they are used not to protect R&D budgets against parasites (the original intent of patents) but to stake a claim in a developing market in order to prevent anyone else from competing.
Actually, no, you couldn't be more wrong. Patents are *precisely* intended to protect the inventor from anyone else competing: The following is a direct quote from "What is a patent?" at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/w hatis.htm :
"The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention." (Emphasis mine)
That is why they have a definite 20-year term, after which they expire, opening the innovation up for anyone to commercialize. Now I'd argue that 17 years (the original term), while reasonable in the 18th century, is a too long for some of the faster-moving technology areas, but not all. (IMO, high-tech should be about 7 years.) But that opens the real can of worms as far as deciding which technology areas are "more equal" and worthy of protection than others.
Let's get one thing clear that many folks seem to misunderstand:
The Latin root for the word "fiduciary" (fidere, I think) means "to trust". It has nothing to do with money, although it's often used in the context of "trusting" someone to respect the monetary interests of the trusting party.
ADM had NO fiduciary responsibilty to its stockholders to fix prices with the Japanese. On the contrary, ADM blatantly VIOLATED its fiduciary responsibility by acting illegally!
On the other hand, Amazon's action was not only legal, but the proper course of action. while I wouldn't go so far as to say companies are *obligated* to pursue patents, it's also clear that neglecting or intentionally declining to file a patent applicaiton on an innovation that materially affects entry barriers in a company's marketplace could open the company up to "legal problems".
A fiduciary responsibility is a *trust* responsibility NOT a *monetary* responsibility!
No, they shouldn't. Although I don't have first hand information, by all reports Mr. Bezos *is* a man. Furthermore, it would be entirely correct usage to prefer the masculine gender when speaking of a group, or even (as in the case of "Man of the Year") a non-specific exemplar. We are all "man" in the sense of "mankind", and there is nothing the least bit sexist about that.
It would be appropriate for Time to title the award "Woman of the Year" if the recipient of the Man of the Year honor is female, but naming anyone (man or woman) "Person of the Year" is insulting and degrading, and is really no better than "Primate of the Year", "Throbbing Glob of Protoplasm of the Year" or other inanities.
It's about time to squash this "PC" nonsense, and give both Men and Women the recognition they deserve rather than stripping them of their sex to pacify radically twisted whiners.
I'm not going to do your research for you, but I stand by my claim, and continue to assert that they are backed by both Christian and atheist philosophers.
You are on the right track: you recognize that your very existence mandates objective truth. But objective truth in turn mandates God. As I said, this is the very reason that God-rejecting philosophy ultimately must deny objective truth or that anything can have a consistent and understandable meaning.
I mentioned some atheist philosophers. On the Christian side, you might want to look at authors like Cornelius van Til and Douglas Wilson. There's an excellent short summary of this in an early chapter in Wilson's book, "Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning."
Oh, and you have it backwards: Truth exists IFF (if and only if)God exists.
I didn't mean to imply that morals cannot exist without religion.
Actually, it's quite accurate to state that morals cannot exist apart from God. This is recognized even by the most humanistic atheists and is the root of the nihilism that they inevitably espouse if they follow thier beliefs to thier logical conclusions.
As Dostoevsky said, "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable." Aha, you say, "Dostoevsky was a Christian!" (as if this somehow invalidates his point), but interestingly, all prominent humanistic atheist thinkers reach the same conclusion: Sartre, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, the list is endless.
If you understand nothing else of philosophy, understand this: The existence of objective truth depends completely upon the existence of God - No God, no truth. Ultimately, this is what all philosophies boil down to - and many philosophers on both sides of the argument have validated this point over the years. If it is indeed possible to know anything, (especially anything of a moral nature) then God must exist.
Furthermore, it's prima facie nonsense to reach that point, as the humanist/atheist philosophers do, and then make the self contradictory assertion that the only thing that is objectively true is that there is no objective truth! (But this non-sequitur is a logical requirement of their determination to deny God exists, so they persist.)
This is not a minor point. If you believe that it's possible to *know* anything, you must *necessarily* believe in God (or at least acknowledge his existence by your acts and every thought, even while consciously mocking His deity.)
Why should these scientists talk to religious leaders? Because they're the ONLY ones in a position to provide valid input on the morality of such a venture. (Although I'm sure they're speaking to some to whom truth is a foreign concept...)
I find it a constant source of amusement that there are so many here on slashdot that pride themselves in their logical methodical thought processes, and yet reject Christianity out of hand, while Chrisitianity can truly be said to be the only logically consistent worldview on the planet. (Don't even bother flaming me in response until you've read John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion..)
There seems to be too much of a bias toward folks that only sling code on slashdot. At the risk of ticking some folks off, I'm going to claim that you can't really claim to be a master of technology unless you play with all of them you can get your hands on - that includes elctronic/computer hardware, complex mechanical systems like cars, control systems, robotics, etc.
I hacked on cars before I hacked on computers - somewhere, I've got a notebook with dozens of quite completely thought-out dream cars and the modifications that would get me from stock to awesome. Cars are expensive, but they're a heck of a lot more fun than fast CPUs - I'd much rather run with 1-2 year old computer technology and drive a Ferrari than throw all that money (more, really, since the Ferrari has been paid for for 8 years now) at the latest quad K8 and VooJoo 2000 3DFx++ graphics card.
I've had a number of really fun cars, and that does not necessarily correlate to expensive - it's quite possible to come up with a really good hacking platform at a very reasonable cost. Although it's fun just to build a car to build a car, consider some form of amateur racing like brackets at the dragstrip or SCCA Solo II autocross - these are really fun, and relatively affordable events, and you'll be surprised how many guys and girls like you are out there. A short list of the contents of my garage over the years:
1972 Buick GS 455 - First car, bad example of the breed, but got me hooked - my *Mom* left twin stripes in the Safeway parking lot with it! There's an old racing saying that you can win with cubic inches or cubic dollars - this car took the cheap but effective route.
1975 Ford Torino GT - Much more reliable, but the 351 Windsor was uninspiring. Still it beat the crud that Detroit was selling new at the time.
1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme - Itty Bitty 260 V8, but the highway gearing meant I could lock the auto tranny in first gear and leave it there for an entire autocross course. This was the first car that went beyond "keep it alive" spending and actually benefited from significnat improvements, mostly in the handling department, since I was in college: Bilsteins, Delrin bushings, Pontiac Grand Am suspension parts, BF Goodrich T/A's and later Goodyear Eagle GTs. This car is responsible for the shelf full of trophies in my garage - it ruled F-stock autocrossing until well after the new 1982 Z-28's and Trans Ams were common.
1974 Fiat X-1/9 Really, really fun car. Sometimes called a Ferrari trainer, and there's a bit of truth to that (my current 308GT4 even shares a number of parts with the X-1/9!) These can be had cheap, and offer a lot of hacking potential. Mine became severely modified, with 7x14 wheels (enormous on that car!), T/A's, stroker crank, cam, big-valve heads, ANSA exhaust, and a pair of Weber downdraft carbs. Best power/weight ratio of any car I've ever owned, and has a number of really serious design features: mid engine, four wheel disks, relatively light weight, removable top (yeah!), etc. Plus, girls think they're cute, especially with 240 HP.
