GTK+ seemed a bit contrived when I tried to learn it. They are using OOP concepts in C.
What's wrong with that? OOP is very natural for expressing many problems, and is usable in _any_ language that supports the concept of a function pointer.
Remember, OOP is a design methodology, not a language feature. Some languages add extra syntax to support it, but OOP is a matter of semantics, not syntax. Just because C lacks syntax specific to OOP doesn't mean it isn't capable of supporting OOP. It is.
No offense, But blizzard and WestWood are really out of it. Want to see a real game, that makes q3test look like doom?
Q3test already looks like Doom. Same incredibly boring tedious gameplay, just with updated graphics.
Both Blizzard and Westwood make fun games. I've never seen a decent game from id or Bungie. Doom was amusing for about 5 minutes, then got real boring real fast. Same for Quake and its sequels. I've never heard of Halo, but Oni looks like another boring first person shooter with the tedium of Mortal Combat thrown in to make you fall asleep faster. Let me know when either company comes up with a game half as good as the original C&C (which would be about 10 times better than anything they've come up with so far)...
I believe that Apple coined the term, "Personal Computer," in the Apple ][ days. (It sounds Jobsian, doesn't it?) Of course they never trademarked it. When IBM came out with the "PC" they co-opted the term.
Really? Where were Apple's unfed, ferral, rabid attack lawyers?
Must have been before Apple bred them. (Did they breed them just in time to sic them on Franklin?)
Either that or even those vicious monsters were afraid of IBM...
On a 22 year old computer? Not likely. I first got into computing, well, not quite as long ago as that (but embarrassingly close), and at the time, the typical machine had 16K of memory, expandable (if at all) to a maximum of 64K (due to 16-bit addressing). But why would you bother, that's WAY more memory than you're ever likely to need. 32K max if you're some sort of lunatic power user who really pushes things, but that's still ample memory...
Just like that band you knew from your neighbourhood ignored you when they landed the million dollar record deal,
They're free to associate with whoever they like. Am I supposed to resent this or something? "Damn them for having the freedom of association!" Sorry, I have more important things to do.
Linux is also succeptable to the taste of green, despite what anyone says.
Linux is an operating system. It's incapable of tasting anything, or succumbing to greed, or selling out, or any of the outrageous things it's been accused of being succeptible to. If by this you mean the Linux community, you're commiting the falacy of assuming we're some sort of hive-mind organism. Individuals within the community may like getting paid, if that's what you mean. And your point is?
As a community, we must do our best in keeping our heads out of the clouds ("oh, they finally love that OS I've loved for so long.. how dreamy is this?")
As individuals, we each have the right to stick our heads where ever we damn well please, thank you very much.
and make sure we don't lose the handle on this thing.
I thought the whole point was about freedom. People are free to use whatever OS they like, for whatever reasons they like. If we actually have "the handle on this thing", we've already lost. Hopefully, no one controls "this thing".
As a Linux user, INFORM your friends and neighbours! Tell them why Linux is such a great OS.. not just because it works, but because it's the communities! Tell them to support the grass-roots Linux community, not just the companies who shrink-wrap it.
I'm not an evangelist. If they want my opinions a good OS, I'm happy to tell them all about Linux, my personal favorite. But I'm not going to be in their face about it. Nor am I going to tell them who they should get their distribution from or who they should support. If they like nice shrink-wrapped packages and thats what they want, then that's who they should give their suppport to! Personally, I don't, but they're free to support whoever they like, just as I am.
But yes, lets not be idealistic. Linux may end up being the Windows of the 00's.
Only if everyone succumbs to the "need" to control it. Windows is under one company's control. Linux is under no one's control. That's what makes it different. If it's really under the community's control, then it's no different from Windows, it's only a matter of who holds the reigns.
Who knows. Anyone who discounts any possibility admits being ill prepared for every possibility.
