Contrast that with what people believe just north of the border [angus-reid.com] - only 22% agree that god created humans within the last 10,000 years. 59% believe in evolution.
So maybe you haven't thought deeply enough about this... are you suggesting genetic differences in intelligence across the border? Or what?
No, I'm saying (not suggesting) that while some other countries have made progress in throwing off the yoke off intellectual repression by religious lobby groups, the US is *ahem* not evolving...
The original post was funny - it was self-deprecating humour:
Being too intelligent is a curse I've had to live with my whole life!
But I guess it sorta goes with my outstanding good looks.:)
My post was a follow-up on it, pointing out that often "beauty (or intelligence) is in the eye of the beholder".
That's right, Forrest! And don't let any of them other boys ever tell you different, y'hear?
You're "special!"
Now get on that short bus before I kick yer ass!
It followed up on the original point - that people are not always unbiased judges. As such, its no different from Aesop's Fable, which iirc, goes like this:
A fox and an owl got into the habit of talking every day. The owl kept on going on about how beautiful her new baby owls were, how wonderful their voices sounded, etc..., so much so, that the fox agreed that he couldn't possibly harm such wonderful creatures.
One day, the fox came upon the owls' nest. Inside were a bunch of scrawny, awkward, squawking baby owls. The fox thought "these ugly things can't possibly be her children" so he ate them.
The moral of the story: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
You now write:
My criterion for intelligence? A sense of humor. Think about it.
Do you want a +1 Ironic / Whoosh mod?
I happen to believe in both evolution and God. What does that make me? Semi-intelligent?:)
No, just wrong on either one or the other;-0
Relax...its all in good fun. If you don't get it, what's the big deal?
Isn't the jury supposed to decide if the accused is guilty of the deed they are accused of ?
They did. They didn't believe her claim that someone hijacked her identity on her computer. There was no wireless, no other evidence that someone else used her computer under her name, the account she shared used the same name as several of her other online accounts elsewhere, and she was caught out about destroying evidence.
They found her guilty based on the facts. Only THEN they decided to send her a message - "Don't lie to us!" If they hadn't believed she was guilty, they would have probably "sent a message" to the RIAA.
the majority claim they're more intelligent than the average person - which simply can't be true.
Of course they can. Intelligence is not a scientific term, it's not something that can be measured, and you can evaluate it in a very narrow context. It's perfectly valid for an individual to judge his own intelligence in a different way from some other individual, with all of them correctly judging their intelligence to be greater than an arbitrary 'average' intelligence decided by a third party.
**snort** Thank you for proving my point. I rest my case.
(the person analyzing the blood sample recently had to admit in court she'd made a mistake in analyzing the small amount of blood found, even
No mistake in analysis - just a mistake in collecting the sample from inside the house. No mistake for the sample on the sack the sleeping bag was stored in - its Nina's blood.
Also, its not a question of whether his story is impossible - just whether it presents a reasonable doubt. An unreasonable doubt is not grounds to find him innocent.
So why did he pick the kids up at school when nobody yet knew that Nina was missing, and it was Nina's day to pick them up? Sounds to me like the act of someone who had personal knowledge. There hasn't been any attempt to explain that one...
What ever happened to researching products before buying them?
So people shouldn't be able to make manufacturers and vendors live up to their promises? Of ot saus "Vista Capable", with no limitations, no "fine print", no disclaimers, then it should be capable of running Vista - not some crippled version.
Sure it makes sense. Most people have an over-inflated idea of how intelligent they are - the majority claim they're more intelligent than the average person - which simply can't be true.
Then again, the majority of Americans believe that God created human beings: 45% believe god did it within the last 10,000 years, and a further 38% believe that god guided it over the last million years (intelligent design). Only 13% believed in Darwin's theory of evolution.
Contrast that with what people believe just north of the border - only 22% agree that god created humans within the last 10,000 years. 59% believe in evolution.
In this set of findings Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80 percent or more of adults accepted evolution; in Japan, 78 percent of adults did. Turkey, on the other hand, had results akin to the US. Kind of telling, I would say...
You're wrong about the "nobody knows" part. Hans Reiser knows, one way or the other.
Unfortunately, we don't have mind-readers yet, so all we can do is look at the evidence and make a decision.
The government is making the case that Reiser killed his wife. The defense is making the case that Reiser didn't. The jury's job is to deide what the facts are, based on that evidence. In other words, is there a reasonable doubt that Reiser killed his wife? Not "a certainty".
I hadn't really been following the case, but the more I look at it today, the more it looks to me like a reasonable person would conclude that Reiser is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He had means, motive, and opportunity. The explanations offered for his actions are patronizing, to say the least. Taken as a whole, his story gets less credible as time goes on, and the "geek defense" or "tortured genius" act is lame.
