I'd be cautious grouping it with Slash or nuke. Those are previous-generation CMS systems, and are becoming quite dated.
Newer stuff such as Drupal, Mambo (which I personally dislike), Textpattern, and other newer CMS systems have embraced emerging web technologies (Ajax, CSS) and are generally written with extremely clean code and have very simplistic ways of operating (mac-like if you would care to make the analogy)
Slash and nuke are dinosaurs. They may still work fine, but if you're going to make a new site, you'd do yourself a favor to research the newer options. Development on all of the 'old' CMSes has stalled, and little work is being done to improve them.
1) The speed is only restricted by the speed of the lines going to the CO. In a small suburban town, this isn't necessarily very fast. I doubt that each strand goes straight to verizon's backbone
2) The max speed with current technology IIRC is quite high, although I think equipment to transmit at these speeds would be prohibitively expensive. Last time I checked, Verizon was using some sort of technology to allow multiple houses to run off of one strand by sending multiple wavelengths of light down a single fibre. I can't confirum this.
3) All of your existing copper phone services will come over the fiber. This takes up a portion of bandwidth. I have absolutely no idea how voice signals are compressed, etc....
4) Verizon is using PPPoE for authentication. Not sure if ATM is anywhere in the mix -- I'm pretty sure Verizon has phased out ATM for DSL, so I doubt that they're using it for FiOS. They supply a router, so it appears to the end-user as pure ethernet.
5) They have a business plan that offers static IP and has port 80 unblocked, but is more expensive. This is pretty much in line with their current DSL offerings.
Wiring a big (huge) city like NYC for fiber would be prohibitively expensive for even the biggest of companies.
The infrastructure of these cities has been gradually implemented over the past 100+ years, and redoing it all from scratch would quite literally be impossible.
That's why verizon has been wiring suburban communities for fiber. Even though the rural areas of my (very small) town don't seem to have been wired, all of the residential neighborhoods have been wired, and as of last week, turned on. I'll have a 5mbps fibre connection next week for less money than my DSL service. For $10 more, I could upgrade to 15mbps.
Oh, and I was one of the last to get DSL/Cable available to me. I suppose this is verizon's apology. If you're doing a complete rebuild, you can't beat a small suburban community. The population density is reasonably high, almost all utilities are above-ground and relatively simple to replace.
NYC and the like are stuck with an inadequate infrastructure from the 1920s. I think we may reach the point someday where high-desnsity urban areas are unnecessary. The reasons they existed in the first place are really no longer practical. Even though NYC is located in a prime location for ocean transport, the cost of living there is certainly higher than in a landlocked state like nebraska.....
Based upon the abstract (I only skimmed the article), I think there's sufficent evidence to throw out the survey: the control group's BMI INCREASED.
The control group should remain the same. Based upon the result of the control group increasing, we can conclude that the population should be continuously be getting fatter and fatter ad infinitum.
The article also failed to mention if the test was double-blinded and such. It fails to mention if the spam was designed to be attractive, or even unsolicited at all. In order for the survey to be valid, it would actually HAVE to be unsolicited, as people subscribing to such an email would naturally tend to be watching their diet more closely than those not subscribing. Additionally, participants that actually READ the messages are more likely to respond to a survey.
Sorry, but these are junk-statistics. Calling crap like this 'science' makes me sick.
The fact is that RealTek and the likes are very much responsible for the proliferation of ethernet on inexpensive desktop PCs.
Sure, you may not like them very much because their equipment is cheap, but in order to put $300 PCs into homes, you're going to need to cut corners somewhere, and thankfully we were able to support broadband in the process.
Although I'd rather have a 3com in a server, I honestly don't see the huge benefits of having premium network gear anymore. The divide between the Premium and Cheap stuff has become very narrow, even though the price gap has grown wider.
Energia has had a perfect (if admittedly short) track record.
It launched polyus and buran without a hitch. Polyus itself failed before reaching orbit, but this was not a fault of Energia, and has been argued that the failure may have been intentional.
Energia is interesting in that it can act like a normal rocket booster, but is able to deliver massive payloads -- the Russian space shuttle was strapped to it on its only flight. If energia were to be ressurected with the help of the US, it is possible that russia could scrape together the funds to rebuild one of the buran orbiters if Kliper (the next-gen russian orbiter design -- still unbuilt) were to fall through.