1985 Chrysler Conquest (Mistubishi Starion) - Really killer car, but mangled by dealer and Chrysler refused to fix it until the warranty finally ran out. Don't expect me to buy another Chrysler - they can give 20 year warranties, because they simply refuse to fix things. nice car, though, but be wary of used ones.
1987 Mazda RX-7 Turbo II - Heck, there's hardly anything left to hack on one of these gems. These 2nd generation RX-7s can be had quite reasonably still - the rotor motors are just tough as nails, and if you do trash one, you can rebuild it on your kitchen table. I love RX-7s, and their fundamental toughness makes them a much better risk than other Japanese sports cars, many of which make Ferraris look cheap in comparison over the long haul. I'd still have this car if I hadn't traded it for the dream car:
1975 Ferrari Dino 308gt4 - Only one listed here I still have (would *you* sell your Ferrari?) It's true: there's just nothing else in the same league as a Ferrari. I've driven (seriously, not looky-loo with a salesman) Porsches, Corvettes, Lotii (Loutuses?), etc., but nothing even approaches the fun of a Ferrari. The gt4 is an especially nice driver, and it's a 2+2, so I can even squeeze the kids in the back in a pinch. This was my daily driver from 1988 to 1994, and it's slated to return to duty by Christmas. My wife let me have it because she decided she'd rather not hear me talk about wanting one for the rest of my life (besides, she loves it too!) These are actually fairly easy to work on, since they have minimal electronics, and a lot of good used Ferraris are still less than many new cars. A good 308 can be had for around $20-25K if you shop carefully. The bottom end of the motor is absolutely bulletproof, and if you make REAL sure you never break a cam belt, the top end will serve you well, too. I like the older carbureted cars - avoid the early fuel injected models. Maintenance is not cheap, but a lot less than many of my friends pay for maintenance on their Boxsters, M3s, and Z3s, and I can actually do a lot of the work on mine, which they can't. If you buy a Ferrari, find a good machanic and get the car checked out first to avoid making a very expensive mistake.
1991 Alfa Romeo 164S - Traded this in a couple of years ago. Big mistake. This car is awesome - it's actualy *more fun* to drive than the Ferrari, but is a big four-door luxury car with lots of room. Absolutely the most stable car I've ever driven at speed. Suffers from the usual Italian car foibles (electrics are truly weird, but seem to work much better than most Italian cars), but is worth it. Go for the "S" model, which is not just badge-engineered - it actually shares surprisingly few parts with the garden variety 164s.
I will offer one caveat: you'll notice many of these cars are Italian. Italian cars are a sickness from which many never recover. After driving Italian cars anything Japanese will seem cheap and flimsy (OK, except the NSX, which is really just a Honda Ferrari Dino), anything German will seem heavy, sterile, and without character, and anything American will seem crude and awkward. They can be a pain in the butt, but they have *brio*, and they make really cool mechanical symphony noises that I promise you are more moving than anything your graphics card can do...
I got to play with what must have been the precursor to the Cadillac technology a few years ago, and it was QUITE IMPRESSIVE. At the time, I was working with the world's largest oil producer on an emergency oil spill response network. I participated in a drill where they tried several new things, including the "instant global network" I built for them, some new voice comms technology, and also a demo of the GM Hughes thermal vision system as it would be sold to law enforcement officials. (This could enhance security of the response site, since the enviros have been known to sabotage spill response operations - go figure...)
It was a dreary winter day in Houston, about 50 degrees and misting - we were at the far end of the parking lot and the drizzle was producing a notable amount of fuzz when looking toward the main building. The GM guy fired up the vision system, and on a little 6" black and white monitor, we suddenly saw a bright white spot moving across the parking lot, attached to the right arm of a walking figure barely visible by eye through the mist. The GM guy grinned from ear to ear - what we were seeing was the heat signature of one of the project guys, and more importantly, his cup of hot coffee, which produced a white spot about a foot and a half in diameter!
I got a fair amount of time in playing with the thing that day - it became quite obvious that there would be no effective way of hiding from such a system. Exposed skin stood out clearly from the environment at distances approaching 1/4 mile, and clothing scarcely attenuated the response, even leather jackets and such, which seemed to be about the most opaque. All this from a system which only cost about $6000 back then (c. 1995).
All in all I came away quite impressed, and wouldn't want to have to sneak past someone equipped with that technology. I don't know if the system I saw was any better because it was intended for law enforcement, or if the Cadillac system is now as good, but it impressed the heck outta me, and I'm not easily impressed by technology.
I'm not fully up to speed on semiconductor fab capabilities anymore, but I'd guess that if te transmeta chip is a reasonably complex CPU requiring state-of-the-art fabs, then there are only about four places they can get them: IBM (can build pretty much anything), Intel (of course, plus they own the weird fab for Alpha chips), TI (right up there with the other two - they fab the UltraSPARCs for Sun), and Motorola (perhaps lagging a bit, but they've announced recent advances in process technology, and I think they and IBM are the only ones doing copper yet.)
There are others, Cypress/Ross (I think they're still around...), AMD, and the Japanese, but they're mostly not on the same plane of process technology as the big four, and excess capacity is harder to come by among those folks - It's definitely a big boy's game now, what with a cutting edge fab costing in excess of $3 BILLION!
I was one of the first to discover that Sprint's Wireless Web was alive and working here in Austin shortly after I bought my QCOM ThinPhone.
There are several significant problems with this technology that can (and should) keep it from becoming popular. (Summary: VERY proprietary, text-only, slow, expensive - other than that, it's OK.)
First of all, you're limited to WAP/HDML (Wireless Application Protocol/Handheld Device Markup Language) web sites. WAP/HDML are about the most restrictive, closed, and proprietary protocols imaginable, and only exist to give Unwired Planet/Phone.com a proprietary lock on the market. There is absolutely no reason why existing protocols wouldn't work just fine, especially for a text-based browser. Note that this means you can't just go your own web page or portal (which could actually be useful...), since you'll need the proprietary W* tools to be able to create the content. Someone here on/. replied to an earlier post of mine with a link to a paper he wrote (pretty good, really) about what he called the "W* Effect", the trend toward needlessly reinventing all Internet protocols for "wireless" use - I'm sure the proprietary control is just an incidental artifact, aren't you?
Second, this *is* just a text-based browser, and the whole system assumes that text is all that matters. I confess I don't understand this - I don't expect people to be navigating complex Vignette or CSS sites from handhelds, but support for graphics does not have to imply a lot of overhead. (Remember when all browsers supported X bitmaps?) This may make sense now, but within the next year, these things wil go the way of the dinosaur as real browsing capabilities come to handhelds.
