Why grammar is important can be summed up in a sign I once saw attached to a shirt rack in a clothing store:
Today only $19.99
Most people would fail to see the syntactical subtlety in that sentence, but if I turned that comma-less sentence into this:
Today, only $19.99
Suddenly the sale I might have previously thought was supposed to last a single day, logically (and legally) becomes an everyday special. Even if you tried to sue the store for false advertisement, you couldn't.
How about this one?
Today only, $19.99
Rest assured, if that's what the sign said on Monday and you returned the following day and saw that shirt still advertised for $19.99, you'd have a mighty strong case in court. False advertising? Hell yes!
So, as you can see, the sign with no comma introduces a logical (temporal) ambiguity. The perceptive person immediately asks himself what the truth is -- will he lose out on a fantastic deal if he comes back tomorrow or not?
So there you have it. Grammar is important. It's so important in fact, that if you don't know your head from your ass regarding grammar, you could potentially get hoodwinked by someone that does.
- IP
-- This public announcement has been brought to you by a highschool dropout that failed every English course he ever took, because he was too damn smart to care.
I have no clue what this specification means. It looks more like the spec. for an ultra high performance video camera.
Not far off. That essentially describes what an optical mouse is. The more often and precisely a mouse can take a snapshot of your workspace, the better and more finely the mouse tracks.
Not exactly a scientific review. The author concludes the mouse with the best precision and responsiveness is a wireless offering with an 800 DPI sensor (MX1000). Being the nature of wireless mice, the mouse is limited to a 125hz polling rate through the USB port versus a stable 500hz and usable 1khz the wired MX518 and Diamondback are capable of. For the unitiated, polling rates determine how many "snapshots" of the mouse's position that are taken every second. So it's 125 times per second versus 500 or even 1000 times per second on the clearly superior mice (518, Diamondback) the author has overlooked.
The MX1000 is of a mere 800DPI whereas the 518 and Diamondback track at 1600DPI. Probably one advantage is that the mouse has a laser sensor instead of the standard optical one, but in the end it's still an inferior mouse than the 518 and Diamondback, which aside from aesthetics, have identical specifications and should rightfully taken to be the same mouse.
As I excel in my computer skills, I learn more and more that no one should need a mouse.
Try sniping a dodgy enemy at 300 yards in your favourte FPS with a keyboard. Fortunately the 518 and Diamondback do this with an ease no standard 800 DPI mouse could even dream of.
Pro "5.8 megapixels, 6,400+ frames per second image capture"
Believe the spec. Razer even invites the adventurous end user to test their product in any way they can muster to verify those numbers. The hardware truly does deliver. I should know, I have a Diamondback, and it tracks smooth as hell and is pixel-point accurate.
Being a Diamondback owner and having done all the research into what became my purchase of the ultimate performance mouse, the contest boils down to two of the four mice listed -- the MX518 and Razer Diamondback, which have virtually identical optical sensors. The MX1000 and Razer Viper have older, less capable sensors, and at least one of those mice has known to be plagued with ugly tracking and pixel skipping problems.
I'm partial. If I'm to recommend one mouse over the other, go out and fetch the Diamondback. Razer is even planning special edition versions of the mouse with green optics, and already they have a plasma blue version released, which looks pretty damn sweet. http://razerzone.com/
Let's be serious -- lightsabers don't "work", even if you're resigned to believe otherwise. Not only that, but this is just another shameless advertisement disguised as a neat little readup. Someone wants you to buy their prop lightsabers; it would be a sin if I repeated that company's name here.
..but the people doing that actual science will come up with theories that actually explain things and are actually useful.
Science could attempt to come up with a theory attempting to explain the frequency individual drops fling off a stream of urine headed to the toilet, but that's all it would ever be -- theory. Theories don't explain things to any kind of finality, they're merely meant to satisfy our voracious ego's need to know now, have now, until we get bored of that and begin thinking up a new and improved theory.
There is no reason to believe that the flow of time is dependent on your awareness of it, and plenty of reason to believe otherwise.
