Congratulations! You've just been brainwashed by all those big corporations that want you sit back and continue chucking whatever they like into the environment.
CO2 levels are higher this year than they have been for twenty million years. Now this could be:
a) Coincidence (1 in 20,000,000)
b) The fact that we're pumping the shit into the atmosphere every day from millions of cars, thousands of aeroplanes and thousands of factories.
You can't alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere with those sort of quantities without affecting the weather. More CO2 == bigger greenhouse effect. Relatively simple chemistry.
What I find amazingly arrogant is that you call this extremism? YOUR view is the extremist version. Almost every climatologist you can find disagrees with you. Jesus Christ, even the Ameri can s aren't that stupid!
The arrogance continues! You accuse Stephen Hawking, arguably one of the greatest scientists in the world today of swallowing junk science? So perhaps you can tell us your great contribution to science that gives you the authority to be able to decide better than him what is and isn't junk science?
Taco could do with hacking a script together that scans each story post for 'furby autopsy' and 'textmode quake'. That would probably cut redundant stories at a stroke.
I had the following forwarded to me the other day. I know posting these sort of things is a bit wanky, but I couldn't help myself. The logic is irrefutable:
A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo, and when theherd is hunted, It is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first.
This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole is maintained or even improved by the regular culling of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can operate only as fast as the slowest brain cells through which the electrical signals pass. Recent epidemiological studies have shown that while excessive intake of alcohol kills off brain cells, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. Thus, regular consumption of beer helps eliminate the weaker cells, constantly making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. The result of this in-depth study verifies and validates the causal link between all-weekend parties and job related performance. It also explains why, after a few short years of leaving a university and getting married, most professionals cannot keep up with the performance of the new graduates. Only those few that stick to the strict regimen of voracious alcoholic consumption can maintain the intellectual levels that they achieve during their college years.
So, this is a call to arms. As our country is losing its technological edge, we must not shudder in our homes. Get back into the bars. Quaff that pint. Your company and country need you to be at your peak, and you shouldn't deny yourself the career that you could have. ---
>Having tried to code after a few beers I've
>found the ability to track logic effectively
>makes it far more frustrating than sober, and
>certainly not a fun thing.
Confucious say, program creatively when pissed and debug when sober.
The people who 'self-destructed' on drugs were probably the people whose lives were already fucked-up, yes? That's certainly the case in my experience. Society would be better off trying to combat the causes of why people turn to drugs rather than fighting against a so-called 'drug menace'. People who use drugs in a genuinely recreational way rarely get into trouble in with them.
Damn right. It's makes the book (esp reference books) ten times more useful (although I would prefer xml/html). Of course, the reason not everyone does this is because you can just email the text to your friends if they don't want to buy the book.
---
I remember (in the days of the Spectrum) text-adventure writers would sometimes deliberately come up with obscure commands that had to be entered just to make the game harder. One particularly infamous one was where the player had to come up with "DISBELIEVE ILLUSION". Not clever.
That still doesn't invalidate the original point you quoted. Occam's razor just says that we should assume that the simplest theory is correct because it is the most likely, not that it proves that is correct.
Our soul is what makes us different from the plants and other animals around us.
Now that's disrespectful, goddammit. I don't believe in God (though I do have a sneaking suspicion that the mind is more than physiology) but I'm not particularly anti-religion. The exception is where they make ludicrous statements like these. How do you claim that, say, bonobos don't have a soul compared to a human despite being demonstrated to have more intelligence than a three-year-old kid? Presumably any aliens we meet would also not have a soul. Hah! Are you in for a shock...
---
Re:Strange Aspects of Einstein's Brain
on
Driving Mr. Albert
·
· Score: 2
remember reading in some Scientific American or some such magazine that researchers had determined that Einstein had a much higher percentage of Glial cells in his brain than does the average population.
Aye, but it's the old cause-and-effect argument again. Was his brain so significantly difference because he was such a genius or did he spend so much time contemplating the universe that parts of his brain were stimulated and enlarged? I believe that a lot of current theories support the latter, but at a guess I'd say it was a combination.
There seems to be a lot of research highlighting the differences between Al's brain and mere mortal's brains. I wonder if you took any two brains from the population would you find significant differences? Just a thought.
Corporations are out to fuck people. Their mission in life is to extract as much money out of your nose as possible.
I don't understand why you are so trusting of self-appointed bureuacrats rather than elected officials? Don't you think democracy is a good idea? I'd rather not have my life controlled by corporations thank you.
Java too slow? We've heard that a million times. Boring. It's quick enough for thousands of Java hackers out there.
It's not as quick as C performance-wise, but you get a speed tradeoff in return for platform independence, greater stability etc etc. The vast majority of apps being written today do not need to be blindingly fast. It's much more useful to have them written faster and be easier to mantain, both of which are helped a lot by Java.
