Excellent post, calm and objective - we need more of that.
I think the common ground, where both pro-gun and anti-gun people can meet, is that it should be made as difficult as possible for someone like Cho to get a gun in the future. And I do believe that there would be pragmatic, sensible ways of doing this, of ipmroving the current system.
Not being intimately familiar with the process of buying a gun - I live in Australia where even the idea of that, for non-hunting purposes, seems bizarre - I can't provide excellent suggestions, but there has to be something: mandatory gun training, psychological assesment, references, interviews - something!
You make some good points, and I agree that it is unfair to say VT is culpable here. There are practical impossibilities with an institution that size, and a flawed or incorrect early notification to students would have been a nightmare they wanted to avoid.
Having said that, if I was on campus would I want to know there was a shooter about? You betcha'. Would I only want to be told that if it was damn sure it was true? You betcha'. So I'm not sure what improvements can be made for the future, but don't rule out things like blanket SMS'ing too early, its at least worth investigating.
Will we adapt over the next thousands of years to be radiation tolerant?
In neo-Darwinism, mutations are random with respect to fitness and do not preferentially favour traits that are well suited to an organism's current environment. So humans will not adapt in response to environments with significant radiation, if that is indeed what you are getting at.
But we may well try and genetically engineer ourselves though.
By the same kind of reasoning, you could argue that snow melting off the mountains and flowing into a lake is decreasing entropy, since what was scattered all over is now in one simple body.
You mean my reasoning about compound chemicals breaking down into simpler materials? You're right, my analogies were far from perfect but the fact remains - decreased entropy has never been demonstrated.
Entropy only applies to a closed system (i.e. with no outside interaction). And even then, it is statistically probable, not absolute. Furthermore, it could be that entropy does not always increase (even probabilistically).
I would humbly disagree.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is just as valid for open systems as it is for closed systems, says John Ross, Harvard University [1]:
"...There are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems."
What will happen if the universe collapses on itself and becomes a singularity?
Good question. If entropy is constantly decreasing then eventually we get the point where there is total disorder and then what? Does the Universe collapse?
I'm not trying to push any buttons, just pointing out that evolution is not as scientific one may think - hence the term "the theory of evolution":)
Evolutionists (and creationists) bring some rather large assumptions to the table and I'm trying to sift through the evidence and figure out what I believe in whilst being as objective as possible - it's hard to do given all the bias flowing around that's for sure.
BTW, could you elaborate on the idea of entropy in a closed system only being statistically probable?
[1] [John Ross, letter in Chemical and Engineering News, Vol. 58 (July 7, 1980), p. 40.]
Yet the theory of evolution would make us believe that entropy can be decreased right?
The natural tendency of complex, ordered arrangements and systems is to become simpler and more disorderly with time [1].
Left to themselves, all chemical compounds break apart into simpler materials, everything ages and wears out (humans, cars, clothing etc) yet with evolution it is possible to become more orderly and complex over time??
I've read the explanation of the sun as an external energy source etc... why then have we never demonstrated the formation of "life" from "dead" matter? Where did "life" come from? Why doesn't a dead stick (assuming a sufficient supply of water, light etc) become live?
[1] R.B. Lindsay, "Physics - To What Extent Is It Deterministic?" American Scientist, Vol. 56, No. 2 (1968), pp. 100-111.
I'm using 1.0 at the moment. If 2.0 has code completion then I'm off to download it now;-)
Eclipse really seems to be a well thought out IDE -- any application with Mr Eric Gamma (Design Pattern book guru) as a developer must be well thought out eh?.
I'm still leaning towards the Intellij IDEA but I'm always ready to try new IDE's and Eclipse is definitely one of the best I've tried thus far (and Jbuilder is losing it's appeal by the day).
Eclipse seems well thought out except for one thing - it's missing code completion. This is helpful for reallyLongMethodNamesInJava, for not having to look up api docs all the time to determine method calls etc.
If someone can point me to a plug-in which rectifies this for Eclipse I would be grateful.
