The only reason that AI was a _box_office_ flop is that the morons in the
world (the majority) when they heard it was a "Science Fiction" movie were
expecting guns, shooting, robots killing robots, robots killing humans,
explosions, implosions...
Instead we had a fairy tale that took place in the future, so it was 'Science
Fiction.'
So in addition to disappointing those who wanted a popcorn click, it
disappointed those who were looking for something more then a retelling of
pinocchio with androids.
Most of them. In 100 years when greenhouse gasses kill everything, birds will wish they had windmills.
This is currently at +5, insightful.
The most popular models for global warming predict a change of +1.8c to +5.8c between 1990 and 2100[1].
I doubt that this will result in the extinction of all life on earth.
[1] Admittedly, they are models. We don't know what will happen 100 years down the road. While we hope that the models are correct, 30 years ago, our models were showing a global cooling trend.
The true question is what's the average windspeed (and how many watts he
gets at that speed).
I couldn't find it in the article (but again, most of the article was/.ed for me).
As for cost, I believe 1 kW/hr 365 days a year @ $.08/kWh runs $700.80.
Depending on the scale of what he's doing (and his location) he may
increase his cost efficiency by skipping the battery array and selling
excess power back to the telco.
Wind Turbine, not Wind Tunnel. You can stick it on your roof and run a
cable to your computer. Poor man's power, as it were.
Considering that the article said that at ~100 rpms, there was 6 amps @ 6 volts
(36 W), and that at ~1000 rpms (heavy wind?) he predicted about 400W, it seems
an iffy proposition to power a desktop computer.
Poor men use laptops, I guess.
(Only read the first page before/. killed the site. Later pages might have
had more info.)
Yup. Ironically, the litigious public provides an environment favoring quackery: for example, homeopathic "medicines," since they're all inert ingredients, are sure not to cause side-effects that would induce a lawsuit. (Never mind that they don't do any good...)
I think you are mistaken. Quack medicine has had a long and successful history in the US. Homeopathy is nothing new.
Unfortunately, much of the population is missing critical thinking skills. Part of this may be due to evolution: We evolved in small tribes, thus we may give anecdotal evidence more credit than its worth. Part of this is probably due to the fact that medicine tends to be rather advanced technology and requires knowledge to understand and evaluate.
As a footnote, homeopathy may not be quack medicine. It may be possible that there is more than a placebo effect at work, and that water does "remember" what was contained in it, and that the memory of the non-diluted compound has a healing effect. This is judged extremely unlikely by most people (including myself) because it requires several possibilities that are almost certainly non-tree.
This brings up another issue: Modern medicine, like many fields, tends to be based upon the probability that something is true or not true. There are uncertainties at the core of medicine. We don't know how some things work and why some people get better. We tend to use research and scientific models and check if the clinical evidence supports them. Small shifts in thought happen in medince all the time: mouth germs can cause heart disease, ulcers can be caused by bacteria. In all probability, there are mainstream medical treatments being prescriped today that are either not effective or harmful to the patient (proportionally, such treatments are probably not very common). In all probability, there are probably more effective treatments out there as well. If you are ignorant of scientific method, research studies, and statistics, its rather easy to start to believe that homeopathy is effective, especially when the homeopath explains what he does in psuedoscientific jargon.
In the course of writing this comment, I found a slightly off-topic link discussing the 'myth' of the medical establishment fighting against the idea that bacteria causes stomach ulcers. The idea of a lone research fighting against the establishment makes a good story and for those unfamiliar with research, it may seem true, which is probably why such stories enter the pool of common knowledge. Unfortunately, with little else to go on, 'common knowledge' often leads to the wrong conclusion.
Re:You don't need new standards
on
The New C Standard
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Before modding me down, think about it. Any programming language is about solving problems, and problems you solve today are different from the ones someone had back in the days of C creation. Moreover, the ways you deal with programming changed as well. IT industry needs new languages, including low-level and compiled ones.
