I have a Macbook Air and I bought the USB-to-Ethernet dongle. I never used it.
Just out of interest why would you buy something you don't have a use for?
"I never used it" != "I knew I had no use for it when I bought it". Perhaps he thought he might need it and wanted to make sure he had one on hand if he needed one Right Now, and later discovered that, in practice, that never happened.
There's this concept of a "mobile workstation", which is a device that is portable, but doesn't compromise so much as to impede features that are actually important to one's work. MacBook Pro was such a thing. Not anymore.
Also, note that "one", the fact that it's spelled and pronounced the same as the cardinality of a singleton set nonwithstanding, can have more than, err, umm, one referent. Not all "one"s work necessarily match your/em. work.)
Yeah, saving that few grams and the 0.1mm savings in profile height
Retina MBP: 2.02kg, 1.8cm. Non-Retina 15: MBP: 2.56kg, 2.41cm. Perhaps 540g is "a few" to you, but 2410-1800 != 0.1.
Apple fanbois: lack of a feature is a feature!
Rational people: lack of a feature that some particular person doesn't use much, in exchange for something they deem an improvement in other matters, is a net feature - e.g., the lighter weight might, for some people, reduce annoyance enough to more than compensate for what annoyance comes from the lack of an Ethernet port.
Now, some other person might use the Ethernet port all the time, and not care as much about the weight. They should, err, umm, buy the other model of MBP.
(But, hey, "some people might quite rationally find A better than B, and others might quite rationally find B better than A" isn't nearly as much fun as hotly and loudly arguing the total rulitude of {A, B} and the total suckitude of {B, A}....)
Every time I read a story about Patrick, I wonder if he ever resolved the weird health problems he shared with the Linux community...
The Slashdot story about that quoted a Slackware changelog from late 2004 as saying "I'm back in California and I'm happy to let you all know that I'm feeling much better.:-) Here are a few updates so you can see that I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Hopefully 10.1 won't be too far off..."
As opposed to all those non-quantum electrons, protons, and neutrons embedded in there now, presumably....
From TFA:
The visionary physicist Stephen Wiesner came up with the idea of quantum money in 1969. He suggested that banks somehow insert a hundred or so photons, the quantum particles of light, into each banknote. He didn’t have any clear idea of how to do that, nor do physicists today, but never mind. It’s still an intriguing notion, because the issuing bank could then create a kind of minuscule secret watermark by polarizing the photons in a special way.
So it's not as if this is some idea that people actually know how to implement....
"...so I'm not that convinced that the presence or absence of God is going to make a big enough difference unless God directly wields the biggest weapon (without the aid of humans) to enforce his opinion...."
Someone who denies the possibility of the existence of God, will also deny the possibility that God did indeed perform judgments in history. Someone like that will also deny that human existence extends beyond physical death. Such a person will also deny that God could possibly use human beings to leave a written record of his activity and commands.
So which of human beings who claim that they know God's commands are we to trust? As I said, history shows pretty clearly that people making such claims don't always agree with one another.
Any historical record, no matter where it is or who created it, in the end always has to be believed by those reading and studying that record. The Bible is that record of God and his activity.
The Bible is claimed by some to be that record. Why should somebody believe those who claim that rather than believing those who don't?
Sodom and Gomorrah did exist in history. Archaeological digs around the Dead Sea have confirmed this.
Possibly, although that article doesn't seem to indicate that there's a consensus amongst archaeologist that they did.
God wiped Sodom and Gomorrah out.
That is your opinion, and of course you are entitled to it, but what makes you think your opinion is better than anybody else's or should be binding on any other person?
Pascal's proof of the game-theoretic result that, in the game he describes, the winning strategy for player A (the human) is to believe? Or did he also have a proof of the existence of God?
There are a number of things I said in the posting to which you're replying. Presumably you're referring to me stating that I'm not OK with somebody finding enjoyment/fulfillment in murdering as many people as possible and calling it their purpose in life.
and of course you are entitled to it, but what makes you think your opinion is better than anybody else's or should be binding on any other person?
Well, most people don't like to be murdered, and most societies, no matter how godless, have managed to have laws against murder. Now, what counts as a murder differs from society to society, even between non-godless societies....
If there is no God, then we are only left with each other's opinion. The one that has the biggest weapon, will ultimately enforce his/her opinion on the rest.