Code completion is one of the reasons I am currently sticking with JBuilder 5 (though I am rapidly beginning to like Intellij IDEA, its refactoring support is awesome)
Jini isn't dead, it is just poorly marketed by Sun (Jini is about services not devices and what is the current trend in industry? - that's right, service based systems ala web services), probably because they've put all their eggs into the J2EE basket (which also has its place).
I strongly encourage you to re-evaluate Jini. It can be a truly powerful paradigm even for none Java enabled machines/devices (e.g. using a surrogate architecture).
Ha! Think that's funny, try reading the whole article that the quote came from. The article is posted on adequacy.org and is titled "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?". It should be titled "Are your parents taking acid?"
It has generated 2243 comments so far and is either the funniest or worst piece of journalism I've ever seen.
An excellent reply to the "they've been slashdotted" comment was given in the forum for this article. I should note that the site is responding fine now.
Most people are unlikely/too lazy to follow the comment link above so I've repeated the first part of the response below:
Yes, I read quite a few snide comments on slashdot about this server not being able to handle the load and ridiculing the article because of it. Frankly these people dont have a clue. It would be pointless in the extreme to operate a server 24/7 to handle the kind of loads the "slashdot effect" generates unless those kind of loads are the norm... A well tuned properly designed website/server should be equipped to handle 2 to 3 times its _expected_ peak traffic rate (which seems about what this server can do as its tuned now). It is a waste of money and hardware trying to do anymore than that imho as 99.9% of the time you would have alot of $$$ sitting totally idle in the form of hardware and bandwidth. Being a server admin myself, I think the guys here did an EXCELLENT job explaining what is involved with hosting a fairly high-traffic website effeciently. And I also think the server/programming for this site is well designed and does its job admirably (better than 99% of the websites on the internet at least). They did an excellent job of explaining the pros and cons
of different approaches to dynamic sites. Knocking them for getting nailed by slashdot isnt exactly productive, I would like to see ANY site which uses database generated content on a single thousand dollar server handle that kind of load (my guess is > 1000 requests per second at its peak from what I have heard from others who have been slashdotted)... Caching can only do so much:)
[Rest of comment follows, see link above for full version]
JBuilder and a text editor works for me ...
on
Java IDEs?
·
· Score: 1
IMO, I think it's important to be comfortable with more than one "type" of IDE when writing Java code. The sophisticated Java IDE's are often very slow to startup, especially if they are written in Java itself (e.g. JBuilder, Forte take upwards of 20 seconds to startup on my machine sometimes - JDK1.3, 512 MB, 400 MHz) which can be a pain in the arse for impulse coding or quick changes to code when the IDE is not running.
Therefore I've found it helpful to have two IDE's I'm comfortable with:
1) A stripped down, quick and dirty text editor which allows you to get in and out of files quick (e.g. notepad, ultraedit under Windows, whatever)
2) A whizz bang do everything for you IDE which provides a huge amount of features (Wizards, code management, plugins) like JBuilder, IBM VisualAge for Java, Forte, Oracle JDeveloper etc etc
See the following links for full lists of Java IDEs out there:
Personally I've used about 10-15 editors tailored for Java and enjoy using Borland JBuilder5 (Enterprise) at the moment for the following reasons:
Wizards for just about any Java component you would want to create - Servlets/JSPs/EJBs/CORBA/Javabeans/XML. This avoids writing a lot of tedious code.
The ability to code all parts of a Java web app. with proper syntax highlighting, and code completion etc. in the one IDE (HTML, Servlets, JSPs, EJBs). The ability to preview the web. app. in the IDE without starting up the app. server. etc, can be helpful (JBuilder comes bundled with Tomcat (and Cocoon), supports Websphere, Weblogic, Borland Appserver and other plugins).
Code completion and insight - Java has lotsOfLongMethodNamesWhichAreSometimesABitTooDescr iptive and a pain to type
Rapid GUI prototyping (null, XYLayout) for Swing clients (if anyone still builds Swing clients, just joking;-))
XML support, Cocoon, XML to DTD, DTD to XML, XSLT transformation previews. You'll may need something like XmlSpy for more sophisticated XML development however.