IT should be noted that energia uses several (depending upon the configuration) Zenit boosters for the first stage. Zenit is used today independently of Energia, and has an excellent track record. Despite the fact that it is the most technically advanced/efficent rocket today, Russia has plans to replace it with a more advanced rocket.
Personally, despite the massive infrastructure improvements needed to reinstate Energia, I think that it would be a benefit to rebuild it. It is alredy an adequate booster to get to the moon or mars. Right now, Bush and Putin aren't getting along quite well due to a number of Putin's policy changes that are effectively destroying the russian democracy. Money talks. If bush were to offer a contract to Energia in exchange for some concessions from Putin, I think US-Russian relations would improve.
On a similar note, Jon Stweart gave a commencement speech at his alma mater -- funny to point out that he was offended by the honarary doctorate they gave him.
But, of course, in the typical Jon Stewart fashion, it's also funny as hell. A good read.
As much as I frown upon people posting without knowing all the facts, I will say this (from the perspective of someone who has dabbled in both)
iCal in theory, will always be less bloated than outlook, simply because it has a more limited feature set --- read into this however you may.
By its own nature, all iCal has to do is provide a rudiementary scheduling interface. Although the UI is beautiful and the program very useful, the future set is very basic. For people like myself who do not require the full capabilities of outlook and exchange, iCal is more than adequate. On top of iCal's very basic architecture, of course, you get neat features tacked on top such as automated reminders and web publishing.
If you work in a big company and use exchange, quite simply, that extra code bloat in outlook is going to pay off bigtime, because you're actually going to be using that "bloat" to boost productivity. If you need the advanced workgroup features of outlook/exchange, chances are you're already using it.
At the moment, for windows, Outlook 2003 appears to be the best calendaring/email application out there, regardless of wether or not you use it to its fullest extent. Although I love iCal for its simpliity and ease of use, I give major props to the MS development team for creating a damn good application. Considering the extra capabilities outlook brings to the table (wether or not they're actually necessary), Microsoft managed to do it with virtually no bloat. Outlook 2003 truly is an elegant application.
somebody recently pointed out to me that 95% of the humor on the simpsons is not original, but simply a reference to something else, be it another TV show/movie, literature, history, or some sort of real-life phenomenon --- regardless of wether or not this is where the comedic value of the gag lies.
I'm saying this all with the highest respect, of course -- the scriptwriters for the simpsons are unbelievably intelligent compared to most. there are hidden references EVERYWHERE -- that I think takes skill.
Many interesting points are made, but I'll have to disagree on a few points here:
First off, I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility of an Apple/AMD partnership in the future. Although AMD certainly doesn't have the capacity to satisfy apple (ditching IBM due to supply problems and then going to AMD is a bad move politically), this should be a signal to AMD to ramp up capacity -- and indeed, AMD already has a new fab coming online in the next few years. AMD's sledgehammer has been the best x86 server chip around for some time now. I'd suspect that as long as intel doesn't make any malicious business arrangment with apple, a sledgehammer-powered xserve is a near certainty.
AMD also already makes other chips than networking, CPUs, and flash. They have a strong (and popular) line of microcontrollers and embedded CPUs, one of which is already in use in the Airport base station.
Part of the x86 move, I believe, is for flexibility. Right now, we've got x86 cpus made by Intel, AMD, and Via (cyrix). If Intel ever had a problem like IBM did with the PPC970, and couldn't ramp up speeds or produce a laptop model, Apple could easily go to AMD if need be. Expect to see some innovative stuff come out of AMD for the purposes of enticing Apple.
And I don't forsee HP/Compaq disappearing ever. For one, HP is a much more diverse company than it appears. Although it's not a cash cow, their scientific equipment division appears as stong as ever.
Right now, I'd be pretty sure that HP is selling lots of workstations and small servers to businesses (their target audience). As long as HP can start producing laptops on par with IBM's thinkpads, I think they could esasily steal away IBM's old market from Lenovo. I'd expect that many US corporations would be wary of using Lenovo, though the fact remains that the thinkpads are probably the best all-around x86 laptops. The fact is that HP/IBM are not on the same level as Dell is. Dell is like a Saturn, while HP/IBM are like a Volvo -- more money, but better quality and a more business-like attitude.
