The probability of dying "p(death)" can be calculated with the simple equation "p(death) = (x - y)/x", where "x" is the number of people who have ever lived, and "y" is the number who have attained immortality.
For an atheist, y = 0, and p(death) = 1, as you have assumed. But other belief systems give different answers. In a traditional Judaeo-Christian system, we find that y = 2 (Enoch and Elijah), and hence p(death) is slightly less than 1.
TEST: Formulate a similar equation for taxes. Compare the results for a variety of belief systems. Is p(death) greater or less than p(taxes)? (Discuss.)
Why are cell phones much more popular in Europe/Japan? Because land-lines are much less popular because of the per-minute rates etc... they don't have that unlimited local calls
Why are cell phones less popular in America? I've heard rumours that Americans have to pay to receive calls. I hope it's not true, but if it is, it's something that needs fixing.
which leads into the fancy-schmancy cell phones they have... they aren't used to using dial-up to reach the web... that's too expensive. so they *only* have internet access through their cell-phones...
That may be true for Japan, but it certainly isn't for Europe. By and large we don't access the internet on our mobiles, and we do by dialup.
I appreciate that you're talking mostly about Japan, of course. Just a European perspective.:)
Most times when a company finds a website they don't like, they start with a "cease and desist", and only move on to (expensive) legal action if that doesn't get the result they want.
A test that succeeds on a sample of precisely one is hardly proven to work. If I find a three-legged cat, I can't claim that any three-legged animal is a cat, or that all cats have three legs. Similarly, if similar signs are found on another world, that doesn't necessarily mean that life exists there - nor does their absence prove that it doesn't.
Although I will concede that finding similar signs would indicate a possibility of life...
Americans very much consider this a war. It is not unusual to consider assassination of foreign officials during times of war. Saddam tried on bush. We've had prohibitions on it that the CIA occasionally violates. There's been consideration of lifting the prohibition.
We're not talking about foreign officials here - we're talking about tourists, exchange students, and immigrant workers! Do you really think that granting them a "trial" by secret tribunal is generous?! (Not that I can really blame you, as Britain is also busily engaged in stripping alleged "terrorists" of their human rights...)
Because many countries that sponsor terrorists may have cbrn capabilities and will probably have missiles that reach the U.S. in 10 or 20 years. Normal deterrence (MAD) does not work for many of these nations, because Saddam Hussein, for example, does not seem to care if we kill all of his citizens. It would save him a lot of work. Upholding treaties kind of pales in comparison to the thought of that.
I hold it proven: you're mad. September 11 has already demonstrated that missiles are not the only way to attack a country. ABM is a flawed idea - it's like going into battle with bullet-proof socks and a bare chest. And this idea that MAD "doesn't work" for so-called "terrorist-sponsoring states" - where on earth is that coming from? Can you provide any evidence at all? Saddam Hussein is a dictator, yes, but I haven't noticed much froth around his mouth.
If you want to be paid for writing something, or making something, then obviously - don't make it until people have paid you to.
Great idea! As a matter of fact, I'm just about ready to start work on a killer app that's going to blow MS out of the water, and improve your productivity no end. I'll have it written within a week of starting, I promise you. I just need you to send a reasonable sum of money to my PayPal account...
Oh, and while you're about it, I know of a great investment opportunity in the South Sea.
Seriously, nobody's going to pay in advance for software. Your idea would mean the death of independent software. Unless you were aiming for a "funny" moderation, of course, in which case I salute you.
But drop the consoles, please. At least the prospect of having to walk across the bar to reach the thing prevents most of the drunker drinkers from putting on... well, I'll leave their choices to your imagination.
Oh, and add a credit/debit card reader. I need my change for the pool table.
Lovely! Now all we have to do is convince our local bartenders to part with $20,000 or so.
Bill Gates is giving away some of his fortune; look at, for example, his considerable donations to Cambridge University. (Though quite why he wanted to support them instead of a worthier cause, I can't imagine.)