Frankly, I believe the GPL prevents this. The majority of the community can abandon freedom, but there will always be individuals who won't, and the community can't stop them from going their own way. Thank the gods Linux is not under our control. That's why the people of Red Hat can do what they like, the people who want to give Red Hat money for it can do so, etc. This is, IMNSHO, a Good Thing(TM), especially considering how many people would stop them if they could (and rant about it since they can't) rather than simply minding their own business!
Insightful. It should be noted, though, that sometimes the minority manages to change the ideals of the majority -- i.e. it moves into the mainstream.
The hippies failed to change the ideals of the majority. (Did they really? Or should I rather say they failed to change them as much as they wanted.) It remains to be seen whether OSS will change everything as far as they want to or not. I think it's already true that it has changed things,
GNU/FSF Foundataion.. i don't "buy" that for what its worth. Free software my ass. It would be great if we all got donations and cash awards. I would believe it, but go to www.gnu.org, you see make donations and make contributions and this is what needs to be done. Whats so free about that?
This may be the most clueless comment I've seen in a long, long time. Go back to www.gnu.org, and this time, actually read it!
Hint: You're confused about what the word "Free" in FSF stands for. Your comments are about money. Nothing on the GNU.org website talks about software that doesn't cost money (except where they clarify that's not what they're talking about).
To ask a counterquestion to your last question: what's not free about that? (Remember, you answer should make no reference to money -- checking www.gnu.org if you're confused about what the word "free" means in this context.)
You know, Red Hat gives away its distribution. I know, I recently downloaded Red Hat 6.0 to install on my SPARCstation. (Thank the gods for DSL!) Red Hat sells a service, not code. If I didn't have a high speed Internet connection, I just might have bought it from them to get a nice CD. To say Red Hat makes money selling other people's code is ridiculous. They make money selling a service, and unless you went down and helped them perform their service, why would you deserve a cut? They sell a service that there's enough demand for that they make money at it. Good for them! But they don't sell code. That they give away for free.
How strange. INTP's are pretty rare (less than 1% of the population). I'm one also, how many other computer geeks out there are INTP's?
Quite a few, I would guess. They've run Myers-Briggs tests over people in various occupations before, and computer programmers tend to fall into INTP a *lot* more often than the general population.
Personally, I'm an extreme personality type in three categories. I invariably max the scale on I, and either do or come close to it on N and P. On the T/F scale, though, I generally come out pretty close to the middle, twice I've scored slightly higher in T (making me also INTP) and once I've scored the other way (INFP).
Perhaps the most interesting line reads, 'Analysts worry that this could destroy the cooperative mood that has been a feature of the Linux community and a key reason for its success.'
Hee hee hee! That's a good one!
Obviously, these reporters never read/.. Someone should let them in on KDE/Qt vs. GNOME/GTK+ or GPL vs. BSD, etc. Show them some fine examples of "cooperative mood".:)
For that matter, how important is a cooperative mood to the success of Linux? Who really needs to cooperate besides people in on the same project? Personally, I think the competative spirit between projects like KDE and GNOME does a lot to help 'the cause' (as long as they can agree on some common protocols)...
And before anyone starts up with the "New and Better Technology" cry - ask yourselves what the big advantage was with Slot 1, and why when it was fiscally expedient for Intel they forgot all about it for the Celeron Series and went for Socket 370?
Why? Your question is irrelevant to the question of why AMD moved to Slot A over Socket 7. I don't care why Intel moved to Slot 1. I do know that the Athlon couldn't possibly be made to work on Socket 7 motherboards. Do you even know what EV6 is? If not, shut up or go post elsewhere about something you have a clue about.
AMD moved away from Socket 7 precisely for the "new and better technology" reasons you're so quick to dismiss, although technically it's not new -- the Alpha has been using it for some time. Why a slot rather than a new type of socket? Well, if you're going to change anyways, who cares? If it ain't Socket 7, it might as well be either a socket or slot. Slots are nice in that you have less of a problem with bent pins, and although ZIF sockets are supposed to solve that, chips can still be damaged while not being installed. More importantly, since it makes no real difference either way, but many consumers find slots easier, why NOT a new slot type?
