I already voted, you insensitive clod! So it's a bit late to try changing my mind now. But anyway...
There's a Republican National Committee ad being shown a lot in my area: "Financial meltdown. Retirement savings lost. Massive unemployment. And some have nominated the least experienced candidate ever. Barack Obama. This will be his first crisis. In this chair [Oval Office]."
Gee, you're right! If the country's economy is in the crapper then what we really need is somebody with 25 years of experience putting it there.
Okay, I"ve never heard of "Worse is better". The author uses it disparagingly, saying "an inferiorly designed system or piece of software may be more successful than its better-designed competitor".
But the Wikipedia article says it means Simplicity > Correctness > Consistency > Completeness, as opposed to an alternate valuing of Correctness > Consistency > Completeness > Simplicity. In other words, doing a few things right and easy is better than doing everything consistently.
I challenge his belief that doing less is inferior to doing more. Stepping away from computers for a moment, I can't think of any device that would be improved by piling on features and would not be improved by doing its key task more efficiently. I guess he's saying that the Internet isn't complex enough and can't do enough different things.
I am a Mac owner and fan, but in my experience Apple is also going in the wrong direction. OS X 10.5 feels slower than 10.4 on my MacBook Pro. And interface-wise my MacBook Pro feels slower than my old Powerbook G4 (despite being much faster at computation-intensive tasks).
It does seem like software tends to grow more demanding even faster than the hardware gets more powerful. When you go back and run old software on new hardware it's drastically faster than recent software, and you wonder why a few new features should cost so much snapiness.
HDTV prices continue to fall, analog transmissions are turning off, and most new programming is being filmed in 16:9. Who would buy a standard definition TV anymore? Soon, HDTV won't be considered a luxury but just the new way of doing things. Much like CDs replaced cassette tapes and DVD replaced VCRs. So even if the purchase of luxury enormous home theaters drops off, the adoption rate of HDTV will approach at least the rate of replacement of old sets.
Most of the ATMs I use have four mechanical buttons on either side of a screen with four corresponding labels. Usually the labels and the buttons are misaligned, so I have a habit of counting down from the top rather than hoping that each button will match the nearest label. This method works okay with a machine that I use every week and that reliably has as many labels as buttons.
But a voting machine that I use every two or four years (or for the first time this year) and that could have any number of buttons and labels? I'm not at all surprised that it could register differently than a voter intended.
If there's good design then the voter will get to confirm their selection and it will be easy to correct mistakes. But step one in that design is that it should be easy to hit the button you want and hard to hit the button you don't. I'll bet that not every voting machine is designed so well.
I figure that the human brain is geared to lose flexibility over time but gain efficiency. In other words, the old man ain't fast but he's wise. Eighty years of playing chess has made him a powerful opponent -- whatever clever plays you tried he had seen before. But deal him a hand of bridge and if he's never played he'll have a harder time learning it than a twenty year old.
What surprises me is that this article suggests that the peak of speed is 39, not something younger.
I think that remark about high purity silicon is by the editor kdawson, not the submitter bednarz. I don't know where he came up with "painstakingly grown crystal of extremely high purity" - it's not in the NSF press release. But searching in Nature reveals the phrase "P-31 donors in isotopically pure Si-28 crystal" in the abstract. So maybe the isotopic (number of neutrons) purity of their material is above and beyond the chemical (number of protons) purity of standard microelectronic silicon.
Maybe he meant iBook. Or Powerbook. I have a Macbook Pro that if you sent back in time could be mistaken for a Powerbook G4 (aside from the label, ports, and trackpad details).
Some fields of science require UNIX for serious work. Some branches of art and design require professional software. Some business interactions require the ability to open Windows software files or connection with Internet Explorer. Some of us like to play games, watch online video, organize our photos, and dabble in video production.
I do all of those. I also want a single computer that I can use at home, work, or travel reliably and with minimal distraction. That's why I have a MacBook Pro plus Parallels and Windows XP.
I agree that creativity pours out mostly when I'm alone and undistracted. But I find that if I schedule too much time alone then I become somewhat lethargic and uninspired.
A couple seminars per week, some social time, and a little busywork to get me into a productive state of mind actually helps stimulate creativity in the remaining downtime.
It's a lot easier to come up with a theory that doesn't match the data or produce data that doesn't match a theory than it is to get theory and data to match. Likewise, it's a lot easier to try to accomplish something and fail than it is to try to accomplish something and succeed.