You fall asleep one moment, have no conscious perception of time passing, and you wake up the next. How much more evidence you do need? Come on, time is supposed to be an unassailable universal property! If it exists independent of our awareness, mind explaining to me why I don't perceive six or seven hours passing while I'm snoring away the way I do while fully awake? You're 0 for 6 here. Care to keep going? Like I said, both your physics and your philosophy are pathetically naive, and I'd add "your logic" to that list as well.
Keeping score, are ya? Since when have you become the authority you arrogant bastard?
Talk about assumptions. The entire foundation of physics is a complex assumption itself. When it can answer the question of human purpose, the why instead of the how, then it will be fit for that task. As it stands, physics operates within limited parameters that at best cannot verify its own truths. It arrogantly strives to answer questions it's ill-equiped to handle. It's a cheap digital substitute of real inquiry into truth.
Affirm or deny, there's only one purpose for all of science. The acquisition of that holy grail of truth, and they ain't gonna get to that point. Not within multiples of a zillionth of a percentage point.
I challenge any mathematician to put in even a quarter lifetime worth of work without considering even once how the human mind factors into the equation of existence, matter and motion.
Bottom line, your time will come. If you're serious about your physics, you will eventually question the value of it and whether it has any real purpose for assessing the human condition and the universe you live in.
It has nothing to do with your fantasy that the universe is conscious, a claim with no empirical support.
This is an easy one. Without time, there cannot be matter. Without matter, space loses its context. Time goes out the window the moment I close my eyes to sleep. If the flow of time is dependent on your awareness of it, everything else is too.
Prove it, and do so without vicariously thinking you're someone else. Do it within the context of you, not what you believe others experience in your absence. That's exactly what you're doing.
Your 'consciousness' is a system of matter and energy just like everything else contained in the the universe.
Even more basic than that, the above observation manifested out of your awareness. You are conscious first, and you make these observations second. If you weren't aware of the phenomenae taking place, you'd have nothing to say about it; you couldn't possibly say anything about it. The universe doesn't give a damn about you.
Have you conclusively figured out what 'you' are that allows you to make such a definite statement?
Get back to us when you want to discuss actual experimentally-verified physics, not unjustifiable assertions that you wish were true.
Physics. Its own foundations are based upon truths which are assumed to be self-evident. Only assumptions. That's what axioms are, yes? But has anyone ever attempted to prove those axioms true? Physics is nothing more than an ongoing exercise in subjectivity. Funny thing is, loop those axioms back in on themselves; attempt to use physics to explain physics and up comes paradox, inconsistency, incompleteness. If you're content with that, great, believe with all your might that science is capable of reaching infinitely into the universe's bottomless pit of truth. Only know that a finite number of axioms can only reveal a finite number of truths, and it might not do so reliably either. Put your axioms into action and there's always a risk of the result being tainted with incompletion. With a failure rate, any failure rate, even if infinitesimal, how reliable can physics be beyond explaining simple things?
There will never be a theory of everything. Face it. There will never in a zillion lifetimes come a neat little equation capable of explaining everything and anything. And scientists will toil for an eternity arrogantly believing they'll solve it. Science cannot provide us with the answer to the universe's purpose.
Tell me, when will physics declare everything in the universe answered? When will physics no longer be needed? Answer, it will always be needed, and that poses a problem to the intrepid scientist hoping to explain everything.
Physics exists squrely within of time, but do something as simple as close your eyes to sleep, what becomes of your physics then? What becomes of you, all of matter, space and time?
yeah.. umm.. see.. we have, as a society, moved beyond meta-physics and into real physics. thanks for playing though.
The universe driven by your physics is eliminated the moment you close your eyes and go to sleep. Time, space and matter -- destroyed. All phenomena, including those your limited physics strive to explain, are created, driven by and dependent upon your awareness.
Consciousness and the universe are not mutually exclusive; they're one in the same. So once you've understood the nature of conciousness, something no science in all of eternity could ever explain, only then you'll fully understand the basis of all the universe's phenomenae.
..the researchers can create matter that is composed of the fundamental building blocks of nature, quarks and gluons..