The USSR actually DID have a series of manned military space stations that orbited during the 1970s. It was known as the Almaz project (more info here). In addition to reconnisance equipment on board, they also carried anti-satelitte weaponry.
The USSR also had some other scary space plans for military space stations. I mean, it even LOOKS sinister, painted black and all...
No. Not at all. The gene could be (and most likely is) recessive, meaning that it could be dormant through several generations until two dormant people with the gene mate and produce a child with the gene.
This is the same reason that genes controlling impotency and diseases that are fatal before puberty still exist.
Yes, it makes the condition statistically unlikely, but then again, the chance of being a homoseual is also statistically unlikely.
I'm not sure if this is true or not, but as another poster has mentioned, the disparity in this trend between parents of children with autism and parents of children with downs syndrome may have very significant reasons behind it.
Although I've never been through the experience, for the sake of my children (and their children), I would not want to possibly pass the gene along for another generation, regardless of how 'rewarding' or 'heartwrenching' the experience was.
What would more revealing would to be to look into how many parents of these children later choose to ADOPT children instead of reproducing in the traditional fashion...
I'll play devils advocate here -- there is simply no proof in either direction because the population of children raised by two same-gender parents is simply far too small to draw any significant conclusions (and rule out other variables; ie. are single-gender couples more statistically likely to live in metropolitian areas? are they more likely to be economically better off? etc. not to mention the hundreds of other variables which ARE proven to be linked to raising successful children)
Granted, I do believe that single-gender couples should be allowed to raise children and be accepted into general society. However, right now, I don't think there's enough evidence in either direction.
Unfortunately, what is true is that the child will be subject to bigotry, just like Jews, Blacks, and Hispanics once were. Fortunately, we have mostly transcended these barriers in America, and I have little doubt that we will be able to accept this group into society.
Indeed, but after watching all 3 (for the first time this weekend (I know I'm hardly a nerd)), I must say that:
1) James Earl Jones is an amazingly good Voice Actor for the part of Darth Vader. 2) Timing was MUCH better. Dramatic pauses were well used, and I must say that the sound of darth vader breathing is almost as effective as the music in Jaws. Quite frankly, the direction was very well done. 3) Although this has already been established elsewhere, the actor playing Obi Wan (his name escapes me at the moment) is an incredibly good actor, and the parts of Luke and Han were played quite well (ie. they were believable in their roles). The only weakness in acting I thought was Leia.
And, yes, I've seen bits of 4,5,6 before (probably the whole thing pieced together), but never in one straight run. I must say that seeing eps. 1,2,3 definitely added to it and definitely builds upon the space opera/tragic theme.
they are directly and inextricibly tied to a single entity -- microsoft. The vast majority of intel's business depends entirely upon Microsoft.
This is a big no-no in the business world, especially since Intel has very little control over microsoft -- Microsoft could theorietically begin to endorse IBM's PowerPC, orchestrate an (illegal) deal with Dell and HP, and silently make the switch by bundling a version of Windows that runs on PPC, but maintains full backward compatibility with x86.
As it currently stands, intel has no freedom. Their fate is doomed to be the same as Microsoft unless they somehow diversify. Granted, as time has shown us by SGI and Sun, diversification is not always a good thing, but for a company the size of intel, having all of its eggs in one basket surely cannot be a good thing. AMD has proved this, as much of its business lies outisde of desktop processors -- it's embedded device and flash memory segments do very well. Granted, intel also produces other products, but has definitely endorsed a policy of the consolidation of their products.
Diversification has worked beautifully for companies like IBM and GE. 10 years ago, I do not think that IBM would have been able to dump its PC business without significantly damaging themselves.
On a similar beat, it is interesting to note diversification in other fields. From an operational standpoint, General Motors is not a car company (that divison loses money). It is a bank. Their financial arm (GMAC) produces far more revenue than the car-making portion. If we invented cheap, effective teleportation, thus eliminating the need for automobiles, GM wouldn't be hurt too badly.
I've experienced quite a few stability issues since upgrading to Tiger, all of which have required me to manually reboot. Hopefully this update will fix whatever that is.
