainly a good thing for the hard-of-hearing (and this one, it would seem, could significantly boost the hearing of anyone, even those with "normal" hearing to start).
Just a second...picture this: two hole Zorb rolling around in the water, and one hole goes below the surface. Water will pour in the submerged hole and Zorb and owner will sleep with the fishes because the only thing that keeps the Zorb afloat normally is air pressure on the inside, which is now being conveniently relieved by the other hole!
The Zorb floats, not because of air pressure inside the sphere, but because it's inflatable. An innertube floats with a hold on it; a Zorb is the same way.
As long as you don't puncture the Zorb, the thing will float even with one hole pointing straight down; water might splash up into the Zorb, but no more than a few drops (which run down the sides and back out through the hole). The Zorb itself would not sink.
wouldn't it be relatively easy for water to shlop down into the entrance hole and drown someone?
Not really. If you keep the hole facing down, no more than a few drops will get in (and then only by splashing) and what gets in will drain out the bottom. You could also, I'd imagine, use a two-hole Zorb for that purpose; you'd get a lot wetter but because the Zorb floats you could always get one entrance above water and breathe.
what if the damn thing popped? You'd NEVER get out.
It looked to me like there was some kind of an internal frame. Not much when the weight of a person is put on it, but probably enough to hold the exit holes open.
As for me, I want a two-entrance, two-harness one of these. But, cruel as the designers of the Website are, they didn't say how you could buy one:.(
In the past, I've enjoyed JonKatz' work. He's presented quite a few very interesting, and sometimes powerful, articles and resulting discussions (see the Hellmouth series for an example of that).
But this... this is absolutely disgusting.
A "reality filter"? Sure, one heck of a nice concept. But who do you think would be pulling the strings? Not the individual, I can tell you that right now. This is exactly the sort of thing governments would leap at and latch onto. Katz' comparison of Clotho to a "Big Sister" is horrifyingly accurate, in more ways than one.
I seriously hope Katz was merely playing Devil's Advocate with this article. If not, I think it can be safely concluded that he's lost his mind. To advocate the denial of free will and rationality to the human mind... it goes against everything the geek community stands for, not to mention everything Katz himself has written about on Slashdot in the past.
Only one thing can determine what is fit and proper for a person to see: that person (or, in the case of a young child, that child's parents). Not a computer program, not a governmental authority, and certainly not anyone else. A person who considers himself incapable of doing this for himself desperately needs psychatric treatment. Reality is not a game. It cannot be filtered out via a program. It has to be taken and dealt with as it comes; nothing is ever going to change that fact.
It's flexible enough, to be sure. But how durable is this stuff? Could it be used for all the purposes which any given type of plastic is used for today?
That's the thing: if this can't be used in many areas, then it will only delay the inevitable, rather than stopping it. Still, it's certainly a good start.
One thing, though. If the plastic can somehow be "extracted" from the plants, then I'm assuming it's in liquid form. If that is the case, why not skip cress and genetically engineer a tree? The plastic would probably have to be secreted into the sap. Then the tree could be tapped like maple trees are for syrup. You could gather the plastic without doing significant harm to the tree, thereby enabling you to get more plastic from it later.
That would certainly increase yields at least somewhat, since you wouldn't have to kill the plant to get the plastic.
Perhaps "redefining" isn't the appropriate term. She wrote back when the genre was still somewhat amorphous, looking for a definition to call its own. Better to say she helped to define the genre, rather than that she redefined it.
You're right, they do mean the same thing. "Passed on," however, seems to have a gentler connotation. The dead don't care how you say it, of course; these terms are more for the living.
Everyone knows "passed on" means "died." It's not like anyone is trying to fool anyone else. It's simply someone's attempt to break the news in a gentler fashion. For a community of people that tends to like science-fiction and fantasy, and therefore has a connection with this woman, that's quite a considerate gesture. Perhaps not entirely necessary, but considerate nonetheless.
That's why you have to be careful. Even a forest is renewable, if you do it right. The tricks are as follows:
1) Plant one tree for every one you cut down. Better, in fact, to plant several in case some don't make it. 2) Cut a forest in sections, and do not touch the sections which are not currently being cut at all. 3) Make each section small enough that by the time the forest is finished, the trees that had been planted first will be at about the same size as the originals were (though probably not the same age). Furthermore, the flora and fauna, which were not disturbed in any section of the forest that was not being cut at any given time, are given a chance to repopulate the area.