And if there is a God, but either not everybody believes in him or those who do don't agree on what he said or on what his sayings mean, then we are only left with each other's opinion of what God said and what he meant, and the one that has the biggest weapon will ultimately enforce his/her opinion on the rest.
Anybody who's actually paid attention to history will realize that it's rather likely that people who all claim to believe in the same God won't necessarily agree on what he said or on what his sayings mean, so I'm not that convinced that the presence or absence of God is going to make a big enough difference unless God directly wields the biggest weapon (without the aid of humans) to enforce his opinion. Not having seen a lot of cases of, say, mass murderers struck down by lightning from above, I'm not sure that's happened.
Why all the hate? The article just uses a pop culture reference to attract readers who may not be as familiar as slashdot readers? It does not even come close to implying the two are related other than the same language
The complaint is about the headline. It's not "tied" by anything tighter than "they use the same language"; by that criterion, there's a lot of malware that's "tied" to one of {pick your UN*X, Windows, a lot of the code that runs the phone system, the code that serves up your pr0n, etc.}.
This is interesting: according to the poll, the group with the highest likelihood of believing in a God-guided evolution are the people with post-graduate studies, at 42%.
The group with the highest likelihood of believing God had nothing to do with it is the same group.
Think about it. 42% of all American PhDs believe something along the lines of intelligent design?
Whether "guided" means "intelligent design" or "set up the laws of the universe such that evolution happened" is not indicated by the poll results. They'd have to have (at least) four choices to determine that.
This is interesting: according to the poll, the group with the highest likelihood of believing in a God-guided evolution are the people with post-graduate studies, at 42%.
The group with the highest likelihood of believing God had nothing to do with it is the same group.
Think about it. 42% of all American PhDs believe something along the lines of intelligent design?
Whether "guided" means "intelligent design" or "set up the laws of the universe such that evolution happened" is not indicated by the poll results. They'd have to have (at least) four choices to determine that.
"I'm an engineer. I use a MacBook. It works great - the only desktop Unix to date done right."
As an engineer myself, I hope they fire you. Nothing personal but if you can't tell the difference between a "MacBook" and a "desktop" then you need to be put out to pasture.
OK, then, he should have said "desktop and laptop Unix" (presumably if The Year Of XXX Linux arrives, and most of the PC's shipped with Linux are laptops, we'll have to call it "The Year Of Laptop Linux" rather than "The Year Of Desktop Linux").
"the only desktop Unix to date done right" -- Consider the following: Opinion = Asshole.
(Presumably referring to "opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one"; I sincerely doubt I'm the only person to add "and many of them are full of shit". BTW, are there any citations of that line prior to its use by Insp. Harry Callahan?)
>Its REALLY simple; linux is not being locked out of desktops.
So what?
Why should Linux be locked out of ARM and portable devices?
Answer that, you fucking shill.
--
BMO
Does
Note that on arm tablets the situation is entirely different. option d and e are not available, and fedora isn't getting the software signed for that platform... if you buy a windows 8 arm device you'll have to crack it to put linux on it.
as copied from the posting to which you replied, count as an answer? Admittedly, vux984 didn't explicitly add "And that sucks." at the end, but my suspicion is that he/she thinks it does.
So, it is OK for Apple to do it, because its a 'better' system, but when Microsoft does it, it should be illegal? Apple fannatics lack any sense.
To exactly match what Apple are currently doing, Microsoft would have to refuse to give out signatures for Windows 8 ARM tablets (as, without jailbreaking, I don't think you can run your choice of OS on iOS machines) and not do any secure-boot stuff on Windows 8 x86 machines (as Macs don't do secure boot by default).
Err, umm, how does he justify tossing the word "intelligently" in there in, for example:
But epigenetics falsified all of that. Science tells us that populations rapidly and intelligently adapt to environmental challenges. Such responses, for example, may be accomplished via modifications to the DNA sequence or via modifications to how genes are expressed. For instance small chemicals, such as methyl groups or hydroxyl groups (or one on top of the other!), may be attached to the DNA or to the histone proteins about which the DNA is wrapped. And such modifications can be passed on to subsequent generations.
So what about epigenetics says "intelligently"? Or did "intelligently" just come ex recto?
It's a punctuated equilibrium. Notice how the miracles have been spaced out throughout the roughly six millennia after the creation of man.
"Roughly" as in "a lot more than", presumably. Absent "God faked it all to test our faith", the evidence seems to be pretty good that both the universe and modern homo sapiens are more than 6000 years old.