Full customisation of pretty much any part of the IDE, keymappings, toolbars etc - I like to use my own keymappings.
Having all parts of a Java component (e.g. methods, attributes) accessible by clicking on its name in a GUI IDE panel - this can be nice to locate sections of code when a Java class becomes large.
I could go on and on, the full feature matrix is here. Of course JBuilder Enterprise costs a *lot of money* and I probably would'nt buy it for home use.
One problem, I refuse to work on JBuilder with less than 512MB RAM. It's written entirely in Java and although they do a great job to make it as fast as it is (using custom class loaders I've read somewhere), stuff like code insight and code completion is painful with anything less than 512MB RAM.
You can feel the terror and intensity, it's scary watching it on CNN.
A snapshot of some of pieces and reports I've seen:
A boeing 747 has crashed in Pittsbourgh, it is thought to be related.
Helicopters are patrolling air space over the pentagon expecting another possible attack... earlier breaking news reported another (FOURTH) hijacked plane headed for a second attack on the Pentagon (within a 3 minute time frame is was thought at one point), this did not eventuate...
One plane, United Flight 175, travelling from Boston to LA is now also thought to be hijacked, with another attack on the Pentagon possible.
JUST IN: POSSIBLE BREACH OF SECURITY, APPARENTLY A SENIOR AMERICAN POLITICIAN MAY BE INVOLVED WITH THE TERRORIST GROUP
I must admit, the specifications sounded impressive, interestingly the D language uses garbage collection and has exception handling. From the article:
D memory allocation is fully garbage collected. Empirical experience suggests that a lot of the complicated features of C++ are necessary in order to manage memory deallocation. With garbage collection, the language gets much simpler.
and...
The superior try-catch-finally model is used rather than just try-catch. There's no need to create dummy objects just to have the destructor implement the finally semantics.
No VM though, so languages Java, Smalltalk et al would still have portability advantages I'd imagine.
A pity it was kinda wasted cause out of everything I've read, this anonymous post has summarised it best
The funny thing is that all of these people who go through all the trouble of installing alternative email in their corp environment are also the people who are aware enough not to open an infected email.
...
Most people could live without Outlook for email. There are lots of alternatives. However, try living without the calendar, appointments, meeting management, and address book. We have well over 100k employees in 10+ divisions. Try finding the email address of someone without the corporate address book. Sure, i could use the one on the web, but that takes 20 times longer and is a clunky interface compared to searching in Outlook.
Myself, I've tried around 20 email applications including Eudora, Messenger etc. I am not biased towards any corporation/operating system/system whatever.
For me, outlook has been excellent for overall management and organisation of contacts and tasks I usually forget etc. Give me something better I'll use it. For email, as the anonymous poster said, use whatever the hell you like.
Outlook also makes synchronisation with my Pocket PC easy (probably *too* easy). That's all I usually ask of given piece of software though, to make my "real" life easier in some aspect.
WinCE devices have a max battery life in the hours.
Depends on what you use them for. You are correct that the Palm battery life is, in general, lightyears ahead.
I'll give you my experience. I've got the iPaq 3650 with WinCE 3.0 and by taking certain measures (e.g. backlight set to low, power off settings after 3 minutes max etc), I can always get a "full" day of (constant use) battery life out of the device (games, music) whatever and not have to worry about it.
However, I do have to remember to put it on the cradle *every night* to re-charge. "That's crap!" you might say. Well it is not much of an issue for me.
Would I like to have my battery life last longer? Of course. I'd like it to last all year if I could. However as long as I can be around a power outlet when I travel, it is not a problem having effectively 15 or so hours life.
And why not put 1GHz processors in something the size of a palm device. Heat/power problems have been overcome before. If you can *effectively* have the processing power of your desktop in your pocket device then surely you can see some nice possibilities there (entertainment wise at least).
For example, the LA Lakers (nba) had a promotion where people, during the game, could have real time multimedia, statistics etc "streamed" to their Pocket PC (sorry can't find the link).
