The best theory I've seen to explain why humans changed from a very long period in a static, very primitive state is that the climate changes caused by the Indonesian super volcano which led to the "bottleneck event" that nearly destroyed our species favoured the brightest and most innovative people who were able to formulate survival strategies that didn't occur to less imaginative individuals.
I've heard the same thing applied to the Jews. Interesting.
Well, sure. In a world with GPS and Google Maps, why on earth would you want to fill up notebook paper with terrible maps when a computer could do the job so much better? It's sort of like when they took food acquisition and eating out of RPGs. It was simply a better gaming experience continuously working on your quest -- not having to figure out how much food you need to take or getting robbed on the way and having to make it back to town just to eat. Automatic mapmaking is great.
Now if I could copy/paste what the people said in Ultima 7 in Exult into gvim, I'd be set!:)
I definitely plan to use this service. That way, I can leave annoying voice messages on the phone of a certain individual who prefers to annoyingly text me instead of confronting me over the phone. Then, I won't have to talk to her -- I can just call and leave another voicemail explaining how she's wrong.
Yes, text messages are a horribly inefficient way of having a conversation, but they're not for conversing, they're for disseminating information.
While you seem intelligent enough to see that and use them that way, your experience does not agree with the most avid users.
Teenagers use texting to send their buddies private messages that their parents can't hear, say, in the car. This naturally leads to conversations.
Like it or not, even adults regularly use texting for conversations. Important conversations, even.
I have watched avid texters be entirely focused on their text conversations, ignoring the world around them, to their own detriment. This includes safety while driving as well as having poor table manners and halting in-progress conversations with them to send messages that are frankly not important. It's rude and it's been done to me time and time again -- and I am intentionally excusing and excluding actually important messages/phone calls.
I'm not really arguing with your usage of texting, I'm just saying it doesn't match up with the crazy texters that I know. Having said that, if I ask someone not to send me text messages because I am too cheap to blow $60/yr on unlimited texting, I expect them to respect my request.
If anyone is interested, I've found the best response to combating people who ignore my request is to simply call the person back and have a conversation.
The thing is, you don't even have to be a member of an oil cartel. If you have assets in the largely unregulated hedge funds speculating in oil right now, your buying it up is enough to spook everyone else with their bucks in oil and you have a run-a-way market until the bastards decide to take profits and the thing spirals down into a bust.
The housing disaster with investment banking had to do with little regulation of mortgage securities. Mortgage bundlers sold a crap product to banks that they billed as low risk. Bzzt wrong. Bundling 25 risky mortgages does not make 1 unrisky investment.
All thanks to Phil Gramm, economic advisor to McCain. -l
I don't care if it makes the Internet work like AOL keywords. I don't care if Google, Yahoo!, et al. have to spider inf() more TLDs. I don't care if idiot corporations think they have to buy every version of.m1kr0s0ft and.msf7 out there "just in case". If we can finally get.fuck and.suck,.lol and.is.gay the Internet will finally release its full scientific potential.
More porn. -l
P.s., Karl Auerbach did experiments showing even BIND could handle umpteen million TLDs.
The summary was wrong to include a link to the Wikipedia homepage without a Wikipedia link about Wikipedia in case you don't know what Wikipedia is. I myself had to Google Wikipedia to find out what Wikipedia was so I am providing the Wikipedia link about Wikipedia in case others were likewise in the dark regarding Wikipedia.
That's fucking retarded. Unless you're at a standstill for several minutes, you'll actually be consuming more energy than you save.
You're probably a troll, but I'll address this common misconception.
Modern fuel injection burns hardly any gas at start-up. The cost in gas is at most, for the biggest fuel hog, around 10 seconds of idling. Source: I heard the guys on CarTalk discuss this topic a few years ago.
Even on old carburetors, the cost of startup is less than "several minutes". However, if you're still driving one of these, maybe you're just afraid that when you turn it off it's not gonna turn ON again.:)
Idling is 100% inefficient. It is also the most polluting state your car's engine is ever in. If you don't need the A/C on, there is no need for the car to be on while you wait 2 - 5 minutes at long lights.