There wasn't a shred of inconsistency in that story.
No, just God changing his mind:
Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
[Abraham prepares to sacrifice Isaac, and bullshits him with "trust me, we'll find a lamb to sacrifice somewhere around here"...]
And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
So, yeah, only the first 3 parts of El Fantasmo's paraphrase actually apply here:
God: Hey, Abraham! Go kill your son.
Abraham: OK.
God: No not really.
Modern science isn't that conceptually different to most religions (talking organised religions here). Its followers believe in empirical evidence (evidence collated by our senses alone). Most religions share this belief, but add further avenues of perception on top. More importantly, almost every religion (amongst other things):
1. Believes it deprecates all previous religions.
There are scientists who believe that science deprecates all previous religions. I have not seen any indication that all scientists do (there are, for example, scientists who identify themselves as Christian or Muslim, so...).
2. Insists it is incompatible with other religions (despite evidence to the contrary).
See my reply to point 1.
3. Claims to answer all the questions you have (and if not now it will in the future).
There are scientists who think science either can or will answer all those questions. There are also scientists who think "why does the universe exist?" are out of scope.
4. Hates being compared on the same platform as other religions.
Yes, I suspect most scientists would reject the notion that science is a religion. One out of four isn't good enough, though.
OK, what causes a particular electron to go through the first slit, or through the second slit?
Damn good question. As far as it can be determined, the act of detection or thinking about the result changes the result.
Erm, well, I'm not sure the Copenhagen interpretation has been experimentally demonstrated to be the only valid interpretation of quantum mechanics (no, experiments showing that local hidden variable theories don't work don't demonstrate that detection collapses the wave function), and I don't think the Copenhagen interpretation says anything about "thinking about the result".
And, in any case, that just causes the wave function to collapse - it doesn't say which particular outcome it collapses to, i.e. the measurement causes the electron to appear to have gone through slit A or slit B, but doesn't choose which slit. For an electron that happens to go through, for example, slit A, what causes it to go through that slit?
Slashdot Mirror
I have a Macbook Air and I bought the USB-to-Ethernet dongle. I never used it.
Just out of interest why would you buy something you don't have a use for?
"I never used it" != "I knew I had no use for it when I bought it". Perhaps he thought he might need it and wanted to make sure he had one on hand if he needed one Right Now, and later discovered that, in practice, that never happened.
There's this concept of a "mobile workstation", which is a device that is portable, but doesn't compromise so much as to impede features that are actually important to one's work. MacBook Pro was such a thing. Not anymore.
Which features that are actually important to your work are missing from the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros?
Also, note that "one", the fact that it's spelled and pronounced the same as the cardinality of a singleton set nonwithstanding, can have more than, err, umm, one referent. Not all "one"s work necessarily match your/em. work.)
Yeah, saving that few grams and the 0.1mm savings in profile height
Retina MBP: 2.02kg, 1.8cm. Non-Retina 15: MBP: 2.56kg, 2.41cm. Perhaps 540g is "a few" to you, but 2410-1800 != 0.1.
Apple fanbois: lack of a feature is a feature!
Rational people: lack of a feature that some particular person doesn't use much, in exchange for something they deem an improvement in other matters, is a net feature - e.g., the lighter weight might, for some people, reduce annoyance enough to more than compensate for what annoyance comes from the lack of an Ethernet port.
Now, some other person might use the Ethernet port all the time, and not care as much about the weight. They should, err, umm, buy the other model of MBP.
(But, hey, "some people might quite rationally find A better than B, and others might quite rationally find B better than A" isn't nearly as much fun as hotly and loudly arguing the total rulitude of {A, B} and the total suckitude of {B, A}....)
You are ignoring the work of REAL scientists
And there are no real scientists here?
Every time I read a story about Patrick, I wonder if he ever resolved the weird health problems he shared with the Linux community...
The Slashdot story about that quoted a Slackware changelog from late 2004 as saying "I'm back in California and I'm happy to let you all know that I'm feeling much better. :-) Here are a few updates so you can see that I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Hopefully 10.1 won't be too far off ..."
If you do not WANT to believe, no amount of evidence will convince you.
And if you WANT to believe, no amount of evidence will convince you to the contrary.
As opposed to all those non-quantum electrons, protons, and neutrons embedded in there now, presumably....
From TFA:
So it's not as if this is some idea that people actually know how to implement....