For example, I have conducted experiments proving that the following things do not cure cancer: reading Slashdot, eating ice cream, playing World of Warcraft, watching The Muppet Show. But if I found one thing that did then I would be rich and famous.
So the reason that positive results dominate the literature is because those are the ones that are scarce and valuable. Publishing negative results would swamp reviewers, publishers, and readers in a mass of unusable anecdotes.
On the other hand, if a theory is already accepted or some agent is believed to work, then research showing negative results is new and valuable.
Considering the type of display that I saw the most growing up, I should dream at 320 by 200 pixel resolution with 32 colors. Thanks, Amiga.
In twenty years, when 4:3 standard definition televisions exist only in museums and the homes of the elderly, that video format will be associated with 1960-2005 just as strongly as black and white television is associated with the decades before. But whether 2005+ is the HDTV era or the post-television era remains to be seen.
Online classified ads aren't unique. But an easy to use, ad-free, heavily trafficked online classified site where you can find an apartment, furnish it, get a mover, find a job, and meet a special friend? I know only one.
I've been checking out the MacBooks to console my sister who I advised to buy a white MacBook two weeks ago (d'oh!). I can't speak for the Canadian dollar, but in USD there's been a branching among MacBook models.
Before there were two: a $1049 model with 1 GB memory, etc and a $1299 model with 2 GB memory, etc. Both were white plastic. If you go to the store now there are two aluminum versions: a $1299 model with 2 GB memory, etc and a $1599 model also with 2 GB memory plus a 90 GB larger drive and a 2.4 GHz CPU versus 2.0 GHz for the cheaper model. If you look closely, there is also a $999 white plastic version with 1 GB memory, etc like before.
So the low end model did get cheaper. But it's still plastic, not the unibody aluminum. (So much for that being a cheaper process.) The old high-end model is the same price but with faster graphics. Then there is a new top-end model that is bigger, faster, and more expensive.
Starcraft still runs fine on my Intel MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and old Powerbook G4. Networking is fine through Battle.net or LAN, but you have to forward a port to host games on Battle.net. There's actually a little bit of mouse lag on the MacBook compared to the Powerbook since for Intel it's running through Rosetta. It's still very playable, but it feels like the computer is working harder than it needs too.
Your old copy will need serious patches. I think the best method for an old disc install is to start by downloading the OS X installer. Once installed, log onto Battle.net and it'll update automatically. One of those patches allows you to play without the CD (after copying some files from it).
My dream for a Classic Starcraft is a free download released for publicity, say six months before the release of Starcraft 2. It'd be nice to get some fresh blood on Battle.net where thousands of us still play Use Map Settings games every day.
Huh, I thought that my 15" MacBook Pro (purchased 11/06) had three USB ports, but I just counted only two plus two never-used Firewire ports. The only thing I ever plug into USB are my camera and my iPod Shuffle. The mouse is Bluetooth and the printer is on the Airport. I'd rather have my next camera use Bluetooth than have my next laptop get an extra port.
I doubt that the people driving 30 MPH in a 45 zone have done the math, but there is some sense to it. And like you suggest, the smart thing to do is avoid braking. If you have a 0.5 mile stretch of road between stop signs then accelerating to 45 MPH is just an extra 15 MPH to brake off at the other end. So it's not that 30 MPH is more efficient than 45 MPH on an infinite stretch of road, but the reduction of top speed decreases the loss to braking.
Yeah, I can't believe he wasted ten whole hours of computer time to find the optimal solution when he could have found a lesser solution in less time! Except that each image took fifteen hours of assembly time. And a less sturdy layout might take even longer to assemble. And the simple solution posted below of doubling the thickness to add a support layer would merely double the cost. Other than that, this project is a complete waste of leisure time!
Does the first writer really mean "trolls" or something else? I thought a troll was someone who intentionally posted an unpopular comment to get a frenzy of reactions. A good troll actually requires intelligence and creativity. It's the humorless automatons who reply to trolls that really clog up message boards. But I don't think that writer meant trolls at all.
It'd be nice if a few more Slashdotters actually read the article so they'd know the primary point of this article:
There are three components of evolution: natural selection, mutation, and random change [of the environment?]. He's saying that mutation has decreased since males mate younger now than before. A 29-year-old has 300 mutations in his sperm, a 50-year-old over 1,000. All your arguments about interruption or continuation of natural selection are off topic.
Back to mutations, is there a chance that our polluted environment induces more mutations than a prehistoric one? Maybe 300 mutations at age 29 is still high compared to what an older male would accumulate in a healthier environment. And anyways, I don't buy that 29 years is young compared to the prehistoric reproduction age.