But he shall probably do things the "American Way", and that does mean cutthroat business followed by philanthropy in later years. Better that way than that none of his profits are ever given back. Maybe there is another way still better - but could Microsoft actually change?
I came up with a great idea for improving transport. Basically you take a torus with a cylinder running through the centre, and it kind of rolls along.
So I took it along to the patent office, and they just laughed at me. Bastards.
...what we really need is rain power. Roofs covered in tiny hydroelectric turbines, and a dam in every gutter. It's the British answer to solar panels!
With Media Player, it's probably something to do with the fact that they're probably using an overlay surface. Besides, could you imagine trying to real-time alpha blend a movie? Ouch.
It's exactly that. Media Player, and indeed just about all media players, use overlays for various reasons; it makes taking screenshots difficult (unless you use somehting like HyperSnap DX), and it's something transparency apps like this one don't take into account.
If you want to watch translucent movies, try Sasami2k, a lovely little movie player. It can do loads of other kewl stuff, like using a movie for your wallpaper. Nice.
DualHead is a nice solution - if you want to use a Matrox card. If you want to keep your GeForce3, it's no good. Besides, it's a silly name for a feature that's really nothing new.
Just plug in a second (ie PCI) video card. You probably won't be playing games on your second screen, and AFAIK a cheap video card is just as good for GUI stuff - as long as you aren't running at some crazy resolution, which is out of the question if you're using an old monitor.
Not so good for hardware-accelerated alpha blending, of course, which is why this is a bit OT.
The main use of a second screen is to hold tool palettes. They're invaluable if you're doing graphics work.
...Microsoft has denied responsibility for a series of attacks carried out in the PRC during the earlier part of this month. The Chinese government has claimed that the bombs, which destroyed several major CD duplication facilities in the city of Xian, had been delivered by vans bearing the familiar Windows (r) logo.
"We suspected something was amiss when we received Windows XP boxes without license agreement stickers or shrinkwrapping," sobbed a survivor, "but the prospect of a new version was too tempting. My partner loaded the disc, and then all hell broke loose."
The US has responded to allegations of complicity by placing the blame firmly on the shoulders of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. "Bin Laden is an enemy of Western culture", declared a White House spokesperson, tucking a tuft of her hair back into her Microsoft (tm) baseball cap. "It was inevitable that he would try to blacken the name of our finest cultural exports."
This is somewhat parallel to the situation common in Windows, where every new application tries to place its shortcuts in a separate folder off Start Menu/Programs. It's common to see start menus that take up two screens or more, whereas everything could be found much faster if properly categorised. MS made things worse in Win98 by having the menu nonalphabetical by default.
Limiting bad organisation to Red Hat is silly. The only Linux distros I've tried are Red Hat and Mandrake, both of which are equally poor in this regard. Nor, I have to say, does the FSS make it any easier to organise a hard drive properly. Is the/usr/local distinction useful, for example? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a setup like/usr/apps,/usr/utils,/usr/games,/usr/wm, and so on - to categorise items by their function, rather than by who compiled them?
The whole/home thing is equally confusing to a Windows migrant. Yes, *nix is a multi-user OS. But is that a useful feature for the majority of home users? Providing irrelevant directories is a sure-fire way to confusion.
It's impossible to have a perfectly organised hard disk, of course. You can't fight entropy.
Everyone seems to think that using Linux, GPG, or other open source/non-MS software would be an easy way to escape such an attack.
Isn't the opposite the case?
What's stopping the FBI from *contributing* to such a project? All they have to do is submit an innocuous-looking patch which just happens to include keylogging! Or what if they released a new open source encryption program which is "invisible to FBI surveillance"? If their code was sufficiently obfuscated, I doubt anyone would catch on quickly.
The Feds aren't stupid, and I think they'll learn quickly enough that Open Source is by no means synonymous with Security.
...if you owned such a system. I'd be willing to bet that you'd rather buy a GeForce 3 AGP card for $100 (yeah, I'm dreaming) than a GeForce 3 module for $300, right?
Profitable indeed, if they could only persuade people it was worth it.