The problem with this method is an economic one: it would take many forests to maintain current volumes. Nonetheless, I see no other way of doing this. I will say that some logging companies cut a forest in strips, such that the forest on either side of the strip is not touched; this seems to be a relatively sensible way of sectioning a forest to be cut.
You are right about one thing: humans have no more right to the planet than any other form of life. But keep in mind, we have no less right either.
The difference here is that the total purpose of the Pokemon cards is to play a game--a gambling game, while the baseball cards are mainly there to collect.
Nice, except for one thing: Pokemon is no more a gambling game than chess. Yes, with some of the older card games you played "for ante" (before each game each player picks a card at random from his or her deck and sets it aside; the winner keeps these cards). Pokemon was not designed to be played this way.
Yes, some kids have created a variation of the game where you do play for ante. But this is not the way the game is meant to be played. If you go back to the original Gameboy game, the first rule of etiquette is that you never take another trainer's Pokemon; that rule spills over into the card game. People make side bets on other games, like golf and billiards, all the time; does this mean that those games should be illegal too? If not, then no one has any business screaming about Pokemon for that reason, because it is no different.
Should it be thrown out of court? Most definitely.
Does it mean "Legal Precedent"? Actually, I'm not as certain. You see, one thing about baseball card manufacturers is that they don't typically divide their cards into common, uncommon, and rare like the game manufacturers do; they print more or less the same amount of every card (the value initially comes from factors other than rarity, and the rarity only comes long after the cards aren't printed anymore). That's probably the tactic the lawyers will use this time ("OK, so baseball cards aren't gambling, but...")
I heard about that one. It wasn't the Columbine one, it was one of the shootings that preceded it.
The thing about it is, the people in that one didn't care at all about justice. All they wanted was revenge and someone other than themselves to blame for the fact that they failed to instill a sense of right and wrong in their child.
In other words, similar to what's going on with the Pokemon cards, only this incident fortunately has a much smaller body count (though the brain-cell count is staggering).
One problem: when you play Clue, you don't have to pay every time, and you don't get money (or something of value) for winning. Your logic is flawed.
However, it is still possible to have to pay to play, just as it is possible for people to bet on games of Clue. It sounds silly, I know. But the point is this: Any game can be considered gambling, undr certain conditioons. Any game can also not be gambling. You do not necessarily have to pay to play Pokemon or even get packs, nor do you necessarily get any sort of prize (geez; you're telling me a small piece of cardboard is worth tons of money just because it has "Blastoise" printed on it? You're dreaming, pal).
These things only have value because people are idiotic enough to pay exorbitant sums of money for them. You're telling me a small piece of thin cardboard is worth tons of money just because it has "Blastoise" printed on it? You're dreaming, pal. Pokemon is a game. An innocent game that some people get too wrapped up in (and that can happen in any game). That's the person's own fault and no one else's.
Slashdot Mirror
Admittedly, it's intriguing. And it does have some very good uses; engineering certain birth defects out of the population is one example.
But sometimes it's not worth the price. The effects will be far worse than could justify any good that comes out of it. Consider:
1) First, the technique has to be perfected in humans. How many thousands, perhaps even millions, will suffer while that's going on?
2) The movie Gattaca shows a society rife with what it calls "genoism"; the belief that engineered people are superior to those who are non-engineered.
3) Is forcing a kid into what may very well be the wrong kind of body for that child, for no other reason than the parents' interests, really a Good Thing? I've never met anyone who could predict the future; you can't know what your child will be like. Parents who would "sculpt" their children into their own image are, quite frankly, among the most selfish bastards I know of.
4) Consider the problem of hate groups. Talk about adding more fuel to the flames. The most extreme are quite likely to engineer their children to be better "warriors for the race" or whatever. Worse, get these people into power and you really have trouble as engineering becomes mandated.
5) Speaking of warriors, I don't even want to know what sort of things governments are going to mandate. But very likely it won't be a pretty sight.
Genetically engineering children could have some truly remarkable benefits. But it may well not be worth the price. As I said, genetically engineering out birth defects is one thing, but it must be very strictly controlled if things aren't to get totally out of hand.
This is sad. Truly sad. So many people engaged in what has to be the most pointless argument of all time (evolution and creationism answer two entirely different questions; they don't conflict at all and it's quite possible that they could both be right or both be wrong).