I thought about it.
You first declared that we need a new language based on the assumption that we are solving different problems from a decade ago. (C99 was released about that long ago, and GCC supports much of the C99 spec).
Yet, thinking about it, you didn't tell us how problems are different from a decade ago.
Nor did you tell us how these problems present difficulties in the upcoming C0X spec.
The amazing thing about C is that it has survived several 'languages of the year'. It obviously has some advantages. It seems to me that C is a proven tool in the programmer's workshop. It doesn't solve all problems, but no tool does. However, it solves a lot of problems very well.
We don't (usually) try kids as adults because we understand that children
tend to have a more limited judgement than adults. Admittedly, there is a
lot of problems with this.
However, arguing that the punishment should be increased due to the severity
of the crime is somewhat faulty logic. If a child runs into the interstate
and ends up causing an accident that kills 20 people, we don't charge the
child with 20 cases of manslaughter.
That's the problem with having limited judgement: You don't really grasp the
consequences of your actions.
(Now if you want to argue that the kid's understanding of the crime was
about the same as an adult's understanding of the crime, and thus he should
be tried as an adult, that could be a valid argument.)
Nethack's is rather primitive (the gods are more or less identical in their actions).
The roguelike "Dungeon Crawl" has a well-fleshed out deity system. For example, Xom, the god of chaos, doesn't care what the character does -- he just randomly awards/punishes.
Trog, the god of berzerkers, hates it when you use magic. Sif Muna rewards magic casters.
Crawl is a fun (although extremely difficult) little game.
You can keep your slide rule, and I'll keep my TI. Which can calculate sin,cos,tan as well as e and pi to 10 digits.
Lets let wikipedia rebutt this:
Advantages: A slide rule tends to moderate the fallacy of "false precision" and significance. The typical precision available to a user of a slide rule is about three places of accuracy. This is in good correspondence with most data available for input to engineering formulas (such as the strength of materials, accurate to two or three places of precision, with a great amount--typically 1.5 or greater--of safety factor as an additional multiplier for error, variations in construction skill, and variability of materials). When a modern pocket calculator is used, the precision may be displayed to seven to ten places of accuracy while in reality, the results can never be of greater precision than the input data available."
Any half-skilled person can write a virus. Heck, a skilled programmer with the right talents and a bit of research could probably write a Warhol worm with just a little research.
Optimize the distribution routines before hand, figure out what tricks you are willing to use to run/hide your virus in the OS, code the core of it, and sit around on security mailing lists. As soon as a new major security hole comes out, add the exploit code and release it.
That's more than enough for a functioning worm. Heck, the right social engineering can create an extremely effective worm.
Yet some people (and employers) consider these "black hats" programming gods. Why?
Is it foolish HR departments? Or is it just a publicity stunt?
A vegan/vegetarian web forum had a thread on "Stupid Things Omnivores [Non-Veg*ns] Say". Amoung its highlights were one omnivore talking about how vegans were at risk for scurvy.
Back to the topic: Vegans don't eat dairy, and one of the sources of health problems in vegetarians is overdoing dairy.
Cow's milk is designed to provide massive amounts of energy for a calf's growth. Therefore, if you become a vegetarian and replace meat products with dairy products, its quite easy to overload on fat and calories. (Yet in moderation, it can be part of a healthy diet.)
As for vitamin D (something that vegans may not consume through diet), 15 minutes in the sun a few times a week should be enough for most people. A sunny commute is probably enough for most people.
Todo: Release software without getting your ass sued off by a frivolous lawsuit.
Methods:
Anonymous remailers.
Friend(s) in countries with weak or non-existant laws.
Sitting down at a cyber cafe and posting it online.
Any mixture of the above.
Of course, a PGP-signature would probably be useful if you want to build up an "official" version. Once you have the first release, the system itself could be used for releasing new versions.