His story also fails Occam's razor, big-time. The simplest explanation that fits all the facts is that he did kill her. His explanation doesn't fit all the facts, and it rings false. More and more, it sounds like someone with too big an ego, who is in the process of losing everything, and finally throws caution and civility to the winds.
Its not like he doesn't have name recognition, and he already has enough money that he doesn't have to steal more for his friends, like BushCheneyHalliburton.
She had taken a job interview, was accepted for the job (after negotiating an extra few grand because she was now going to be a single mother - you don't bother negotiating if all you're doing is setting up a story line), etc.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/07/BAOFUTA27.DTL
(02-06) 12:48 PST OAKLAND --
Two days before she disappeared, Nina Reiser accepted a $50,000-a-year job with the San Francisco Department of Public Health to help Russian immigrants, the woman who hired her testified Wednesday.
Prosecutors hope Patricia Erwin's testimony will help persuade the jury in the murder trial of Reiser's estranged husband, Hans Reiser, that the missing woman didn't vanish voluntarily - a theory the defense has advanced.
Nina Reiser eagerly discussed the job, to help fellow Russian immigrants with their health concerns, during two interviews in August 2006 and accepted it Sept. 1, 2006, said Erwin, a project manager for the Public Health Department. Reiser was last seen two days after that, and never showed up for work at the San Francisco agency.
"She was very outgoing, friendly," Erwin said in Alameda County Superior Court. "She was easy to connect with. She seemed down-to-earth, and she also seemed very committed to working with us."
Echoing an opinion voiced by other witnesses at the trial, Erwin said the mother of two, then 31 years old, didn't seem to be the kind of person who would abandon her children. "My impression was they were a major part of her life," she said.
Prosecutors say Hans Reiser killed his wife after she dropped off their children at his Oakland hills home Sept. 3, 2006. Her body hasn't been found. The 44-year-old defendant has pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys have suggested that Nina Reiser is alive and hiding in Russia.
Also Wednesday, Richard Wilson of the TransUnion credit bureau testified that Hans Reiser was $90,000 in debt as of late last month. The figure includes $29,000 in unpaid child support, he said. Nina Reiser was about $30,000 in debt, Wilson said.
Other witnesses have testified that Hans Reiser complained that his wife was a financial burden to him.
In other testimony, Michael Caniglia, an employee of AT&T Mobility, said Hans Reiser's cell phone was dormant between Sept. 1 and Sept. 5, 2006, when his voice mail was checked at 5:02 p.m.
At 5:04 p.m. that day, an eight-second call was made on his cell phone to Nina Reiser's cell phone, the phone records showed.
Caniglia said Hans Reiser's cell phone received several incoming phone calls in the days after his wife disappeared. But the phone was either out of range, turned off or had its battery removed, he said.
Caniglia testified that the location of cell phones can be determined if they are on - even when no calls are being made - but not if they are turned off or the batteries are removed.
Prosecutor Paul Hora has told jurors that Hans Reiser's cell phone's battery was detached when police detained him several weeks after his wife disappeared and that her cell phone's battery was detached when police found the phone in her abandoned car.
he 44-year-old popular Linux programmer has pleaded not guilty, claiming his wife abandoned their children, now 6 and 8, and left Oakland for Russia, where the couple met in 1998 while Hans Reiser was overseas developing software.
So let's recap:
Hans owed Nina $$$ - $29k at that point. Nina was about $30k in debt - which balances pretty much with the $29k Hans owed her in child support.
Nina had no need to leave the country - she had a job, custody of the kids, if
Dude, he's not saying he's better, he's saying that his country has set things up so that this is the case, and it is a travesty since he lives in a first world country.
Get that chip off your shoulder before your hurt yourself.
For cednturies, "First world country" meant the Europeans only. That's why there was "First world", "New world", and "3rd world", etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World:.
According to the original definition, Australia isn't a first world country. Neither are the US, Canada, etc. They're all part of the "new world". Its only in the last 50 years that the meaning has changed (USians don't like to not be part of the "first world").
All I'm saying is that as a defense, it sucks the big one.
Its not a valid defense. It may satisfy Reiser as a defense, but it won't satisfy the jury, who will see it as an attempt to manipulate or game them by someone who thinks he's smart enough to get away with it. (by "it", I don't mean murder - I'm referring to the attempted manipulation)
Here we have someone with much personal motive (his wife had left him, cleaned out his bank account, gotten custody of the kids, was having sex with someone else, etc), and this is the best defense the lawyer can come up with? It sounds like his own lawyer doesn't believe him.
