No, it can't be "questioned". It's science. It's fact. You can't question fact.
It was once settled fact that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System, with (flawed but present) mathematical proofs to back it up.
Yes, you can question fact - the trick lies in proving that any refutations you find are themselves factual, and that they provide a better explanation for observed pheonomenon, and that they don't conflict with other relevant supporting facts.
After all, one cannot prove a better hypothesis without first questioning the existing one.
Actually, I remember being taught Evolution as a kid... in Catholic School. They also described Darwin as the man, right down to his own religious convictions, and his assertions that Evolution was never meant to supplant religious belief (which makes the whole proposition of Evolution as an anti-religious proof to be silly at best). IOW, we got the full scientific curricula, as well as the historical and personal context.
Meanwhile, the public schools (by comparison) still teach the lowest-common-denominator version of it.
This brings up something bigger than Evolution though, IMHO. While Catholic schools still teach classes in Logic, Critical Thinking, and Rhetoric (the latter esp. in Jesuit-run schools), the public schools don't even bother. I think that lacking to be a far greater scientific travesty than whatever gets taught during a Biology class.
The point of science is to invite conflicting points of view, so that they may be tested. The whole point of science is to weed out the unprovable hypotheses from the provable, so that in the end we get a solid set of working facts from which to build more complex ones.
As long as it uses the same scientific methods, I have zero problems with any challenging points of view being taught in a classroom.
And BTW: allowing alternate points of view in a science class is not akin to an imposition of Sharia law. Also, Islam encompasses well over 1bn people, including nations such as Indonesia (which definitely doesn't practice Sharia law...), Turkey (which is quite liberal, even by EU standards), and so forth. So, you may want to keep that brush a bit narrower than you currently have it.
Err, TFA only consists of interviews. If I were a Texan and repaired computers, I don't think I'd want to stake my business on what the legislator said in a news interview, as opposed to the actual letter of the law, which quite frankly is very poorly written.
Consumers who knowingly take computers to an unlicensed company for repair can face the same penalties.
-From one of the TFA's.
So, if I lived in Texas (fat chance, but...) and I RMA'd a busted machine purchased off a smaller OEM online (and out-of-state), I can get a big fat fine and a criminal record because the OEM would probably not have a Texas PI license?
Something is definitely brain-dead in the Texas Legislature.
It doesn't, but the logic is supposed to go along the lines that (just example) if Joe GeekSquad does something dumb with your data, there's bigger repercussions at stake (e.g. Joe GeekSquad loses his bond, faces losing his license and thus his livelihood, etc etc).
Of course, it'll become a complete and utter state-sanctioned racket, just like realtor licensing and Bar (legal) licensing... you have to take certain classes, you have to pass certain tests, etc etc... all of which feeds a little cottage industry designed to teach and help certify (and here we all thought the Boot Camp was dead...)
I'm just curious as to how the frig they're ever going to enforce against those among us who build/support machines owned by family and friends.
Err, Obama voted for it along with the majority. McCain was counted "Not Present".
Bush has yet to do anything at all with it.
I'm not saying this to troll, but to suggest that perhaps you're angry at the wrong person, when instead you should be looking at people - specifically, both viable candidates for the US Presidential elections come November (IIRC, McCain is on record as supporting it - could be wrong about that though).
Actually, 1994 was the biggest upheaval in Congress. The Democrats held majority power for 30+ years to that point, and looked to continue that hold... then suddenly this guy named Gingrich and a whole horde of opposition party candidates won a cascade of elections, blasting out a huge majority for themselves. The Senate fell to GOP rule just as quickly as the House did.
2006 really was no upheaval because the GOP majority in Congress had slowly begun to wane ever since 1998 or so... it was a slow shift if nothing else.
Incidentally, Barack Obama voted "Yea" on this bill. Not "Present", not "Npot voting", not "No"... he voted for it.
I wonder what the DNC and its fan base is going to do when they find out en masse? I wonder how they'll spin it if McCain's campaign ever gets its head out of its collective ass and spreads word about it?
I wouldn't be so sure of it happening soon... some odd thoughts:
The oscilloscopes required to read and reliably analyze such a waveform at the moment cost approximately more than most folks' houses (not counting probes, tips, calibration contracts, etc). We have a few here where I work, and they're treated like newborn children because of the pricetag.
Even in a digital waveform, you've always had rise and falloff, and those could conceivably be read and acted on (though in only a few damned-small niche cases). You've also always had analog circuits and components, though in programming you read the output as a float value, the shunt off the desired threshold(s) as the breakpoint(s) in your if/else (or case) statements.
