I guess you just missed the next bit where he says, "however each party told the other to bugger off, after they realised they had nothing in common, towels on their heads notwithstanding" (slight paraphrasing).
Seriously tho, I think rumsfeld met with saddam more often than bin laden did, and probably had more ties too.
On a related note, to steal Bill Hicks' joke: How did they know that Iraq had WMD's? They checked their invoices.
dude the reason it's an article on slashdot is so that he can talk to other people to see if it is a universal trend or not. You know, like, hold a discussion on a forum for, like, discussion. Sheesh, if you want news, feck off somewhere else and stop bothering us. Slashdot is, and always was, a discussion forum based on recent news and events which might have some relevance to us geeks.
Once more, in bold, for the hard of understanding, THIS IS NOT A NEWS SITE, IT'S A DISCUSSION FORUM
actually there are a number of ways round this in windows, once you get over the fact that it isn't *n?x.
You can type the full path of the executable from your current directory and it will run from the current directory. Just like unix.
Alternatively you can just add python.exe to your path as another poster suggested. Again, just like unix.
A third option, if you don't want to mess with your path, would be to create a batch file called python.cmd and stick it in a directory which was already in your path. This can contain the full path and executable of your python.exe, plus "%*" so that any parameters are preserved.
My favourite tho would be to associate the.py extension with the python.exe executable as the "open" action in explorer (for some reason it has to be "open", not just the default). You can then just type script.py and the shell will automagically run it using python.exe, regardless of which directory you are in. You can go one stage further and append.py to the "pathext" variable, then you don't even need the.py extension, just type "script" from the correct directory and windys will spot the py extension, then run python.exe with your script and any extra parameters.
btw you can cd to the desktop, its in c:\documents and settings\USERNAME\desktop. You can't symlink tho, and that is a pisser.
Seriously, you need to try some of the newer text adventures which are being written today. There is some fastastic writing in text adventures these days. I appreciate that the term "interactive fiction" maybe sounds like an attempt to make the genre more "worthy" (graphic novel?) but in some cases I think it is justified.
try spider and web or The Moonlit Tower. The second one is more of an example of what I'm talking about, although the first one is a fantastic example of the flexibility of interactive fiction over conventional fiction.
Grab a z-code interpreter for your plaform of choice (win32, linux, mac, palm, wince etc) and try some modern IF. Things have changed a LOT since the eighties, trust me. You rarely even have to "guess the verb" these days!
I agree. However, I personally hate the offtopic mod and usually mark it unfair in M2. It's the whole point of slashdot. Yes the stories tend to be the same stuff, yes they frequently dupe. But I'm not here for the stories, I'm here for the lively and (occasionally) intelligent discussion. The stories are just the starting point. If the comments occasionally stray off-topic, who gives a fuck?
it's not just anonymous. I'm being asked to type the text too and I'm logged in. But I think you may be right. It was making for some surreal threads tho.
I'm afraid I disagree. I accept that I'm arguing largely from a layman's perpective (I read new scientist every week for what it's worth, so I have some idea of what has been accomplished, it terms of understanding the genome, and what has still to be understood). However I feel that to think that DNA manipulation is "pretty much cookbook" demonstrates a disturbing level of hubris.
I accept that from a cause and effect perspective we can see that adding a extra gene in a specific place appears to have a specific effect. Although the term "most normal" is worrying in this regard. I'm not sure that we (or I if you prefer) are confident that all of the effects of potential mutations are understood.
In a way I am almost in favour of making seed which can't reproduce, to combat precisely this. Although the ramifications of leaving farmers in thrall to the likes of Monsato is hideous. There I think we do agree.
I also think that we agree about the knee-jerk reaction to this in the media. Although, as I said in the original post, I think that it is difficult to separate the political arguments from the scientific or the ones which are just sensational because it sells papers (frankenfood and all that crap).
Being European myself and very interested in the GMO debate I would have to point out that the debate has more to do with globalisation and the curbing of multinational corporate power than the actual science of GMO. That is not to say that there isn't some dodgy science in there too, the encoding of antibiotic resistance seems like a particularly stupid idea imho, given the problems we are having with mrsa and the like.