Nothing is more fundamental than simple awareness, from which all matter originates. Quarks and gluons cannot be final as long as they require a conscious observer to give them context. Quarks and gluons are comprised of consciousness, the universe's true primordial building block. Any scientist that fails to make that observation is missing the only part of their theory that truly matters.
I hardly think that Consciousness can ever be explained as many would like to believe by reducing our brains to "computers".
Something is conscious when it is self-aware. Human beings are self aware because there is a subject object split in our awareness. Illogical as it may be, we the perceiver observe ourselves, the perceived.
Technically we aren't conscious, because we've fallen out of touch with who and what we really are. Try it sometime, ask yourself who or what you are. The answers you come up with would invariably be fleeting titles or things you have, not things you are. -- "This is who I am, right here, right now. All right? All that counts is here and now, and this is me!" --Doctor Who, The End of The World
we do not know how the brain works. sure we understand the chemical processes and can correlate them to trends in personality.
Classic mistake. Chemical processes don't ultimately result in something we call mind. Mind, like everything else is an object born out of awareness. When you observe those chemical processes you believe creates mind, that observation is dependent on you being aware. No awareness? No observation. No observation? No world, no universe.
There is no objectively knowing mind from within mind, so don't be fooled by no stinkin' namby-pamby scientist. The combined knowledge of all the world's scientists can't claim shit on mind compared to a diligent Buddhist.
Screw computer literacy. The overwhelming majority of the population couldn't pass basic literacy, period, and it's growing profoundly worse by the day.
This reminds me of the time I went to a local variety store here in Toronto and handed the cashier a ten dollar bill that had been out of circulation for a decade. Being the immigrant nation this is, he didn't recognize it. With a look on his face that approached vile disgust, he said "what is this?" I said "that's legal tender, buddy."
Slashdot Mirror
Why grammar is important can be summed up in a sign I once saw attached to a shirt rack in a clothing store:
Today only $19.99
Most people would fail to see the syntactical subtlety in that sentence, but if I turned that comma-less sentence into this:
Today, only $19.99
Suddenly the sale I might have previously thought was supposed to last a single day, logically (and legally) becomes an everyday special. Even if you tried to sue the store for false advertisement, you couldn't.
How about this one?
Today only, $19.99
Rest assured, if that's what the sign said on Monday and you returned the following day and saw that shirt still advertised for $19.99, you'd have a mighty strong case in court. False advertising? Hell yes!
So, as you can see, the sign with no comma introduces a logical (temporal) ambiguity. The perceptive person immediately asks himself what the truth is -- will he lose out on a fantastic deal if he comes back tomorrow or not?
So there you have it. Grammar is important. It's so important in fact, that if you don't know your head from your ass regarding grammar, you could potentially get hoodwinked by someone that does.
- IP
--
This public announcement has been brought to you by a highschool dropout that failed every English course he ever took, because he was too damn smart to care.
You use far too many commas.
- IP
What is emulation without games to emulate?
Let us know when this thing can run more than one game.
- IP
I have no clue what this specification means. It looks more like the spec. for an ultra high performance video camera.
Not far off. That essentially describes what an optical mouse is. The more often and precisely a mouse can take a snapshot of your workspace, the better and more finely the mouse tracks.
- IP
Not exactly a scientific review. The author concludes the mouse with the best precision and responsiveness is a wireless offering with an 800 DPI sensor (MX1000). Being the nature of wireless mice, the mouse is limited to a 125hz polling rate through the USB port versus a stable 500hz and usable 1khz the wired MX518 and Diamondback are capable of. For the unitiated, polling rates determine how many "snapshots" of the mouse's position that are taken every second. So it's 125 times per second versus 500 or even 1000 times per second on the clearly superior mice (518, Diamondback) the author has overlooked.
The MX1000 is of a mere 800DPI whereas the 518 and Diamondback track at 1600DPI. Probably one advantage is that the mouse has a laser sensor instead of the standard optical one, but in the end it's still an inferior mouse than the 518 and Diamondback, which aside from aesthetics, have identical specifications and should rightfully taken to be the same mouse.
- IP
As I excel in my computer skills, I learn more and more that no one should need a mouse.