I suspect most of the flame I hear against Java is from established C coders who are scared they'll have to learn a new language. Try it, you might like it. I use Java and Perl almost exclusively now. I wouldn't use C now unless I was feeling masochistic or had to do something really low-level.
There is no reason to think that humanity has had any affect on the weather.
This is one of the most imbecellic statements I have heard on/. all week. We are pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. THIS WARMS THE ATMOSPHERE UP by trapping heat from the sun. It's practically unchallenged in serious scientific circles.
Now you can argue about how much effect this actually has, and you can even make a case for it being a relatively minor effect compared to the Earth's natural cycles. But you can't say that we can significantly change the composition of the planet's atmosphere without affecting the weather and expect to be taken seriously.
If the artic cap has thinned 45% (!!!!), then according to global warming models, the sea should have risen ~10-100 meters, depending on the model
No, you fool. These models do not exist, you have invented them. The melting of the Arctic ice will not affect sea levels a lot because most of it is displacing water already.
Exactly. I fail to see why Americans are so obsessed by them. Knives, pistols, assault rifles, anti-tank weapons, nuclear bombs, biological weapons.
They're all weapons, and most people would agree that the more dangerous ones at the end of the list should not be available to the average person. Most first-world countries draw the line before guns, the USA draws it after. It's more a question of practicality than principles; a case of "how much should the general public be trusted" rather than "can the general public be trusted".
Guns are constantly used legaly for stopping crimes in progress and protecting innocent people, but those stories rarely make it out of the local paper.
The statistic I keep hearing is that gun owners are 40+ times more likely to shoot yourself or a family member by accident than shoot an intruder.
Anyone know if this is true? If so, it seems to be a good case of restricting access to guns.
From reading this thread, I get the impression that Americans can shoot anyone who breaks into their home, at least in some states. Is this correct? Last year, whilst lashed I walked into the wrong house. If this was in the USA, could I have been shot?
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations! You've just been brainwashed by all those big corporations that want you sit back and continue chucking whatever they like into the environment.
CO2 levels are higher this year than they have been for twenty million years. Now this could be:
a) Coincidence (1 in 20,000,000)
b) The fact that we're pumping the shit into the atmosphere every day from millions of cars, thousands of aeroplanes and thousands of factories.
You can't alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere with those sort of quantities without affecting the weather. More CO2 == bigger greenhouse effect. Relatively simple chemistry.
What I find amazingly arrogant is that you call this extremism? YOUR view is the extremist version. Almost every climatologist you can find disagrees with you. Jesus Christ, even the Ameri can s aren't that stupid!
The arrogance continues! You accuse Stephen Hawking, arguably one of the greatest scientists in the world today of swallowing junk science? So perhaps you can tell us your great contribution to science that gives you the authority to be able to decide better than him what is and isn't junk science?
---
Taco could do with hacking a script together that scans each story post for 'furby autopsy' and 'textmode quake'. That would probably cut redundant stories at a stroke.
---
I had the following forwarded to me the other day. I know posting these sort of things is a bit wanky, but I couldn't help myself. The logic is irrefutable:
A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo, and when theherd is hunted, It is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first.
This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole is maintained or even improved by the regular culling of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can operate only as fast as the slowest brain cells through which the electrical signals pass. Recent epidemiological studies have shown that while excessive intake of alcohol kills off brain cells, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. Thus, regular consumption of beer helps eliminate the weaker cells, constantly making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. The result of this in-depth study verifies and validates the causal link between all-weekend parties and job related performance. It also explains why, after a few short years of leaving a university and getting married, most professionals cannot keep up with the performance of the new graduates. Only those few that stick to the strict regimen of voracious alcoholic consumption can maintain the intellectual levels that they achieve during their college years.
So, this is a call to arms. As our country is losing its technological edge, we must not shudder in our homes. Get back into the bars. Quaff that pint. Your company and country need you to be at your peak, and you shouldn't deny yourself the career that you could have.
---
>Having tried to code after a few beers I've
>found the ability to track logic effectively
>makes it far more frustrating than sober, and
>certainly not a fun thing.
Confucious say, program creatively when pissed and debug when sober.
---
The people who 'self-destructed' on drugs were probably the people whose lives were already fucked-up, yes? That's certainly the case in my experience. Society would be better off trying to combat the causes of why people turn to drugs rather than fighting against a so-called 'drug menace'. People who use drugs in a genuinely recreational way rarely get into trouble in with them.
---
And in other news, someone has just worked out how to cut up a furby.
---
Colossus and Zuse's machine were built before the ABC was completed in 1942.
---
Er... which Matrix plot holes? No, seriously... serious question. It mostly seemed reasonable enough to me (as far as these things go OC).
