Stolen definition of faith: "Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing."
Science is method of knowing that is an extension of our senses through logic and experimentation. Our senses are often completely wrong. I've thought someone else was on the phone or in person. I've misread things I've sworn were correct the first time, etc.
By definition, science requires faith in science _and_ one's senses or at least the collective opinion of other's senses. Science is often wrong, after all its a process not an event. Science is after the truth or a specific truth with is the definition of faith.
However, I've had unacceptably high false-positive rates.
I too had that problem with SpamAssassin version 2.6x, but with 3.0 and later its been much better. Granted, I use almost every test under the sun, and I have my threshold set to 10.0 for "spam-nasty" and 13.0 for "spam-nasty-to-the-point-of-no-return". Yes, those are the mailbox names:)
I also have a custom plugin for SpamAssassin that does non-linear postprocess scoring of SPAM. What it does is gives 3 points for every SPAM subject rule hit, one point for every other hit, minus every HAM rule hit. Then if the resulting hits are greater than 3, then a score of hits ** 1.2 / 4 is added to the total SPAM score. If you're still with me I'm impressed.
What this does is helps flag SPAM with many seemingly insignificant SPAM flags to score higher, and on a non-linear basis which reduces the false positives to practically 0. I only get a couple of mails in the "spam-nasty" box a day, and I check that for false positives. The only ones I see in there are solicited commercial emails that are poorly done, and nobody cares about them anyway. The "spam-nasty-to-the-point-of-no-return" box is full of the SPAM we have all come to hate.
For some reason, nobody seems too interested in my non-linear approach, and although SpamAssassin is pretty effective, I've only gotten maybe 5-10 SPAMs slip through, and only one false positive over 18 months or so since 3.0 came out.
Its amusing that when SA misses a SPAM, my users actually come to me and ask me about it. I look at the mail, and there is nothing really special about it to trigger anything, so there isn't much to be done. Some of them are I guess test SPAMs where a new SPAMmer is testing there new software or something.
Supply and demand has nothing to do with the diamond market. As I understand it, the prices are kept artificially high by the diamond cartels and their storehouses of stones.
Yes, the diamond cartels do their price thing, mostly by De Beers, and supply and demand still works. They strictly control the supply, and artificially created and maintained a demand.
Not to disrespect you or your wife, but the whole myth behind the huge diamond ring is that the man is supposed to be able to afford a rock of some arbitrary size where larger is better AND a house, etc, etc.
Want to talk about an excellent marketing scheme. The more recent ads telling us that we need to spend "2 months salary" even gauges how much to spend regardless of your income! Brilliant.
Java has basically screwed itself. It is hardly used on the web anymore for a reason.
JavaScript, DHTML, CSS, and HTML are part of the web and all have open standards. JavaScript however started similar to Flash, and it too has many annoyances.
Flash is a toy. A seemingly unnecessary proprietary gizmo to make websites harder to index or even possibly view.
I personally don't like inlined plugin type of stuff in my browser. Some because of issues of the different programs fighting over each other, some for stability, some for privacy, some for security, some because I don't think its cool to go to a website and have cheesy midi music looping or some obnoxious simple animation repeating over and over while driving my CPU up to 100%. I would prefer everything that is not an image or text to be a direct download so that I can view it when I want, at the volume I want, as often as I want. Having a movie or sound file or game or animation inlined with the text of a webpage vs having it in a separate window and controlled by a program of my choosing does not negatively affect the content or wishes of the website. And yes people, inlined movies no matter how good your internet connection is often pause or have other issues when trying to view them in realtime vs a simple download that just works.
Having my browser crash, having every other website yell at me because I'm not using the correct version of exotic plugin X, Y, or Z, having risks for security flaws, inability to review the content at a later time, and so on are all either real or potential negatives that are unnecessary from my point of view and the original authors point of view.
I predict that plugins will be the new spyware/malware or whathaveyou in the future. I will always be against them.
I've found that people want things that "just work" and as an extention to that, programs have to "just work" in the way that they are used to.
Geeks are not people, doubly so for those younger than 30.
They do things like taking laser printers apart to turn them into shredders, ask questions like "How do I take something that I can buy off the shelf and do it myself with Linux half as good -- but FREE!", etc.
I don't use any "office" apps, but in my experience OO was no where near something I would depend on for personal or professional "office" type applications.
The about.com link is pretty lame. It does not even mention IBM's role in bar codes, which was significant.