Things like processing MPEG streams (say) on the fly would require some significant MHz power in the pocket device to be usable.
Good to see well thought out comments. I'd just like to comment on a common theme I see in the technical community which you've hit upon nicely...
... welcome to life. All life, human or otherwise, is governed by the rules of evolution
I agree. If you believe science (encompassing evolution, technology etc) provides, at least on some level, solutions and rules to "life" then what you say is spot on.
We really then become a group of people dictated by our genetic makeup. We are trying to ensure our own survival and hence have self interest as our #1 priority.
In that case, what reason do I have not to kill you (say) tomorrow if it helps me survive? Some fuzzy moral system? Some intrinsic values passed on to you by kindred or culture? What would science tell me to do? Is science (and evolution ) a moral or ethical system itself?
Evolution theory has a lot of logic behind it, after all I _want_ to be able to explain life and how it came to be. However certain aspects (e.g. the Big Bang) still require you to take a quantum leap of "faith" as such. That is, we cannot define how life began, the universe began etc _definitely_ via human logic.
Myself, I don't claim to have answers (I've got a bucket load of questions though;-)), I'm interested in all well thought out opinions I come across. I've searched my whole life for meaning.
I have made a similar leap of "faith" as evolutionists, I believe in Creation.
The idea that maybe there's this spirit called "God" who created and the universe and living creatures is just crazy at first? Who would believe that?? And a God that wants you to have the chance to live forever?? No way I hear you say!
I could be totally wrong in believing in Creation, I happily admit it!! But hey, if I've thought my philiosophies out and I am truly happy with my thoughts on life (and after life), then have I really lost anything?
Should you dislike/disregard someone for not thinking like you?
I'm not a religious fanatic, just someone who's searching for the answers to something none of us like to face - why am I here and what happens when I die?
Creationists and linux are similar in that respect. The people who make the most noise about it and get the most publicity, often ruin the appreciation and time (to listen) that people have for those who genuinely think things out and are just trying to look for answers.
We're all looking for answers you know. I don't believe in me vs you. I believe in _us_ trying to figure out what this life thingy is all about.
Creation may seem to some people a "nicer" way to think about it, I admit it. I also can't provide any links or definitive facts to this Creation thing I talk about. That must mean I'm totally wrong, right?
What if man is wrong though and we cannot explain everything with our combined intelligence?
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent post, calm and objective - we need more of that.
I think the common ground, where both pro-gun and anti-gun people can meet, is that it should be made as difficult as possible for someone like Cho to get a gun in the future. And I do believe that there would be pragmatic, sensible ways of doing this, of ipmroving the current system.
Not being intimately familiar with the process of buying a gun - I live in Australia where even the idea of that, for non-hunting purposes, seems bizarre - I can't provide excellent suggestions, but there has to be something: mandatory gun training, psychological assesment, references, interviews - something!
You make some good points, and I agree that it is unfair to say VT is culpable here. There are practical impossibilities with an institution that size, and a flawed or incorrect early notification to students would have been a nightmare they wanted to avoid.
Having said that, if I was on campus would I want to know there was a shooter about? You betcha'. Would I only want to be told that if it was damn sure it was true? You betcha'. So I'm not sure what improvements can be made for the future, but don't rule out things like blanket SMS'ing too early, its at least worth investigating.
We must live in different universes then!
What was your sample size? One?
Will we adapt over the next thousands of years to be radiation tolerant?
In neo-Darwinism, mutations are random with respect to fitness and do not preferentially favour traits that are well suited to an organism's current environment. So humans will not adapt in response to environments with significant radiation, if that is indeed what you are getting at.
But we may well try and genetically engineer ourselves though.
My apologies, that should obviously read:
"If entropy is constantly increasing then eventually we get the point where there is total disorder and then what?"
You mean my reasoning about compound chemicals breaking down into simpler materials? You're right, my analogies were far from perfect but the fact remains - decreased entropy has never been demonstrated.