Third, it's just painfully difficult to do any input at all (now THIS is dangerous cellphone activity when driving!), and the response times are far too slow to be of much use. The response time is often glacial, and the menu/site layouts often require extra needless hops to ge to the info you want.
At first, I thought perhaps I wasn't giving it a fair trial, so I actually made an effort to get comfortable with it and use it, but it just doesn't work well enough to be really useful. It's novelty/toy value wears off after the first month or two (and certainly after the first bill or two), and I probably haven't used it once in the past month or so.
I think this will turn out to be a flash in the pan, and something that is forgotten in a year or so. The value just isn't there - not for geeks, not for anybody.
Sun sells a PS/2 keyboard/mouse adapter for Suns. It used to be about $50, but it looks like they've gone with a 3rd party adapter instead of the Sun-branded one they used to use, so it may even be cheaper now.
NASA loved these for adding different pointing devices to thier Suns at JSC. No one ever changed keyboards - it's pretty tough to improve on Sun's keyboards, especially if you chose the Sun layout (with the control key next to the A where Bill Joy intended it to be) instead of the PC layout that some people inexplicably prefer.
I believe it was Ted Nelson that said something like, "Thousands of years ago, our ancestors discovered that it was much easier to draw with sticks than with rocks. The stick prevailed until just recently, when we inexplicably began to draw with rocks again." (bad paraphrase, I'm sure)
He has a point. Sticks are easier, and allow you to input non-trivial things. Try feeding a handwriting recognition program or drawing a picture with a mouse.
Pens can replace mice, but not vice versa. User interfaces that take advantage of this can be very powerful, but then the best user interface for things like browsing (where the chief function is selection of a specific area) is the touchscreen, which outside the PDA world has hardly taken off at all.
I don't think it's going too far to say that it's the touchscreen feature of PDA's that makes them so darn easy, quick, and useful, and is largely responsible for thier success. Given that touchscreens and browsers work so well together, why don't we see the combination more often? (This raises interesting points for UI designers, who, whether they intend to or not, may wind up with something that looks very much like the heirarchical swooshes of the screens on Star Trek.)
Since it's likely that there will be mutiple kinds of input devices in the future (I think touchscreens to augment mice are more likely than sticks, but I like sticks better than mice), UIs will have to take this into account.
Other than the possible integration of character recognition, and the ability to more effectively use the display resolution (touchscreens have a notable weakness in that regard), what changes in UI would result from the widespread availability of sticks?
1) Eric Schmidt did not come from Javasoft, he was CTO for all of Sun. (He is also a certified VSG (Very Smart Guy), and one of the very few CEOs in this business that *fully* comprehends the importance and role of network computing environments. He was instrumental in the genesis of Oak/Java. For this reason alone I still hold out hope for Novell.)
2) Actually, Kerberos is not a directory service at all, but an auth service that relies on Project Athena's Hesiod service as its directory. It's possible to use Hesiod for things other than Kerberos, but unfortunately, Hesiod/Athena never took off outside a few DEC Unix shops. NIS+ may actually have the most elegant architecture of the NDS/NIS+/AD trio of (at least technically) serious contenders, but Sun never built tools that would have made NIS+ usable by mortals, so no one does (or really even can, it's sad.)
11) Novell's directory is in some ways less elegant than AD, but it has the big advantage of running on darn near eveything, where AD is (and is likely to remain) NT only.
12) Good point - especially on the low end. But it would be a mistake not to continue to capitalize on success in the mid-range server market. There are too many people out there that think Linux is the right answer everywhere. Part of being a good technologist is recognizing "appropriate technology."
This definitely does NOT belong on an FSF page, and can only hurt their cause.
(That bad, bad, Gingrich is against "rights for gays!" To paraphrase Linda Bowles, one of my favorite columnists, "Could someone please explain to me why being confused about which end of a penis one belongs on should confer any special rights on the confused party?" Gingrich's position is eminently reasonable here, as in most (not all) other cases...)
This is not really new. It's the same problem the Better Business Bureau has had for all of its existence - they will never apply meaningful pressure against anyone who is a member, because that would be biting the hand that feeds them.
What results is a sham that's only a little better than an outright protection racket. The inherent conflict of interest prevent even gross violations of guidelines from showing up on the records of those willing to pay for the protection. Sad but true. Os how is it big news that this problem has found its way to the net.
Why don't we talk about something important like stamping out spam?
There have been several of these kinds of devices, but the Zenith CruisePad achieved a fair degree of success , especially for providing mobility in hospital and healthcare environments. (I used to do healthcare IT consulting.)
The initial CruisePads weren't really computers in their own right with wireless LANs, but rather Windows Terminals that used a wireless link to remotely control another PC. This made them quite expensive, so they never became very popular outside the places where mobility has a high value.
I think the company continued on for a while after Zenith was gored by Bull, but other than a non-responsive link at cruisetech.com, and some fossils at ZDS, there doesn't seem to be much left of them.
Actually,no. Haven't you noticeda shift over the past few years to putting better technology into notebooks?
Many OEMs (correctly, I think) see notebooks and even desktops derived from notebook technology like Gateway's Profile as the wave of the future. It's likely that conventional "desktop" technology will die off over the next few years.
This will be a good thing - computers will get smaller, quieter, more power-efficient, more flat-panel-ready, and finally, the huge gap between notebook and desktop computing costs should close considerably.
I used to work for Dell's laptop line of business.
Laptop drive reliability is a big deal, and by far the most expensive problem to deal with in the field. The opinion of Dell's engineers on this topic was that IBM is in a class by themselves. (This would be the TravelStar 2.5" series rather than the more ordinary destop DeskStar 3.5" drives.)
The peripherals team spent a lot of effort to qualify even one vendor (Fujitsu) that was able to get their drive durability and reliability up in the same neighborhood as IBM's. Even then, the opinion of those doing the testing was that although the Fujitsus (after having them make many modifications) were acceptable, they still were'nt as good as the IBMs.
This datapoint is about a year and a half old now, but many of the technologies are the same in both series of drives, and in fact, we may one day see new technology in laptop drives first because that market is less cost-sensitive.
(FWIW, although hard disks died routinely in laptops a few years ago, the disk is now one of the most rugged components of the machine, sometimes able to take more abuse (G's) than the screen or PWB. Operating G's are higher now than non-operating G's were a few years ago.)
If you've got B&O gear in the first place it's hard to feel sorry for you...
Still, this is why I didn't buy a B&O rig several years ago. Although they used to have the best remotes on the planet, they are decidedly behind the times now, and have been for several years.
B&O's IR remotes work quite differently from the garden variety, but they definitely have a superior architecture (as usual for them...)
There are two things that make B&O remotes fundamentally different: First, the carrier frequency is *much* higher (400 KHz vs. 40 KHz, IIRC), giving the opportunity for far higher data rates. Second, the protocol allows for 2-way communication, so the CD player, for instance, can display the title of the track playing on the remote itself.
So far as I know, there's no learning remote out there that's capable of sampling quickly enough to snarf B&O remote codes.