I'm sure I'm not the first one to think of such a system. I would be surprised if software hasn't been released this way yet.
Fansubs are not only free, but
they are easily available. Right now, I don't know of any place within a
100 miles of me that has a good quality of anime.
Lets be realistic. The US market requires translation and subbing or dubbing.
Both of which (I would guess) can be done for a fraction of the price of
creating a new animated episode[1]. Yet the cost per DVD in the stores run $20
- $40, often for only an hour's worth of video (one or two episodes).
In addition, series tend to be many episodes long. At $40 for one or two
episodes, a 20-episode series is over $800.
If companies want to appeal to the mass market, LOWER THE DAMN PRICE TO SOMETHING REASONABLE.
I suspect that the current commercial anime market in the US is driven by
extreme fans with a lot of spare cash. The fansub market is driven by
more mainstream fans who won't dish out thousands of dollars a year just to
see a new series.
A question for non-English speaking/.ers -- when popular US shows are released
in foreign countries, how much do they cost per season? Does a series of
24 or CSI cost hundreds of US$? Or is it a more reasonable cost?)
[1] Hint, hint: I'm sure a few fansubbers would sub a movie for a reasonable
cost.
I've been playing a fan translation of DragonQuest (DragonWarrior) 5 which originally came out in Japan.
While it has the annoying verbose interface common to the DragonQuest series, I'm finding that the game itself is quite enjoyable. Its a shame that it was never officially released in the US by Nintendo. It was a strong SNES title, IMHO.
Considering that Nintendo had a policy of censoring US releases, I'm tempted to drag up fan translations of the other games in the series and play them again.
Sure, there are modern games which are rather fun, but some of the old classics are worth playing again.
Then there are "timeless" games such as Nethack and the other roguelikes which are worth playing again and again.
- SF is hard-core, or "serious" science fiction. That includes, for example, books from Iain M. Banks, and movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey. SF works are usually space operas, well researched on the (possible) technical plan, and can plunge the reader/viewer right down the weird and absolutely alien, which not all may like.
Er, SF (or what most people term as "hard SF") works are usually space operas?
There are many definitions of "Space Opera", but Wikipedia's definition is probably close enough for most people: "Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic adventure, interstellar travel, and space battles where the main storyline is centred around interstellar conflict and character drama."
From further reading of the wikipedia article, there seems to be a "New Space Opera" genre that is hard SF. For an old Science Fiction geek like myself, when I think of space operas, I tend to think of Star Wars. Most of the old space operas aren't usually considered hard SF, and I wouldn't consider some of the newer space operas to be hard SF as well (for example, Bujold's works).
The drug companies have not used it in child vaccines since 2002. In the US
. As for other countries, most notably third world countries that are
accepting "charitable donations" from drug companies, are stuck being
guinea pigs until the true risks are discovered.
So, you are weighing a known risk (risk of childhood diseases) against an
unknown risk (risk that vaccines will cause autism) and assuming that
there is a problem?
In that case, let me inform you that the US population are stuck being
guinea pigs because seatbelts may cause baldness.
Sure, my critics may say that I'm massaging and misreading the data (they
claim that any baldness is probably due to increased life expectency of
seatbelt wearers) but do you really want to take the risk?
Not only do you have layout, planting times, and organic methods, but there are loads of experimentation available.
Do you want to use the French-Intensive method of gardening? How about the traditional method? Blocks or rows?
This year, I'm experimenting with rooting suckers from tomato plants and seeing if the new plants are worthwhile producers. I'm also trying to plant late corn in between flowering beans. (I like to maximize my yeild from a small space.) Next year, I'm going to try interplanting lettuce and tomatoes, hoping that the tomatoes will keep the lettuce cool enough to extend the growing season. I'll also try more mulch next year, I think.
If a typical textbook author never used anything undr 'Fair Use', how would
you explain the existance of textbooks about Modern Art (complete with
pictures), Architecture (again, more pictures), etc...