There are many areas in Michigan, not far outside Detroit, where the speed limit is 70 MPH. Traffic typically moves at 75 and you can approach 80 before drawing much attention from traffic cops. So a regulator set to 80 lets you merge safely and keep pace with traffic but prevents you from doing outright stupid things like taking an exit ramp at 95.
Wow, at first I thought you were complaining that Diablo 2 is filled with jerks who just click and cheat and make your games unfun. Then I realized that you're that jerk and don't want your own fun spoiled!
I'm not very impressed by your ability to click a mouse or to download hacks that somebody else wrote. But I've learned that different folks get their jollies in different ways. It'd be nice if Battle.net could set aside a server just for all the jerks and hackers. Call it "Thunderdome". Or "Hell". They can go click, exploit, scam, and spam to their hearts delight. The rest of us will go play something fun and friendly.
Well I think that's part of the problem! I quit playing World of Warcraft because I got to the point where I needed a group to make progress. But if you're part of a group of friends or a clan then you have to play whenever the group plays, whether you want to or not. Otherwise you get left behind levelwise.
Multiplayer RPG is really fun if you and your friends have a ton of time to spend. But people who are busy, have scattered friends, or just want to play occasionally need a valid single-player mode.
I thought this batch of disagree mail was an interesting look into nerd psychology.
#1) Terrible irony: you don't want to post as a "coward" but you appear afraid to stand up to your overbearing stalker wife. Or maybe you're not afraid and have stood up, but you're stuck with an unreasonable spouse.
#2) Sorry dude, she hasn't been fooling around on Slashdot. She's fooling around alright, or at least looking at sites that she doesn't think you'll approve of. But you know how you leave an Excel window open all day so you can quickly hide Slashdot if your boss comes by? Well she opened a Slashdot window to hide what she was really doing.
#3) Some people aren't meant to have kids, at least not yet. Unfortunately you have kids you don't want. And anyways, would having your kid reading kids.slashdot.com next to you really be any better than having them surf pbskids.org next to you?
ALL) Not only do Slashdot readers have girlfriends, but they have wives and kids (you insensitive clod)!
Slashdot Mirror
I already voted, you insensitive clod! So it's a bit late to try changing my mind now. But anyway...
There's a Republican National Committee ad being shown a lot in my area: "Financial meltdown. Retirement savings lost. Massive unemployment. And some have nominated the least experienced candidate ever. Barack Obama. This will be his first crisis. In this chair [Oval Office]."
Gee, you're right! If the country's economy is in the crapper then what we really need is somebody with 25 years of experience putting it there.
Okay, I"ve never heard of "Worse is better". The author uses it disparagingly, saying "an inferiorly designed system or piece of software may be more successful than its better-designed competitor".
But the Wikipedia article says it means Simplicity > Correctness > Consistency > Completeness, as opposed to an alternate valuing of Correctness > Consistency > Completeness > Simplicity. In other words, doing a few things right and easy is better than doing everything consistently.
I challenge his belief that doing less is inferior to doing more. Stepping away from computers for a moment, I can't think of any device that would be improved by piling on features and would not be improved by doing its key task more efficiently. I guess he's saying that the Internet isn't complex enough and can't do enough different things.
I am a Mac owner and fan, but in my experience Apple is also going in the wrong direction. OS X 10.5 feels slower than 10.4 on my MacBook Pro. And interface-wise my MacBook Pro feels slower than my old Powerbook G4 (despite being much faster at computation-intensive tasks).
It does seem like software tends to grow more demanding even faster than the hardware gets more powerful. When you go back and run old software on new hardware it's drastically faster than recent software, and you wonder why a few new features should cost so much snapiness.
HDTV prices continue to fall, analog transmissions are turning off, and most new programming is being filmed in 16:9. Who would buy a standard definition TV anymore? Soon, HDTV won't be considered a luxury but just the new way of doing things. Much like CDs replaced cassette tapes and DVD replaced VCRs. So even if the purchase of luxury enormous home theaters drops off, the adoption rate of HDTV will approach at least the rate of replacement of old sets.
Most of the ATMs I use have four mechanical buttons on either side of a screen with four corresponding labels. Usually the labels and the buttons are misaligned, so I have a habit of counting down from the top rather than hoping that each button will match the nearest label. This method works okay with a machine that I use every week and that reliably has as many labels as buttons.
But a voting machine that I use every two or four years (or for the first time this year) and that could have any number of buttons and labels? I'm not at all surprised that it could register differently than a voter intended.