Additionally, Tiger occasionally turns off the function and volume keys on certain powerbooks. This has been confirmed by several users and does not appear to be fixed in the update.
DOS must have been the best at SOMETHING, because it eventually prevailed in the end.
And, honestly, in terms of design, I don't think linux is that good. I don't think BSD is all that good either. Windows is awful too.
In my mind, Unix is overcomplicated and antiquated. Why can't we design a system with the needs of modern home computers in mind rather than mainframes in the 70s? Hell. We're still using the TTY acronym to describe a terminal (TTY=TeleTYpe machine). Unix is a definite case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
Granted, steps are being taken in the right direction -- the abandoning of the traditional Unix Filesystem, apple's amazingly cool launchd, etc... but the fact remains is that it's all too complicated and obfuscated. The fact that we're complaining about the lack of a good packaging system points to a serious flaw in that Unix is the only type of system that NEEDS this sort of thing.
In the 80s, there was tons of diversity in the OS marketplace. There was DOS, MacOS, Unix, and all the other failed OSes. It looks like Unix won out simply because it already had an established market, and, hey... it's owned by ma' bell. The only successful newcomer to the OS scene in the past 15 years has been NT. How sad is THAT?
I really don't think we should be looking at linux, but, instead, looking at (creating) other operating systems that take advantage of all modern features (build the GUI into the underlying OS, a logical approach to hardware support, sensible APIs, etc.) while also maximizing simplicity. This CAN be done!
Just look at the number of failed OS pet projects. There are so many out there that never made it simply for lack of developer support in favor of the lurking hulk that Unix has become. Don't get me wrong, I think some wonderful things have been done with Linux/BSD and I commend those developers, but I think it is time to move on. It's a miracle that something as complicated as Linux/Unix even WORKS, let alone works WELL. The size and complexity of Unix is snowballing rapidly, and it's time for consolidation and simplification. The open source community has already proven that it has been able to keep the antiquated hulk of unix working well all these years, and it's time that it proves that it can create something even BETTER from scratch (and while we're at it, let's abandon X-windows and destroy the concept of a 'separate' GUI all together)
BeOS has been jumping out in my mind as I write this post as one such OS. It got lots of stuff right from the start. It was built upon sensible principles, supported as much hardware as the small development team could allow, and was FAST as hell. Perhaps more importantly, it was the only operating system that wasn't explicitly written to imitate another previous operating system (I'll acknowledge that MacOS was a big influence, but BE certainly wasn't a derivative work). It also wasn't written by a group of researchers, but by a business with a proper marketing department that knew what attributes could be changed to imporove the concept of the Operating System. Microsoft and apple have both done this to some degree of success, but, likewise, NT was built to be compatible with Win9x which was built to be compatible with DOS, and OSX was built to be compatible with Darwin/NextSTEP. The only real OS that was built from scratch by non-academics that achieved some degree of success was MacOS Classic which was revolutionary in its day.
Unless an open-source OS can be written from scratch and throw all the crap from the past out, we're not going to replace the Commercial OS market anytime soon. I for one do think that open-source will be important in the future, not as a political idea (it fits in nicely with communism and fascism), but simply because it has the potential to throw away the past and start from scratch and create something revolutionary. Linux was a me-too Operating system to imitate Minix/Unix. It will always be lurking in the past of the gigantic steel IBM mainframes. Open Source may be the future. Unix will not.
Most of the proponents of Text-only email commonly ignore usability as a factor in their arguments.
Quite simply, HTML allows for newsletters (and even normal correspondence) to be displayed in a more readable fashion than a text email would be. Ask anyone in the publishing world and they will tell you that a good layout is vital. Many HTML newsletters make good use of columns and colored headings and such.....
And of course, for normal plain email correspondance, bold, italics, underlines, bulleted lists, and even hyperlinks are all vitally useful.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be cautious grouping it with Slash or nuke. Those are previous-generation CMS systems, and are becoming quite dated.
Newer stuff such as Drupal, Mambo (which I personally dislike), Textpattern, and other newer CMS systems have embraced emerging web technologies (Ajax, CSS) and are generally written with extremely clean code and have very simplistic ways of operating (mac-like if you would care to make the analogy)
Slash and nuke are dinosaurs. They may still work fine, but if you're going to make a new site, you'd do yourself a favor to research the newer options. Development on all of the 'old' CMSes has stalled, and little work is being done to improve them.