Back on topic - the main issue I personally have with gene therapy is that we have abolutely no idea whatsover what effect messing around with various genes might have in the long term. The human genome is insanely complex and has evolved a very delicate balance over millions of years, who knows what effect sticking some extra genes in the middle might have.
definately - that is an amazing journey, but don't get out of your car at any part of glencoe, unless you want to be midgy-food!
On the tourist side, there is also roslyn chapel, near edinburgh. (especially if you have read the da-vinci code).
If you are in edinburgh you can go down to hollyrood and see an example of how not to design a parliament building. While in edinburgh the museum of scotland is worth a visit.
seriously though, get the hell out of the cities and go up north if you really want to see scotland. Speyside is recommended if you like whisky, a map of speyside reads like a whisky catalogue - virtually every town has one named after it. (it's worth a visit even if you don't like the stuff as the scenery is very nice and relatively midgy-free)
btw - if you don't know what a midgy is, you'll find out pretty damn quickly;-) They are definately nastier in the north west, but the scenery is generally more spectacular on the west too. Take a mosquito net and a camera. (apparently pipe smoke is good too.)
If you look at our genetic make up, we are slowly finding more and more genetic mutations. We are decaying the more we reproduce. And as far as thermodynamics go, we are always heading towards entropy, and eventually 0 Kelvin. So what part of the revelation of God's creation makes us thing that we came from frogs, or birds, or fish or whatever. "Given enough time, frogs turn into princes. In some places that's called a fairy tale. In a laboratory, it's called science."
Mutations happen all the time, most of them are random. Some of them are detrimental, some are advantageous, some are just random. Look up the concept of "selective pressure" some time - in the wild where competition is fierce, anything which gives an advantage will allow an organism to live longer and breed more. Anything which hinders an organism is likely to get it killed. It therefore follows that organisms with advantageous mutations will become more prevalalent, eventually superceding the original "species" given enough time, under the same competitive pressure.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, humans can mostly control their environment and food supply, and can allow the weaker members of the "species" to survive and breed. Therefore there is no direct selective pressure any more, so the mutations seem to be just random again.
So we are not "decaying", and evolution is not a fairy tale; it can be observed just now in natural habitats where there is still fierce selective pressure. It is a slow and random process however.
yeh, i know it's offtopic, but this thread has well over 2000 submissions and I'm bored with US politics now.
Millions of Google users + Google's uber-elite talent pool + Billions of dollars + World Class search technology + Detailed satellite maps of the entire globe = Best searching and mapping software available
They are finally starting to; I just attended a course on AD 2003 (have to - it's my job;-( and they were actively pushing the whole "logon as normal punter and use runas when you need elevated priviledge" methodology. Give it another 5 years and this sort of thing may be commonplace. The problem at the moment is that it seems to be comletely random whether a program wants admin access to install. So even if you educate your home users, they will still get used to the idea of needing to type the admin password from time to time. If they get used to it, they won't think about it when they get hit with a virus asking for the password, they'll just blindly type the damn thing in regardless.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought she was german!
but if it's raining, he goes all the way up to his floor...
hell, that's nothing, I figured out the puzzle before I was even aware of its existence!
sheesh, what's with all the intellectual dick-measuring in this thread anyway?
nobody replied so I thought I would:
the book was "Pompei" by Robert Harris, good book.
I guess you just missed the next bit where he says, "however each party told the other to bugger off, after they realised they had nothing in common, towels on their heads notwithstanding" (slight paraphrasing).
Seriously tho, I think rumsfeld met with saddam more often than bin laden did, and probably had more ties too.
On a related note, to steal Bill Hicks' joke:
How did they know that Iraq had WMD's?
They checked their invoices.
dude
the reason it's an article on slashdot is so that he can talk to other people to see if it is a universal trend or not.
You know, like, hold a discussion on a forum for, like, discussion.