Bar codes have been a staple in grocery stores since the mid 80s. Its also worth mentioning that another example of patents hurting innovation is that Symbol owns a patent on a "bar code reader with a trigger" so they either exclusively market such items or all similar items are licensed from Symbol.
I don't see RFID tags replacing bar codes any sooner than bar codes have replaced paper price stickers.
Are these crashes repeatable or do they have any kind of similarity?
I've been using Linux since 0.9x, and its been very stable for me over the years with a few exceptions that were experienced by other people as well.
My first assumption when I have a seemingly random kernel crash with no meaningful data from the OOPs or other messages is that there is a problem with my hardware.
For me, the Linux kernel is more robust than electrical power or hardware.
I was having a look around for anything which suggest dehydration may be a major factor in causing cancer
I haven't heard that dehydration is cancer causing, but I have heard that avoiding carcinogens and drinking adequate water is the best way of preventing cancer.
Adequate water intake eliminates the toxins in the body. Seems completely reasonable to me.
It is far, far easier to create a bar code than an RFID tag.
Albeit, its been 5 years since I've worked with RFID tags, but then you simply bought them, and they already were "created", which meant that they had a unique number embedded in them.
RFID tags are pretty cool. Advantages: no need for direct line of sight, data can be uploaded to them, they are passive and require no internal energy source. Disadvantages: cost, potential privacy issues, reliability.
I don't see RFID tags entirely replacing bar codes because bar codes are so inexpensive and easy. Even if the bar code is mangled beyond laser scanning, the numbers can be manually fed into the device if need be.
Both technologies are excellent. I used bar codes as an IQ test for the cashier when I'm buying canned cat food in bulk:) If the cashier scans each identical item...
Maybe I could dd the first sector of hda to hdc, which would clone the reference MBR. But I'm not sure that works if the disk geometries are different. And sometimes I do want to tweak the LILO configs for the new platform, including VGA settings etc.
OK, I've used Linux on Alphas, x86, x86-64, ia64, and mips processors.
I've used Linux from 1997 to 2004 as my primary desktop environment.
I see nothing special about Linux' desktop environment over what is available for FreeBSD, Solaris, etc, simply because they are all the same.
So how am I being a troll to say that the next version of Windows, that at worst will be no different than the current version of Windows will drive people to Linux which has no compelling end-user features over Windows?
So long as Longhorn looks a little prettier and the pressure eventually is pushed to corporations/people to upgrade for compatibility, people will move to it.
But then, when they find out that their old applications don't work anymore, the chronic issues getting 3rd party hardware to work, or even the hardware that came with their machine that came with Vista doesn't work, difficulty installing applications, networking issues to their fileserver, office documents will look formatted strange, printing issues, etc, etc.
Then, they will run in droves to Linux. Regardless of their desktop environment -- KDE, Gnome, FVWM, TWM, or hell, just a windowless xterm would solve all of these problems.
FreeBSD, Solaris, and OS X users will also wait in line for the features that Linux has to offer. They will follow like a stampede in the planes of Africa.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but I am a Linux user. Have been for over 10 years. I love it in my server rooms, its easy to troubleshoot, administer, its as reliable as the hardware and power (more so actually), but if I never have to type 'startx' or login to a box that is set up at runlevel 5, thats fine by me.
I even have Linux on a 4 CPU Itanium SGI Prism with 2 dual head graphics cards which might be nice for custom visualization applications, but after logging in and the file manager crashes the first time you use it, and there are these little semi-hidden windows on the desktop when I'm not logged in as root (don't know what they are yet, I believe its an SGI thing). The OpenGL screensavers silently die when you run them as root. The OpenGL screensavers, even on such a highend box, are not completely smooth and flicker free.
I'm not blaming Linux here at all. Linux is fine, its the entire GUI subsystem of Linux and all other *NIX OSes (besides OS X) suffer from the same problems because they are the same GUI.
Once someone, gasp, even a commercial company fixes the GUI and end user issues, then Linux or some other *NIX system will gain mass appeal, not a minute before.
In a nutshell, I'm saying that logic is internally valid just like mathematics, it has its own rules and abides by those rules regardless of their truth. Emotions don't have much of a rhyme or reason to them. The same condition can produce different emotional responses within the same person and between different people.
You see the emotions can be explained logically.
I have bipolar disorder. Give me a logical explanation for my emotions that is universally explained like mathematics or logic so that I can give it to people so that I don't run into any more problems in the future. After going through emotional roller coasters all my life, and looking back and seeing no reason behind the emotions much of the time, I've concluded that they are irrational, transient, and objectively not real. If I treated my emotions as I do logic, I simply would not be able to function in life.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-- Edsger Dijkstra
That said, since when has UNIX and Linux been "the popular alternatives" to Windows. I've thought for years that Windows was the popular alternative to other systems for games.