I would humbly disagree.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is just as valid for open systems as it is for closed systems, says John Ross, Harvard University [1]:
"...There are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems."
Good question. If entropy is constantly decreasing then eventually we get the point where there is total disorder and then what? Does the Universe collapse?
I'm not trying to push any buttons, just pointing out that evolution is not as scientific one may think - hence the term "the theory of evolution"
Evolutionists (and creationists) bring some rather large assumptions to the table and I'm trying to sift through the evidence and figure out what I believe in whilst being as objective as possible - it's hard to do given all the bias flowing around that's for sure.
BTW, could you elaborate on the idea of entropy in a closed system only being statistically probable?
[1] [John Ross, letter in Chemical and Engineering News, Vol. 58 (July 7, 1980), p. 40.]
Yet the theory of evolution would make us believe that entropy can be decreased right?
The natural tendency of complex, ordered arrangements and systems is to become simpler and more disorderly with time [1].
Left to themselves, all chemical compounds break apart into simpler materials, everything ages and wears out (humans, cars, clothing etc) yet with evolution it is possible to become more orderly and complex over time??
I've read the explanation of the sun as an external energy source etc
[1] R.B. Lindsay, "Physics - To What Extent Is It Deterministic?" American Scientist, Vol. 56, No. 2 (1968), pp. 100-111.
I'm using 1.0 at the moment. If 2.0 has code completion then I'm off to download it now ;-)
Eclipse really seems to be a well thought out IDE -- any application with Mr Eric Gamma (Design Pattern book guru) as a developer must be well thought out eh?.
I'm still leaning towards the Intellij IDEA but I'm always ready to try new IDE's and Eclipse is definitely one of the best I've tried thus far (and Jbuilder is losing it's appeal by the day).
Eclipse seems well thought out except for one thing - it's missing code completion. This is helpful for reallyLongMethodNamesInJava, for not having to look up api docs all the time to determine method calls etc.
If someone can point me to a plug-in which rectifies this for Eclipse I would be grateful.
Code completion is one of the reasons I am currently sticking with JBuilder 5 (though I am rapidly beginning to like Intellij IDEA, its refactoring support is awesome)
I'm sure the following people might disagree with you:
- U.S. Army
- Raytheon (U.S. Navy)
- Cisco
- eko systems (medical data and equipment)
- More success stories here and here
Jini isn't dead, it is just poorly marketed by Sun (Jini is about services not devices and what is the current trend in industry? - that's right, service based systems ala web services), probably because they've put all their eggs into the J2EE basket (which also has its place).
I strongly encourage you to re-evaluate Jini. It can be a truly powerful paradigm even for none Java enabled machines/devices (e.g. using a surrogate architecture).
Read the Jini FAQ, see the following excellent article on Jini and have a look at the Jini user mailing list sometime and you will be surprised by how powerful Jini can be.
a sheep?
A: a woolly jumper (ba boom)
What do you get when you cross a kangaroo, a sheep and a lion?
A: the king of the woolly jumpers (ba ba boomshka)
And what do you get when you cross a sheep, a kangaroo, a lion and CmdrTaco? (tough one)
A: Anne Tomlinson
Ha! Think that's funny, try reading the whole article that the quote came from. The article is posted on adequacy.org and is titled "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?". It should be titled "Are your parents taking acid?"
It has generated 2243 comments so far and is either the funniest or worst piece of journalism I've ever seen.
Read the full article for yourself here
Most people are unlikely/too lazy to follow the comment link above so I've repeated the first part of the response below:
IMO, I think it's important to be comfortable with more than one "type" of IDE when writing Java code. The sophisticated Java IDE's are often very slow to startup, especially if they are written in Java itself (e.g. JBuilder, Forte take upwards of 20 seconds to startup on my machine sometimes - JDK1.3, 512 MB, 400 MHz) which can be a pain in the arse for impulse coding or quick changes to code when the IDE is not running.