Besides, how difficult is it really to swap parts of a PC? Sure, still too complicated for the average user, but at least these days we have PnP, IDE autodetection, and so on...
Not here they don't. Most of the University of Oxford runs on Windows, and I log onto NT servers daily.
And Windows networking is a real system. You may not like it, you may prefer other systems - it sounds like you automatically disparage anything you don't use yourself - but it has sufficient features and sufficient security for most purposes. Er... when fully patched and up to date, of course. ^_^
"Basically, there will be a point soon where even gaming consoles will all be "fast enough", which will mean bad news for hardware manufacturers until the "Next Big Thing" emerges to max out even cutting-edge stuff. Will it be "true virtual reality"? Who knows? I for one will be interested to see..."
I'm waiting for real-time raytraced lighting, and some kind of equivalent for sound. (Wavetracing?) Oh, and forget texture mapping - I want every bobble of the carpet to be individually modelled, same as every fibre of cloth, for proper realism.
You may look at current systems and think things can't get much better, but there's still a huge amount of stuff that these systems can't even dream of handling. I remember looking at Doom and wondering how Quake could improve on it - doesn't that sound silly now?
Frankly, I believe we have years of meaningful speed increases to come. It's not time to worry yet.
...formerly PSXEmu.com, and still the best source I know of for PSX emulation news. (No, I don't work there.) They don't have the bleem! 1.6 update online yet - they were linking to bleem.com - but I expect they'll put it up soon.
...Randy always said he'd love to get another coder on the job, but it'd be more trouble than it was worth. Not quite a perfect candidate for OSS development.
(Sure, there *are* OSS projects that use ASM, but...)
The Cambridge Z88 mostly used RAM for storage. Changing the batteries, you had about 30 seconds before you started losing data. Of course, there was still a low-tech solution for the slow: plugging it into the mains while you changed the batteries.
Besides, I don't know about you, but I don't have to change my CMOS battery very often...
Slashdot Mirror
Perfect! Otherwise, how would the aliens know that Earth was tiny, flat, and stamped with the Queen's head on one side?
The probability of dying "p(death)" can be calculated with the simple equation "p(death) = (x - y)/x", where "x" is the number of people who have ever lived, and "y" is the number who have attained immortality.
For an atheist, y = 0, and p(death) = 1, as you have assumed. But other belief systems give different answers. In a traditional Judaeo-Christian system, we find that y = 2 (Enoch and Elijah), and hence p(death) is slightly less than 1.
TEST: Formulate a similar equation for taxes. Compare the results for a variety of belief systems. Is p(death) greater or less than p(taxes)? (Discuss.)
There I was thinking that one bought them in order to be able to watch the film at will, with surround sound and a high-resolution picture. Silly me.
Why are cell phones much more popular in Europe/Japan? Because land-lines are much less popular because of the per-minute rates etc... they don't have that unlimited local calls
Why are cell phones less popular in America? I've heard rumours that Americans have to pay to receive calls. I hope it's not true, but if it is, it's something that needs fixing.
which leads into the fancy-schmancy cell phones they have... they aren't used to using dial-up to reach the web... that's too expensive. so they *only* have internet access through their cell-phones...
That may be true for Japan, but it certainly isn't for Europe. By and large we don't access the internet on our mobiles, and we do by dialup.
I appreciate that you're talking mostly about Japan, of course. Just a European perspective. :)
Most times when a company finds a website they don't like, they start with a "cease and desist", and only move on to (expensive) legal action if that doesn't get the result they want.
You're forgetting Star Control II. The Slylandro fit the bill perfectly.
A test that succeeds on a sample of precisely one is hardly proven to work. If I find a three-legged cat, I can't claim that any three-legged animal is a cat, or that all cats have three legs. Similarly, if similar signs are found on another world, that doesn't necessarily mean that life exists there - nor does their absence prove that it doesn't.
Although I will concede that finding similar signs would indicate a possibility of life...