1) The speed is only restricted by the speed of the lines going to the CO. In a small suburban town, this isn't necessarily very fast. I doubt that each strand goes straight to verizon's backbone
2) The max speed with current technology IIRC is quite high, although I think equipment to transmit at these speeds would be prohibitively expensive. Last time I checked, Verizon was using some sort of technology to allow multiple houses to run off of one strand by sending multiple wavelengths of light down a single fibre. I can't confirum this.
3) All of your existing copper phone services will come over the fiber. This takes up a portion of bandwidth. I have absolutely no idea how voice signals are compressed, etc....
4) Verizon is using PPPoE for authentication. Not sure if ATM is anywhere in the mix -- I'm pretty sure Verizon has phased out ATM for DSL, so I doubt that they're using it for FiOS. They supply a router, so it appears to the end-user as pure ethernet.
5) They have a business plan that offers static IP and has port 80 unblocked, but is more expensive. This is pretty much in line with their current DSL offerings.
Google is your best bet for any more information
Wiring a big (huge) city like NYC for fiber would be prohibitively expensive for even the biggest of companies.
The infrastructure of these cities has been gradually implemented over the past 100+ years, and redoing it all from scratch would quite literally be impossible.
That's why verizon has been wiring suburban communities for fiber. Even though the rural areas of my (very small) town don't seem to have been wired, all of the residential neighborhoods have been wired, and as of last week, turned on. I'll have a 5mbps fibre connection next week for less money than my DSL service. For $10 more, I could upgrade to 15mbps.
Oh, and I was one of the last to get DSL/Cable available to me. I suppose this is verizon's apology. If you're doing a complete rebuild, you can't beat a small suburban community. The population density is reasonably high, almost all utilities are above-ground and relatively simple to replace.
NYC and the like are stuck with an inadequate infrastructure from the 1920s. I think we may reach the point someday where high-desnsity urban areas are unnecessary. The reasons they existed in the first place are really no longer practical. Even though NYC is located in a prime location for ocean transport, the cost of living there is certainly higher than in a landlocked state like nebraska.....
Based upon the abstract (I only skimmed the article), I think there's sufficent evidence to throw out the survey: the control group's BMI INCREASED.
The control group should remain the same. Based upon the result of the control group increasing, we can conclude that the population should be continuously be getting fatter and fatter ad infinitum.
The article also failed to mention if the test was double-blinded and such. It fails to mention if the spam was designed to be attractive, or even unsolicited at all. In order for the survey to be valid, it would actually HAVE to be unsolicited, as people subscribing to such an email would naturally tend to be watching their diet more closely than those not subscribing. Additionally, participants that actually READ the messages are more likely to respond to a survey.
Sorry, but these are junk-statistics. Calling crap like this 'science' makes me sick.
The fact is that RealTek and the likes are very much responsible for the proliferation of ethernet on inexpensive desktop PCs.
Sure, you may not like them very much because their equipment is cheap, but in order to put $300 PCs into homes, you're going to need to cut corners somewhere, and thankfully we were able to support broadband in the process.
Although I'd rather have a 3com in a server, I honestly don't see the huge benefits of having premium network gear anymore. The divide between the Premium and Cheap stuff has become very narrow, even though the price gap has grown wider.
Energia has had a perfect (if admittedly short) track record.
It launched polyus and buran without a hitch. Polyus itself failed before reaching orbit, but this was not a fault of Energia, and has been argued that the failure may have been intentional.
Energia is interesting in that it can act like a normal rocket booster, but is able to deliver massive payloads -- the Russian space shuttle was strapped to it on its only flight. If energia were to be ressurected with the help of the US, it is possible that russia could scrape together the funds to rebuild one of the buran orbiters if Kliper (the next-gen russian orbiter design -- still unbuilt) were to fall through.
IT should be noted that energia uses several (depending upon the configuration) Zenit boosters for the first stage. Zenit is used today independently of Energia, and has an excellent track record. Despite the fact that it is the most technically advanced/efficent rocket today, Russia has plans to replace it with a more advanced rocket.