If they were so smart, they would have thought of an excuse to get out of jury duty.
The jury is middle aged, middle class, small-C conservative. It draws people who make decisions in society - wield real power - simply because they are able - and willing - to put in whatever time and effort is needed to get the job done.
... or its composed of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of lying to get out of having to perform what many people consider an onerous duty.
If you're innocent, these are the type of people you'd want to entrust your fate to. If you're guilty, on the other hand...
That's for sure. Already, 10.3% of all homes are "under water" on their mortgages. Its expected that between 30% and 50% will end up tht way before we get to the bottom of the trough. The US could be in for a Japan-style meltdown, with at least a decade lost.
This will sideswipe the worlds' economy.
Already, there's a question of whether several German state banks, who hold billions in US toxic mortgage paper, will be forced into bankruptcy.
That's what happens in a global economy where lying ratings agencies give triple-a ratings to junk in return for fees.
Who the hell commits a crime with pair of books on crime in their vehicle, and then leave it all there for someone to find. Programmers know too much about allocation and management of objects to not destroy them when its detrimental they no longer exist.
So there's no such thing as a buffer overrun, or forgetting to mate every call to malloc() with a free()?
I don't buy the "programmer geek defense". It doesn't match up with the reality, which is that you don't have to be a programmer to be an asshole. They're orthogonic. Lets look at the excuses another way:
The books - a "reverse psychology" ploy - figurng that he's so much smarter than everyone else, and that they'd buy into his "well, if I were guilty, why would I have such books? I'd be stupid!" Narcisssists are very much likely to think along such convoluted lines, and to believe that others will fall for their "explanations"
The front seat - well, if it had blood on it, he had to dispose of it, since he wasn't smart enough to know that its possible to destroy the dna evidence (if he hadn't been into reading popular books about crime scene technology, and instead read up on the subject properly, he'd have known this). The last murder trial I sat on, the dna expert said he couldn't mention the techniques that could be used to destroy the evidence (you can buy the needed stuff at your local grocery store, btw), but that no such destruction had taken place.
The $8k and passport. That doesn't need much of an explanation, and could be quite innocent. His wife had already grabbed $$$ from the bank account. Wouldn't YOU want to stay "liquid" in such a case? Passport - why leave it around for someone to grab when you're living in your car?
Do I believe he did it? I can't say - I'm not on the jury. However, I definitely don't buy into the defense tactic of 'geek nerds are "special" and "hard to understand"' as a "get out of jail" card.
Reiser's lawyer is making a big mistake. Sure, he's playing the "this guy is a creep" card to the jury - but he's also insulting the jury's intelligence by thinking that they won't see it for what it is - a ploy, and not evidence one way or the other. Not trusting a jury can come back and bite you - look at what happened with Jamie Thomas and the $222,000 copyright infringement award. The jurors were pissed that she lied to them, and made it known both inside and outside the courtroom.
"She's a liar. We wanted to send a message. I don't know what the fuck she was thinking."
Better to not take the stand, and let people suspect you're an idiot, than to take it, and prove them right.
Then there's the danger that the jurors will think - "If they really expect us to buy into this bs, they must think we just fell off a turnip truck. Sounds like what I'd expect a guilty know-it-all to do."
At the very least, the choice of tactics shows that the lawyer doesn't believe his client is innocent. Based on that, I'd say the jury will probably convict.
And those software "updates", if Windows ever completely breaks backward compatability, will have to take the form of completely new versions, rewritten from scratch; in such a case, people wil be examining their options.
You know, I'm honestly really tired of seeing this same lame ass rant over and over again in every single MS article. Kudos to you at least for keeping it relatively short. This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME Microsoft releases an new OS. They can't win, even if they DID write the best software known to man, and you know why? Legacy compatibility. You guys bitch when it doesn't work with your old shit and if it DOES work with your old shit, you bitch because the OS is bloated and runs like shit. There's a price for compatibility and if you think you have the easy and simple solution, you're probably wrong.
If Microsoft drops backwards compatibility, there's no reason for people to use Microsoft products. If you're going to have to switch all your software anyway, why not switch to linux or osx?
In other words, Microsoft has no choice - they have to continue to produce the same crappy software, because that is what their franchise is based on. Breaking backwards compatibility breaks the only reason people continue to use Windows - because their existing software works.
Most of the people who use Windows hate their computers. Ask how many of them would be happy to contribute to a fund to pay the legal fees of whoever takes out Redmond... among Windows users, Gates is more hated than Hillary.
I am sure you can find one pretty good example of that if you think hard enough.