If there's good design then the voter will get to confirm their selection and it will be easy to correct mistakes. But step one in that design is that it should be easy to hit the button you want and hard to hit the button you don't. I'll bet that not every voting machine is designed so well.
I figure that the human brain is geared to lose flexibility over time but gain efficiency. In other words, the old man ain't fast but he's wise. Eighty years of playing chess has made him a powerful opponent -- whatever clever plays you tried he had seen before. But deal him a hand of bridge and if he's never played he'll have a harder time learning it than a twenty year old.
What surprises me is that this article suggests that the peak of speed is 39, not something younger.
I think that remark about high purity silicon is by the editor kdawson, not the submitter bednarz. I don't know where he came up with "painstakingly grown crystal of extremely high purity" - it's not in the NSF press release. But searching in Nature reveals the phrase "P-31 donors in isotopically pure Si-28 crystal" in the abstract. So maybe the isotopic (number of neutrons) purity of their material is above and beyond the chemical (number of protons) purity of standard microelectronic silicon.
Maybe he meant iBook. Or Powerbook. I have a Macbook Pro that if you sent back in time could be mistaken for a Powerbook G4 (aside from the label, ports, and trackpad details).
Some fields of science require UNIX for serious work. Some branches of art and design require professional software. Some business interactions require the ability to open Windows software files or connection with Internet Explorer. Some of us like to play games, watch online video, organize our photos, and dabble in video production.
I do all of those. I also want a single computer that I can use at home, work, or travel reliably and with minimal distraction. That's why I have a MacBook Pro plus Parallels and Windows XP.
I agree that creativity pours out mostly when I'm alone and undistracted. But I find that if I schedule too much time alone then I become somewhat lethargic and uninspired.
A couple seminars per week, some social time, and a little busywork to get me into a productive state of mind actually helps stimulate creativity in the remaining downtime.
It's a lot easier to come up with a theory that doesn't match the data or produce data that doesn't match a theory than it is to get theory and data to match. Likewise, it's a lot easier to try to accomplish something and fail than it is to try to accomplish something and succeed.
For example, I have conducted experiments proving that the following things do not cure cancer: reading Slashdot, eating ice cream, playing World of Warcraft, watching The Muppet Show. But if I found one thing that did then I would be rich and famous.
So the reason that positive results dominate the literature is because those are the ones that are scarce and valuable. Publishing negative results would swamp reviewers, publishers, and readers in a mass of unusable anecdotes.
On the other hand, if a theory is already accepted or some agent is believed to work, then research showing negative results is new and valuable.
Considering the type of display that I saw the most growing up, I should dream at 320 by 200 pixel resolution with 32 colors. Thanks, Amiga.
In twenty years, when 4:3 standard definition televisions exist only in museums and the homes of the elderly, that video format will be associated with 1960-2005 just as strongly as black and white television is associated with the decades before. But whether 2005+ is the HDTV era or the post-television era remains to be seen.
Craigslist
Online classified ads aren't unique. But an easy to use, ad-free, heavily trafficked online classified site where you can find an apartment, furnish it, get a mover, find a job, and meet a special friend? I know only one.
I've been checking out the MacBooks to console my sister who I advised to buy a white MacBook two weeks ago (d'oh!). I can't speak for the Canadian dollar, but in USD there's been a branching among MacBook models.
Before there were two: a $1049 model with 1 GB memory, etc and a $1299 model with 2 GB memory, etc. Both were white plastic. If you go to the store now there are two aluminum versions: a $1299 model with 2 GB memory, etc and a $1599 model also with 2 GB memory plus a 90 GB larger drive and a 2.4 GHz CPU versus 2.0 GHz for the cheaper model. If you look closely, there is also a $999 white plastic version with 1 GB memory, etc like before.
So the low end model did get cheaper. But it's still plastic, not the unibody aluminum. (So much for that being a cheaper process.) The old high-end model is the same price but with faster graphics. Then there is a new top-end model that is bigger, faster, and more expensive.
Starcraft still runs fine on my Intel MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and old Powerbook G4. Networking is fine through Battle.net or LAN, but you have to forward a port to host games on Battle.net. There's actually a little bit of mouse lag on the MacBook compared to the Powerbook since for Intel it's running through Rosetta. It's still very playable, but it feels like the computer is working harder than it needs too.
Your old copy will need serious patches. I think the best method for an old disc install is to start by downloading the OS X installer. Once installed, log onto Battle.net and it'll update automatically. One of those patches allows you to play without the CD (after copying some files from it).