Try sniping a dodgy enemy at 300 yards in your favourte FPS with a keyboard. Fortunately the 518 and Diamondback do this with an ease no standard 800 DPI mouse could even dream of.
- IP
Pro "5.8 megapixels, 6,400+ frames per second image capture"
Believe the spec. Razer even invites the adventurous end user to test their product in any way they can muster to verify those numbers. The hardware truly does deliver. I should know, I have a Diamondback, and it tracks smooth as hell and is pixel-point accurate.
- IP
Being a Diamondback owner and having done all the research into what became my purchase of the ultimate performance mouse, the contest boils down to two of the four mice listed -- the MX518 and Razer Diamondback, which have virtually identical optical sensors. The MX1000 and Razer Viper have older, less capable sensors, and at least one of those mice has known to be plagued with ugly tracking and pixel skipping problems.
I'm partial. If I'm to recommend one mouse over the other, go out and fetch the Diamondback. Razer is even planning special edition versions of the mouse with green optics, and already they have a plasma blue version released, which looks pretty damn sweet. http://razerzone.com/
- IP
The real question is: How good is it for fragging the shit outta everyone?
Not as good as my Razer Diamondback.
- IP
Let's be serious -- lightsabers don't "work", even if you're resigned to believe otherwise. Not only that, but this is just another shameless advertisement disguised as a neat little readup. Someone wants you to buy their prop lightsabers; it would be a sin if I repeated that company's name here.
Thanks, but no thanks.
- IP
"Sure, you wicked atheist, you may disbelieve now, but you will eventually see the error of your ways."
Please. If you're an atheist, you're as much as a moron as a theist.
- IP
Science could attempt to come up with a theory attempting to explain the frequency individual drops fling off a stream of urine headed to the toilet, but that's all it would ever be -- theory. Theories don't explain things to any kind of finality, they're merely meant to satisfy our voracious ego's need to know now, have now, until we get bored of that and begin thinking up a new and improved theory.
- IP
There is no reason to believe that the flow of time is dependent on your awareness of it, and plenty of reason to believe otherwise.
You fall asleep one moment, have no conscious perception of time passing, and you wake up the next. How much more evidence you do need? Come on, time is supposed to be an unassailable universal property! If it exists independent of our awareness, mind explaining to me why I don't perceive six or seven hours passing while I'm snoring away the way I do while fully awake?
You're 0 for 6 here. Care to keep going? Like I said, both your physics and your philosophy are pathetically naive, and I'd add "your logic" to that list as well.
Keeping score, are ya? Since when have you become the authority you arrogant bastard?
Talk about assumptions. The entire foundation of physics is a complex assumption itself. When it can answer the question of human purpose, the why instead of the how, then it will be fit for that task. As it stands, physics operates within limited parameters that at best cannot verify its own truths. It arrogantly strives to answer questions it's ill-equiped to handle. It's a cheap digital substitute of real inquiry into truth.
Affirm or deny, there's only one purpose for all of science. The acquisition of that holy grail of truth, and they ain't gonna get to that point. Not within multiples of a zillionth of a percentage point.
I challenge any mathematician to put in even a quarter lifetime worth of work without considering even once how the human mind factors into the equation of existence, matter and motion.
Bottom line, your time will come. If you're serious about your physics, you will eventually question the value of it and whether it has any real purpose for assessing the human condition and the universe you live in.
- IP
It has nothing to do with your fantasy that the universe is conscious, a claim with no empirical support.
This is an easy one. Without time, there cannot be matter. Without matter, space loses its context. Time goes out the window the moment I close my eyes to sleep. If the flow of time is dependent on your awareness of it, everything else is too.
- IP
The universe exists with or without you.
Prove it, and do so without vicariously thinking you're someone else. Do it within the context of you, not what you believe others experience in your absence. That's exactly what you're doing.
- IP
Your 'consciousness' is a system of matter and energy just like everything else contained in the the universe.
Even more basic than that, the above observation manifested out of your awareness. You are conscious first, and you make these observations second. If you weren't aware of the phenomenae taking place, you'd have nothing to say about it; you couldn't possibly say anything about it.
The universe doesn't give a damn about you.