Wearing out the starter motor: Again, this is b.s. These things are rated for so many restarts it's ridiculous. If the starter is going to break, it's usually unrelated to the number of starts. The culprit is typically poor lubrication. Source: CarTalk again in the same discussion.
Save yourself some bucks. Help out the elderly and children by reducing ground level ozone. Turn off the car when you are sitting there and won't be moving for awhile.
Slowing down when I'm behind you and speeding up when I try to pass.
Interesting. Another poster was advocating this as a good way to deal with tailgaters.
Zoning out at a green light.
How long a wait are you thinking is too long? I just ask cause I turn the car off at long lights to save gas and every now and then I'll get caught and it might take me 1 - 2 seconds to turn the car on and put it in drive. I try and pay attention, etc. but like I said, every now and then...
... during "invasion or rebellion"... which has been interpreted by SCOTUS to include declarations of war... which has not been declared... and wouldn't necessarily pass constitutional muster if invasion/rebellion were not imminent (e.g., declaring war on poverty, terrorism, etc.).
I disagree. I don't think the Legislative or Executive branches have the authority to switch the Constitution on and off at will. Habeus corpus should apply to any American citizen or foreign detainee held by Americans (excluding foreign army prisoners in a time of declared war). Period. There may be some finagling over how classified evidence, etc. is handled. And that is fine and dandy with me. But the right to a fair legal justification for your imprisonment is a fundamental human right entirely at odds with infinite detainment. I think the Constitution and the Supreme Court clearly support that right.
It isn't well known, even geeks might not know exactly what it does (i.e., where the separation is between X, the window manager, and so forth), and for some reason it lacks the 'coolness' factor of the Linux kernel.
Oh, what sad times are these when even persons calling themselves geeks do not know the difference between X, the window manager, windowing toolkits, etc. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I don't understand how a compressed ball of hot gas, i.e., the supposed original state of the universe at the big bang, is a low entropy state. It is too small for gravity to be a factor. Its macrostate is basically the same no matter how you rearrange the microstates... at least, that's what it sounds like to me. Help me out, here, I'm trying to understand.
I've been reading the SciAm version of the article recommended by another poster, and it says that the universe started as a low entropy state. I don't understand how you can consider a largely homogeneous blob a low entropy state. What am I missing?
Slashdot Mirror
THEN, to get anything more than absolutely shitty cars (Pontiac Solstice??) and shitty tracks you have to buy your way up.
Well, as this is a simulation and not a game, I expect you will be able to sell advertising on your rig to make up for the extra purchasing costs.
-l
Wha...?
TWC has free HD locals now, at least in the markets I'm aware of. They have to have something to compete with DirecTV, Dish, and AT&T.
-l
The truth is insightful.
-l
I've heard the same thing applied to the Jews. Interesting.
-l
Agreed, but most of those people play Rolemaster, not computer games which do all the rolling for you. :)
-l
Well, sure. In a world with GPS and Google Maps, why on earth would you want to fill up notebook paper with terrible maps when a computer could do the job so much better? It's sort of like when they took food acquisition and eating out of RPGs. It was simply a better gaming experience continuously working on your quest -- not having to figure out how much food you need to take or getting robbed on the way and having to make it back to town just to eat. Automatic mapmaking is great.
Now if I could copy/paste what the people said in Ultima 7 in Exult into gvim, I'd be set! :)
Cheers,
-l
I definitely plan to use this service. That way, I can leave annoying voice messages on the phone of a certain individual who prefers to annoyingly text me instead of confronting me over the phone. Then, I won't have to talk to her -- I can just call and leave another voicemail explaining how she's wrong.
Haha!
-l
Short answer: It's been done. I can't find a link to what I read several years ago, but I think it may have even been on Slashdot.
-l
While you seem intelligent enough to see that and use them that way, your experience does not agree with the most avid users.