I know a guy who lived to be over a hundred years old, and until the day he died he smoked cigarettes, drank a 1/5 of liqueur, and drove over 100mph every time he got the chance.
He died at the age of 103 from an nerve infection that was caused by being hit on his big toe with a horseshoe that hung over his doorway for good luck.
So you still cry when you don't get a piece of candy? Do you get equally upset when anyone is hurt or dies?
Logic is universal, emotions are subjective.
When I feel emotionally good, lets say at a rock concert and the band is jamming and the crowd is screaming and I'm dancing with some good looking girl, that has nothing to do with logic. Half the time I can't even think straight! Some people would have a miserable time in the same situation. Nobody can disagree or agree with logic.
Well actually it doesn't. Really you should pay someone what they are worth based on their performance.
In case you haven't noticed, women have children. Men do not.
Children take 9 months to develop inside of a woman's body. During the last 3 months or so a woman is to a degree physically impaired. Afterwards, the woman is more than likely the primary one to take care of the infant. They come with breasts, men do not. When the woman no longer is interested in her mate, she gets payment from the mate until she finds a replacement to pay.
Yes, men and women should be paid the same for their same performance.
So, if they can charge men more for car insurance because statistically they are worse drivers then can employers pay women less because statistically they are less intellegent?
Women are paid less for some reason. Same with fat, ugly and dumb people.
Slashdot Mirror
Science does not require faith.
Stolen definition of faith: "Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing."
Science is method of knowing that is an extension of our senses through logic and experimentation. Our senses are often completely wrong. I've thought someone else was on the phone or in person. I've misread things I've sworn were correct the first time, etc.
By definition, science requires faith in science _and_ one's senses or at least the collective opinion of other's senses. Science is often wrong, after all its a process not an event. Science is after the truth or a specific truth with is the definition of faith.
My $0.02
However, I've had unacceptably high false-positive rates.
:)
I too had that problem with SpamAssassin version 2.6x, but with 3.0 and later its been much better. Granted, I use almost every test under the sun, and I have my threshold set to 10.0 for "spam-nasty" and 13.0 for "spam-nasty-to-the-point-of-no-return". Yes, those are the mailbox names
I also have a custom plugin for SpamAssassin that does non-linear postprocess scoring of SPAM. What it does is gives 3 points for every SPAM subject rule hit, one point for every other hit, minus every HAM rule hit. Then if the resulting hits are greater than 3, then a score of hits ** 1.2 / 4 is added to the total SPAM score. If you're still with me I'm impressed.
What this does is helps flag SPAM with many seemingly insignificant SPAM flags to score higher, and on a non-linear basis which reduces the false positives to practically 0. I only get a couple of mails in the "spam-nasty" box a day, and I check that for false positives. The only ones I see in there are solicited commercial emails that are poorly done, and nobody cares about them anyway. The "spam-nasty-to-the-point-of-no-return" box is full of the SPAM we have all come to hate.
For some reason, nobody seems too interested in my non-linear approach, and although SpamAssassin is pretty effective, I've only gotten maybe 5-10 SPAMs slip through, and only one false positive over 18 months or so since 3.0 came out.
Its amusing that when SA misses a SPAM, my users actually come to me and ask me about it. I look at the mail, and there is nothing really special about it to trigger anything, so there isn't much to be done. Some of them are I guess test SPAMs where a new SPAMmer is testing there new software or something.
Supply and demand has nothing to do with the diamond market. As I understand it, the prices are kept artificially high by the diamond cartels and their storehouses of stones.
Yes, the diamond cartels do their price thing, mostly by De Beers, and supply and demand still works. They strictly control the supply, and artificially created and maintained a demand.
Not to disrespect you or your wife, but the whole myth behind the huge diamond ring is that the man is supposed to be able to afford a rock of some arbitrary size where larger is better AND a house, etc, etc.
Want to talk about an excellent marketing scheme. The more recent ads telling us that we need to spend "2 months salary" even gauges how much to spend regardless of your income! Brilliant.
Yes, its affected and not effected. That is one of my pet peeves as well. Also, the incorrect distinction between 'bring' and 'take' gets me as well.
When I was in highschool English class we used the "Elements of Style" book that is now in the public domain here: http://www.bartleby.com/141/. It clears up commonly misused expressions like these.