I understand that parents are people too, and don't give up their movie going
rights at the birth of their child.
HOWEVER, if you have a child, you either get a sitter, or you must be willing
to leave the theatre when your child gets rowdy. And for God's sake, if the
movie is scary or creepy, don't drag your kids to it!
The rest of the movie's audience is also paying to watch the movie, and they
don't want to be disturbed. Its rude when you keep your misbehaving children
in the theatre.
Its parents who won't control their children that give all parents, and all
children, a bad reputation.
I'm not a professional programmer (far from it), and I'm not trying to pass
off the impression that I'm speaking from an expert's point of view.
However, a nice quote that I've heard is "Perfect is the enemy of 'good
enough'", which has more than a bit of truth to it. I've painted myself into
coding corners before, and I've had ugly hacks to get out of it. I've
included a fair number of comments such as "/* TODO: this is unmaintainable
*/". But the code, while ugly, works. Moreso, it works without any noticable
bugs being discovered.
In such a situation, I sit back and consider the following: the 'correct'
solution takes time, takes energy, and probably will need to be debugged.
The "horror-from-the-deep" implimentation is working. Therefore, until I'm
ready to extend the code, I'm willing to let the ugly solution stay in the
code.
I know this isn't the "correct" way to code. I should have the right solution
the first time (according to certain self-proclaimed experts). There is also
the cries from the refactoring crowd, which tell me to rewrite the bad code
to "fix" it. But lets be honest -- the hideous code is already debugged.
It works. It may not be perfect, but its good enough for now.
Later, when I go to extend the functionality of bits of code, the ugly hack
tends to be written out. In that case, the obscure bits of ugly code that
weren't touched after the day it was debugged stays in. The ugly code which
needs to be extended and deal with strange and weird cases gets rewritten into
something more robust and readable.
In short: Its often not worth investing time to "fix" working bad code that
is infrequently used and/or extended. The current code should be debugged.
The new code won't be. Why encourage bugs?
This also neglects the issue of "How much carbon does mankind produce" vs.
"How much carbon does nature produce." (It may turn out that natural
production of CO2, including volcanos, dwarf any human contribution).
The research in that area ends up reporting different results depending on
who is paying the scientist's bills. (And its easy to find criticism about
scientific climate models and data collection methods.)
There is also the possibility that earth is due for a natural phase of
global warming, which means that warming climates are inevitable.
If global warming is due to CO2, there is the question of how much it
costs to reduce CO2 emissions, and if that money could be better spent
on other environmental causes.
Due to the above, I'm rather skeptical about most proposals to limit global
warming. The data isn't there to justify the expenditures, especially
considering that (1) sooner or later, climate change will happen naturally
sooner or later and (2) if global warming will happen, it will probably have
a net benefit on many countries' economies.
I'd rather see the money spent on tasks with a more tangable benefit. We
know what will happen if we spend $1M to set aside a wildlife area. We
don't know what will happen if we spend $1M to put X units of CO2 under the
sea floor.
Microsoft's marketing team
managed to convince untold millions of lusers that that fifth-rate DOS
shell called "Windows 3.1" was functionally competitive with a Macintosh.
They did it again with Windows 95, and then again with Windows 98.
Mindblowing.
I must be a luser, because I am one of those individuals who considered Windows 98 to be functionally competitive with a Macintosh.
Sure, Windows 98 had its faults (it required good hardware with stable drivers,
and it wanted well-behaved programs), but for several years, Windows 98 was
my main desktop system, and its still installed as a dual-boot option on
my fastest machine[0].
Why? I can edit documents, create spreadsheets, code-compile-debug, edit
graphics[1], listen to music, watch videos, and play games. The hardware in
the mid/late 1990s often seemed faster for x86. There were more applications,
and many of them were free (speech/beer).