Truly analog programming would require that we pretty much cast out nearly everything we're using now, or at best modify the hell out of a given language (if you think C gives you the shakes now...:) ).
Otherwise I agree perfectly - it would be pretty cool.
...they treat the earliest stages as if the diode were a unijunction transistor of sorts (using the photon reaction as if it were the gate 'voltage'), and check the waveform? Gah - I'll RTFA(bstract) @ work...:)
Must be nice... I ego-googled just for a second, and found out that I'm an electrical engineering professor (though I used to have an EE, this guy ain't me), and a former Attorney General for the state of Iowa, among other things... Judging by the first page or two, potential employers are going to probably going to give up in frustration if they ever want to peek in on me online...
My name is fairly common (last name is Miller) - there's roughly 4 of us in the company I work for (out of 95k employees), and there's about forty of me w/ the same first/last name combo (with various differences in middle names and etc.) in the metro area phone book.
It's not just online, either - I remember awhile when some idiot collection agency kept bugging me over some other guy's debt, because we happened to share the same first/last name combo. I tried to tell them this repeatedly, then finally out of frustration told 'em: "see you in court, idiot!" It never came to fruition, and my credit record never reflected it *shrug*
I guess that's why I never really worried if I see my name online - chances are it's not me anyway.
Agreed, perfectly. It's all a question of impact. (OTOH, there's still an uphill battle of the decades of propaganda concerning nuclear waste).
To be honest, carpeting a desert with solar panels makes zero problems for me... life there is pretty scarce at best in the best-producing areas (e.g. Death Valley), and its not like there's a mad scramble of developers who would complain.
Depends on where you put them. If they're parked along the Oregon or Northern California Coast (where whales, sea lions, and etc live and thrive), then yeah, it'll be a bother. But if you park them where there's minimal impact (say, off the coast of New York City), or you space them out enough to not pose a hazard, no problem.
Besides, it's a question of how much damage. Potentially disturbing the patterns of some wildlife here or there (without killing them off, obviously) is a helluva lot more responsible than burning megatons of fuel oil daily, no?
* so I take it that no one could cough up the highest Crysis framerate figure? (yes, I know, I KNOW!...but it seems to be all-to-common for LAN-goers to brag on framerates these days).
* Finally! I can bring my machine-du-jour and not have everyone stare at it funny because it's not a Windows box! (I always brought either a Linux box or a Mac).
* How d'ya taunt on chat in the thing? "'LOAD * 8,1' this, n00b!" doesn't quite have a ring to it, y'know?
* How many LED's and uber-liquid-cooling heatsink rigs can you jam into a C-64 case, anyway?
* Well, rebooting would still be just as common...
...wish that it was worth more than that, but seriously, I haven't touched QOOLE (if anyone remembers that one) since 1999-2000.
Question I have is, what use would remain for it?
Now for games out now... sure. But UT(insert year here) comes with built-in level editors, as do many other games. Odds are excellent that someone on Gamasutra has built a converter to allow a level built in.3ds/.obj/.fbx/COLLADA format to be imported and tweaked in very short order (which allows one to build levels for multiple games without the need to re-learn a new tool every time a new game comes out).
Err, what does online reviews filtering have to do with reading a book?
Hell, I pretty much do this unconsciously anyway when evaluating something, for things that I am familiar with (e.g. computer parts, electronics, etc).
Also - last I checked, Powell's Books hasn't gone out of business or become a glorified magazine stand. Folks on the train haven't stopped reading books and novels (of an amazing variety judging by last night's commute home).
It's a question of priorities - I have zero problems with curling up and reading a nice long novel - I do hate having to weed through a pile of user-generated reviews built with various stages of literacy and agendae.
Dude, even back in history the sound bite, even if it makes no sense nowadays ("Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!") has been prevalent.
Also, "our current times" include things that simply didn't exist before: near-universal literacy, 24/7/365 media, and a desire to do something with one's time off other than simply sit around in a half-drunken stupor somewhere while catching up from the work-week's exhaustion. The latter part was pretty much what the vast majority of humanity did with what little leisure time they got.
...is there any way to have it filter out the obvious astroturfers and trolls?
Seriously, any big-name product or service will have a coterie of fanboys (or paid astroturfers) who will praise something no matter what, and a flock of trolls who will point out everything wrong with it, no matter what.
...now how do you filter those out?
Do that, and it'd be one hell of an advancement in filtering.:)
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No, it can't be "questioned". It's science. It's fact. You can't question fact.
It was once settled fact that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System, with (flawed but present) mathematical proofs to back it up.
Yes, you can question fact - the trick lies in proving that any refutations you find are themselves factual, and that they provide a better explanation for observed pheonomenon, and that they don't conflict with other relevant supporting facts.