Personally, despite the massive infrastructure improvements needed to reinstate Energia, I think that it would be a benefit to rebuild it. It is alredy an adequate booster to get to the moon or mars. Right now, Bush and Putin aren't getting along quite well due to a number of Putin's policy changes that are effectively destroying the russian democracy. Money talks. If bush were to offer a contract to Energia in exchange for some concessions from Putin, I think US-Russian relations would improve.
On a similar note, Jon Stweart gave a commencement speech at his alma mater -- funny to point out that he was offended by the honarary doctorate they gave him.
But, of course, in the typical Jon Stewart fashion, it's also funny as hell. A good read.
God, it would seem has a sense of humor.
From TFA:
"The Judean date is chronicled in the Bible, Quran and ancient literature for its diverse powers -- from an aphrodisiac to a contraceptive"
As much as I frown upon people posting without knowing all the facts, I will say this (from the perspective of someone who has dabbled in both)
iCal in theory, will always be less bloated than outlook, simply because it has a more limited feature set --- read into this however you may.
By its own nature, all iCal has to do is provide a rudiementary scheduling interface. Although the UI is beautiful and the program very useful, the future set is very basic. For people like myself who do not require the full capabilities of outlook and exchange, iCal is more than adequate. On top of iCal's very basic architecture, of course, you get neat features tacked on top such as automated reminders and web publishing.
If you work in a big company and use exchange, quite simply, that extra code bloat in outlook is going to pay off bigtime, because you're actually going to be using that "bloat" to boost productivity. If you need the advanced workgroup features of outlook/exchange, chances are you're already using it.
At the moment, for windows, Outlook 2003 appears to be the best calendaring/email application out there, regardless of wether or not you use it to its fullest extent. Although I love iCal for its simpliity and ease of use, I give major props to the MS development team for creating a damn good application. Considering the extra capabilities outlook brings to the table (wether or not they're actually necessary), Microsoft managed to do it with virtually no bloat. Outlook 2003 truly is an elegant application.
somebody recently pointed out to me that 95% of the humor on the simpsons is not original, but simply a reference to something else, be it another TV show/movie, literature, history, or some sort of real-life phenomenon --- regardless of wether or not this is where the comedic value of the gag lies.
I'm saying this all with the highest respect, of course -- the scriptwriters for the simpsons are unbelievably intelligent compared to most. there are hidden references EVERYWHERE -- that I think takes skill.
Many interesting points are made, but I'll have to disagree on a few points here:
First off, I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility of an Apple/AMD partnership in the future. Although AMD certainly doesn't have the capacity to satisfy apple (ditching IBM due to supply problems and then going to AMD is a bad move politically), this should be a signal to AMD to ramp up capacity -- and indeed, AMD already has a new fab coming online in the next few years. AMD's sledgehammer has been the best x86 server chip around for some time now. I'd suspect that as long as intel doesn't make any malicious business arrangment with apple, a sledgehammer-powered xserve is a near certainty.
AMD also already makes other chips than networking, CPUs, and flash. They have a strong (and popular) line of microcontrollers and embedded CPUs, one of which is already in use in the Airport base station.
Part of the x86 move, I believe, is for flexibility. Right now, we've got x86 cpus made by Intel, AMD, and Via (cyrix). If Intel ever had a problem like IBM did with the PPC970, and couldn't ramp up speeds or produce a laptop model, Apple could easily go to AMD if need be. Expect to see some innovative stuff come out of AMD for the purposes of enticing Apple.
And I don't forsee HP/Compaq disappearing ever. For one, HP is a much more diverse company than it appears. Although it's not a cash cow, their scientific equipment division appears as stong as ever.
Right now, I'd be pretty sure that HP is selling lots of workstations and small servers to businesses (their target audience). As long as HP can start producing laptops on par with IBM's thinkpads, I think they could esasily steal away IBM's old market from Lenovo. I'd expect that many US corporations would be wary of using Lenovo, though the fact remains that the thinkpads are probably the best all-around x86 laptops. The fact is that HP/IBM are not on the same level as Dell is. Dell is like a Saturn, while HP/IBM are like a Volvo -- more money, but better quality and a more business-like attitude.