I should also point out that people here are severely overreacting to the Kansas decision, mainly because of a rather key piece of misinformation: Kansas does not require schools to teach creationism. All the law does is say that evolution is not a requirement; no new requirements were set (therefore, most school curricula were not affected in the least, since most biology teachers prefer to teach evolution).
Look. In the end, both theories are technically myths (or theories; use whichever term you prefer but it applies equally to both) anyway. We're never going to be able to conclusively prove either one unless someone gets a time machine and goes back with a camera. Personally, I'd love to see both turn out right, if only because the looks on the militant creationists' and militant evolutionists' faces would be priceless. Until that happens, the only truly honest and fair way to teach is to tell it like it is: we don't really know how life got here, here are the major theories, here are the flaws and merits of each; you'll have to decide for yourself what you believe.
For the record, I believe both. Evolution answers how life got here but never touches on why. Creationism provides a reason why but never states exactly what happened ("God said 'Let there be light...' and there was light"; gee, how descriptive). That's the strange part of things; religion deals with cosmic purpose, science deals with cosmic order, yet somehow people have gotten it into their heads that two things which deal with completely different matters somehow conflict.
The major problem with the G4 is that LinuxPPC won't run on it yet. Soon, but not just yet.
Even when it does, I doubt AltiVec support is going to be in GCC for at least another year, and probably more like two, although now that Apple uses GCC to compile OSX it's quite possible that they'll contribute Velocity support themselves rather than wait for it to come "naturally." And they will contribute it if they write it; Steve Jobs is still reeling from his last skirmish with the FSF and I don't think he's willing to try closing modifications to GCC again.
This said, Icecast seems to be the way to go for a streaming server. QuickTime is your other major option, and while it works quite well there's the problem of the fact that there is no Linux QuickTime Streaming player, so you'll cut off a portion of your audience.
What I find off here is that no one has mentioned bandwidth, which is just as important as processor power. You probably already have significant bandwidth because of the Webserver, but you might want a separate connection for the new one (getting a 10Base-T on campus shouldn't be hard at all; of you're lucky you might be able to get 100Base-T). The college itself should have adequate bandwidth for your needs.
This man, unfortunately, has tenure at Princeton, so there's little use in demanding that he leave his field (they can't fire him and it's doubtful that he will resign). But to promote infanticide for selfish reasons: that's the mark of a mind that should be watched very carefully.
Who the hell does this man think he is that he can decide who is human and who is not? Let's take, for instance, Stephen Hawking. He wasn't born with Lou Gherig's disease, but let's say that he was found to be susceptible to it at birth. Furthermore, let's say his parents euthanized him because he would eventually "cramp their style" or someone else's. Think of what the world would have lost.
While we're at it, what about Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder, two men who became talented musicians, even though both were blind?
This man has no right whatsoever to decide that handicapped children have no potential. Every human does, even those with severe cases of brain damage in one form or another. To snuff out that potential, particularly when it's involuntary, to decrease the parents' "suffering" isn't simply inhumane; I think this one qualifies as inhuman.
While we're at it, I think it calls upon us to define what is human. to start, let's say that a two-year-old is human. Why? Because I don't think anyone will argue that it isn't, so we have a convenient baseline for comparison. Is a newborn human? Genetically, it certainly is. Morphologically, it's as human as a two-year-old (who, I remind you, is still not fully-developed).
An infant carries on all of the same biological processes as a two-year-old (meaning all of the biological processes of an adult except those involved in reproduction; but since this isn't counted against a two-year-old's humanity then it's not fair to count it against an infant's). Granted, the average two-year-old is toilet-trained, but I don't think anyone here is going to say that toilet-training makes someone human.
Its brain, while still maturing, has the capacity to learn, even if the child hasn't learned how to vocalize yet. Since people who are born mute for one reason or another are considered human, it's not fair to count the inability to speak against an infant.
It can't survive on its own, but neither can a two-year-old (or most animals at a comparable stage of development) so that cannot be counted against it either. If you want to take the "parasite approach" then I must remind you that parasites are still considered alive, and that there are many full-grown adults who are just as parasitic yet still couunted as human.
Does it have consciousness? I'd love to see how he proposes to test that question(assuming he's ever tried; I've found that many philosophers tend to go on convenient assumptions and leave the testing to others). Just when is this "magic moment" that the brain develops consciousness? I'm in the camp that believes the brain is pre-wired for consciousness, and has it as soon as it develops to the point where it could possibly posess it (which is probably, to be honest, still in the fetal stages; I don't claim to know exactly when).