And of course, B&O asumes if you can afford any of their gear, then everything in your house will be theirs, so their remotes (at least last time I checked) don't have the ability to control non-B&O gear, either. Bummer.
GRRR. That's NOT right. WHY does the system try to make itself smarter than I am? And preview works so badly it's impossible to tell what might work without clogging the topic with trash. GRRR.
Well, a few people have suggested tinfoil hats, but these can just reflect the radiation back down into your head if they don't cover the sides, or produce anoying RF nulls if they do cover the sides of the head.
Herewith, then, is the ultimate engineering solution to the problem as only a True Texan could devise it - the Tin Gallon Tin Hat with clever central radiation device.
(Copyright and all patent rights reserved in case anyone is actually silly enough to build it:-) )
(Rob: Why can't I include at least a small image here? I hate ASCII art!)
Note antenna safely up above tin hat (Central position assures optimum | signal strength!) | (((( | )))) -- dangerous radio waves _|_ |[ ]|--- Cellphone plugs into convenient |...| receptacle in top of hat _|...|_ / |___| \ | |---Tin Gallon Tin Hat ____|_______|____ (Brim protects body from | _/ \_ harmful radiation) |(. 0 0.) -- Happy talker with long term | [.. ] memory intact \ \ / " \ YAK / Note microphone hanging from hat! -----
This is the true answer to your question of, "where is the safe yet practical place to put that antenna anyhow?" Of course it comes in sizes (taller users get shorter antennae) to ensure doorway clearance. Oh yeah, and this should be a good reason for the rest of you to realize why it's important to drive a pickup truck, something we've known in Texas for a long time!
(and yes, i can say that, since my family has been here for several generations. That said, I prefer the Ferrari to the truck, but it's important to also have a good tow vehicle if you own "a furrin sports car that looks like a shark"...)
I have read of at least one study, maybe two, that showed the RF leakage up the headset wire was roughly equivalent to that in the antenna, so this probably only creates the illusion of distancing the hazard. (I'll see if I can find the URL - I think I have it in my bookmarks list at home, which is separate because it had over 1200 entries tha last time I synchronized my bookmarks - ack!)
Besides, who's to say your liver or something isn't even more at risk than your brain? We just don't know or understand much about these effects yet...
Don't forget Paul's letter to Philemon about his runaway slave Onesimus. He sends Onesimus back to Philemon with the letter now in our Bible and the powerful reminder that he should forgive Onesimus and treat him as a brother in Christ, just as he would treat Paul himself. To hammer it home he reminds Philemon that he owes his life to Paul.
That's a pretty powerful message about slavery, and one that sets a pretty high bar for Christian owners of Christian slaves.
Go read Philemon. It's real short, and you might even learn something. If you're not up to something even that long, try one of the letters to Timothy, as they are full of good advice.
Actually, many very serious philosophers on both sides have reached the conclusion that objective truth *requires* the existence of God - that is, that nothing can be certain without God.
This has led those that believe in God to recognize that there can be no truth apart from that which He reveals to us, and at the same time, has led many of the modern postmodern philosophers to the nihilistic conclusion that nothing matters or can matter because nothing can be objectively true in a world where one begins with the premise that God cannot exist.
Ultimately, you have two choices: A world with God, in which things are knowable and objective truth exists, or a world without God, where nothing is knowable and nothing can have any meaning whatsoever.
The bleak nihilism that is the hallmark of postmodern thought is not simply a trendy blackness - it's the inevitable conclusion of a logical train of thought that begins with denying the existence of God - and even the most atheistic of philosophers freely admit this.
Finally, some are trying to draw a distinction between theology and science. Theology *is* a science - in fact, until this century, everyone would have been exposed to "the queen of the sciences" as theology was known then. (You can learn a lot by reading old books! Do so, and you'll discover how rare real critical thinking has become in our society, how few of us are prepared to do any at all, and how wrong much of what you may have been taught truly is...)
I agree that scientifically provable truths are important.
But just as creationism (or your turtles) cannot be proven, niether can some aspects of evolution, particularly macroevolution, which is vital for the whole thing to hang together. This bothers me as it should bother any serious-minded inquirer looking at the evidence. Serious creationists don't dispute the overwhelming evidence for microevolution (that is, gasp, they accept scientific fact), but there is a real dearth of evidence for macroevolution. In fact, numerous people have pointed out that microevolution actually works against macroevolution in the following way: mutations that weaken the species tend to result in non-propagation of that mutation, and mutations which strengthen that species tend to ensure it's survival as a species and discourage the large-scale jumps required to create a new species. This is a serious problem that should be seriously evaluated. Current evolutionary theory has no adquate answer to these concerns.
I freely admit that some creationists try to shoe-horn a few facts around a pre-determined conclusion, resulting in deplorable science and sometimes even worse theology. Some evolutionists do the same, just without the theology.
But I am open-minded enough to see that the serious creationists raise some very scientifically valid points. Anyone truly believing in the scientific method realizes that they cannot throw out data points simply because they are inconvenient and still expect to arrive at the truth.
The remainder of your argument is essentially ad hominem, that anyone with a religious worldview is automatically excluded from consideration, which is ridiculous. Also, remember that although science reveals certain truths, our understanding of them is often woefully incomplete, for instance , a hundred years ago, we "knew as fact" that Newtonian physics was true, and yet Einstein, Heisenberg and others have since revealed that virtually none of Newtonian physics is strictly true, but rather only a useful model within certain bounds.
Finally, on a related note, I strongly disagree with your assertion that only the quantitative is true. There are many things in life which are demonstrably true but which cannot be quantified, including (but not limited to) all things which have an as-yet-undiscovered scientific explanation.
Science is a very valuable tool, but it is not applicable in all situations, and attempting to force-fit it is a bit like driving screws with a hammer.
P.S.: Your choice of where the flood waters went was a prticularly bad choice in light of the fact that I included a link in my original post (which you apparently did not read) from the New Scientist (hardly a creationist bastion) that shows the earth is even now losing tremendous amounts of seawater to the interior of the planet. Does this prove the flood? Of course not, but it should make an open-minded person think, at least.
They don't just make Ethernet cards, they were the first networking company in history: Bob Metcalfe (3Com's founder) is acknowledged as the *inventor* of Ethernet. For those too young to know, Ethernet in its very earliest days was supported by three companies: Digital, Intel, and Xerox. Sometimes in very old Ethernet documents you can find references to DIX Ethernet, which standardized the AUI connector. (Some AIX or RS6K documents contained references to DIX until about 1994, at least...)
Oral history alive and well, educating the newbies...:-)
P.S.: If you haven't worked with 3mbps Ethernet, you're not really a network old-timer. (Yep, it was 3 mbps for a short time before they moved to 10. If you ever get to see a Sun 1 up close (they're antiques now, and fairly rare), look at the back - they usually have a plate/sticker there showing they've been upgraded to support 10 meg Ethernet.)