Sheesh, if you want news, feck off somewhere else and stop bothering us. Slashdot is, and always was, a discussion forum based on recent news and events which might have some relevance to us geeks.
Once more, in bold, for the hard of understanding, THIS IS NOT A NEWS SITE, IT'S A DISCUSSION FORUM
dammit
wasn't the Monad a bad guy in an ABC warriors story?
actually there are a number of ways round this in windows, once you get over the fact that it isn't *n?x.
.py extension with the python.exe executable as the "open" action in explorer (for some reason it has to be "open", not just the default). You can then just type script.py and the shell will automagically run it using python.exe, regardless of which directory you are in. You can go one stage further and append .py to the "pathext" variable, then you don't even need the .py extension, just type "script" from the correct directory and windys will spot the py extension, then run python.exe with your script and any extra parameters.
You can type the full path of the executable from your current directory and it will run from the current directory. Just like unix.
Alternatively you can just add python.exe to your path as another poster suggested. Again, just like unix.
A third option, if you don't want to mess with your path, would be to create a batch file called python.cmd and stick it in a directory which was already in your path. This can contain the full path and executable of your python.exe, plus "%*" so that any parameters are preserved.
My favourite tho would be to associate the
btw you can cd to the desktop, its in c:\documents and settings\USERNAME\desktop. You can't symlink tho, and that is a pisser.
Seriously, you need to try some of the newer text adventures which are being written today. There is some fastastic writing in text adventures these days.
I appreciate that the term "interactive fiction" maybe sounds like an attempt to make the genre more "worthy" (graphic novel?) but in some cases I think it is justified.
try spider and web or The Moonlit Tower. The second one is more of an example of what I'm talking about, although the first one is a fantastic example of the flexibility of interactive fiction over conventional fiction.
Grab a z-code interpreter for your plaform of choice (win32, linux, mac, palm, wince etc) and try some modern IF. Things have changed a LOT since the eighties, trust me. You rarely even have to "guess the verb" these days!
I agree.
However, I personally hate the offtopic mod and usually mark it unfair in M2. It's the whole point of slashdot. Yes the stories tend to be the same stuff, yes they frequently dupe. But I'm not here for the stories, I'm here for the lively and (occasionally) intelligent discussion. The stories are just the starting point. If the comments occasionally stray off-topic, who gives a fuck?
it's not just anonymous. I'm being asked to type the text too and I'm logged in. But I think you may be right.
It was making for some surreal threads tho.
I'm afraid I disagree. I accept that I'm arguing largely from a layman's perpective (I read new scientist every week for what it's worth, so I have some idea of what has been accomplished, it terms of understanding the genome, and what has still to be understood). However I feel that to think that DNA manipulation is "pretty much cookbook" demonstrates a disturbing level of hubris.
I accept that from a cause and effect perspective we can see that adding a extra gene in a specific place appears to have a specific effect. Although the term "most normal" is worrying in this regard. I'm not sure that we (or I if you prefer) are confident that all of the effects of potential mutations are understood.
In a way I am almost in favour of making seed which can't reproduce, to combat precisely this. Although the ramifications of leaving farmers in thrall to the likes of Monsato is hideous. There I think we do agree.
I also think that we agree about the knee-jerk reaction to this in the media. Although, as I said in the original post, I think that it is difficult to separate the political arguments from the scientific or the ones which are just sensational because it sells papers (frankenfood and all that crap).
given that I'm seeing it in a thread about the Eurovision Song Contest, I'm going for "screwed up".
Still, arguments about Cuba in relation to Eurovision is strangely in keeping with the bizarre nature of the contest if you ask me.
Either that or the Togmeister isn't the only one capable of sarcasm.
btw is it just my connection or is this thread mixed up with the one about Cuba? It's making for some surreal reading.
-1, missed the point completely.
Being European myself and very interested in the GMO debate I would have to point out that the debate has more to do with globalisation and the curbing of multinational corporate power than the actual science of GMO.
That is not to say that there isn't some dodgy science in there too, the encoding of antibiotic resistance seems like a particularly stupid idea imho, given the problems we are having with mrsa and the like.