The Amber Diceless Role-Playing Game has the fastest combat system (not only no HP, but no dice rolling, weapon damage tables, etc.) and least burdensome rules. Unfortunately, no computer will ever be able to run it (barring some unprecedented advances in AI). "Roll-playing" games like AD&D make for much better computer games.
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Re: Typical Bigotry vs. excellent propoganda
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Err, that was hardly a non-biased point of view. You're too easily swayed by a reasonable sounding voice. Just because someone presents their point of view calmly and reasonably doesn't make it unbiased.
The last comment is particularly telling. The author sounds too intelligent and well versed to have missed the point that badly. I personally have a stake in a software engineering company and hope to be quite rich in the not too distant future. There's nothing wrong with that. And yet, I don't like Bill Gates. This has *nothing* to do with the fact that he's rich. I don't like Microsoft. This has *nothing* to do with the fact that they're a business, out to make money. The original poster wants to dismiss our attitude towards the unethical behavior of Gates/Microsoft by pretending our beef it with the fact that they're a company. He's putting words in our mouths by sayings we think Microsoft is evil because they're a company bent on making money and dominating the software market. And from his writing skills, I'm guessing he's not actually stupid enough to believe that this is the reason we hate Microsoft. He can't have missed the point that badly. Which means his last comment is a deliberate distortion of the truth, not an innocent misunderstanding.
I have no problems with a company that wants to make money, or a person who wants to get rich. I'd be a definate pot calling the kettle black if I did. What I have problems with is unethical behavior. Being against evil does not make you a communist, no matter how hard the evil people want to paint you with that label.
Bill Gates *is* evil, and this has nothing to do with how much money he has. I'm sure if he was penniless, he'd still be evil. Likewise, I think I'm basically good, and I don't expect that to change any when I'm rich. This is not an issue about money or marketshare. It's all about behavior. Don't try and confuse the issue by pretending those of us who cry foul are doing so because we hate winners. We love winners, assuming they didn't cheat to win. If they did, expect us to demand they return the gold medal they stole...
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Who *really* decides what's "core X architecture"?
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Hmmm. It this a significant issue anymore? Since the broohaha where XFree nearly forked from the Open Group's standard, I've been wondering who really controls X. I'm not sure either group does at this point. But whatever. In any case, if there's some modification to X I want, I'd rather hear XFree is implementing it than the Open Group or whatever the frick they're called now. DRI will not remain an XFree86 specific extension unless there's really no need for it. If there's truly a need, it'll get adopted by others. If that happens, it'll be a sure sign that the torch really has been passed, and XFree is now in control. Which is good, because I don't think they *want* to be in control. What's the old saying? "Anyone who *wants* to be President should absolutely not be allowed to do the job."
It's more free because the only string attached is "not only is it free now, but it must *remain* free". BSD-style says its free now, but doesn't insure that it *remains* free in the future. So, so sum up:
BSD: Free, for now. GPL: Free, forever.
Which is more free? Obviously, that's debatable, or we wouldn't all spill so much virtual ink on the subject, but in my opinion, the second is more free. The only string attached with GPL is one that guarentees freedom. I can live with that...
Good grief. If MS wants to promote BSD, great! They're just helping to dig their grave a little deeper.
Besides, I love NetBSD. My old machines get upgraded to it when their manufacturers stop supporting them. My old Mac won't run MacOS 7.6 or newer -- voila, NetBSD/mac68k. I tried Linux, but it's not useable on my machine (yet). Solaris 7 theoretically works on my SPARCstation, but man is it a dog. Sun doesn't realize we haven't all upgraded to Ultras yet (or just doesn't care). It'll get upgraded to NetBSD soon (although I'll at least take a look at Linux -- but my experience trying to get it working on my old Mac makes me leary of wasting time trying it on my old SPARC -- I may reserve Linux for my newer, higher performance systems like my Pentium II. I love Linux too, but it just doesn't seem to run as well as NetBSD on my non-Intel systems, or at least that's what my Mac experience was).