Oh, and let's get to the "suffering" bit, while we're at it. Who, exactly, suffers? I do quite a lot of work with Down's Syndrome children (my uncle had one of the more severe cases on record, in case you're wondering how I got started in this). The children don't seem to be suffering; they make the best of the situation. And the parents... well, the parents of the children are frankly among the happiest people I've ever seen; they aren't suffering either. Yes, it's an extra burden; I never argued that it wasn't. But it's pure selfishness to reject a child because of something which will mean an extra burden for yourself.
There are risks involved in having a child. When you decide to have a child, you accept those risks. To remove the risk... that's a grey area at best; it reduces burdens, but at what cost? Perhaps a disrespect for human life? I see something of that in this professor.
But enough of this rant. I don't agree with this guy. I'll respect his right to say it, but I don't believe it should be from the professorial position he currently enjoys. There's nothing that can be done about it, of course (he has tenure, after all). And as long as he teaches this as only one philosophy out of many, that's one thing. But if this man starts indoctrinating his students, that's quite another.
I seem to remember that Zummy was fooling a lot of reporters (they thought that the 'bot was actually a Linux technician). Perhaps the maintainer should try and submit that?
Actually, it's plenty meaningful, on two levels.
Keep in mind: these benchmarks are meant to compare the iMac to other computers in its class (meaning concumer computers in this case).
Therefore, the benchmarks are revealing on two levels: first of all that this machine has the best technology in its class, and that it's faster than anything else in its class. Part of the point is that PC manufacturers tend to scrimp big time when it comes to their underpowered "consumer" models. The iMac, while it's no G4, is hardly scrimping in any aspect.
How can you possibly judge something to be a failure when it hasn't even been available for a month yet? The only failure I've seen on Apple's part concerning the iBook is the failure to make as many iBooks as people are buying... that's hardly a failure on the iBook's part (if anything it's a great success for the iBook).
Both desktop environments claim toolkit-agnosticity (Gnome prefers GTK, KDE prefers Qt, but neither one requires a specific toolkit). The problem, of course, is that you'll have to write a lot of things twice and use #defines to figure out which to use.
I wonder if there's an abstraction toolkit in the works which could compile for either environment (sort of like wxWindows for desktop environments instead of operating systems)?
I'd rate this Flamebait or Troll, but better to actually say why (I really wish you could mod and post in the same discussion).
You ask why all the most advanced games are closed-source. There are two reasons for this. First, you forget that the eventual goal of the Open-Source movement is to create an entire software platform which is Open-Source. This is a very big job, and it involves far more than just the OS. All sorts of other work has to be done, and a lot (such as office productivity software) isn't done at this point in time. When it comes to coding, games are a pretty low priority to Open-Source developers (playing is another matter entirely).
Second, Open-Source does have one major disadvantage: initial development times are extremely slow. This is a tradeoff; you often get better code, but you pay for it in spades time-wise. I would point you to Golgotha's site of an example of a highly-advanced Open-Source game in development, but unfortunately I've forgotten where the site is (can someone help me out here?)
I should also point out that the slowness of Open-Source development time is regained in bugfixing time later.
Look, for once the government might actually have a point. I suppose it depends on their definition of "hacking" and exactly what they plan to teach in these assemblies. But is this going to be brainwashing? Probably not, no more than pro-safety or anti-drug assemblies are at any rate; having been to many of these over the course of my childhood I can say I wasn't brainwashed.
Let's wait and see what these assemblies actually involve before passing judgement. Hell, who knows, perhaps they might actually teach the kids some online manners. I do hope they get the hacker/cracker distinction right (they probably won't though). I agree that this sort of thing isn't the government's job, but in an age where the vast majority of parents are too damn lazy and/or selfish to even teach their kids right from wrong (and spend time with the kids), someone has to do it. The government's far from the ideal choice, indeed they're the last choice I'd make for someone to teach people right from wrong, but until we get a generation of parents who care (I'm hoping the next one will have more sense than this one) I really see no other alternative.
It wouldn't help if they were trying to clone a female either. Actually, this isn't going to work out at all, even if they bring one or two back, you can't bring back a whole species without a lot of samples (and I doubt that enough samples of mammoth DNA that are still suitable for cloning are still in existence).