After all, one cannot prove a better hypothesis without first questioning the existing one.
Actually, I remember being taught Evolution as a kid... in Catholic School. They also described Darwin as the man, right down to his own religious convictions, and his assertions that Evolution was never meant to supplant religious belief (which makes the whole proposition of Evolution as an anti-religious proof to be silly at best). IOW, we got the full scientific curricula, as well as the historical and personal context.
Meanwhile, the public schools (by comparison) still teach the lowest-common-denominator version of it.
This brings up something bigger than Evolution though, IMHO. While Catholic schools still teach classes in Logic, Critical Thinking, and Rhetoric (the latter esp. in Jesuit-run schools), the public schools don't even bother. I think that lacking to be a far greater scientific travesty than whatever gets taught during a Biology class.
The point of science is to invite conflicting points of view, so that they may be tested. The whole point of science is to weed out the unprovable hypotheses from the provable, so that in the end we get a solid set of working facts from which to build more complex ones.
As long as it uses the same scientific methods, I have zero problems with any challenging points of view being taught in a classroom.
And BTW: allowing alternate points of view in a science class is not akin to an imposition of Sharia law. Also, Islam encompasses well over 1bn people, including nations such as Indonesia (which definitely doesn't practice Sharia law...), Turkey (which is quite liberal, even by EU standards), and so forth. So, you may want to keep that brush a bit narrower than you currently have it.
Err, TFA only consists of interviews. If I were a Texan and repaired computers, I don't think I'd want to stake my business on what the legislator said in a news interview, as opposed to the actual letter of the law, which quite frankly is very poorly written.
Consumers who knowingly take computers to an unlicensed company for repair can face the same penalties.
-From one of the TFA's.
So, if I lived in Texas (fat chance, but...) and I RMA'd a busted machine purchased off a smaller OEM online (and out-of-state), I can get a big fat fine and a criminal record because the OEM would probably not have a Texas PI license?
Something is definitely brain-dead in the Texas Legislature.
It doesn't, but the logic is supposed to go along the lines that (just example) if Joe GeekSquad does something dumb with your data, there's bigger repercussions at stake (e.g. Joe GeekSquad loses his bond, faces losing his license and thus his livelihood, etc etc).
Of course, it'll become a complete and utter state-sanctioned racket, just like realtor licensing and Bar (legal) licensing... you have to take certain classes, you have to pass certain tests, etc etc... all of which feeds a little cottage industry designed to teach and help certify (and here we all thought the Boot Camp was dead...)
I'm just curious as to how the frig they're ever going to enforce against those among us who build/support machines owned by family and friends.
It's not like they'd go and vote for McCain anyways...
But nothing stops them from simply not voting, no?
He'd buy more headaches than the show of support would be worth (after all, who is Clinton going to stump for now... McCain?)
Err, Obama voted for it along with the majority. McCain was counted "Not Present".
Bush has yet to do anything at all with it.
I'm not saying this to troll, but to suggest that perhaps you're angry at the wrong person, when instead you should be looking at people - specifically, both viable candidates for the US Presidential elections come November (IIRC, McCain is on record as supporting it - could be wrong about that though).
Actually, 1994 was the biggest upheaval in Congress. The Democrats held majority power for 30+ years to that point, and looked to continue that hold... then suddenly this guy named Gingrich and a whole horde of opposition party candidates won a cascade of elections, blasting out a huge majority for themselves. The Senate fell to GOP rule just as quickly as the House did.
2006 really was no upheaval because the GOP majority in Congress had slowly begun to wane ever since 1998 or so... it was a slow shift if nothing else.
Incidentally, Barack Obama voted "Yea" on this bill. Not "Present", not "Npot voting", not "No"... he voted for it.
I wonder what the DNC and its fan base is going to do when they find out en masse? I wonder how they'll spin it if McCain's campaign ever gets its head out of its collective ass and spreads word about it?
Interesting, to say the least...
Err, you want us to send down a rope to haul you up after the point gets done whooshing by? :)
(IOW, he was kidding) :)
I wouldn't be so sure of it happening soon... some odd thoughts:
The oscilloscopes required to read and reliably analyze such a waveform at the moment cost approximately more than most folks' houses (not counting probes, tips, calibration contracts, etc). We have a few here where I work, and they're treated like newborn children because of the pricetag.
Even in a digital waveform, you've always had rise and falloff, and those could conceivably be read and acted on (though in only a few damned-small niche cases). You've also always had analog circuits and components, though in programming you read the output as a float value, the shunt off the desired threshold(s) as the breakpoint(s) in your if/else (or case) statements.