I never found a task I wanted to do that would require a Macintosh. I never
had the urge to run MacOS 7, 8 or 9. I was exposed to Apples/Macs throughout
my education, and had even learned to program on an old Apple. But by the
mid 1990s, I had switched to Windows and didn't change until my switch to
Debian a few years ago.
Even today, considering MacOS pre-X and Windows 95/98, I would consider them
to be more or less functionally competitive.
I guess I'm a luser that has been brainwashed by Microsoft's marketting team.
[0] Win2k would probably be a better choice, but I don't use windows enough
to upgrade.
[1] Macs have had a decent edge in some (most?) aspects[2] of his field.
[2] In my limited experience, WinNT was popular for the control of expensive
hardware for printing and photography. It may have been due to the
engineers' knowledge of windows, or it may have been easier to modify to run
the hardware. I don't know.
Considering modern ATX power supplies common to most desktop PCs, wouldn't
"off" be considered a "low power state"? (ATX power supplies use a small
amount of current even when the computer is off, unless the power supply is
plugged.)
In that case, the stats will be that roughly 40% of desktop PCs are in a
low power state at night.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead we had a fairy tale that took place in the future, so it was 'Science Fiction.'
So in addition to disappointing those who wanted a popcorn click, it disappointed those who were looking for something more then a retelling of pinocchio with androids.
This is currently at +5, insightful.
The most popular models for global warming predict a change of +1.8c to +5.8c between 1990 and 2100[1].
I doubt that this will result in the extinction of all life on earth.
[1] Admittedly, they are models. We don't know what will happen 100 years down the road. While we hope that the models are correct, 30 years ago, our models were showing a global cooling trend.
The true question is what's the average windspeed (and how many watts he gets at that speed).
I couldn't find it in the article (but again, most of the article was /.ed for me).
As for cost, I believe 1 kW/hr 365 days a year @ $.08/kWh runs $700.80.
Depending on the scale of what he's doing (and his location) he may increase his cost efficiency by skipping the battery array and selling excess power back to the telco.
Considering that the article said that at ~100 rpms, there was 6 amps @ 6 volts (36 W), and that at ~1000 rpms (heavy wind?) he predicted about 400W, it seems an iffy proposition to power a desktop computer.
Poor men use laptops, I guess.
(Only read the first page before /. killed the site. Later pages might have
had more info.)
I think you are mistaken. Quack medicine has had a long and successful history in the US. Homeopathy is nothing new.
Unfortunately, much of the population is missing critical thinking skills. Part of this may be due to evolution: We evolved in small tribes, thus we may give anecdotal evidence more credit than its worth. Part of this is probably due to the fact that medicine tends to be rather advanced technology and requires knowledge to understand and evaluate.
As a footnote, homeopathy may not be quack medicine. It may be possible that there is more than a placebo effect at work, and that water does "remember" what was contained in it, and that the memory of the non-diluted compound has a healing effect. This is judged extremely unlikely by most people (including myself) because it requires several possibilities that are almost certainly non-tree.
This brings up another issue: Modern medicine, like many fields, tends to be based upon the probability that something is true or not true. There are uncertainties at the core of medicine. We don't know how some things work and why some people get better. We tend to use research and scientific models and check if the clinical evidence supports them. Small shifts in thought happen in medince all the time: mouth germs can cause heart disease, ulcers can be caused by bacteria. In all probability, there are mainstream medical treatments being prescriped today that are either not effective or harmful to the patient (proportionally, such treatments are probably not very common). In all probability, there are probably more effective treatments out there as well. If you are ignorant of scientific method, research studies, and statistics, its rather easy to start to believe that homeopathy is effective, especially when the homeopath explains what he does in psuedoscientific jargon.
In the course of writing this comment, I found a slightly off-topic link discussing the 'myth' of the medical establishment fighting against the idea that bacteria causes stomach ulcers. The idea of a lone research fighting against the establishment makes a good story and for those unfamiliar with research, it may seem true, which is probably why such stories enter the pool of common knowledge. Unfortunately, with little else to go on, 'common knowledge' often leads to the wrong conclusion.