I'm glad to know you've been using Gnome since 0.40, but have you bothered to update to a newer version recently? Gnome comes with Enlightenment and has for some time. Granted, you do not need to download and install it, but that doesn't alter the fact that Enlightenment is the WM Gnome comes with, if you follow the directions on their FTP site, which instruct you to download everything in the "Base" directory, which includes Englightenment. (Even if they didn't tell you to, the fact that Enlightenment is in the Base directory ought to be a clue...)
I assume you're trying to be sarcastic. If it weren't for the fact that you're dead wrong, it might even have been funny...
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No reason for BSD at all except the legal stuff...
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In practical terms, BSD-style licenses exist for the purpose of declaring the author can't be sued. And that's pretty much it. Unless you're worried about being sued, there's really no reason to release something under a BSD-style license -- just release to the public domain.
I used to gnash my teeth over the oxymoron of a "free software license", and rally against people using the GPL instead of just releasing something to the public domain. Eventually, though, I realized if I wanted my code to remain free, something like the GPL is a necessary evil. But if you're not concerned about it, go ahead, release public domain, or BSD if you're paranoid about lawsuits. This is a really stupid thing to fight a war over, even if it's just a flame war. Let each author do as he/she prefers...
of course, if we were using DNA as our storage medium, would that mean that we would be reading off data in a four bit as opposed to a two bit system?
Err, presumably you mean a four value (2 bits) as opposed to a two value (1 bit) system. Yes, that would be the case. But since we generally read memory in at least 8 bit chunks anyways, this doesn't make any difference to the computer. It knows not that the data was reconstructed from the state of 4 molecules rather than 8 transistors. You've done something horribly wrong if your computer cares how the data is stored -- this is the kind of information that interests electrical engineers, not computer scientists...:)
You'll find in lingustics as well that most people do not have a concurrently available vocabulary of thousands of words, in fact 5000 words is a lot even for an adult, you don't need nearly that to get along in society. But the availability of a word at a given instant is largely related to its association with other concepts and word streams. People with larger vocabularies are often more capable of utilizing a larger wordset because they typically are making an effort to use less common words (even if they won't fess up to it).
I think you're confusing a couple of half-remember facts and combining them into one incorrect one. The average adult typically only uses about a thousand words. Even those of us who are extremely intelligent with vocabularies from specialized fields -- we just have a few "exotic" words in our standard lexicon of things we talk about.
This does not alter the fact that there are dozens of words we know for every one we actually use. We only use a small fraction of the words we know -- most of the words we know will never pass our lips, it'll simply never come up in conversation. Nor will we type or pen them, we'll never have cause to.
Thus, our "working vocabulary" is a rather tiny fraction of the words we know. 60,000 is not unusual for an educated adult. Add to that our knowledge of how to make words from other words, and there may be two or three hundred thousand words you would have no trouble comprehending if you came across while reading.
So, your "available vocabulary" is a few orders of magnitude greater than your typical "working vocabulary".
Actually, that's pretty much true of any book. Most books, if not editted, would require about an entire TV season's worth of time to do. A 2 hour movie can't come from anything more than a short story without heavy editting...
ACK! Molly Millions (actually, I prefer the name she used in Mona Lisa Overdrive, Sally Shears) is NOT in the movie. The woman in the movie is not Molly with a different name. That wouldn't be surprising, she's used different names in the books. However, the woman the the movie has a lot less in common with Molly than simply a different name. Point in fact, I'm hard pressed to think of much they had in common other than being female and in a story with the same title.
It would have been much cooler if Molly *had* been in the movie. But she'd be the most interesting character in the movie, so they doubtless felt they needed to replace her with a far less competent, streetwise, and interesting character to keep her from overshadowing Keanu...
It can't how much is used at once. Simply processing the data from your eyes alone, turning the signals from the rods and cones into a coherent visual image, is occupying 30% of your brain (according to college psych textbook). Of course, this is not surprising, considering it's the single most complex task brains do. Contemplating philosophy is a relatively simple task by comparison...