---
Damn right. It's makes the book (esp reference books) ten times more useful (although I would prefer xml/html). Of course, the reason not everyone does this is because you can just email the text to your friends if they don't want to buy the book.
---
I remember (in the days of the Spectrum) text-adventure writers would sometimes deliberately come up with obscure commands that had to be entered just to make the game harder. One particularly infamous one was where the player had to come up with "DISBELIEVE ILLUSION". Not clever.
---
...but human senses are not truly limited to the 5 common ones.
Nope. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, pressure, pain, heat, cold, balance...
---
That still doesn't invalidate the original point you quoted. Occam's razor just says that we should assume that the simplest theory is correct because it is the most likely, not that it proves that is correct.
---
Our soul is what makes us different from the plants and other animals around us.
Now that's disrespectful, goddammit. I don't believe in God (though I do have a sneaking suspicion that the mind is more than physiology) but I'm not particularly anti-religion. The exception is where they make ludicrous statements like these. How do you claim that, say, bonobos don't have a soul compared to a human despite being demonstrated to have more intelligence than a three-year-old kid? Presumably any aliens we meet would also not have a soul. Hah! Are you in for a shock...
---
remember reading in some Scientific American or some such magazine that researchers had determined that Einstein had a much higher percentage of Glial cells in his brain than does the average population.
Aye, but it's the old cause-and-effect argument again. Was his brain so significantly difference because he was such a genius or did he spend so much time contemplating the universe that parts of his brain were stimulated and enlarged? I believe that a lot of current theories support the latter, but at a guess I'd say it was a combination.
There seems to be a lot of research highlighting the differences between Al's brain and mere mortal's brains. I wonder if you took any two brains from the population would you find significant differences? Just a thought.
---
Corporations are out to fuck people. Their mission in life is to extract as much money out of your nose as possible.
I don't understand why you are so trusting of self-appointed bureuacrats rather than elected officials? Don't you think democracy is a good idea? I'd rather not have my life controlled by corporations thank you.
---
Damn, that's the second time I've been caught out like that in a web forum. Remembering the distance to P.C. has so far given me no kudos at all :-)
Actually, the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light years away. Just being annoyingly pedantic...
Java too slow? We've heard that a million times. Boring. It's quick enough for thousands of Java hackers out there.
It's not as quick as C performance-wise, but you get a speed tradeoff in return for platform independence, greater stability etc etc. The vast majority of apps being written today do not need to be blindingly fast. It's much more useful to have them written faster and be easier to mantain, both of which are helped a lot by Java.
I suspect most of the flame I hear against Java is from established C coders who are scared they'll have to learn a new language. Try it, you might like it. I use Java and Perl almost exclusively now. I wouldn't use C now unless I was feeling masochistic or had to do something really low-level.
// die rolling program
// assume imported java.util.Random;
Random r = new Random();
System.out.println(r.nextInt(5) + 1);
// it doesn't get any easier than this,
// even in Basic
There is no reason to think that humanity has had any affect on the weather.
/. all week. We are pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. THIS WARMS THE ATMOSPHERE UP by trapping heat from the sun. It's practically unchallenged in serious scientific circles.
This is one of the most imbecellic statements I have heard on
Now you can argue about how much effect this actually has, and you can even make a case for it being a relatively minor effect compared to the Earth's natural cycles. But you can't say that we can significantly change the composition of the planet's atmosphere without affecting the weather and expect to be taken seriously.
If the artic cap has thinned 45% (!!!!), then according to global warming models, the sea should have risen ~10-100 meters, depending on the model
No, you fool. These models do not exist, you have invented them. The melting of the Arctic ice will not affect sea levels a lot because most of it is displacing water already.
Under the terms of the data protection act, they have to register all the information they hold about you.
This data protection register is online. This is what a search for Tesco turned up.
That's almost the same idea as abolishing speed limits and letting individual drivers choose what is a safe speed to drive at.
A gun is just a tool..
Exactly. I fail to see why Americans are so obsessed by them. Knives, pistols, assault rifles, anti-tank weapons, nuclear bombs, biological weapons.
They're all weapons, and most people would agree that the more dangerous ones at the end of the list should not be available to the average person. Most first-world countries draw the line before guns, the USA draws it after. It's more a question of practicality than principles; a case of "how much should the general public be trusted" rather than "can the general public be trusted".
Guns are constantly used legaly for stopping crimes in progress and protecting innocent people, but those stories rarely make it out of the local paper.
The statistic I keep hearing is that gun owners are 40+ times more likely to shoot yourself or a family member by accident than shoot an intruder.
Anyone know if this is true? If so, it seems to be a good case of restricting access to guns.
From reading this thread, I get the impression that Americans can shoot anyone who breaks into their home, at least in some states. Is this correct? Last year, whilst lashed I walked into the wrong house. If this was in the USA, could I have been shot?