I don't recall butterflies being mentioned in "Guns, Germs, & Steel." Perhaps I missed it.
The point of the book, in case you missed it, is that the classic argument (they're savages, we're civilized) is not a scientific approach to the question of why certain achievements occurred in Eurasia rather than Africa, the Americas, or Oceania.
In fact, the arguments are not deterministic. The advantages that peoples had on a particular continent did not a priori determine their success, but does provide an explanation for why some societies could "advance" more rapidly than others.
Isn't this about 15 years out of date? The gargoyle was put up in the 80's. (There was a children's competition to design new gargoyles. Darth made it up there along with a raccoon and some other less threatening images.)
Teller apolitical? You must be mad. If you read the Oppenheimer trial transcripts, it's quite clear that the impetus for the H-bomb was the "Russian device" not research for research sake.
Similarly, he was the champion of Reagan's favorite toy, the "Star Wars" missle system, again, hardly a pure research project.
His plan for nuking the coastline of Alaska, in order to make new harbors, might have been research, but it certainly wasn't a good idea, and it's that kind of enthusiasm for the bomb that's given him a reputation.
where you are creating a destroying a large number of strings. In this case, using a StringBuffer is far more efficient and doesn't really harm readability.
The thing is, being Microsoft, you don't have to "beat them," at least, not in the sense of being better.
With a desktop monopoly, you just update IE with a "search the web" button that uses your search engine and some very large percentage of users will simply use it without investigating alternatives.
That doesn't prevent it from being a joke. In its April 1985 issue Discover Magazine announced that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them. After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history.
France, Germany, and Belgium do not constitute "the rest of the world".
True enough,but the administration dropped the quest for a vote in the Security Council because it was looking like they wouldn't even get a majority.
there are dozens of other countries supporting the US
Yeah, like Bulgaria and Burundi. Besides England, Spain, and Australia, hardly any nation of a significant size is behind us on this one. Even safe in the North American continent, Canada and Mexico are on the other side.
No one has proposed "forcing" anything. What these people are doing is merely to inform. All they are saying is that Google does not behave in a way that they believe or may be led to believe. This is a tremendously important thing to do, whether or not it results in any changes, because of the role Google has in the internet community.
We should never blindly support any entity, corporate, religious, or governmental. These people are merely providing a view to what might otherwise go unseen.
The choices aren't always cut and dried,either. Imagine you are working on a project that helps a company keep track of it's public reputation (and presumably do something about it.) Then you discover that one of the top customers for the product is an organization you find ethically dubious, like a tobacco company or the Church of Scientology. (Real examples, folks, not just theoretical ones.)
The software itself isn't unethical, but you find the fruit of your labor being used in ways you didn't expect.
That [Palm] is what the market wanted - a *small*, usable, electronic daytimer.
Excuse me, but not ALL of the market wants the same things. That's why there are subcompact cars, sports cars, and SUVs. I used the Palm and the Newton before choosing the MP2000, because I wanted the bigger screen real estate, ethernet option, e-mail, fax, etc. The earlier models were under powered in my opinion, but the MP2K series was (and still is) pretty snappy, performance-wise.
There's room for both. Palm is nice for addresses and calendar, but it's horrible for note taking. I'd love to have the Newton as thin as a Palm (which could be done with today's technology) but I'm happy with larger height and width.
Gates is confident the software his company is developing today will put Microsoft further ahead and perhaps pull the entire economy out of its slump.
Talk about delusions of grandeur. Perhaps Mr. Gates is unaware of the steel, oil, drug, agriculture, etc. industries that can get along just fine without the latest release of Windows.
Well, if he's talking about the ones everyone else is talking about, it's that SUVs don't have to meet the emmissions rules that cars do, nor do they have to meet the same MPG requirments (20 vs 27 for cars.)
Since it costs a bit more to make a cleaner car or a more efficient car, the suburban assult vehicles are getting a free ride on a statute meant to assist rural farmers and small businesses.
Chicago or maybe Gangs will win best picture - two movies I won't waste the time to watch.
It's interesting to see the level of prejudice against "musicals" here. While there are certainly too many than are dated, overly saccharine, nonesense, the best ones stand as real drama.
Chicago is definitely in the class of better musical and it's a delightfully cynical look at the american justice system. Sweeny Todd is another example of a show that trancends the stereotyically musical, as is Dennis Potter's TV miniseries The Singing Detective.
People have mentioned the obvious: bugs, Microsoft, and bloatware, but another issue that should be considered is loss of control.
As companies centralize IT and "reign in" the freedom of the PC revolution, they force the users to standardize on a piece of software that has features the IT department likes. These features may be management capabilities that have no bearing on the capabilities the user wants. The users are then stuck with crummy software that can't be changed which doesn't do what they want.
Yes. Great book,it also points out that the telegraph originally did not even require electricity and wires. It was done with signaling mirrors. Of course, Greeks and American Indians used signal fires, but not as a continuous information architecture the way the telegraph was.
This is an interesting concept..but i don't see how it's physically possible.
Actually, it's already been done. The programming language Linda by David Gelertner uses pattern matching.
Everything exists in a large tuple-space and objects can be "written" into the space. They are "read" by pattern matching. Objects can be passive data or active processes.
It's a very simple and elegant idea. The JINI and JavaSpaces projects use these concepts, which is probably why Lanier's article is on the Java site.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't recall butterflies being mentioned in "Guns, Germs, & Steel." Perhaps I missed it.
The point of the book, in case you missed it, is that the classic argument (they're savages, we're civilized) is not a scientific approach to the question of why certain achievements occurred in Eurasia rather than Africa, the Americas, or Oceania.
In fact, the arguments are not deterministic. The advantages that peoples had on a particular continent did not a priori determine their success, but does provide an explanation for why some societies could "advance" more rapidly than others.