Americans very much consider this a war. It is not unusual to consider assassination of foreign officials during times of war. Saddam tried on bush. We've had prohibitions on it that the CIA occasionally violates. There's been consideration of lifting the prohibition.
We're not talking about foreign officials here - we're talking about tourists, exchange students, and immigrant workers! Do you really think that granting them a "trial" by secret tribunal is generous?! (Not that I can really blame you, as Britain is also busily engaged in stripping alleged "terrorists" of their human rights...)
Because many countries that sponsor terrorists may have cbrn capabilities and will probably have missiles that reach the U.S. in 10 or 20 years. Normal deterrence (MAD) does not work for many of these nations, because Saddam Hussein, for example, does not seem to care if we kill all of his citizens. It would save him a lot of work. Upholding treaties kind of pales in comparison to the thought of that.
I hold it proven: you're mad. September 11 has already demonstrated that missiles are not the only way to attack a country. ABM is a flawed idea - it's like going into battle with bullet-proof socks and a bare chest. And this idea that MAD "doesn't work" for so-called "terrorist-sponsoring states" - where on earth is that coming from? Can you provide any evidence at all? Saddam Hussein is a dictator, yes, but I haven't noticed much froth around his mouth.
If you want to be paid for writing something, or making something, then obviously - don't make it until people have paid you to.
Great idea! As a matter of fact, I'm just about ready to start work on a killer app that's going to blow MS out of the water, and improve your productivity no end. I'll have it written within a week of starting, I promise you. I just need you to send a reasonable sum of money to my PayPal account...
Oh, and while you're about it, I know of a great investment opportunity in the South Sea.
Seriously, nobody's going to pay in advance for software. Your idea would mean the death of independent software. Unless you were aiming for a "funny" moderation, of course, in which case I salute you.
But drop the consoles, please. At least the prospect of having to walk across the bar to reach the thing prevents most of the drunker drinkers from putting on... well, I'll leave their choices to your imagination.
Oh, and add a credit/debit card reader. I need my change for the pool table.
Lovely! Now all we have to do is convince our local bartenders to part with $20,000 or so.
Bill Gates is giving away some of his fortune; look at, for example, his considerable donations to Cambridge University. (Though quite why he wanted to support them instead of a worthier cause, I can't imagine.)
But he shall probably do things the "American Way", and that does mean cutthroat business followed by philanthropy in later years. Better that way than that none of his profits are ever given back. Maybe there is another way still better - but could Microsoft actually change?
This is what I love about Slashdot, though - people actually do calculate this sort of thing, and come up with interesting results.
I came up with a great idea for improving transport. Basically you take a torus with a cylinder running through the centre, and it kind of rolls along.
So I took it along to the patent office, and they just laughed at me. Bastards.
...what we really need is rain power. Roofs covered in tiny hydroelectric turbines, and a dam in every gutter. It's the British answer to solar panels!
With Media Player, it's probably something to do with the fact that they're probably using an overlay surface. Besides, could you imagine trying to real-time alpha blend a movie? Ouch.
It's exactly that. Media Player, and indeed just about all media players, use overlays for various reasons; it makes taking screenshots difficult (unless you use somehting like HyperSnap DX), and it's something transparency apps like this one don't take into account.
If you want to watch translucent movies, try Sasami2k, a lovely little movie player. It can do loads of other kewl stuff, like using a movie for your wallpaper. Nice.
DualHead is a nice solution - if you want to use a Matrox card. If you want to keep your GeForce3, it's no good. Besides, it's a silly name for a feature that's really nothing new.
Just plug in a second (ie PCI) video card. You probably won't be playing games on your second screen, and AFAIK a cheap video card is just as good for GUI stuff - as long as you aren't running at some crazy resolution, which is out of the question if you're using an old monitor.
Not so good for hardware-accelerated alpha blending, of course, which is why this is a bit OT.
The main use of a second screen is to hold tool palettes. They're invaluable if you're doing graphics work.
"We suspected something was amiss when we received Windows XP boxes without license agreement stickers or shrinkwrapping," sobbed a survivor, "but the prospect of a new version was too tempting. My partner loaded the disc, and then all hell broke loose."