Truly analog programming would require that we pretty much cast out nearly everything we're using now, or at best modify the hell out of a given language (if you think C gives you the shakes now... :) ).
Otherwise I agree perfectly - it would be pretty cool.
...they treat the earliest stages as if the diode were a unijunction transistor of sorts (using the photon reaction as if it were the gate 'voltage'), and check the waveform? Gah - I'll RTFA(bstract) @ work... :)
Montana is a couple of states away from me :)
I've pretty much left it dormant since 1995 since I shifted careers... bad typing in the morning &tc.
Must be nice... I ego-googled just for a second, and found out that I'm an electrical engineering professor (though I used to have an EE, this guy ain't me), and a former Attorney General for the state of Iowa, among other things... Judging by the first page or two, potential employers are going to probably going to give up in frustration if they ever want to peek in on me online...
My name is fairly common (last name is Miller) - there's roughly 4 of us in the company I work for (out of 95k employees), and there's about forty of me w/ the same first/last name combo (with various differences in middle names and etc.) in the metro area phone book.
It's not just online, either - I remember awhile when some idiot collection agency kept bugging me over some other guy's debt, because we happened to share the same first/last name combo. I tried to tell them this repeatedly, then finally out of frustration told 'em: "see you in court, idiot!" It never came to fruition, and my credit record never reflected it *shrug*
I guess that's why I never really worried if I see my name online - chances are it's not me anyway.
Agreed, perfectly. It's all a question of impact. (OTOH, there's still an uphill battle of the decades of propaganda concerning nuclear waste).
To be honest, carpeting a desert with solar panels makes zero problems for me... life there is pretty scarce at best in the best-producing areas (e.g. Death Valley), and its not like there's a mad scramble of developers who would complain.
Depends on where you put them. If they're parked along the Oregon or Northern California Coast (where whales, sea lions, and etc live and thrive), then yeah, it'll be a bother. But if you park them where there's minimal impact (say, off the coast of New York City), or you space them out enough to not pose a hazard, no problem.
Besides, it's a question of how much damage. Potentially disturbing the patterns of some wildlife here or there (without killing them off, obviously) is a helluva lot more responsible than burning megatons of fuel oil daily, no?
* so I take it that no one could cough up the highest Crysis framerate figure? (yes, I know, I KNOW! ...but it seems to be all-to-common for LAN-goers to brag on framerates these days).
* Finally! I can bring my machine-du-jour and not have everyone stare at it funny because it's not a Windows box! (I always brought either a Linux box or a Mac).
* How d'ya taunt on chat in the thing? "'LOAD * 8,1' this, n00b!" doesn't quite have a ring to it, y'know?
* How many LED's and uber-liquid-cooling heatsink rigs can you jam into a C-64 case, anyway?
* Well, rebooting would still be just as common...
...wish that it was worth more than that, but seriously, I haven't touched QOOLE (if anyone remembers that one) since 1999-2000.
Question I have is, what use would remain for it?
Now for games out now... sure. But UT(insert year here) comes with built-in level editors, as do many other games. Odds are excellent that someone on Gamasutra has built a converter to allow a level built in .3ds/.obj/.fbx/COLLADA format to be imported and tweaked in very short order (which allows one to build levels for multiple games without the need to re-learn a new tool every time a new game comes out).
Who says you have to? It can be a switch, an option.
Err, what does online reviews filtering have to do with reading a book?
Hell, I pretty much do this unconsciously anyway when evaluating something, for things that I am familiar with (e.g. computer parts, electronics, etc).
Also - last I checked, Powell's Books hasn't gone out of business or become a glorified magazine stand. Folks on the train haven't stopped reading books and novels (of an amazing variety judging by last night's commute home).
It's a question of priorities - I have zero problems with curling up and reading a nice long novel - I do hate having to weed through a pile of user-generated reviews built with various stages of literacy and agendae.
Dude, even back in history the sound bite, even if it makes no sense nowadays ("Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!") has been prevalent.
Also, "our current times" include things that simply didn't exist before: near-universal literacy, 24/7/365 media, and a desire to do something with one's time off other than simply sit around in a half-drunken stupor somewhere while catching up from the work-week's exhaustion. The latter part was pretty much what the vast majority of humanity did with what little leisure time they got.
...is there any way to have it filter out the obvious astroturfers and trolls?
Seriously, any big-name product or service will have a coterie of fanboys (or paid astroturfers) who will praise something no matter what, and a flock of trolls who will point out everything wrong with it, no matter what.
Do that, and it'd be one hell of an advancement in filtering. :)