I thought about it.
You first declared that we need a new language based on the assumption that we are solving different problems from a decade ago. (C99 was released about that long ago, and GCC supports much of the C99 spec).
Yet, thinking about it, you didn't tell us how problems are different from a decade ago.
Nor did you tell us how these problems present difficulties in the upcoming C0X spec.
The amazing thing about C is that it has survived several 'languages of the year'. It obviously has some advantages. It seems to me that C is a proven tool in the programmer's workshop. It doesn't solve all problems, but no tool does. However, it solves a lot of problems very well.
We don't (usually) try kids as adults because we understand that children tend to have a more limited judgement than adults. Admittedly, there is a lot of problems with this.
However, arguing that the punishment should be increased due to the severity of the crime is somewhat faulty logic. If a child runs into the interstate and ends up causing an accident that kills 20 people, we don't charge the child with 20 cases of manslaughter.
That's the problem with having limited judgement: You don't really grasp the consequences of your actions.
(Now if you want to argue that the kid's understanding of the crime was about the same as an adult's understanding of the crime, and thus he should be tried as an adult, that could be a valid argument.)
Roguelikes often have a fleshed-out diety system.
Nethack's is rather primitive (the gods are more or less identical in their actions).
The roguelike "Dungeon Crawl" has a well-fleshed out deity system. For example, Xom, the god of chaos, doesn't care what the character does -- he just randomly awards/punishes. Trog, the god of berzerkers, hates it when you use magic. Sif Muna rewards magic casters.
Crawl is a fun (although extremely difficult) little game.
Lets let wikipedia rebutt this:
Very true.
Any half-skilled person can write a virus. Heck, a skilled programmer with the right talents and a bit of research could probably write a Warhol worm with just a little research.
Optimize the distribution routines before hand, figure out what tricks you are willing to use to run/hide your virus in the OS, code the core of it, and sit around on security mailing lists. As soon as a new major security hole comes out, add the exploit code and release it.
That's more than enough for a functioning worm. Heck, the right social engineering can create an extremely effective worm.
Yet some people (and employers) consider these "black hats" programming gods. Why?
Is it foolish HR departments? Or is it just a publicity stunt?
Slight tangent:
A vegan/vegetarian web forum had a thread on "Stupid Things Omnivores [Non-Veg*ns] Say". Amoung its highlights were one omnivore talking about how vegans were at risk for scurvy.
Back to the topic: Vegans don't eat dairy, and one of the sources of health problems in vegetarians is overdoing dairy.
Cow's milk is designed to provide massive amounts of energy for a calf's growth. Therefore, if you become a vegetarian and replace meat products with dairy products, its quite easy to overload on fat and calories. (Yet in moderation, it can be part of a healthy diet.)
As for vitamin D (something that vegans may not consume through diet), 15 minutes in the sun a few times a week should be enough for most people. A sunny commute is probably enough for most people.
Todo: Release software without getting your ass sued off by a frivolous lawsuit.
Methods:
Of course, a PGP-signature would probably be useful if you want to build up an "official" version. Once you have the first release, the system itself could be used for releasing new versions.
I'm sure I'm not the first one to think of such a system. I would be surprised if software hasn't been released this way yet.
You forgot a biggie:
Fansubs are not only free, but they are easily available. Right now, I don't know of any place within a 100 miles of me that has a good quality of anime.
Lets be realistic. The US market requires translation and subbing or dubbing. Both of which (I would guess) can be done for a fraction of the price of creating a new animated episode[1]. Yet the cost per DVD in the stores run $20 - $40, often for only an hour's worth of video (one or two episodes).
In addition, series tend to be many episodes long. At $40 for one or two episodes, a 20-episode series is over $800.
If companies want to appeal to the mass market, LOWER THE DAMN PRICE TO SOMETHING REASONABLE.