Therefore I've found it helpful to have two IDE's I'm comfortable with:
1) A stripped down, quick and dirty text editor which allows you to get in and out of files quick (e.g. notepad, ultraedit under Windows, whatever)
2) A whizz bang do everything for you IDE which provides a huge amount of features (Wizards, code management, plugins) like JBuilder, IBM VisualAge for Java, Forte, Oracle JDeveloper etc etc
See the following links for full lists of Java IDEs out there:
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/tools/jw-tools
http://www.webdeveloper.com/java/java_ides.html
Personally I've used about 10-15 editors tailored for Java and enjoy using Borland JBuilder5 (Enterprise) at the moment for the following reasons:
Wizards for just about any Java component you would want to create - Servlets/JSPs/EJBs/CORBA/Javabeans/XML. This avoids writing a lot of tedious code.
The ability to code all parts of a Java web app. with proper syntax highlighting, and code completion etc. in the one IDE (HTML, Servlets, JSPs, EJBs). The ability to preview the web. app. in the IDE without starting up the app. server. etc, can be helpful (JBuilder comes bundled with Tomcat (and Cocoon), supports Websphere, Weblogic, Borland Appserver and other plugins).
Code completion and insight - Java has lotsOfLongMethodNamesWhichAreSometimesABitTooDescr iptive and a pain to type
Rapid GUI prototyping (null, XYLayout) for Swing clients (if anyone still builds Swing clients, just joking ;-))
XML support, Cocoon, XML to DTD, DTD to XML, XSLT transformation previews. You'll may need something like XmlSpy for more sophisticated XML development however.
Full customisation of pretty much any part of the IDE, keymappings, toolbars etc - I like to use my own keymappings.
Having all parts of a Java component (e.g. methods, attributes) accessible by clicking on its name in a GUI IDE panel - this can be nice to locate sections of code when a Java class becomes large.
I could go on and on, the full feature matrix is here. Of course JBuilder Enterprise costs a *lot of money* and I probably would'nt buy it for home use.
One problem, I refuse to work on JBuilder with less than 512MB RAM. It's written entirely in Java and although they do a great job to make it as fast as it is (using custom class loaders I've read somewhere), stuff like code insight and code completion is painful with anything less than 512MB RAM.
The Pentagon has NOT been hit again. The report was denied in the time frame I posted it.
Another aircraft (a Jumbo) has just hit the Pentagon
"Communications systems across the nation are jammed. Advise everyone you come in contact with to STAY OFF THE PHONE!!!!!!
Emergency services need the phone much worse than you do!!!!!!!!!
You can feel the terror and intensity, it's scary watching it on CNN.
A snapshot of some of pieces and reports I've seen:
A boeing 747 has crashed in Pittsbourgh, it is thought to be related.
Helicopters are patrolling air space over the pentagon expecting another possible attack ... earlier breaking news reported another (FOURTH) hijacked plane headed for a second attack on the Pentagon (within a 3 minute time frame is was thought at one point), this did not eventuate ...
One plane, United Flight 175, travelling from Boston to LA is now also thought to be hijacked, with another attack on the Pentagon possible.
JUST IN: POSSIBLE BREACH OF SECURITY, APPARENTLY A SENIOR AMERICAN POLITICIAN MAY BE INVOLVED WITH THE TERRORIST GROUP
Just as George Bush addresses America, reports have come in that the plane/s may have been hijacked ...
D memory allocation is fully garbage collected. Empirical experience suggests that a lot of the complicated features of C++ are necessary in order to manage memory deallocation. With garbage collection, the language gets much simpler.
and ...
The superior try-catch-finally model is used rather than just try-catch. There's no need to create dummy objects just to have the destructor implement the finally semantics.
No VM though, so languages Java, Smalltalk et al would still have portability advantages I'd imagine.
The funny thing is that all of these people who go through all the trouble of installing alternative email in their corp environment are also the people who are aware enough not to open an infected email.
Most people could live without Outlook for email. There are lots of alternatives. However, try living without the calendar, appointments, meeting management, and address book. We have well over 100k employees in 10+ divisions. Try finding the email address of someone without the corporate address book. Sure, i could use the one on the web, but that takes 20 times longer and is a clunky interface compared to searching in Outlook.