Otherwise, you get massive inbreeding. That would be even more destrictuve to the mammoths than unrestricted hunting would.
It's not a sign that the government is collapsing; it isn't. But they're afraid that crypto could very easily pave the way for their collapse, and they have a damn good reason to fear that.
The government claims that criminals will use encryption to hide their plans from the poice. Interesting theory, and true in some aspects, but they forget two things:
1) Most criminals don't know how to use encryption. Hell, most people don't know how to use it; encryption software is not known for its ease of use.
2) Those who would use it are going to use it anyway. Most criminals already get their stuff by illegal means; legal ones are too easy to trace (guns are a big example of this, and it's why I don't believe gun control works).
Now, I do find it interesting that even the loosened export restrictions bar the posting of crypto source online. In other words, US citizens still won't be able to work on Open-Source crypto (or any other crypto with even one person on the team who's not in the US, because the only practical way to get the source to that person is via the Net). The government sure knows how to make enemies out of the very people it's trying to court...
Even the GPL allows you to contact the author and attempt to make an alternate licensing arrangement (the author can, of course, refuse). The DSFG, last I checked, allows for this. So CUPS doesn't fail DSFG after all.
Actually, it looks as though this thing doesn't understand language better than humans (if at all). All it can do is pick out the sounds and form them into words. It still does not know what the words mean.
In essence, what was created is little more than a super-hearing-aid. Certainly a good thing for the hard-of-hearing (and this one, it would seem, could significantly boost the hearing of anyone, even those with "normal" hearing to start).
Just a second...picture this: two hole Zorb rolling around in the water, and one hole goes below the surface. Water will pour in the submerged hole and Zorb and owner will sleep with the fishes because the only thing that keeps the Zorb afloat normally is air pressure on the inside, which is now being conveniently relieved by the other hole!
The Zorb floats, not because of air pressure inside the sphere, but because it's inflatable. An innertube floats with a hold on it; a Zorb is the same way.
As long as you don't puncture the Zorb, the thing will float even with one hole pointing straight down; water might splash up into the Zorb, but no more than a few drops (which run down the sides and back out through the hole). The Zorb itself would not sink.
wouldn't it be relatively easy for water to shlop down into the entrance hole and drown someone?
:.(
Not really. If you keep the hole facing down, no more than a few drops will get in (and then only by splashing) and what gets in will drain out the bottom. You could also, I'd imagine, use a two-hole Zorb for that purpose; you'd get a lot wetter but because the Zorb floats you could always get one entrance above water and breathe.
what if the damn thing popped? You'd NEVER get out.
It looked to me like there was some kind of an internal frame. Not much when the weight of a person is put on it, but probably enough to hold the exit holes open.
As for me, I want a two-entrance, two-harness one of these. But, cruel as the designers of the Website are, they didn't say how you could buy one
In the past, I've enjoyed JonKatz' work. He's presented quite a few very interesting, and sometimes powerful, articles and resulting discussions (see the Hellmouth series for an example of that).
But this... this is absolutely disgusting.
A "reality filter"? Sure, one heck of a nice concept. But who do you think would be pulling the strings? Not the individual, I can tell you that right now. This is exactly the sort of thing governments would leap at and latch onto. Katz' comparison of Clotho to a "Big Sister" is horrifyingly accurate, in more ways than one.
I seriously hope Katz was merely playing Devil's Advocate with this article. If not, I think it can be safely concluded that he's lost his mind. To advocate the denial of free will and rationality to the human mind... it goes against everything the geek community stands for, not to mention everything Katz himself has written about on Slashdot in the past.
Only one thing can determine what is fit and proper for a person to see: that person (or, in the case of a young child, that child's parents). Not a computer program, not a governmental authority, and certainly not anyone else. A person who considers himself incapable of doing this for himself desperately needs psychatric treatment. Reality is not a game. It cannot be filtered out via a program. It has to be taken and dealt with as it comes; nothing is ever going to change that fact.
It's flexible enough, to be sure. But how durable is this stuff? Could it be used for all the purposes which any given type of plastic is used for today?
That's the thing: if this can't be used in many areas, then it will only delay the inevitable, rather than stopping it. Still, it's certainly a good start.