"...so I'm not that convinced that the presence or absence of God is going to make a big enough difference unless God directly wields the biggest weapon (without the aid of humans) to enforce his opinion...."
Someone who denies the possibility of the existence of God, will also deny the possibility that God did indeed perform judgments in history. Someone like that will also deny that human existence extends beyond physical death. Such a person will also deny that God could possibly use human beings to leave a written record of his activity and commands.
So which of human beings who claim that they know God's commands are we to trust? As I said, history shows pretty clearly that people making such claims don't always agree with one another.
Any historical record, no matter where it is or who created it, in the end always has to be believed by those reading and studying that record. The Bible is that record of God and his activity.
The Bible is claimed by some to be that record. Why should somebody believe those who claim that rather than believing those who don't?
Sodom and Gomorrah did exist in history. Archaeological digs around the Dead Sea have confirmed this.
Possibly, although that article doesn't seem to indicate that there's a consensus amongst archaeologist that they did.
God wiped Sodom and Gomorrah out.
That is your opinion, and of course you are entitled to it, but what makes you think your opinion is better than anybody else's or should be binding on any other person?
It avoids the glitches in Pascal's proof.
Pascal's proof of the game-theoretic result that, in the game he describes, the winning strategy for player A (the human) is to believe? Or did he also have a proof of the existence of God?
That is your opinion,
There are a number of things I said in the posting to which you're replying. Presumably you're referring to me stating that I'm not OK with somebody finding enjoyment/fulfillment in murdering as many people as possible and calling it their purpose in life.
and of course you are entitled to it, but what makes you think your opinion is better than anybody else's or should be binding on any other person?
Well, most people don't like to be murdered, and most societies, no matter how godless, have managed to have laws against murder. Now, what counts as a murder differs from society to society, even between non-godless societies....
If there is no God, then we are only left with each other's opinion. The one that has the biggest weapon, will ultimately enforce his/her opinion on the rest.
And if there is a God, but either not everybody believes in him or those who do don't agree on what he said or on what his sayings mean, then we are only left with each other's opinion of what God said and what he meant, and the one that has the biggest weapon will ultimately enforce his/her opinion on the rest.
Anybody who's actually paid attention to history will realize that it's rather likely that people who all claim to believe in the same God won't necessarily agree on what he said or on what his sayings mean, so I'm not that convinced that the presence or absence of God is going to make a big enough difference unless God directly wields the biggest weapon (without the aid of humans) to enforce his opinion. Not having seen a lot of cases of, say, mass murderers struck down by lightning from above, I'm not sure that's happened.
Why all the hate? The article just uses a pop culture reference to attract readers who may not be as familiar as slashdot readers? It does not even come close to implying the two are related other than the same language
The complaint is about the headline. It's not "tied" by anything tighter than "they use the same language"; by that criterion, there's a lot of malware that's "tied" to one of {pick your UN*X, Windows, a lot of the code that runs the phone system, the code that serves up your pr0n, etc.}.
Aw crap, completely fucked up the quoting.
This is interesting: according to the poll, the group with the highest likelihood of believing in a God-guided evolution are the people with post-graduate studies, at 42%.
The group with the highest likelihood of believing God had nothing to do with it is the same group.
Think about it. 42% of all American PhDs believe something along the lines of intelligent design?
Whether "guided" means "intelligent design" or "set up the laws of the universe such that evolution happened" is not indicated by the poll results. They'd have to have (at least) four choices to determine that.
This is interesting: according to the poll, the group with the highest likelihood of believing in a God-guided evolution are the people with post-graduate studies, at 42%.
The group with the highest likelihood of believing God had nothing to do with it is the same group.
Think about it. 42% of all American PhDs believe something along the lines of intelligent design?
Whether "guided" means "intelligent design" or "set up the laws of the universe such that evolution happened" is not indicated by the poll results. They'd have to have (at least) four choices to determine that.
Any poll conducted by telephone is inherently biased. Assuming they're calling (predominantly? only?) land-line phones
"Predominantly" to the extent that "Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cell phone respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents by region." (see the "Survey Methods" section at the end).
"I'm an engineer. I use a MacBook. It works great - the only desktop Unix to date done right."
As an engineer myself, I hope they fire you. Nothing personal but if you can't tell the difference between a "MacBook" and a "desktop" then you need to be put out to pasture.