Myself, I've tried around 20 email applications including Eudora, Messenger etc. I am not biased towards any corporation/operating system/system whatever.For me, outlook has been excellent for overall management and organisation of contacts and tasks I usually forget etc. Give me something better I'll use it. For email, as the anonymous poster said, use whatever the hell you like.
Outlook also makes synchronisation with my Pocket PC easy (probably *too* easy). That's all I usually ask of given piece of software though, to make my "real" life easier in some aspect.
CE2.0- vs CE3.0 is like comparing Windows 9x to Windows 2000 stability/useability wise.
I'm pretty sure you'd be correct in that CE3.0 (PocketPC) was written entiretly from scratch.
Depends on what you use them for. You are correct that the Palm battery life is, in general, lightyears ahead.
I'll give you my experience. I've got the iPaq 3650 with WinCE 3.0 and by taking certain measures (e.g. backlight set to low, power off settings after 3 minutes max etc), I can always get a "full" day of (constant use) battery life out of the device (games, music) whatever and not have to worry about it.
However, I do have to remember to put it on the cradle *every night* to re-charge. "That's crap!" you might say. Well it is not much of an issue for me.
Would I like to have my battery life last longer? Of course. I'd like it to last all year if I could. However as long as I can be around a power outlet when I travel, it is not a problem having effectively 15 or so hours life.
And why not put 1GHz processors in something the size of a palm device. Heat/power problems have been overcome before. If you can *effectively* have the processing power of your desktop in your pocket device then surely you can see some nice possibilities there (entertainment wise at least).
For example, the LA Lakers (nba) had a promotion where people, during the game, could have real time multimedia, statistics etc "streamed" to their Pocket PC (sorry can't find the link). Things like processing MPEG streams (say) on the fly would require some significant MHz power in the pocket device to be usable.
What's more hypocritical, a TV network that has double standards on sex or people who pretend they don't have double standards on sex?
I agree. If you believe science (encompassing evolution, technology etc) provides, at least on some level, solutions and rules to "life" then what you say is spot on.
We really then become a group of people dictated by our genetic makeup. We are trying to ensure our own survival and hence have self interest as our #1 priority.
In that case, what reason do I have not to kill you (say) tomorrow if it helps me survive? Some fuzzy moral system? Some intrinsic values passed on to you by kindred or culture? What would science tell me to do? Is science (and evolution ) a moral or ethical system itself?
Evolution theory has a lot of logic behind it, after all I _want_ to be able to explain life and how it came to be. However certain aspects (e.g. the Big Bang) still require you to take a quantum leap of "faith" as such. That is, we cannot define how life began, the universe began etc _definitely_ via human logic.
Myself, I don't claim to have answers (I've got a bucket load of questions though ;-)), I'm interested in all well thought out opinions I come across. I've searched my whole life for meaning.
I have made a similar leap of "faith" as evolutionists, I believe in Creation.
The idea that maybe there's this spirit called "God" who created and the universe and living creatures is just crazy at first? Who would believe that?? And a God that wants you to have the chance to live forever?? No way I hear you say!
I could be totally wrong in believing in Creation, I happily admit it!! But hey, if I've thought my philiosophies out and I am truly happy with my thoughts on life (and after life), then have I really lost anything?
Should you dislike/disregard someone for not thinking like you?
I'm not a religious fanatic, just someone who's searching for the answers to something none of us like to face - why am I here and what happens when I die?
Creationists and linux are similar in that respect. The people who make the most noise about it and get the most publicity, often ruin the appreciation and time (to listen) that people have for those who genuinely think things out and are just trying to look for answers.
We're all looking for answers you know. I don't believe in me vs you. I believe in _us_ trying to figure out what this life thingy is all about.
Creation may seem to some people a "nicer" way to think about it, I admit it. I also can't provide any links or definitive facts to this Creation thing I talk about. That must mean I'm totally wrong, right?
What if man is wrong though and we cannot explain everything with our combined intelligence?
Something to think about!!