Back on topic - the main issue I personally have with gene therapy is that we have abolutely no idea whatsover what effect messing around with various genes might have in the long term. The human genome is insanely complex and has evolved a very delicate balance over millions of years, who knows what effect sticking some extra genes in the middle might have.
definately - that is an amazing journey, but don't get out of your car at any part of glencoe, unless you want to be midgy-food!
;-) They are definately nastier in the north west, but the scenery is generally more spectacular on the west too. Take a mosquito net and a camera. (apparently pipe smoke is good too.)
On the tourist side, there is also roslyn chapel, near edinburgh. (especially if you have read the da-vinci code).
If you are in edinburgh you can go down to hollyrood and see an example of how not to design a parliament building. While in edinburgh the museum of scotland is worth a visit.
seriously though, get the hell out of the cities and go up north if you really want to see scotland. Speyside is recommended if you like whisky, a map of speyside reads like a whisky catalogue - virtually every town has one named after it. (it's worth a visit even if you don't like the stuff as the scenery is very nice and relatively midgy-free)
btw - if you don't know what a midgy is, you'll find out pretty damn quickly
There used to be such a site, it was called moviecritic and it was fantastic. It died.
A quick search on the goog revealed that this might be a replacement but apparently it needs more users to get a decent database going.
My fellow slashdotters, you know what to do...
real force power comes from midichlorians, not some farcical aquatic ceremony...
(btw that was genius, I ready did LOL!)
ah yes, absolutely - that was classic. (come to stoneybridge etc.)
;-) (even if they can understand it)
Never heard of Velvet soup either and I live here!
Do you get "chewin the fat" over there then? If you liked absolutely you will definately like that.
In my opinion the best thing about scottish comedy is that the english don't get it
(just realised I'm replying to someone who probably is english and referring to over there! ah, well, feck it...)
yay! +5 wag the dog reference! Great movie, unfortunately, probably had more relevance to Clinton than Bush.
If you look at our genetic make up, we are slowly finding more and more genetic mutations. We are decaying the more we reproduce. And as far as thermodynamics go, we are always heading towards entropy, and eventually 0 Kelvin. So what part of the revelation of God's creation makes us thing that we came from frogs, or birds, or fish or whatever. "Given enough time, frogs turn into princes. In some places that's called a fairy tale. In a laboratory, it's called science."
Mutations happen all the time, most of them are random. Some of them are detrimental, some are advantageous, some are just random. Look up the concept of "selective pressure" some time - in the wild where competition is fierce, anything which gives an advantage will allow an organism to live longer and breed more. Anything which hinders an organism is likely to get it killed. It therefore follows that organisms with advantageous mutations will become more prevalalent, eventually superceding the original "species" given enough time, under the same competitive pressure.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, humans can mostly control their environment and food supply, and can allow the weaker members of the "species" to survive and breed. Therefore there is no direct selective pressure any more, so the mutations seem to be just random again.
So we are not "decaying", and evolution is not a fairy tale; it can be observed just now in natural habitats where there is still fierce selective pressure. It is a slow and random process however.
yeh, i know it's offtopic, but this thread has well over 2000 submissions and I'm bored with US politics now.
Millions of Google users +
Google's uber-elite talent pool +
Billions of dollars +
World Class search technology +
Detailed satellite maps of the entire globe =
Best searching and mapping software available
US finds Osama?
They are finally starting to; I just attended a course on AD 2003 (have to - it's my job ;-( and they were actively pushing the whole "logon as normal punter and use runas when you need elevated priviledge" methodology.
Give it another 5 years and this sort of thing may be commonplace. The problem at the moment is that it seems to be comletely random whether a program wants admin access to install. So even if you educate your home users, they will still get used to the idea of needing to type the admin password from time to time. If they get used to it, they won't think about it when they get hit with a virus asking for the password, they'll just blindly type the damn thing in regardless.
Holy shit! 500 odd refs - not a googlewhack by any stretch of the imagination. Only the first 10 or so refer to this article, that is disturbing...