People are back to using QuickEdit? Awesome. Just loved the ascii art box drawing mode. Menus if you wanted them. And those Wordstar keyboard shortcuts! Ctl-k-b, ctl-k-e, ctl-k-y here I come!... hmmm.. On second thought, saying "ctl-k-y here I come" might be a bad choice of words...
Seriously, was there ever a simpler, better editor than quickedit?
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm saying (not suggesting) that while some other countries have made progress in throwing off the yoke off intellectual repression by religious lobby groups, the US is *ahem* not evolving ...
The original post was funny - it was self-deprecating humour:
My post was a follow-up on it, pointing out that often "beauty (or intelligence) is in the eye of the beholder".
It followed up on the original point - that people are not always unbiased judges. As such, its no different from Aesop's Fable, which iirc, goes like this:
You now write:
Do you want a +1 Ironic / Whoosh mod?
No, just wrong on either one or the otherRelax ...its all in good fun. If you don't get it, what's the big deal?
They did. They didn't believe her claim that someone hijacked her identity on her computer. There was no wireless, no other evidence that someone else used her computer under her name, the account she shared used the same name as several of her other online accounts elsewhere, and she was caught out about destroying evidence.
They found her guilty based on the facts. Only THEN they decided to send her a message - "Don't lie to us!" If they hadn't believed she was guilty, they would have probably "sent a message" to the RIAA.
**snort** Thank you for proving my point. I rest my case.
No mistake in analysis - just a mistake in collecting the sample from inside the house. No mistake for the sample on the sack the sleeping bag was stored in - its Nina's blood.
Also, its not a question of whether his story is impossible - just whether it presents a reasonable doubt. An unreasonable doubt is not grounds to find him innocent.
So why did he pick the kids up at school when nobody yet knew that Nina was missing, and it was Nina's day to pick them up? Sounds to me like the act of someone who had personal knowledge. There hasn't been any attempt to explain that one ...
So people shouldn't be able to make manufacturers and vendors live up to their promises? Of ot saus "Vista Capable", with no limitations, no "fine print", no disclaimers, then it should be capable of running Vista - not some crippled version.
Sure it makes sense. Most people have an over-inflated idea of how intelligent they are - the majority claim they're more intelligent than the average person - which simply can't be true.
Then again, the majority of Americans believe that God created human beings: 45% believe god did it within the last 10,000 years, and a further 38% believe that god guided it over the last million years (intelligent design). Only 13% believed in Darwin's theory of evolution.
Contrast that with what people believe just north of the border - only 22% agree that god created humans within the last 10,000 years. 59% believe in evolution.
In this set of findings Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80 percent or more of adults accepted evolution; in Japan, 78 percent of adults did. Turkey, on the other hand, had results akin to the US. Kind of telling, I would say ...
A towel and a copy of your HHGTTG,
And maybe a hammer to whack Marvin with. If he's going to be so depressed all the time, might as well give him a reason to be.
You're wrong about the "nobody knows" part. Hans Reiser knows, one way or the other.
Unfortunately, we don't have mind-readers yet, so all we can do is look at the evidence and make a decision.
The government is making the case that Reiser killed his wife. The defense is making the case that Reiser didn't. The jury's job is to deide what the facts are, based on that evidence. In other words, is there a reasonable doubt that Reiser killed his wife? Not "a certainty".
I hadn't really been following the case, but the more I look at it today, the more it looks to me like a reasonable person would conclude that Reiser is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He had means, motive, and opportunity. The explanations offered for his actions are patronizing, to say the least. Taken as a whole, his story gets less credible as time goes on, and the "geek defense" or "tortured genius" act is lame.
His story also fails Occam's razor, big-time. The simplest explanation that fits all the facts is that he did kill her. His explanation doesn't fit all the facts, and it rings false. More and more, it sounds like someone with too big an ego, who is in the process of losing everything, and finally throws caution and civility to the winds.
Its not like he doesn't have name recognition, and he already has enough money that he doesn't have to steal more for his friends, like BushCheneyHalliburton.
How come nobody's pointed out how many PlayStation 3 computer clusters this is?
Do you really want to have a $59M machine dependent upon Dell customer support?
She had taken a job interview, was accepted for the job (after negotiating an extra few grand because she was now going to be a single mother - you don't bother negotiating if all you're doing is setting up a story line), etc. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/07/BAOFUTA27.DTL
Also, Nina wasn't a "mail-order bride".
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/hans-reiser-m-3.html
So let's recap:
For cednturies, "First world country" meant the Europeans only. That's why there was "First world", "New world", and "3rd world", etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World:.