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they are used not to protect R&D budgets against parasites (the original intent of patents) but to stake a claim in a developing market in order to prevent anyone else from competing.
w hatis.htm :
Actually, no, you couldn't be more wrong. Patents are *precisely* intended to protect the inventor from anyone else competing: The following is a direct quote from "What is a patent?" at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/
"The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention." (Emphasis mine)
That is why they have a definite 20-year term, after which they expire, opening the innovation up for anyone to commercialize. Now I'd argue that 17 years (the original term), while reasonable in the 18th century, is a too long for some of the faster-moving technology areas, but not all. (IMO, high-tech should be about 7 years.) But that opens the real can of worms as far as deciding which technology areas are "more equal" and worthy of protection than others.
Let's get one thing clear that many folks seem to misunderstand:
The Latin root for the word "fiduciary" (fidere, I think) means "to trust". It has nothing to do with money, although it's often used in the context of "trusting" someone to respect the monetary interests of the trusting party.
ADM had NO fiduciary responsibilty to its stockholders to fix prices with the Japanese. On the contrary, ADM blatantly VIOLATED its fiduciary responsibility by acting illegally!
On the other hand, Amazon's action was not only legal, but the proper course of action. while I wouldn't go so far as to say companies are *obligated* to pursue patents, it's also clear that neglecting or intentionally declining to file a patent applicaiton on an innovation that materially affects entry barriers in a company's marketplace could open the company up to "legal problems".
A fiduciary responsibility is a *trust* responsibility NOT a *monetary* responsibility!
No, they shouldn't. Although I don't have first hand information, by all reports Mr. Bezos *is* a man. Furthermore, it would be entirely correct usage to prefer the masculine gender when speaking of a group, or even (as in the case of "Man of the Year") a non-specific exemplar. We are all "man" in the sense of "mankind", and there is nothing the least bit sexist about that.
It would be appropriate for Time to title the award "Woman of the Year" if the recipient of the Man of the Year honor is female, but naming anyone (man or woman) "Person of the Year" is insulting and degrading, and is really no better than "Primate of the Year", "Throbbing Glob of Protoplasm of the Year" or other inanities.
It's about time to squash this "PC" nonsense, and give both Men and Women the recognition they deserve rather than stripping them of their sex to pacify radically twisted whiners.
[flame off - I feel better now...]
I'm not going to do your research for you, but I stand by my claim, and continue to assert that they are backed by both Christian and atheist philosophers.
You are on the right track: you recognize that your very existence mandates objective truth. But objective truth in turn mandates God. As I said, this is the very reason that God-rejecting philosophy ultimately must deny objective truth or that anything can have a consistent and understandable meaning.
I mentioned some atheist philosophers. On the Christian side, you might want to look at authors like Cornelius van Til and Douglas Wilson. There's an excellent short summary of this in an early chapter in Wilson's book, "Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning."
Oh, and you have it backwards: Truth exists IFF (if and only if)God exists.
I didn't mean to imply that morals cannot exist without religion.
Actually, it's quite accurate to state that morals cannot exist apart from God. This is recognized even by the most humanistic atheists and is the root of the nihilism that they inevitably espouse if they follow thier beliefs to thier logical conclusions.
As Dostoevsky said, "If God does not exist, then all things are permissable." Aha, you say, "Dostoevsky was a Christian!" (as if this somehow invalidates his point), but interestingly, all prominent humanistic atheist thinkers reach the same conclusion: Sartre, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, the list is endless.
If you understand nothing else of philosophy, understand this: The existence of objective truth depends completely upon the existence of God - No God, no truth. Ultimately, this is what all philosophies boil down to - and many philosophers on both sides of the argument have validated this point over the years. If it is indeed possible to know anything, (especially anything of a moral nature) then God must exist.
Furthermore, it's prima facie nonsense to reach that point, as the humanist/atheist philosophers do, and then make the self contradictory assertion that the only thing that is objectively true is that there is no objective truth! (But this non-sequitur is a logical requirement of their determination to deny God exists, so they persist.)
This is not a minor point. If you believe that it's possible to *know* anything, you must *necessarily* believe in God (or at least acknowledge his existence by your acts and every thought, even while consciously mocking His deity.)
Why should these scientists talk to religious leaders? Because they're the ONLY ones in a position to provide valid input on the morality of such a venture. (Although I'm sure they're speaking to some to whom truth is a foreign concept...)
I find it a constant source of amusement that there are so many here on slashdot that pride themselves in their logical methodical thought processes, and yet reject Christianity out of hand, while Chrisitianity can truly be said to be the only logically consistent worldview on the planet. (Don't even bother flaming me in response until you've read John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion..)
There seems to be too much of a bias toward folks that only sling code on slashdot. At the risk of ticking some folks off, I'm going to claim that you can't really claim to be a master of technology unless you play with all of them you can get your hands on - that includes elctronic/computer hardware, complex mechanical systems like cars, control systems, robotics, etc.
I hacked on cars before I hacked on computers - somewhere, I've got a notebook with dozens of quite completely thought-out dream cars and the modifications that would get me from stock to awesome. Cars are expensive, but they're a heck of a lot more fun than fast CPUs - I'd much rather run with 1-2 year old computer technology and drive a Ferrari than throw all that money (more, really, since the Ferrari has been paid for for 8 years now) at the latest quad K8 and VooJoo 2000 3DFx++ graphics card.
I've had a number of really fun cars, and that does not necessarily correlate to expensive - it's quite possible to come up with a really good hacking platform at a very reasonable cost. Although it's fun just to build a car to build a car, consider some form of amateur racing like brackets at the dragstrip or SCCA Solo II autocross - these are really fun, and relatively affordable events, and you'll be surprised how many guys and girls like you are out there. A short list of the contents of my garage over the years:
1972 Buick GS 455 - First car, bad example of the breed, but got me hooked - my *Mom* left twin stripes in the Safeway parking lot with it! There's an old racing saying that you can win with cubic inches or cubic dollars - this car took the cheap but effective route.
1975 Ford Torino GT - Much more reliable, but the 351 Windsor was uninspiring. Still it beat the crud that Detroit was selling new at the time.
1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme - Itty Bitty 260 V8, but the highway gearing meant I could lock the auto tranny in first gear and leave it there for an entire autocross course. This was the first car that went beyond "keep it alive" spending and actually benefited from significnat improvements, mostly in the handling department, since I was in college: Bilsteins, Delrin bushings, Pontiac Grand Am suspension parts, BF Goodrich T/A's and later Goodyear Eagle GTs. This car is responsible for the shelf full of trophies in my garage - it ruled F-stock autocrossing until well after the new 1982 Z-28's and Trans Ams were common.
1974 Fiat X-1/9 Really, really fun car. Sometimes called a Ferrari trainer, and there's a bit of truth to that (my current 308GT4 even shares a number of parts with the X-1/9!) These can be had cheap, and offer a lot of hacking potential. Mine became severely modified, with 7x14 wheels (enormous on that car!), T/A's, stroker crank, cam, big-valve heads, ANSA exhaust, and a pair of Weber downdraft carbs. Best power/weight ratio of any car I've ever owned, and has a number of really serious design features: mid engine, four wheel disks, relatively light weight, removable top (yeah!), etc. Plus, girls think they're cute, especially with 240 HP.