Have you conclusively figured out what 'you' are that allows you to make such a definite statement?
- IP
Get back to us when you want to discuss actual experimentally-verified physics, not unjustifiable assertions that you wish were true.
Physics. Its own foundations are based upon truths which are assumed to be self-evident. Only assumptions. That's what axioms are, yes? But has anyone ever attempted to prove those axioms true? Physics is nothing more than an ongoing exercise in subjectivity. Funny thing is, loop those axioms back in on themselves; attempt to use physics to explain physics and up comes paradox, inconsistency, incompleteness. If you're content with that, great, believe with all your might that science is capable of reaching infinitely into the universe's bottomless pit of truth. Only know that a finite number of axioms can only reveal a finite number of truths, and it might not do so reliably either. Put your axioms into action and there's always a risk of the result being tainted with incompletion. With a failure rate, any failure rate, even if infinitesimal, how reliable can physics be beyond explaining simple things?
There will never be a theory of everything. Face it. There will never in a zillion lifetimes come a neat little equation capable of explaining everything and anything. And scientists will toil for an eternity arrogantly believing they'll solve it. Science cannot provide us with the answer to the universe's purpose.
Tell me, when will physics declare everything in the universe answered? When will physics no longer be needed? Answer, it will always be needed, and that poses a problem to the intrepid scientist hoping to explain everything.
Physics exists squrely within of time, but do something as simple as close your eyes to sleep, what becomes of your physics then? What becomes of you, all of matter, space and time?
- IP
[The universe] doesn't depend on us for *anything*.
The universe is a conscious entity. It ain't there if consciousness ain't there, regardless of what you think.
- IP
yeah.. umm.. see.. we have, as a society, moved beyond meta-physics and into real physics. thanks for playing though.
The universe driven by your physics is eliminated the moment you close your eyes and go to sleep. Time, space and matter -- destroyed. All phenomena, including those your limited physics strive to explain, are created, driven by and dependent upon your awareness.
Consciousness and the universe are not mutually exclusive; they're one in the same. So once you've understood the nature of conciousness, something no science in all of eternity could ever explain, only then you'll fully understand the basis of all the universe's phenomenae.
- IP
..the researchers can create matter that is composed of the fundamental building blocks of nature, quarks and gluons..
Nothing is more fundamental than simple awareness, from which all matter originates. Quarks and gluons cannot be final as long as they require a conscious observer to give them context. Quarks and gluons are comprised of consciousness, the universe's true primordial building block. Any scientist that fails to make that observation is missing the only part of their theory that truly matters.
- IP
I hardly think that Consciousness can ever be explained as many would like to believe by reducing our brains to "computers".
Something is conscious when it is self-aware. Human beings are self aware because there is a subject object split in our awareness. Illogical as it may be, we the perceiver observe ourselves, the perceived.
Technically we aren't conscious, because we've fallen out of touch with who and what we really are. Try it sometime, ask yourself who or what you are. The answers you come up with would invariably be fleeting titles or things you have, not things you are.
--
"This is who I am, right here, right now. All right? All that counts is here and now, and this is me!" --Doctor Who, The End of The World
we do not know how the brain works. sure we understand the chemical processes and can correlate them to trends in personality.
Classic mistake. Chemical processes don't ultimately result in something we call mind. Mind, like everything else is an object born out of awareness. When you observe those chemical processes you believe creates mind, that observation is dependent on you being aware. No awareness? No observation. No observation? No world, no universe.
- IP
There is no objectively knowing mind from within mind, so don't be fooled by no stinkin' namby-pamby scientist. The combined knowledge of all the world's scientists can't claim shit on mind compared to a diligent Buddhist.
Over and out.
- IP
Screw computer literacy. The overwhelming majority of the population couldn't pass basic literacy, period, and it's growing profoundly worse by the day.
- IP
This reminds me of the time I went to a local variety store here in Toronto and handed the cashier a ten dollar bill that had been out of circulation for a decade. Being the immigrant nation this is, he didn't recognize it. With a look on his face that approached vile disgust, he said "what is this?" I said "that's legal tender, buddy."
He took the bill.
- IP