I'm not really arguing with your usage of texting, I'm just saying it doesn't match up with the crazy texters that I know. Having said that, if I ask someone not to send me text messages because I am too cheap to blow $60/yr on unlimited texting, I expect them to respect my request.
If anyone is interested, I've found the best response to combating people who ignore my request is to simply call the person back and have a conversation.
$0.02USD,
-l
Sorry, but the word just doesn't job well!
-l
The thing is, you don't even have to be a member of an oil cartel. If you have assets in the largely unregulated hedge funds speculating in oil right now, your buying it up is enough to spook everyone else with their bucks in oil and you have a run-a-way market until the bastards decide to take profits and the thing spirals down into a bust.
The housing disaster with investment banking had to do with little regulation of mortgage securities. Mortgage bundlers sold a crap product to banks that they billed as low risk. Bzzt wrong. Bundling 25 risky mortgages does not make 1 unrisky investment.
All thanks to Phil Gramm, economic advisor to McCain.
-l
I don't care if it makes the Internet work like AOL keywords. I don't care if Google, Yahoo!, et al. have to spider inf() more TLDs. I don't care if idiot corporations think they have to buy every version of .m1kr0s0ft and .msf7 out there "just in case". If we can finally get .fuck and .suck, .lol and .is.gay the Internet will finally release its full scientific potential.
More porn.
-l
P.s., Karl Auerbach did experiments showing even BIND could handle umpteen million TLDs.
The summary was wrong to include a link to the Wikipedia homepage without a Wikipedia link about Wikipedia in case you don't know what Wikipedia is. I myself had to Google Wikipedia to find out what Wikipedia was so I am providing the Wikipedia link about Wikipedia in case others were likewise in the dark regarding Wikipedia.
-l
P.s., Wikipedia.
I have no idea, but I'm gonna cry if the answer is "Yes, just use remote desktop..."
-l
Just one, but he hits "apt-get dist-upgrade" twice a day... :)
-l
You're probably a troll, but I'll address this common misconception.
Save yourself some bucks. Help out the elderly and children by reducing ground level ozone. Turn off the car when you are sitting there and won't be moving for awhile.
-l
It also provides a forum to pontificate without any reasonable expectation of retort. Preachers can't abide a skeptic.
-l
Interesting. Another poster was advocating this as a good way to deal with tailgaters.
How long a wait are you thinking is too long? I just ask cause I turn the car off at long lights to save gas and every now and then I'll get caught and it might take me 1 - 2 seconds to turn the car on and put it in drive. I try and pay attention, etc. but like I said, every now and then...
-l
... during "invasion or rebellion"... which has been interpreted by SCOTUS to include declarations of war... which has not been declared... and wouldn't necessarily pass constitutional muster if invasion/rebellion were not imminent (e.g., declaring war on poverty, terrorism, etc.).
-l
I disagree. I don't think the Legislative or Executive branches have the authority to switch the Constitution on and off at will. Habeus corpus should apply to any American citizen or foreign detainee held by Americans (excluding foreign army prisoners in a time of declared war). Period. There may be some finagling over how classified evidence, etc. is handled. And that is fine and dandy with me. But the right to a fair legal justification for your imprisonment is a fundamental human right entirely at odds with infinite detainment. I think the Constitution and the Supreme Court clearly support that right.
$0.02USD,
-l
I'll look into it. Thanks for bearing with me.
-l
Oh, what sad times are these when even persons calling themselves geeks do not know the difference between X, the window manager, windowing toolkits, etc. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
-l
I don't understand how a compressed ball of hot gas, i.e., the supposed original state of the universe at the big bang, is a low entropy state. It is too small for gravity to be a factor. Its macrostate is basically the same no matter how you rearrange the microstates... at least, that's what it sounds like to me. Help me out, here, I'm trying to understand.
-l
I've been reading the SciAm version of the article recommended by another poster, and it says that the universe started as a low entropy state. I don't understand how you can consider a largely homogeneous blob a low entropy state. What am I missing?
Thanks,
-l