The USSR actually DID have a series of manned military space stations that orbited during the 1970s. It was known as the Almaz project (more info here). In addition to reconnisance equipment on board, they also carried anti-satelitte weaponry.
The USSR also had some other scary space plans for military space stations. I mean, it even LOOKS sinister, painted black and all...
well, duh. where do you think transylvania is?
No. Not at all. The gene could be (and most likely is) recessive, meaning that it could be dormant through several generations until two dormant people with the gene mate and produce a child with the gene.
This is the same reason that genes controlling impotency and diseases that are fatal before puberty still exist.
Yes, it makes the condition statistically unlikely, but then again, the chance of being a homoseual is also statistically unlikely.
I'm not sure if this is true or not, but as another poster has mentioned, the disparity in this trend between parents of children with autism and parents of children with downs syndrome may have very significant reasons behind it.
Although I've never been through the experience, for the sake of my children (and their children), I would not want to possibly pass the gene along for another generation, regardless of how 'rewarding' or 'heartwrenching' the experience was.
What would more revealing would to be to look into how many parents of these children later choose to ADOPT children instead of reproducing in the traditional fashion...
I'll play devils advocate here -- there is simply no proof in either direction because the population of children raised by two same-gender parents is simply far too small to draw any significant conclusions (and rule out other variables; ie. are single-gender couples more statistically likely to live in metropolitian areas? are they more likely to be economically better off? etc. not to mention the hundreds of other variables which ARE proven to be linked to raising successful children)
Granted, I do believe that single-gender couples should be allowed to raise children and be accepted into general society. However, right now, I don't think there's enough evidence in either direction.
Unfortunately, what is true is that the child will be subject to bigotry, just like Jews, Blacks, and Hispanics once were. Fortunately, we have mostly transcended these barriers in America, and I have little doubt that we will be able to accept this group into society.
Headline should read:
"60% of people interviewed by National Geographic believe...."
how many people did they survey? how did they choose who to survey? was it a random sample? was it voluntary?
Their claim is far too vague and broad. To me, it looks like a bullshit statistic.
etc. etc. etc.
(could someone with a qualified background in this matter comment on this --- although I've taken statistics classes, I'm by no means a professional)
Indeed, but after watching all 3 (for the first time this weekend (I know I'm hardly a nerd)), I must say that:
1) James Earl Jones is an amazingly good Voice Actor for the part of Darth Vader.
2) Timing was MUCH better. Dramatic pauses were well used, and I must say that the sound of darth vader breathing is almost as effective as the music in Jaws. Quite frankly, the direction was very well done.
3) Although this has already been established elsewhere, the actor playing Obi Wan (his name escapes me at the moment) is an incredibly good actor, and the parts of Luke and Han were played quite well (ie. they were believable in their roles). The only weakness in acting I thought was Leia.
And, yes, I've seen bits of 4,5,6 before (probably the whole thing pieced together), but never in one straight run. I must say that seeing eps. 1,2,3 definitely added to it and definitely builds upon the space opera/tragic theme.
that's not a moon.....
This points a huge flaw in intel's business plan.
they are directly and inextricibly tied to a single entity -- microsoft. The vast majority of intel's business depends entirely upon Microsoft.
This is a big no-no in the business world, especially since Intel has very little control over microsoft -- Microsoft could theorietically begin to endorse IBM's PowerPC, orchestrate an (illegal) deal with Dell and HP, and silently make the switch by bundling a version of Windows that runs on PPC, but maintains full backward compatibility with x86.
As it currently stands, intel has no freedom. Their fate is doomed to be the same as Microsoft unless they somehow diversify. Granted, as time has shown us by SGI and Sun, diversification is not always a good thing, but for a company the size of intel, having all of its eggs in one basket surely cannot be a good thing. AMD has proved this, as much of its business lies outisde of desktop processors -- it's embedded device and flash memory segments do very well. Granted, intel also produces other products, but has definitely endorsed a policy of the consolidation of their products.
Diversification has worked beautifully for companies like IBM and GE. 10 years ago, I do not think that IBM would have been able to dump its PC business without significantly damaging themselves.
On a similar beat, it is interesting to note diversification in other fields. From an operational standpoint, General Motors is not a car company (that divison loses money). It is a bank. Their financial arm (GMAC) produces far more revenue than the car-making portion. If we invented cheap, effective teleportation, thus eliminating the need for automobiles, GM wouldn't be hurt too badly.
and let the meme begin.....