I've not done any research, but doesn't it seem as if there are many more defects, allergies, and weaknesses in the population today than there was in the past?
Umm, the percentage of people born with them shouldn't increase. With natural selection active, it should decrease. Without it, it should just remain about where they are.
On the other hand, since these people aren't dying off in childhood but remaining part of the population, even if the percentage of people born with these problems doesn't increase, the percentage of the living population that has them should increase.
Also, since the population as a whole is increasing, although on a percentage basis people born with these problems should not be increasing, the number of people with them should be.
This doesn't mean evolution will come to a dead halt. In fact, as we become more adept at and more comfortable with genetic manipulation, human evolution is likely to resume. Artificial selection of specific genes will replace natural selection of entire organisms.
Slashdot Mirror
What's wrong with that? OOP is very natural for expressing many problems, and is usable in _any_ language that supports the concept of a function pointer.
Remember, OOP is a design methodology, not a language feature. Some languages add extra syntax to support it, but OOP is a matter of semantics, not syntax. Just because C lacks syntax specific to OOP doesn't mean it isn't capable of supporting OOP. It is.
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Q3test already looks like Doom. Same incredibly boring tedious gameplay, just with updated graphics.
Both Blizzard and Westwood make fun games. I've never seen a decent game from id or Bungie. Doom was amusing for about 5 minutes, then got real boring real fast. Same for Quake and its sequels. I've never heard of Halo, but Oni looks like another boring first person shooter with the tedium of Mortal Combat thrown in to make you fall asleep faster. Let me know when either company comes up with a game half as good as the original C&C (which would be about 10 times better than anything they've come up with so far)...
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Really? Where were Apple's unfed, ferral, rabid attack lawyers?
Must have been before Apple bred them. (Did they breed them just in time to sic them on Franklin?)
Either that or even those vicious monsters were afraid of IBM...
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On a 22 year old computer? Not likely. I first got into computing, well, not quite as long ago as that (but embarrassingly close), and at the time, the typical machine had 16K of memory, expandable (if at all) to a maximum of 64K (due to 16-bit addressing). But why would you bother, that's WAY more memory than you're ever likely to need. 32K max if you're some sort of lunatic power user who really pushes things, but that's still ample memory...
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I only give credit where credit is due.
Just like that band you knew from your neighbourhood ignored you when they landed the million dollar record deal,
They're free to associate with whoever they like. Am I supposed to resent this or something? "Damn them for having the freedom of association!" Sorry, I have more important things to do.
Linux is also succeptable to the taste of green, despite what anyone says.
Linux is an operating system. It's incapable of tasting anything, or succumbing to greed, or selling out, or any of the outrageous things it's been accused of being succeptible to. If by this you mean the Linux community, you're commiting the falacy of assuming we're some sort of hive-mind organism. Individuals within the community may like getting paid, if that's what you mean. And your point is?
As a community, we must do our best in keeping our heads out of the clouds ("oh, they finally love that OS I've loved for so long
As individuals, we each have the right to stick our heads where ever we damn well please, thank you very much.
and make sure we don't lose the handle on this thing.
I thought the whole point was about freedom. People are free to use whatever OS they like, for whatever reasons they like. If we actually have "the handle on this thing", we've already lost. Hopefully, no one controls "this thing".
As a Linux user, INFORM your friends and neighbours! Tell them why Linux is such a great OS
I'm not an evangelist. If they want my opinions a good OS, I'm happy to tell them all about Linux, my personal favorite. But I'm not going to be in their face about it. Nor am I going to tell them who they should get their distribution from or who they should support. If they like nice shrink-wrapped packages and thats what they want, then that's who they should give their suppport to! Personally, I don't, but they're free to support whoever they like, just as I am.
But yes, lets not be idealistic. Linux may end up being the Windows of the 00's.
Only if everyone succumbs to the "need" to control it. Windows is under one company's control. Linux is under no one's control. That's what makes it different. If it's really under the community's control, then it's no different from Windows, it's only a matter of who holds the reigns.