1985 Chrysler Conquest (Mistubishi Starion) - Really killer car, but mangled by dealer and Chrysler refused to fix it until the warranty finally ran out. Don't expect me to buy another Chrysler - they can give 20 year warranties, because they simply refuse to fix things. nice car, though, but be wary of used ones.
1987 Mazda RX-7 Turbo II - Heck, there's hardly anything left to hack on one of these gems. These 2nd generation RX-7s can be had quite reasonably still - the rotor motors are just tough as nails, and if you do trash one, you can rebuild it on your kitchen table. I love RX-7s, and their fundamental toughness makes them a much better risk than other Japanese sports cars, many of which make Ferraris look cheap in comparison over the long haul. I'd still have this car if I hadn't traded it for the dream car:
1975 Ferrari Dino 308gt4 - Only one listed here I still have (would *you* sell your Ferrari?) It's true: there's just nothing else in the same league as a Ferrari. I've driven (seriously, not looky-loo with a salesman) Porsches, Corvettes, Lotii (Loutuses?), etc., but nothing even approaches the fun of a Ferrari. The gt4 is an especially nice driver, and it's a 2+2, so I can even squeeze the kids in the back in a pinch. This was my daily driver from 1988 to 1994, and it's slated to return to duty by Christmas. My wife let me have it because she decided she'd rather not hear me talk about wanting one for the rest of my life (besides, she loves it too!) These are actually fairly easy to work on, since they have minimal electronics, and a lot of good used Ferraris are still less than many new cars. A good 308 can be had for around $20-25K if you shop carefully. The bottom end of the motor is absolutely bulletproof, and if you make REAL sure you never break a cam belt, the top end will serve you well, too. I like the older carbureted cars - avoid the early fuel injected models. Maintenance is not cheap, but a lot less than many of my friends pay for maintenance on their Boxsters, M3s, and Z3s, and I can actually do a lot of the work on mine, which they can't. If you buy a Ferrari, find a good machanic and get the car checked out first to avoid making a very expensive mistake.
1991 Alfa Romeo 164S - Traded this in a couple of years ago. Big mistake. This car is awesome - it's actualy *more fun* to drive than the Ferrari, but is a big four-door luxury car with lots of room. Absolutely the most stable car I've ever driven at speed. Suffers from the usual Italian car foibles (electrics are truly weird, but seem to work much better than most Italian cars), but is worth it. Go for the "S" model, which is not just badge-engineered - it actually shares surprisingly few parts with the garden variety 164s.
I will offer one caveat: you'll notice many of these cars are Italian. Italian cars are a sickness from which many never recover. After driving Italian cars anything Japanese will seem cheap and flimsy (OK, except the NSX, which is really just a Honda Ferrari Dino), anything German will seem heavy, sterile, and without character, and anything American will seem crude and awkward. They can be a pain in the butt, but they have *brio*, and they make really cool mechanical symphony noises that I promise you are more moving than anything your graphics card can do...
Try hacking cars, why don't you?
I got to play with what must have been the precursor to the Cadillac technology a few years ago, and it was QUITE IMPRESSIVE. At the time, I was working with the world's largest oil producer on an emergency oil spill response network. I participated in a drill where they tried several new things, including the "instant global network" I built for them, some new voice comms technology, and also a demo of the GM Hughes thermal vision system as it would be sold to law enforcement officials. (This could enhance security of the response site, since the enviros have been known to sabotage spill response operations - go figure...)
It was a dreary winter day in Houston, about 50 degrees and misting - we were at the far end of the parking lot and the drizzle was producing a notable amount of fuzz when looking toward the main building. The GM guy fired up the vision system, and on a little 6" black and white monitor, we suddenly saw a bright white spot moving across the parking lot, attached to the right arm of a walking figure barely visible by eye through the mist. The GM guy grinned from ear to ear - what we were seeing was the heat signature of one of the project guys, and more importantly, his cup of hot coffee, which produced a white spot about a foot and a half in diameter!
I got a fair amount of time in playing with the thing that day - it became quite obvious that there would be no effective way of hiding from such a system. Exposed skin stood out clearly from the environment at distances approaching 1/4 mile, and clothing scarcely attenuated the response, even leather jackets and such, which seemed to be about the most opaque. All this from a system which only cost about $6000 back then (c. 1995).
All in all I came away quite impressed, and wouldn't want to have to sneak past someone equipped with that technology. I don't know if the system I saw was any better because it was intended for law enforcement, or if the Cadillac system is now as good, but it impressed the heck outta me, and I'm not easily impressed by technology.
I'm not fully up to speed on semiconductor fab capabilities anymore, but I'd guess that if te transmeta chip is a reasonably complex CPU requiring state-of-the-art fabs, then there are only about four places they can get them: IBM (can build pretty much anything), Intel (of course, plus they own the weird fab for Alpha chips), TI (right up there with the other two - they fab the UltraSPARCs for Sun), and Motorola (perhaps lagging a bit, but they've announced recent advances in process technology, and I think they and IBM are the only ones doing copper yet.)
There are others, Cypress/Ross (I think they're still around...), AMD, and the Japanese, but they're mostly not on the same plane of process technology as the big four, and excess capacity is harder to come by among those folks - It's definitely a big boy's game now, what with a cutting edge fab costing in excess of $3 BILLION!
I was one of the first to discover that Sprint's Wireless Web was alive and working here in Austin shortly after I bought my QCOM ThinPhone.
/. replied to an earlier post of mine with a link to a paper he wrote (pretty good, really) about what he called the "W* Effect", the trend toward needlessly reinventing all Internet protocols for "wireless" use - I'm sure the proprietary control is just an incidental artifact, aren't you?
There are several significant problems with this technology that can (and should) keep it from becoming popular. (Summary: VERY proprietary, text-only, slow, expensive - other than that, it's OK.)
First of all, you're limited to WAP/HDML (Wireless Application Protocol/Handheld Device Markup Language) web sites. WAP/HDML are about the most restrictive, closed, and proprietary protocols imaginable, and only exist to give Unwired Planet/Phone.com a proprietary lock on the market. There is absolutely no reason why existing protocols wouldn't work just fine, especially for a text-based browser. Note that this means you can't just go your own web page or portal (which could actually be useful...), since you'll need the proprietary W* tools to be able to create the content. Someone here on
Second, this *is* just a text-based browser, and the whole system assumes that text is all that matters. I confess I don't understand this - I don't expect people to be navigating complex Vignette or CSS sites from handhelds, but support for graphics does not have to imply a lot of overhead. (Remember when all browsers supported X bitmaps?) This may make sense now, but within the next year, these things wil go the way of the dinosaur as real browsing capabilities come to handhelds.