I've experienced quite a few stability issues since upgrading to Tiger, all of which have required me to manually reboot. Hopefully this update will fix whatever that is.
Additionally, Tiger occasionally turns off the function and volume keys on certain powerbooks. This has been confirmed by several users and does not appear to be fixed in the update.
Sigh.......
they could just be making it up :-)
DOS must have been the best at SOMETHING, because it eventually prevailed in the end.
And, honestly, in terms of design, I don't think linux is that good. I don't think BSD is all that good either. Windows is awful too.
In my mind, Unix is overcomplicated and antiquated. Why can't we design a system with the needs of modern home computers in mind rather than mainframes in the 70s? Hell. We're still using the TTY acronym to describe a terminal (TTY=TeleTYpe machine). Unix is a definite case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
Granted, steps are being taken in the right direction -- the abandoning of the traditional Unix Filesystem, apple's amazingly cool launchd, etc... but the fact remains is that it's all too complicated and obfuscated. The fact that we're complaining about the lack of a good packaging system points to a serious flaw in that Unix is the only type of system that NEEDS this sort of thing.
In the 80s, there was tons of diversity in the OS marketplace. There was DOS, MacOS, Unix, and all the other failed OSes. It looks like Unix won out simply because it already had an established market, and, hey... it's owned by ma' bell. The only successful newcomer to the OS scene in the past 15 years has been NT. How sad is THAT?
I really don't think we should be looking at linux, but, instead, looking at (creating) other operating systems that take advantage of all modern features (build the GUI into the underlying OS, a logical approach to hardware support, sensible APIs, etc.) while also maximizing simplicity. This CAN be done!
Just look at the number of failed OS pet projects. There are so many out there that never made it simply for lack of developer support in favor of the lurking hulk that Unix has become. Don't get me wrong, I think some wonderful things have been done with Linux/BSD and I commend those developers, but I think it is time to move on. It's a miracle that something as complicated as Linux/Unix even WORKS, let alone works WELL. The size and complexity of Unix is snowballing rapidly, and it's time for consolidation and simplification. The open source community has already proven that it has been able to keep the antiquated hulk of unix working well all these years, and it's time that it proves that it can create something even BETTER from scratch (and while we're at it, let's abandon X-windows and destroy the concept of a 'separate' GUI all together)
BeOS has been jumping out in my mind as I write this post as one such OS. It got lots of stuff right from the start. It was built upon sensible principles, supported as much hardware as the small development team could allow, and was FAST as hell. Perhaps more importantly, it was the only operating system that wasn't explicitly written to imitate another previous operating system (I'll acknowledge that MacOS was a big influence, but BE certainly wasn't a derivative work). It also wasn't written by a group of researchers, but by a business with a proper marketing department that knew what attributes could be changed to imporove the concept of the Operating System. Microsoft and apple have both done this to some degree of success, but, likewise, NT was built to be compatible with Win9x which was built to be compatible with DOS, and OSX was built to be compatible with Darwin/NextSTEP. The only real OS that was built from scratch by non-academics that achieved some degree of success was MacOS Classic which was revolutionary in its day.
Unless an open-source OS can be written from scratch and throw all the crap from the past out, we're not going to replace the Commercial OS market anytime soon. I for one do think that open-source will be important in the future, not as a political idea (it fits in nicely with communism and fascism), but simply because it has the potential to throw away the past and start from scratch and create something revolutionary. Linux was a me-too Operating system to imitate Minix/Unix. It will always be lurking in the past of the gigantic steel IBM mainframes. Open Source may be the future. Unix will not.
Most of the proponents of Text-only email commonly ignore usability as a factor in their arguments.
Quite simply, HTML allows for newsletters (and even normal correspondence) to be displayed in a more readable fashion than a text email would be. Ask anyone in the publishing world and they will tell you that a good layout is vital. Many HTML newsletters make good use of columns and colored headings and such.....
And of course, for normal plain email correspondance, bold, italics, underlines, bulleted lists, and even hyperlinks are all vitally useful.
the ASCII ribbon campaign should have ended long ago