I suspect that the current commercial anime market in the US is driven by extreme fans with a lot of spare cash. The fansub market is driven by more mainstream fans who won't dish out thousands of dollars a year just to see a new series.
A question for non-English speaking /.ers -- when popular US shows are released
in foreign countries, how much do they cost per season? Does a series of
24 or CSI cost hundreds of US$? Or is it a more reasonable cost?)
[1] Hint, hint: I'm sure a few fansubbers would sub a movie for a reasonable cost.
I've been playing a fan translation of DragonQuest (DragonWarrior) 5 which originally came out in Japan.
While it has the annoying verbose interface common to the DragonQuest series, I'm finding that the game itself is quite enjoyable. Its a shame that it was never officially released in the US by Nintendo. It was a strong SNES title, IMHO.
Considering that Nintendo had a policy of censoring US releases, I'm tempted to drag up fan translations of the other games in the series and play them again.
Sure, there are modern games which are rather fun, but some of the old classics are worth playing again.
Then there are "timeless" games such as Nethack and the other roguelikes which are worth playing again and again.
When you are predicting your oil deathpool, you might want to google for shale oil, and its current cost/barrel.
If fuel prices stay as high as they are, shale oil starts to become competitive.
Er, SF (or what most people term as "hard SF") works are usually space operas?
There are many definitions of "Space Opera", but Wikipedia's definition is probably close enough for most people: "Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic adventure, interstellar travel, and space battles where the main storyline is centred around interstellar conflict and character drama."
From further reading of the wikipedia article, there seems to be a "New Space Opera" genre that is hard SF. For an old Science Fiction geek like myself, when I think of space operas, I tend to think of Star Wars. Most of the old space operas aren't usually considered hard SF, and I wouldn't consider some of the newer space operas to be hard SF as well (for example, Bujold's works).
So, you are weighing a known risk (risk of childhood diseases) against an unknown risk (risk that vaccines will cause autism) and assuming that there is a problem?
In that case, let me inform you that the US population are stuck being guinea pigs because seatbelts may cause baldness.
Sure, my critics may say that I'm massaging and misreading the data (they claim that any baldness is probably due to increased life expectency of seatbelt wearers) but do you really want to take the risk?
Stop mandatory seatbelt laws now!
Yes. Gardening.
Its geeky, in its own way.
Not only do you have layout, planting times, and organic methods, but there are loads of experimentation available.
Do you want to use the French-Intensive method of gardening? How about the traditional method? Blocks or rows?
This year, I'm experimenting with rooting suckers from tomato plants and seeing if the new plants are worthwhile producers. I'm also trying to plant late corn in between flowering beans. (I like to maximize my yeild from a small space.) Next year, I'm going to try interplanting lettuce and tomatoes, hoping that the tomatoes will keep the lettuce cool enough to extend the growing season. I'll also try more mulch next year, I think.
If a typical textbook author never used anything undr 'Fair Use', how would you explain the existance of textbooks about Modern Art (complete with pictures), Architecture (again, more pictures), etc...
You forgot misbehaved children.
I understand that parents are people too, and don't give up their movie going rights at the birth of their child.
HOWEVER, if you have a child, you either get a sitter, or you must be willing to leave the theatre when your child gets rowdy. And for God's sake, if the movie is scary or creepy, don't drag your kids to it!
The rest of the movie's audience is also paying to watch the movie, and they don't want to be disturbed. Its rude when you keep your misbehaving children in the theatre.
Its parents who won't control their children that give all parents, and all children, a bad reputation.
I'm not a professional programmer (far from it), and I'm not trying to pass off the impression that I'm speaking from an expert's point of view.
However, a nice quote that I've heard is "Perfect is the enemy of 'good enough'", which has more than a bit of truth to it. I've painted myself into coding corners before, and I've had ugly hacks to get out of it. I've included a fair number of comments such as "/* TODO: this is unmaintainable */". But the code, while ugly, works. Moreso, it works without any noticable bugs being discovered.