Third, it's just painfully difficult to do any input at all (now THIS is dangerous cellphone activity when driving!), and the response times are far too slow to be of much use. The response time is often glacial, and the menu/site layouts often require extra needless hops to ge to the info you want.
At first, I thought perhaps I wasn't giving it a fair trial, so I actually made an effort to get comfortable with it and use it, but it just doesn't work well enough to be really useful. It's novelty/toy value wears off after the first month or two (and certainly after the first bill or two), and I probably haven't used it once in the past month or so.
I think this will turn out to be a flash in the pan, and something that is forgotten in a year or so. The value just isn't there - not for geeks, not for anybody.
Sun sells a PS/2 keyboard/mouse adapter for Suns. It used to be about $50, but it looks like they've gone with a 3rd party adapter instead of the Sun-branded one they used to use, so it may even be cheaper now.
NASA loved these for adding different pointing devices to thier Suns at JSC. No one ever changed keyboards - it's pretty tough to improve on Sun's keyboards, especially if you chose the Sun layout (with the control key next to the A where Bill Joy intended it to be) instead of the PC layout that some people inexplicably prefer.
I believe it was Ted Nelson that said something like, "Thousands of years ago, our ancestors discovered that it was much easier to draw with sticks than with rocks. The stick prevailed until just recently, when we inexplicably began to draw with rocks again." (bad paraphrase, I'm sure)
He has a point. Sticks are easier, and allow you to input non-trivial things. Try feeding a handwriting recognition program or drawing a picture with a mouse.
Pens can replace mice, but not vice versa. User interfaces that take advantage of this can be very powerful, but then the best user interface for things like browsing (where the chief function is selection of a specific area) is the touchscreen, which outside the PDA world has hardly taken off at all.
I don't think it's going too far to say that it's the touchscreen feature of PDA's that makes them so darn easy, quick, and useful, and is largely responsible for thier success. Given that touchscreens and browsers work so well together, why don't we see the combination more often? (This raises interesting points for UI designers, who, whether they intend to or not, may wind up with something that looks very much like the heirarchical swooshes of the screens on Star Trek.)
Since it's likely that there will be mutiple kinds of input devices in the future (I think touchscreens to augment mice are more likely than sticks, but I like sticks better than mice), UIs will have to take this into account.
Other than the possible integration of character recognition, and the ability to more effectively use the display resolution (touchscreens have a notable weakness in that regard), what changes in UI would result from the widespread availability of sticks?
A few corrections:
1) Eric Schmidt did not come from Javasoft, he was CTO for all of Sun. (He is also a certified VSG (Very Smart Guy), and one of the very few CEOs in this business that *fully* comprehends the importance and role of network computing environments. He was instrumental in the genesis of Oak/Java. For this reason alone I still hold out hope for Novell.)
2) Actually, Kerberos is not a directory service at all, but an auth service that relies on Project Athena's Hesiod service as its directory. It's possible to use Hesiod for things other than Kerberos, but unfortunately, Hesiod/Athena never took off outside a few DEC Unix shops. NIS+ may actually have the most elegant architecture of the NDS/NIS+/AD trio of (at least technically) serious contenders, but Sun never built tools that would have made NIS+ usable by mortals, so no one does (or really even can, it's sad.)
11) Novell's directory is in some ways less elegant than AD, but it has the big advantage of running on darn near eveything, where AD is (and is likely to remain) NT only.
12) Good point - especially on the low end. But it would be a mistake not to continue to capitalize on success in the mid-range server market. There are too many people out there that think Linux is the right answer everywhere. Part of being a good technologist is recognizing "appropriate technology."
This definitely does NOT belong on an FSF page, and can only hurt their cause.
(That bad, bad, Gingrich is against "rights for gays!" To paraphrase Linda Bowles, one of my favorite columnists, "Could someone please explain to me why being confused about which end of a penis one belongs on should confer any special rights on the confused party?" Gingrich's position is eminently reasonable here, as in most (not all) other cases...)
This is not really new. It's the same problem the Better Business Bureau has had for all of its existence - they will never apply meaningful pressure against anyone who is a member, because that would be biting the hand that feeds them.
What results is a sham that's only a little better than an outright protection racket. The inherent conflict of interest prevent even gross violations of guidelines from showing up on the records of those willing to pay for the protection. Sad but true. Os how is it big news that this problem has found its way to the net.
Why don't we talk about something important like stamping out spam?
There have been several of these kinds of devices, but the Zenith CruisePad achieved a fair degree of success , especially for providing mobility in hospital and healthcare environments. (I used to do healthcare IT consulting.)
The initial CruisePads weren't really computers in their own right with wireless LANs, but rather Windows Terminals that used a wireless link to remotely control another PC. This made them quite expensive, so they never became very popular outside the places where mobility has a high value.
I think the company continued on for a while after Zenith was gored by Bull, but other than a non-responsive link at cruisetech.com, and some fossils at ZDS, there doesn't seem to be much left of them.
Actually,no. Haven't you noticeda shift over the past few years to putting better technology into notebooks?
Many OEMs (correctly, I think) see notebooks and even desktops derived from notebook technology like Gateway's Profile as the wave of the future. It's likely that conventional "desktop" technology will die off over the next few years.
This will be a good thing - computers will get smaller, quieter, more power-efficient, more flat-panel-ready, and finally, the huge gap between notebook and desktop computing costs should close considerably.
Notebook technology is the future...
I used to work for Dell's laptop line of business.
Laptop drive reliability is a big deal, and by far the most expensive problem to deal with in the field. The opinion of Dell's engineers on this topic was that IBM is in a class by themselves. (This would be the TravelStar 2.5" series rather than the more ordinary destop DeskStar 3.5" drives.)
The peripherals team spent a lot of effort to qualify even one vendor (Fujitsu) that was able to get their drive durability and reliability up in the same neighborhood as IBM's. Even then, the opinion of those doing the testing was that although the Fujitsus (after having them make many modifications) were acceptable, they still were'nt as good as the IBMs.
This datapoint is about a year and a half old now, but many of the technologies are the same in both series of drives, and in fact, we may one day see new technology in laptop drives first because that market is less cost-sensitive.
(FWIW, although hard disks died routinely in laptops a few years ago, the disk is now one of the most rugged components of the machine, sometimes able to take more abuse (G's) than the screen or PWB. Operating G's are higher now than non-operating G's were a few years ago.)
If you've got B&O gear in the first place it's hard to feel sorry for you...
Still, this is why I didn't buy a B&O rig several years ago. Although they used to have the best remotes on the planet, they are decidedly behind the times now, and have been for several years.
B&O's IR remotes work quite differently from the garden variety, but they definitely have a superior architecture (as usual for them...)
There are two things that make B&O remotes fundamentally different: First, the carrier frequency is *much* higher (400 KHz vs. 40 KHz, IIRC), giving the opportunity for far higher data rates. Second, the protocol allows for 2-way communication, so the CD player, for instance, can display the title of the track playing on the remote itself.
So far as I know, there's no learning remote out there that's capable of sampling quickly enough to snarf B&O remote codes.