(Now lets hope I didn't make a silly grammar mistake like I always do when correcting someone
Screw Java, JavaScript, DHTML, CSS and HTML!
Java has basically screwed itself. It is hardly used on the web anymore for a reason.
JavaScript, DHTML, CSS, and HTML are part of the web and all have open standards. JavaScript however started similar to Flash, and it too has many annoyances.
Flash is a toy. A seemingly unnecessary proprietary gizmo to make websites harder to index or even possibly view.
I personally don't like inlined plugin type of stuff in my browser. Some because of issues of the different programs fighting over each other, some for stability, some for privacy, some for security, some because I don't think its cool to go to a website and have cheesy midi music looping or some obnoxious simple animation repeating over and over while driving my CPU up to 100%. I would prefer everything that is not an image or text to be a direct download so that I can view it when I want, at the volume I want, as often as I want. Having a movie or sound file or game or animation inlined with the text of a webpage vs having it in a separate window and controlled by a program of my choosing does not negatively affect the content or wishes of the website. And yes people, inlined movies no matter how good your internet connection is often pause or have other issues when trying to view them in realtime vs a simple download that just works.
Having my browser crash, having every other website yell at me because I'm not using the correct version of exotic plugin X, Y, or Z, having risks for security flaws, inability to review the content at a later time, and so on are all either real or potential negatives that are unnecessary from my point of view and the original authors point of view.
I predict that plugins will be the new spyware/malware or whathaveyou in the future. I will always be against them.
I've found that people want things that "just work" and as an extention to that, programs have to "just work" in the way that they are used to.
Geeks are not people, doubly so for those younger than 30.
They do things like taking laser printers apart to turn them into shredders, ask questions like "How do I take something that I can buy off the shelf and do it myself with Linux half as good -- but FREE!", etc.
I don't use any "office" apps, but in my experience OO was no where near something I would depend on for personal or professional "office" type applications.
The about.com link is pretty lame. It does not even mention IBM's role in bar codes, which was significant.
Bar codes have been a staple in grocery stores since the mid 80s. Its also worth mentioning that another example of patents hurting innovation is that Symbol owns a patent on a "bar code reader with a trigger" so they either exclusively market such items or all similar items are licensed from Symbol.
I don't see RFID tags replacing bar codes any sooner than bar codes have replaced paper price stickers.
RFID tags only transmit data. There is nothing special about the data itself. TCP/IP has no limitations on transmitting any data that I have heard of.
Are these crashes repeatable or do they have any kind of similarity?
I've been using Linux since 0.9x, and its been very stable for me over the years with a few exceptions that were experienced by other people as well.
My first assumption when I have a seemingly random kernel crash with no meaningful data from the OOPs or other messages is that there is a problem with my hardware.
For me, the Linux kernel is more robust than electrical power or hardware.
YMMV.
I was having a look around for anything which suggest dehydration may be a major factor in causing cancer
I haven't heard that dehydration is cancer causing, but I have heard that avoiding carcinogens and drinking adequate water is the best way of preventing cancer.
Adequate water intake eliminates the toxins in the body. Seems completely reasonable to me.
It is far, far easier to create a bar code than an RFID tag.
:) If the cashier scans each identical item...
Albeit, its been 5 years since I've worked with RFID tags, but then you simply bought them, and they already were "created", which meant that they had a unique number embedded in them.
RFID tags are pretty cool. Advantages: no need for direct line of sight, data can be uploaded to them, they are passive and require no internal energy source. Disadvantages: cost, potential privacy issues, reliability.
I don't see RFID tags entirely replacing bar codes because bar codes are so inexpensive and easy. Even if the bar code is mangled beyond laser scanning, the numbers can be manually fed into the device if need be.
Both technologies are excellent. I used bar codes as an IQ test for the cashier when I'm buying canned cat food in bulk
Maybe I could dd the first sector of hda to hdc, which would clone the reference MBR. But I'm not sure that works if the disk geometries are different. And sometimes I do want to tweak the LILO configs for the new platform, including VGA settings etc.
Thats worked for me for years.
OK, I've used Linux on Alphas, x86, x86-64, ia64, and mips processors.
I've used Linux from 1997 to 2004 as my primary desktop environment.
I see nothing special about Linux' desktop environment over what is available for FreeBSD, Solaris, etc, simply because they are all the same.
So how am I being a troll to say that the next version of Windows, that at worst will be no different than the current version of Windows will drive people to Linux which has no compelling end-user features over Windows?
So long as Longhorn looks a little prettier and the pressure eventually is pushed to corporations/people to upgrade for compatibility, people will move to it.