Who knows. Anyone who discounts any possibility admits being ill prepared for every possibility.
Frankly, I believe the GPL prevents this. The majority of the community can abandon freedom, but there will always be individuals who won't, and the community can't stop them from going their own way. Thank the gods Linux is not under our control. That's why the people of Red Hat can do what they like, the people who want to give Red Hat money for it can do so, etc. This is, IMNSHO, a Good Thing(TM), especially considering how many people would stop them if they could (and rant about it since they can't) rather than simply minding their own business!
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The hippies failed to change the ideals of the majority. (Did they really? Or should I rather say they failed to change them as much as they wanted.) It remains to be seen whether OSS will change everything as far as they want to or not. I think it's already true that it has changed things,
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But seriously, if such a thing appeared, it would simply get reverse engineered...
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This may be the most clueless comment I've seen in a long, long time. Go back to www.gnu.org, and this time, actually read it!
Hint: You're confused about what the word "Free" in FSF stands for. Your comments are about money. Nothing on the GNU.org website talks about software that doesn't cost money (except where they clarify that's not what they're talking about).
To ask a counterquestion to your last question: what's not free about that? (Remember, you answer should make no reference to money -- checking www.gnu.org if you're confused about what the word "free" means in this context.)
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Quite a few, I would guess. They've run Myers-Briggs tests over people in various occupations before, and computer programmers tend to fall into INTP a *lot* more often than the general population.
Personally, I'm an extreme personality type in three categories. I invariably max the scale on I, and either do or come close to it on N and P. On the T/F scale, though, I generally come out pretty close to the middle, twice I've scored slightly higher in T (making me also INTP) and once I've scored the other way (INFP).
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Hee hee hee! That's a good one!
Obviously, these reporters never read
For that matter, how important is a cooperative mood to the success of Linux? Who really needs to cooperate besides people in on the same project? Personally, I think the competative spirit between projects like KDE and GNOME does a lot to help 'the cause' (as long as they can agree on some common protocols)...
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Why? Your question is irrelevant to the question of why AMD moved to Slot A over Socket 7. I don't care why Intel moved to Slot 1. I do know that the Athlon couldn't possibly be made to work on Socket 7 motherboards. Do you even know what EV6 is? If not, shut up or go post elsewhere about something you have a clue about.
AMD moved away from Socket 7 precisely for the "new and better technology" reasons you're so quick to dismiss, although technically it's not new -- the Alpha has been using it for some time. Why a slot rather than a new type of socket? Well, if you're going to change anyways, who cares? If it ain't Socket 7, it might as well be either a socket or slot. Slots are nice in that you have less of a problem with bent pins, and although ZIF sockets are supposed to solve that, chips can still be damaged while not being installed. More importantly, since it makes no real difference either way, but many consumers find slots easier, why NOT a new slot type?
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The last comment is particularly telling. The author sounds too intelligent and well versed to have missed the point that badly. I personally have a stake in a software engineering company and hope to be quite rich in the not too distant future. There's nothing wrong with that. And yet, I don't like Bill Gates. This has *nothing* to do with the fact that he's rich. I don't like Microsoft. This has *nothing* to do with the fact that they're a business, out to make money. The original poster wants to dismiss our attitude towards the unethical behavior of Gates/Microsoft by pretending our beef it with the fact that they're a company. He's putting words in our mouths by sayings we think Microsoft is evil because they're a company bent on making money and dominating the software market. And from his writing skills, I'm guessing he's not actually stupid enough to believe that this is the reason we hate Microsoft. He can't have missed the point that badly. Which means his last comment is a deliberate distortion of the truth, not an innocent misunderstanding.
I have no problems with a company that wants to make money, or a person who wants to get rich. I'd be a definate pot calling the kettle black if I did. What I have problems with is unethical behavior. Being against evil does not make you a communist, no matter how hard the evil people want to paint you with that label.