OK, then, he should have said "desktop and laptop Unix" (presumably if The Year Of XXX Linux arrives, and most of the PC's shipped with Linux are laptops, we'll have to call it "The Year Of Laptop Linux" rather than "The Year Of Desktop Linux").
"the only desktop Unix to date done right" -- Consider the following: Opinion = Asshole.
(Presumably referring to "opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one"; I sincerely doubt I'm the only person to add "and many of them are full of shit". BTW, are there any citations of that line prior to its use by Insp. Harry Callahan?)
>Its REALLY simple; linux is not being locked out of desktops.
So what?
Why should Linux be locked out of ARM and portable devices?
Answer that, you fucking shill.
-- BMO
Does
as copied from the posting to which you replied, count as an answer? Admittedly, vux984 didn't explicitly add "And that sucks." at the end, but my suspicion is that he/she thinks it does.
So, it is OK for Apple to do it, because its a 'better' system, but when Microsoft does it, it should be illegal? Apple fannatics lack any sense.
To exactly match what Apple are currently doing, Microsoft would have to refuse to give out signatures for Windows 8 ARM tablets (as, without jailbreaking, I don't think you can run your choice of OS on iOS machines) and not do any secure-boot stuff on Windows 8 x86 machines (as Macs don't do secure boot by default).
(Alternate title giving some more details; "Microsoft" abbreviated as "Msft" to make the title fit given /.'s apparent title-length restrictions.)
Read TFA before commenting.
Don't bet on it indeed!
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/05/evolutionists-are-up-in-arms-over-real.html
Err, umm, how does he justify tossing the word "intelligently" in there in, for example:
So what about epigenetics says "intelligently"? Or did "intelligently" just come ex recto?
It's a punctuated equilibrium. Notice how the miracles have been spaced out throughout the roughly six millennia after the creation of man.
"Roughly" as in "a lot more than", presumably. Absent "God faked it all to test our faith", the evidence seems to be pretty good that both the universe and modern homo sapiens are more than 6000 years old.
Quite true, so when will the evolutionists start to deal with the fact that the evidence doesn't fit the theory?
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/search/label/False%20expectations
So when will the physicists start to deal with the fact that the evidence doesn't fit the theory? Oh, wait, it already happened. Sometimes a simple model works for a while and then, as more evidence shows up, has to be replaced. That's what's happening here; it's not as if "God created it all at once and nothing big has changed since then" is the only replacement (or even that it's a replacement at all, unless you have an alternative explanation for the fossil record blah blah blah).
You should probably read the Bible before you go paraphrasing it. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2022:1-15&version=NKJV
There wasn't a shred of inconsistency in that story.
No, just God changing his mind:
[Abraham prepares to sacrifice Isaac, and bullshits him with "trust me, we'll find a lamb to sacrifice somewhere around here"...]
So, yeah, only the first 3 parts of El Fantasmo's paraphrase actually apply here:
Modern science isn't that conceptually different to most religions (talking organised religions here). Its followers believe in empirical evidence (evidence collated by our senses alone). Most religions share this belief, but add further avenues of perception on top. More importantly, almost every religion (amongst other things): 1. Believes it deprecates all previous religions.
There are scientists who believe that science deprecates all previous religions. I have not seen any indication that all scientists do (there are, for example, scientists who identify themselves as Christian or Muslim, so...).
2. Insists it is incompatible with other religions (despite evidence to the contrary).
See my reply to point 1.
3. Claims to answer all the questions you have (and if not now it will in the future).
There are scientists who think science either can or will answer all those questions. There are also scientists who think "why does the universe exist?" are out of scope.
4. Hates being compared on the same platform as other religions.
Yes, I suspect most scientists would reject the notion that science is a religion. One out of four isn't good enough, though.
OK, what causes a particular electron to go through the first slit, or through the second slit?
Damn good question. As far as it can be determined, the act of detection or thinking about the result changes the result.
Erm, well, I'm not sure the Copenhagen interpretation has been experimentally demonstrated to be the only valid interpretation of quantum mechanics (no, experiments showing that local hidden variable theories don't work don't demonstrate that detection collapses the wave function), and I don't think the Copenhagen interpretation says anything about "thinking about the result".
And, in any case, that just causes the wave function to collapse - it doesn't say which particular outcome it collapses to, i.e. the measurement causes the electron to appear to have gone through slit A or slit B, but doesn't choose which slit. For an electron that happens to go through, for example, slit A, what causes it to go through that slit?