But then, when they find out that their old applications don't work anymore, the chronic issues getting 3rd party hardware to work, or even the hardware that came with their machine that came with Vista doesn't work, difficulty installing applications, networking issues to their fileserver, office documents will look formatted strange, printing issues, etc, etc.
Then, they will run in droves to Linux. Regardless of their desktop environment -- KDE, Gnome, FVWM, TWM, or hell, just a windowless xterm would solve all of these problems.
FreeBSD, Solaris, and OS X users will also wait in line for the features that Linux has to offer. They will follow like a stampede in the planes of Africa.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but I am a Linux user. Have been for over 10 years. I love it in my server rooms, its easy to troubleshoot, administer, its as reliable as the hardware and power (more so actually), but if I never have to type 'startx' or login to a box that is set up at runlevel 5, thats fine by me.
I even have Linux on a 4 CPU Itanium SGI Prism with 2 dual head graphics cards which might be nice for custom visualization applications, but after logging in and the file manager crashes the first time you use it, and there are these little semi-hidden windows on the desktop when I'm not logged in as root (don't know what they are yet, I believe its an SGI thing). The OpenGL screensavers silently die when you run them as root. The OpenGL screensavers, even on such a highend box, are not completely smooth and flicker free.
I'm not blaming Linux here at all. Linux is fine, its the entire GUI subsystem of Linux and all other *NIX OSes (besides OS X) suffer from the same problems because they are the same GUI.
Once someone, gasp, even a commercial company fixes the GUI and end user issues, then Linux or some other *NIX system will gain mass appeal, not a minute before.
The lawyers may have won in the short term, but everybody has won in the long term.
How many companies do you think will put a non-user serviceable battery in electronics in the future or something similar?
In a nutshell, I'm saying that logic is internally valid just like mathematics, it has its own rules and abides by those rules regardless of their truth. Emotions don't have much of a rhyme or reason to them. The same condition can produce different emotional responses within the same person and between different people.
You see the emotions can be explained logically.
I have bipolar disorder. Give me a logical explanation for my emotions that is universally explained like mathematics or logic so that I can give it to people so that I don't run into any more problems in the future. After going through emotional roller coasters all my life, and looking back and seeing no reason behind the emotions much of the time, I've concluded that they are irrational, transient, and objectively not real. If I treated my emotions as I do logic, I simply would not be able to function in life.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-- Edsger Dijkstra
That said, since when has UNIX and Linux been "the popular alternatives" to Windows. I've thought for years that Windows was the popular alternative to other systems for games.
knowledge is power, use it wisely
"Knowledge shared is power lost."
-- Aleister Crowley
Seriously. When everyone is a criminal in the eyes of the establishment, the only real crime is stupidity.
I know a guy who lived to be over a hundred years old, and until the day he died he smoked cigarettes, drank a 1/5 of liqueur, and drove over 100mph every time he got the chance.
He died at the age of 103 from an nerve infection that was caused by being hit on his big toe with a horseshoe that hung over his doorway for good luck.
I don't believe in horseshoes anymore.
Lots of them still print the whole number on the paper. :/
And the carbons and whatnot are carefully filed in the trash together.
Going through your trash, I might get something interesting.
Going through a restaurant's or other store's trash, odds are I'll get many interesting things.
Then the suit should be filed against the websites illegally serving their copyrighted images, not Google.
Google has more money.
Emotion has a logical basis.
So you still cry when you don't get a piece of candy? Do you get equally upset when anyone is hurt or dies?
Logic is universal, emotions are subjective.
When I feel emotionally good, lets say at a rock concert and the band is jamming and the crowd is screaming and I'm dancing with some good looking girl, that has nothing to do with logic. Half the time I can't even think straight! Some people would have a miserable time in the same situation. Nobody can disagree or agree with logic.
Why is it foolish? It makes sense to me.
Well actually it doesn't. Really you should pay someone what they are worth based on their performance.
In case you haven't noticed, women have children. Men do not.
Children take 9 months to develop inside of a woman's body. During the last 3 months or so a woman is to a degree physically impaired. Afterwards, the woman is more than likely the primary one to take care of the infant. They come with breasts, men do not. When the woman no longer is interested in her mate, she gets payment from the mate until she finds a replacement to pay.
Yes, men and women should be paid the same for their same performance.
So, if they can charge men more for car insurance because statistically they are worse drivers then can employers pay women less because statistically they are less intellegent?
Women are paid less for some reason. Same with fat, ugly and dumb people.