In such a situation, I sit back and consider the following: the 'correct' solution takes time, takes energy, and probably will need to be debugged. The "horror-from-the-deep" implimentation is working. Therefore, until I'm ready to extend the code, I'm willing to let the ugly solution stay in the code.
I know this isn't the "correct" way to code. I should have the right solution the first time (according to certain self-proclaimed experts). There is also the cries from the refactoring crowd, which tell me to rewrite the bad code to "fix" it. But lets be honest -- the hideous code is already debugged. It works. It may not be perfect, but its good enough for now.
Later, when I go to extend the functionality of bits of code, the ugly hack tends to be written out. In that case, the obscure bits of ugly code that weren't touched after the day it was debugged stays in. The ugly code which needs to be extended and deal with strange and weird cases gets rewritten into something more robust and readable.
In short: Its often not worth investing time to "fix" working bad code that is infrequently used and/or extended. The current code should be debugged. The new code won't be. Why encourage bugs?
This also neglects the issue of "How much carbon does mankind produce" vs. "How much carbon does nature produce." (It may turn out that natural production of CO2, including volcanos, dwarf any human contribution).
The research in that area ends up reporting different results depending on who is paying the scientist's bills. (And its easy to find criticism about scientific climate models and data collection methods.)
There is also the possibility that earth is due for a natural phase of global warming, which means that warming climates are inevitable.
If global warming is due to CO2, there is the question of how much it costs to reduce CO2 emissions, and if that money could be better spent on other environmental causes.
Due to the above, I'm rather skeptical about most proposals to limit global warming. The data isn't there to justify the expenditures, especially considering that (1) sooner or later, climate change will happen naturally sooner or later and (2) if global warming will happen, it will probably have a net benefit on many countries' economies.
I'd rather see the money spent on tasks with a more tangable benefit. We know what will happen if we spend $1M to set aside a wildlife area. We don't know what will happen if we spend $1M to put X units of CO2 under the sea floor.
Er, why not use GnuPG (free) + 2 Cheap Webstorage/hosts.
Its cheap, its secure, and since the data is on two physically different machines at two different locations it should be reliable.
I must be a luser, because I am one of those individuals who considered Windows 98 to be functionally competitive with a Macintosh.
Sure, Windows 98 had its faults (it required good hardware with stable drivers, and it wanted well-behaved programs), but for several years, Windows 98 was my main desktop system, and its still installed as a dual-boot option on my fastest machine[0].
Why? I can edit documents, create spreadsheets, code-compile-debug, edit graphics[1], listen to music, watch videos, and play games. The hardware in the mid/late 1990s often seemed faster for x86. There were more applications, and many of them were free (speech/beer).
I never found a task I wanted to do that would require a Macintosh. I never had the urge to run MacOS 7, 8 or 9. I was exposed to Apples/Macs throughout my education, and had even learned to program on an old Apple. But by the mid 1990s, I had switched to Windows and didn't change until my switch to Debian a few years ago.
Even today, considering MacOS pre-X and Windows 95/98, I would consider them to be more or less functionally competitive.
I guess I'm a luser that has been brainwashed by Microsoft's marketting team.
[0] Win2k would probably be a better choice, but I don't use windows enough to upgrade.
[1] Macs have had a decent edge in some (most?) aspects[2] of his field.
[2] In my limited experience, WinNT was popular for the control of expensive hardware for printing and photography. It may have been due to the engineers' knowledge of windows, or it may have been easier to modify to run the hardware. I don't know.
Considering modern ATX power supplies common to most desktop PCs, wouldn't "off" be considered a "low power state"? (ATX power supplies use a small amount of current even when the computer is off, unless the power supply is plugged.)
In that case, the stats will be that roughly 40% of desktop PCs are in a low power state at night.