And of course, B&O asumes if you can afford any of their gear, then everything in your house will be theirs, so their remotes (at least last time I checked) don't have the ability to control non-B&O gear, either. Bummer.
GRRR. That's NOT right. WHY does the system try to make itself smarter than I am? And preview works so badly it's impossible to tell what might work without clogging the topic with trash. GRRR.
Well, a few people have suggested tinfoil hats, but these can just reflect the radiation back down into your head if they don't cover the sides, or produce anoying RF nulls if they do cover the sides of the head.
:-) )
.) -- Happy talker with long term .. ] memory intact
Herewith, then, is the ultimate engineering solution to the problem as only a True Texan could devise it - the Tin Gallon Tin Hat with clever central radiation device.
(Copyright and all patent rights reserved in case anyone is actually silly enough to build it
(Rob: Why can't I include at least a small image here? I hate ASCII art!)
Note antenna safely up above tin hat
(Central position assures optimum
| signal strength!)
|
(((( | )))) -- dangerous radio waves
_|_
|[ ]|--- Cellphone plugs into convenient
|...| receptacle in top of hat
_|...|_
/ |___| \
| |---Tin Gallon Tin Hat
____|_______|____ (Brim protects body from
| _/ \_ harmful radiation)
|(. 0 0
| [
\ \ /
" \ YAK / Note microphone hanging from hat!
-----
This is the true answer to your question of, "where is the safe yet practical place to put that antenna anyhow?" Of course it comes in sizes (taller users get shorter antennae) to ensure doorway clearance. Oh yeah, and this should be a good reason for the rest of you to realize why it's important to drive a pickup truck, something we've known in Texas for a long time!
(and yes, i can say that, since my family has been here for several generations. That said, I prefer the Ferrari to the truck, but it's important to also have a good tow vehicle if you own "a furrin sports car that looks like a shark"...)
I have read of at least one study, maybe two, that showed the RF leakage up the headset wire was roughly equivalent to that in the antenna, so this probably only creates the illusion of distancing the hazard. (I'll see if I can find the URL - I think I have it in my bookmarks list at home, which is separate because it had over 1200 entries tha last time I synchronized my bookmarks - ack!)
Besides, who's to say your liver or something isn't even more at risk than your brain? We just don't know or understand much about these effects yet...
Don't forget Paul's letter to Philemon about his runaway slave Onesimus. He sends Onesimus back to Philemon with the letter now in our Bible and the powerful reminder that he should forgive Onesimus and treat him as a brother in Christ, just as he would treat Paul himself. To hammer it home he reminds Philemon that he owes his life to Paul.
That's a pretty powerful message about slavery, and one that sets a pretty high bar for Christian owners of Christian slaves.
Go read Philemon. It's real short, and you might even learn something. If you're not up to something even that long, try one of the letters to Timothy, as they are full of good advice.
Actually, many very serious philosophers on both sides have reached the conclusion that objective truth *requires* the existence of God - that is, that nothing can be certain without God.
This has led those that believe in God to recognize that there can be no truth apart from that which He reveals to us, and at the same time, has led many of the modern postmodern philosophers to the nihilistic conclusion that nothing matters or can matter because nothing can be objectively true in a world where one begins with the premise that God cannot exist.
Ultimately, you have two choices: A world with God, in which things are knowable and objective truth exists, or a world without God, where nothing is knowable and nothing can have any meaning whatsoever.
The bleak nihilism that is the hallmark of postmodern thought is not simply a trendy blackness - it's the inevitable conclusion of a logical train of thought that begins with denying the existence of God - and even the most atheistic of philosophers freely admit this.
Finally, some are trying to draw a distinction between theology and science. Theology *is* a science - in fact, until this century, everyone would have been exposed to "the queen of the sciences" as theology was known then. (You can learn a lot by reading old books! Do so, and you'll discover how rare real critical thinking has become in our society, how few of us are prepared to do any at all, and how wrong much of what you may have been taught truly is...)
I hate to say it, but don't be so dogmatic.
I agree that scientifically provable truths are important.
But just as creationism (or your turtles) cannot be proven, niether can some aspects of evolution, particularly macroevolution, which is vital for the whole thing to hang together. This bothers me as it should bother any serious-minded inquirer looking at the evidence. Serious creationists don't dispute the overwhelming evidence for microevolution (that is, gasp, they accept scientific fact), but there is a real dearth of evidence for macroevolution. In fact, numerous people have pointed out that microevolution actually works against macroevolution in the following way: mutations that weaken the species tend to result in non-propagation of that mutation, and mutations which strengthen that species tend to ensure it's survival as a species and discourage the large-scale jumps required to create a new species. This is a serious problem that should be seriously evaluated. Current evolutionary theory has no adquate answer to these concerns.
I freely admit that some creationists try to shoe-horn a few facts around a pre-determined conclusion, resulting in deplorable science and sometimes even worse theology. Some evolutionists do the same, just without the theology.
But I am open-minded enough to see that the serious creationists raise some very scientifically valid points. Anyone truly believing in the scientific method realizes that they cannot throw out data points simply because they are inconvenient and still expect to arrive at the truth.
The remainder of your argument is essentially ad hominem, that anyone with a religious worldview is automatically excluded from consideration, which is ridiculous. Also, remember that although science reveals certain truths, our understanding of them is often woefully incomplete, for instance , a hundred years ago, we "knew as fact" that Newtonian physics was true, and yet Einstein, Heisenberg and others have since revealed that virtually none of Newtonian physics is strictly true, but rather only a useful model within certain bounds.
Finally, on a related note, I strongly disagree with your assertion that only the quantitative is true. There are many things in life which are demonstrably true but which cannot be quantified, including (but not limited to) all things which have an as-yet-undiscovered scientific explanation.
Science is a very valuable tool, but it is not applicable in all situations, and attempting to force-fit it is a bit like driving screws with a hammer.
P.S.: Your choice of where the flood waters went was a prticularly bad choice in light of the fact that I included a link in my original post (which you apparently did not read) from the New Scientist (hardly a creationist bastion) that shows the earth is even now losing tremendous amounts of seawater to the interior of the planet. Does this prove the flood? Of course not, but it should make an open-minded person think, at least.
They don't just make Ethernet cards, they were the first networking company in history: Bob Metcalfe (3Com's founder) is acknowledged as the *inventor* of Ethernet. For those too young to know, Ethernet in its very earliest days was supported by three companies: Digital, Intel, and Xerox. Sometimes in very old Ethernet documents you can find references to DIX Ethernet, which standardized the AUI connector. (Some AIX or RS6K documents contained references to DIX until about 1994, at least...)
:-)
Oral history alive and well, educating the newbies...
P.S.: If you haven't worked with 3mbps Ethernet, you're not really a network old-timer. (Yep, it was 3 mbps for a short time before they moved to 10. If you ever get to see a Sun 1 up close (they're antiques now, and fairly rare), look at the back - they usually have a plate/sticker there showing they've been upgraded to support 10 meg Ethernet.)