Arg. Who's gonna make the portable I want?
Isn't this about 15 years out of date? The gargoyle was put up in the 80's. (There was a children's competition to design new gargoyles. Darth made it up there along with a raccoon and some other less threatening images.)
Teller apolitical? You must be mad. If you read the Oppenheimer trial transcripts, it's quite clear that the impetus for the H-bomb was the "Russian device" not research for research sake.
Similarly, he was the champion of Reagan's favorite toy, the "Star Wars" missle system, again, hardly a pure research project.
His plan for nuking the coastline of Alaska, in order to make new harbors, might have been research, but it certainly wasn't a good idea, and it's that kind of enthusiasm for the bomb that's given him a reputation.
But those of us who like off-the-wall British literary send-ups have been fantasizing about her since Cold Comfort Farm.
It's going to be great fun watching the marketing guys build their PowerPoint presentations on their cell phones.
Pretty funny. Kind of like the old story about how our train tracks are spaced the way they are because of the size of Roman chariot wheels.
How could you beat Google?
The thing is, being Microsoft, you don't have to "beat them," at least, not in the sense of being better.
With a desktop monopoly, you just update IE with a "search the web" button that uses your search engine and some very large percentage of users will simply use it without investigating alternatives.
I read it in the latest Discover
That doesn't prevent it from being a joke. In its April 1985 issue Discover Magazine announced that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them. After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history.
Text above stolen from http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/top100.html
Tampopo
Delicatessen
France, Germany, and Belgium do not constitute "the rest of the world".
True enough,but the administration dropped the quest for a vote in the Security Council because it was looking like they wouldn't even get a majority.
there are dozens of other countries supporting the US
Yeah, like Bulgaria and Burundi. Besides England, Spain, and Australia, hardly any nation of a significant size is behind us on this one. Even safe in the North American continent, Canada and Mexico are on the other side.
No one has proposed "forcing" anything. What these people are doing is merely to inform. All they are saying is that Google does not behave in a way that they believe or may be led to believe. This is a tremendously important thing to do, whether or not it results in any changes, because of the role Google has in the internet community.
We should never blindly support any entity, corporate, religious, or governmental. These people are merely providing a view to what might otherwise go unseen.
The choices aren't always cut and dried,either. Imagine you are working on a project that helps a company keep track of it's public reputation (and presumably do something about it.) Then you discover that one of the top customers for the product is an organization you find ethically dubious, like a tobacco company or the Church of Scientology. (Real examples, folks, not just theoretical ones.)
The software itself isn't unethical, but you find the fruit of your labor being used in ways you didn't expect.
That [Palm] is what the market wanted - a *small*, usable, electronic daytimer.
Excuse me, but not ALL of the market wants the same things. That's why there are subcompact cars, sports cars, and SUVs. I used the Palm and the Newton before choosing the MP2000, because I wanted the bigger screen real estate, ethernet option, e-mail, fax, etc. The earlier models were under powered in my opinion, but the MP2K series was (and still is) pretty snappy, performance-wise.
There's room for both. Palm is nice for addresses and calendar, but it's horrible for note taking. I'd love to have the Newton as thin as a Palm (which could be done with today's technology) but I'm happy with larger height and width.
Gates is confident the software his company is developing today will put Microsoft further ahead and perhaps pull the entire economy out of its slump.
Talk about delusions of grandeur. Perhaps Mr. Gates is unaware of the steel, oil, drug, agriculture, etc. industries that can get along just fine without the latest release of Windows.
What "tax breaks for SUVs" are you talking about?
Well, if he's talking about the ones everyone else is talking about, it's that SUVs don't have to meet the emmissions rules that cars do, nor do they have to meet the same MPG requirments (20 vs 27 for cars.)
Since it costs a bit more to make a cleaner car or a more efficient car, the suburban assult vehicles are getting a free ride on a statute meant to assist rural farmers and small businesses.
This will only be relevant when Mozilla has the market share that Netscape did at it's peak.
Reminiscent of the 1934 Nessie photograph. Even though it's been documented as a hoax, the true believers live on.
And of course, crop circles are practically a religion to some.
Chicago or maybe Gangs will win best picture - two movies I won't waste the time to watch.
It's interesting to see the level of prejudice against "musicals" here. While there are certainly too many than are dated, overly saccharine, nonesense, the best ones stand as real drama.
Chicago is definitely in the class of better musical and it's a delightfully cynical look at the american justice system. Sweeny Todd is another example of a show that trancends the stereotyically musical, as is Dennis Potter's TV miniseries The Singing Detective.
People have mentioned the obvious: bugs, Microsoft, and bloatware, but another issue that should be considered is loss of control.
As companies centralize IT and "reign in" the freedom of the PC revolution, they force the users to standardize on a piece of software that has features the IT department likes. These features may be management capabilities that have no bearing on the capabilities the user wants. The users are then stuck with crummy software that can't be changed which doesn't do what they want.
Yes. Great book,it also points out that the telegraph originally did not even require electricity and wires. It was done with signaling mirrors. Of course, Greeks and American Indians used signal fires, but not as a continuous information architecture the way the telegraph was.
They've changed their name to the the Altria Group. Bad old Enron's gone, Arthur Anderson's gone, Philip Morris, too. Aren't they?
This is an interesting concept..but i don't see how it's physically possible.
Actually, it's already been done. The programming language Linda by David Gelertner uses pattern matching.
Everything exists in a large tuple-space and objects can be "written" into the space. They are "read" by pattern matching. Objects can be passive data or active processes.
It's a very simple and elegant idea. The JINI and JavaSpaces projects use these concepts, which is probably why Lanier's article is on the Java site.
It's long been know that laptop theives are often more interested in the data than the computer.
Some computers sold on eBay are sold for the data.