According to the original definition, Australia isn't a first world country. Neither are the US, Canada, etc. They're all part of the "new world". Its only in the last 50 years that the meaning has changed (USians don't like to not be part of the "first world").
Gee, this computer is the BIGGEST flop generator of them all!
That's too bad.
NO! That's GOOD!
It is?
Yeah, lots and lots of flops per second - the more the better!
So the bigger the flops, the better?
Right!
Fewer flops is bad?
You got it!
And researchers want more money for more time with bigger flops?
Now you get it!
So they got $59 million for this humongous flop generator?
Yep!
Why don't they just burn the money if they want to generate a really big flop?
That wouldn't work - that wouldn't make any useful computing flops!
So this generates all these "useful computing flops"
Yes.
Was Vista one of their prototypes?
All I'm saying is that as a defense, it sucks the big one.
Its not a valid defense. It may satisfy Reiser as a defense, but it won't satisfy the jury, who will see it as an attempt to manipulate or game them by someone who thinks he's smart enough to get away with it. (by "it", I don't mean murder - I'm referring to the attempted manipulation)
Here we have someone with much personal motive (his wife had left him, cleaned out his bank account, gotten custody of the kids, was having sex with someone else, etc), and this is the best defense the lawyer can come up with? It sounds like his own lawyer doesn't believe him.
That's right, Forrest! And don't let any of them other boys ever tell you different, y'hear?
You're "special!"
Now get on that short bus before I kick yer ass!
If you're innocent, these are the type of people you'd want to entrust your fate to. If you're guilty, on the other hand ...
That's for sure. Already, 10.3% of all homes are "under water" on their mortgages. Its expected that between 30% and 50% will end up tht way before we get to the bottom of the trough. The US could be in for a Japan-style meltdown, with at least a decade lost.
This will sideswipe the worlds' economy.
Already, there's a question of whether several German state banks, who hold billions in US toxic mortgage paper, will be forced into bankruptcy.
That's what happens in a global economy where lying ratings agencies give triple-a ratings to junk in return for fees.
"There is no clear motive for Hans to of killed his wife."
There are motives aplenty:
People have killed their former spouses over much less. There's plenty of motive.
So there's no such thing as a buffer overrun, or forgetting to mate every call to malloc() with a free()?
I don't buy the "programmer geek defense". It doesn't match up with the reality, which is that you don't have to be a programmer to be an asshole. They're orthogonic. Lets look at the excuses another way:
Do I believe he did it? I can't say - I'm not on the jury. However, I definitely don't buy into the defense tactic of 'geek nerds are "special" and "hard to understand"' as a "get out of jail" card.
Reiser's lawyer is making a big mistake. Sure, he's playing the "this guy is a creep" card to the jury - but he's also insulting the jury's intelligence by thinking that they won't see it for what it is - a ploy, and not evidence one way or the other. Not trusting a jury can come back and bite you - look at what happened with Jamie Thomas and the $222,000 copyright infringement award. The jurors were pissed that she lied to them, and made it known both inside and outside the courtroom.
Better to not take the stand, and let people suspect you're an idiot, than to take it, and prove them right.
Then there's the danger that the jurors will think - "If they really expect us to buy into this bs, they must think we just fell off a turnip truck. Sounds like what I'd expect a guilty know-it-all to do."
At the very least, the choice of tactics shows that the lawyer doesn't believe his client is innocent. Based on that, I'd say the jury will probably convict.
And those software "updates", if Windows ever completely breaks backward compatability, will have to take the form of completely new versions, rewritten from scratch; in such a case, people wil be examining their options.
My point was that various security products (including firewalls) are affected, and we all know how quick an unprotected windows box can get p0wned.
As for "switching to linux", I can't switch. I'm already there - been there off and on since slackware 3.x, My last Windows purchase was Windows 95.
If Microsoft drops backwards compatibility, there's no reason for people to use Microsoft products. If you're going to have to switch all your software anyway, why not switch to linux or osx?
In other words, Microsoft has no choice - they have to continue to produce the same crappy software, because that is what their franchise is based on. Breaking backwards compatibility breaks the only reason people continue to use Windows - because their existing software works.
Most of the people who use Windows hate their computers. Ask how many of them would be happy to contribute to a fund to pay the legal fees of whoever takes out Redmond ... among Windows users, Gates is more hated than Hillary.
People are back to using QuickEdit? Awesome. Just loved the ascii art box drawing mode. Menus if you wanted them. And those Wordstar keyboard shortcuts! Ctl-k-b, ctl-k-e, ctl-k-y here I come! ... hmmm .. On second thought, saying "ctl-k-y here I come" might be a bad choice of words ...
Seriously, was there ever a simpler, better editor than quickedit?