Bill Gates *is* evil, and this has nothing to do with how much money he has. I'm sure if he was penniless, he'd still be evil. Likewise, I think I'm basically good, and I don't expect that to change any when I'm rich. This is not an issue about money or marketshare. It's all about behavior. Don't try and confuse the issue by pretending those of us who cry foul are doing so because we hate winners. We love winners, assuming they didn't cheat to win. If they did, expect us to demand they return the gold medal they stole...
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BSD: Free, for now.
GPL: Free, forever.
Which is more free? Obviously, that's debatable, or we wouldn't all spill so much virtual ink on the subject, but in my opinion, the second is more free. The only string attached with GPL is one that guarentees freedom. I can live with that...
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Besides, I love NetBSD. My old machines get upgraded to it when their manufacturers stop supporting them. My old Mac won't run MacOS 7.6 or newer -- voila, NetBSD/mac68k. I tried Linux, but it's not useable on my machine (yet). Solaris 7 theoretically works on my SPARCstation, but man is it a dog. Sun doesn't realize we haven't all upgraded to Ultras yet (or just doesn't care). It'll get upgraded to NetBSD soon (although I'll at least take a look at Linux -- but my experience trying to get it working on my old Mac makes me leary of wasting time trying it on my old SPARC -- I may reserve Linux for my newer, higher performance systems like my Pentium II. I love Linux too, but it just doesn't seem to run as well as NetBSD on my non-Intel systems, or at least that's what my Mac experience was).
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I assume you're trying to be sarcastic. If it weren't for the fact that you're dead wrong, it might even have been funny...
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I used to gnash my teeth over the oxymoron of a "free software license", and rally against people using the GPL instead of just releasing something to the public domain. Eventually, though, I realized if I wanted my code to remain free, something like the GPL is a necessary evil. But if you're not concerned about it, go ahead, release public domain, or BSD if you're paranoid about lawsuits. This is a really stupid thing to fight a war over, even if it's just a flame war. Let each author do as he/she prefers...
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Err, presumably you mean a four value (2 bits) as opposed to a two value (1 bit) system. Yes, that would be the case. But since we generally read memory in at least 8 bit chunks anyways, this doesn't make any difference to the computer. It knows not that the data was reconstructed from the state of 4 molecules rather than 8 transistors. You've done something horribly wrong if your computer cares how the data is stored -- this is the kind of information that interests electrical engineers, not computer scientists...
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I think you're confusing a couple of half-remember facts and combining them into one incorrect one. The average adult typically only uses about a thousand words. Even those of us who are extremely intelligent with vocabularies from specialized fields -- we just have a few "exotic" words in our standard lexicon of things we talk about.
This does not alter the fact that there are dozens of words we know for every one we actually use. We only use a small fraction of the words we know -- most of the words we know will never pass our lips, it'll simply never come up in conversation. Nor will we type or pen them, we'll never have cause to.
Thus, our "working vocabulary" is a rather tiny fraction of the words we know. 60,000 is not unusual for an educated adult. Add to that our knowledge of how to make words from other words, and there may be two or three hundred thousand words you would have no trouble comprehending if you came across while reading.
So, your "available vocabulary" is a few orders of magnitude greater than your typical "working vocabulary".
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It would have been much cooler if Molly *had* been in the movie. But she'd be the most interesting character in the movie, so they doubtless felt they needed to replace her with a far less competent, streetwise, and interesting character to keep her from overshadowing Keanu...
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Umm, the percentage of people born with them shouldn't increase. With natural selection active, it should decrease. Without it, it should just remain about where they are.
On the other hand, since these people aren't dying off in childhood but remaining part of the population, even if the percentage of people born with these problems doesn't increase, the percentage of the living population that has them should increase.
Also, since the population as a whole is increasing, although on a percentage basis people born with these problems should not be increasing, the number of people with them should be.
This doesn't mean evolution will come to a dead halt. In fact, as we become more adept at and more comfortable with genetic manipulation, human evolution is likely to resume. Artificial selection of specific genes will replace natural selection of entire organisms.
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