One thing, though. If the plastic can somehow be "extracted" from the plants, then I'm assuming it's in liquid form. If that is the case, why not skip cress and genetically engineer a tree? The plastic would probably have to be secreted into the sap. Then the tree could be tapped like maple trees are for syrup. You could gather the plastic without doing significant harm to the tree, thereby enabling you to get more plastic from it later.
That would certainly increase yields at least somewhat, since you wouldn't have to kill the plant to get the plastic.
Perhaps "redefining" isn't the appropriate term. She wrote back when the genre was still somewhat amorphous, looking for a definition to call its own. Better to say she helped to define the genre, rather than that she redefined it.
You're right, they do mean the same thing. "Passed on," however, seems to have a gentler connotation. The dead don't care how you say it, of course; these terms are more for the living.
Everyone knows "passed on" means "died." It's not like anyone is trying to fool anyone else. It's simply someone's attempt to break the news in a gentler fashion. For a community of people that tends to like science-fiction and fantasy, and therefore has a connection with this woman, that's quite a considerate gesture. Perhaps not entirely necessary, but considerate nonetheless.
That's why you have to be careful. Even a forest is renewable, if you do it right. The tricks are as follows:
1) Plant one tree for every one you cut down. Better, in fact, to plant several in case some don't make it.
2) Cut a forest in sections, and do not touch the sections which are not currently being cut at all.
3) Make each section small enough that by the time the forest is finished, the trees that had been planted first will be at about the same size as the originals were (though probably not the same age). Furthermore, the flora and fauna, which were not disturbed in any section of the forest that was not being cut at any given time, are given a chance to repopulate the area.
The problem with this method is an economic one: it would take many forests to maintain current volumes. Nonetheless, I see no other way of doing this. I will say that some logging companies cut a forest in strips, such that the forest on either side of the strip is not touched; this seems to be a relatively sensible way of sectioning a forest to be cut.
You are right about one thing: humans have no more right to the planet than any other form of life. But keep in mind, we have no less right either.
The difference here is that the total purpose of the Pokemon cards is to play a game--a gambling game, while the baseball cards are mainly there to collect.
Nice, except for one thing: Pokemon is no more a gambling game than chess. Yes, with some of the older card games you played "for ante" (before each game each player picks a card at random from his or her deck and sets it aside; the winner keeps these cards). Pokemon was not designed to be played this way.
Yes, some kids have created a variation of the game where you do play for ante. But this is not the way the game is meant to be played. If you go back to the original Gameboy game, the first rule of etiquette is that you never take another trainer's Pokemon; that rule spills over into the card game. People make side bets on other games, like golf and billiards, all the time; does this mean that those games should be illegal too? If not, then no one has any business screaming about Pokemon for that reason, because it is no different.
Should it be thrown out of court? Most definitely.
Does it mean "Legal Precedent"? Actually, I'm not as certain. You see, one thing about baseball card manufacturers is that they don't typically divide their cards into common, uncommon, and rare like the game manufacturers do; they print more or less the same amount of every card (the value initially comes from factors other than rarity, and the rarity only comes long after the cards aren't printed anymore). That's probably the tactic the lawyers will use this time ("OK, so baseball cards aren't gambling, but...")
I heard about that one. It wasn't the Columbine one, it was one of the shootings that preceded it.
The thing about it is, the people in that one didn't care at all about justice. All they wanted was revenge and someone other than themselves to blame for the fact that they failed to instill a sense of right and wrong in their child.
In other words, similar to what's going on with the Pokemon cards, only this incident fortunately has a much smaller body count (though the brain-cell count is staggering).
One problem: when you play Clue, you don't have to pay every time, and you don't get money (or something of value) for winning. Your logic is flawed.
However, it is still possible to have to pay to play, just as it is possible for people to bet on games of Clue. It sounds silly, I know. But the point is this: Any game can be considered gambling, undr certain conditioons. Any game can also not be gambling. You do not necessarily have to pay to play Pokemon or even get packs, nor do you necessarily get any sort of prize (geez; you're telling me a small piece of cardboard is worth tons of money just because it has "Blastoise" printed on it? You're dreaming, pal).
These things only have value because people are idiotic enough to pay exorbitant sums of money for them. You're telling me a small piece of thin cardboard is worth tons of money just because it has "Blastoise" printed on it? You're dreaming, pal. Pokemon is a game. An innocent game that some people get too wrapped up in (and that can happen in any game). That's the person's own fault and no one else's.