My dream for a Classic Starcraft is a free download released for publicity, say six months before the release of Starcraft 2. It'd be nice to get some fresh blood on Battle.net where thousands of us still play Use Map Settings games every day.
TheNevermind
Huh, I thought that my 15" MacBook Pro (purchased 11/06) had three USB ports, but I just counted only two plus two never-used Firewire ports. The only thing I ever plug into USB are my camera and my iPod Shuffle. The mouse is Bluetooth and the printer is on the Airport. I'd rather have my next camera use Bluetooth than have my next laptop get an extra port.
How brave of you.
Seems more like the tenth guy got his bartender buddy to reduce his tab even though it put the bar's owner into debt.
No, you're not. Plagiarism is bad enough. Plagiarism combined with false attribution and impersonation ought to be prosecuted as slander.
I doubt that the people driving 30 MPH in a 45 zone have done the math, but there is some sense to it. And like you suggest, the smart thing to do is avoid braking. If you have a 0.5 mile stretch of road between stop signs then accelerating to 45 MPH is just an extra 15 MPH to brake off at the other end. So it's not that 30 MPH is more efficient than 45 MPH on an infinite stretch of road, but the reduction of top speed decreases the loss to braking.
Yeah, I can't believe he wasted ten whole hours of computer time to find the optimal solution when he could have found a lesser solution in less time! Except that each image took fifteen hours of assembly time. And a less sturdy layout might take even longer to assemble. And the simple solution posted below of doubling the thickness to add a support layer would merely double the cost. Other than that, this project is a complete waste of leisure time!
Does the first writer really mean "trolls" or something else? I thought a troll was someone who intentionally posted an unpopular comment to get a frenzy of reactions. A good troll actually requires intelligence and creativity. It's the humorless automatons who reply to trolls that really clog up message boards. But I don't think that writer meant trolls at all.
It'd be nice if a few more Slashdotters actually read the article so they'd know the primary point of this article:
There are three components of evolution: natural selection, mutation, and random change [of the environment?]. He's saying that mutation has decreased since males mate younger now than before. A 29-year-old has 300 mutations in his sperm, a 50-year-old over 1,000. All your arguments about interruption or continuation of natural selection are off topic.
Back to mutations, is there a chance that our polluted environment induces more mutations than a prehistoric one? Maybe 300 mutations at age 29 is still high compared to what an older male would accumulate in a healthier environment. And anyways, I don't buy that 29 years is young compared to the prehistoric reproduction age.
There are many areas in Michigan, not far outside Detroit, where the speed limit is 70 MPH. Traffic typically moves at 75 and you can approach 80 before drawing much attention from traffic cops. So a regulator set to 80 lets you merge safely and keep pace with traffic but prevents you from doing outright stupid things like taking an exit ramp at 95.
Wow, at first I thought you were complaining that Diablo 2 is filled with jerks who just click and cheat and make your games unfun. Then I realized that you're that jerk and don't want your own fun spoiled!
I'm not very impressed by your ability to click a mouse or to download hacks that somebody else wrote. But I've learned that different folks get their jollies in different ways. It'd be nice if Battle.net could set aside a server just for all the jerks and hackers. Call it "Thunderdome". Or "Hell". They can go click, exploit, scam, and spam to their hearts delight. The rest of us will go play something fun and friendly.
Well I think that's part of the problem! I quit playing World of Warcraft because I got to the point where I needed a group to make progress. But if you're part of a group of friends or a clan then you have to play whenever the group plays, whether you want to or not. Otherwise you get left behind levelwise.
Multiplayer RPG is really fun if you and your friends have a ton of time to spend. But people who are busy, have scattered friends, or just want to play occasionally need a valid single-player mode.
I thought this batch of disagree mail was an interesting look into nerd psychology.
#1) Terrible irony: you don't want to post as a "coward" but you appear afraid to stand up to your overbearing stalker wife. Or maybe you're not afraid and have stood up, but you're stuck with an unreasonable spouse.
#2) Sorry dude, she hasn't been fooling around on Slashdot. She's fooling around alright, or at least looking at sites that she doesn't think you'll approve of. But you know how you leave an Excel window open all day so you can quickly hide Slashdot if your boss comes by? Well she opened a Slashdot window to hide what she was really doing.
#3) Some people aren't meant to have kids, at least not yet. Unfortunately you have kids you don't want. And anyways, would having your kid reading kids.slashdot.com next to you really be any better than having them surf pbskids.org next to you?
ALL) Not only do Slashdot readers have girlfriends, but they have wives and kids (you insensitive clod)!