The US has responded to allegations of complicity by placing the blame firmly on the shoulders of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. "Bin Laden is an enemy of Western culture", declared a White House spokesperson, tucking a tuft of her hair back into her Microsoft (tm) baseball cap. "It was inevitable that he would try to blacken the name of our finest cultural exports."
This is somewhat parallel to the situation common in Windows, where every new application tries to place its shortcuts in a separate folder off Start Menu/Programs. It's common to see start menus that take up two screens or more, whereas everything could be found much faster if properly categorised. MS made things worse in Win98 by having the menu nonalphabetical by default.
/usr/local distinction useful, for example? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a setup like /usr/apps, /usr/utils, /usr/games, /usr/wm, and so on - to categorise items by their function, rather than by who compiled them?
/home thing is equally confusing to a Windows migrant. Yes, *nix is a multi-user OS. But is that a useful feature for the majority of home users? Providing irrelevant directories is a sure-fire way to confusion.
Limiting bad organisation to Red Hat is silly. The only Linux distros I've tried are Red Hat and Mandrake, both of which are equally poor in this regard. Nor, I have to say, does the FSS make it any easier to organise a hard drive properly. Is the
The whole
It's impossible to have a perfectly organised hard disk, of course. You can't fight entropy.
Everyone seems to think that using Linux, GPG, or other open source/non-MS software would be an easy way to escape such an attack.
Isn't the opposite the case?
What's stopping the FBI from *contributing* to such a project? All they have to do is submit an innocuous-looking patch which just happens to include keylogging! Or what if they released a new open source encryption program which is "invisible to FBI surveillance"? If their code was sufficiently obfuscated, I doubt anyone would catch on quickly.
The Feds aren't stupid, and I think they'll learn quickly enough that Open Source is by no means synonymous with Security.
...if you owned such a system. I'd be willing to bet that you'd rather buy a GeForce 3 AGP card for $100 (yeah, I'm dreaming) than a GeForce 3 module for $300, right?
Profitable indeed, if they could only persuade people it was worth it.
Besides, how difficult is it really to swap parts of a PC? Sure, still too complicated for the average user, but at least these days we have PnP, IDE autodetection, and so on...
Not here they don't. Most of the University of Oxford runs on Windows, and I log onto NT servers daily.
And Windows networking is a real system. You may not like it, you may prefer other systems - it sounds like you automatically disparage anything you don't use yourself - but it has sufficient features and sufficient security for most purposes. Er... when fully patched and up to date, of course. ^_^
"Basically, there will be a point soon where even gaming consoles will all be "fast enough", which will mean bad news for hardware manufacturers until the "Next Big Thing" emerges to max out even cutting-edge stuff. Will it be "true virtual reality"? Who knows? I for one will be interested to see..."
I'm waiting for real-time raytraced lighting, and some kind of equivalent for sound. (Wavetracing?) Oh, and forget texture mapping - I want every bobble of the carpet to be individually modelled, same as every fibre of cloth, for proper realism.
You may look at current systems and think things can't get much better, but there's still a huge amount of stuff that these systems can't even dream of handling. I remember looking at Doom and wondering how Quake could improve on it - doesn't that sound silly now?
Frankly, I believe we have years of meaningful speed increases to come. It's not time to worry yet.
...formerly PSXEmu.com, and still the best source I know of for PSX emulation news. (No, I don't work there.) They don't have the bleem! 1.6 update online yet - they were linking to bleem.com - but I expect they'll put it up soon.
...Randy always said he'd love to get another coder on the job, but it'd be more trouble than it was worth. Not quite a perfect candidate for OSS development.
(Sure, there *are* OSS projects that use ASM, but...)
The Cambridge Z88 mostly used RAM for storage. Changing the batteries, you had about 30 seconds before you started losing data. Of course, there was still a low-tech solution for the slow: plugging it into the mains while you changed the batteries.
Besides, I don't know about you, but I don't have to change my CMOS battery very often...