What's wrong with voting for a self-confessed ex-drunk?
Perhaps nothing - but it illustrates how little American voters actually care about real issues. Alcoholism, or any other form of drug addiction, is not something that simply goes away, nor is it something that you can easily shrug off. I think, if people cared about what kind of person became president, they would have taken an interest, since it strikes as important to know whether the guy has actually kicked the habit, or just replaced it with something else. I don't mean this in a hostile sense - but the US would not be well served by a Yeltsin-type of president.
Dear me, what is actually wrong with Americans and their politics? Maybe you guys need a Jeremy Corbyn to change the tone - somebody who has the temerity to shuffle along in slippers and speak plainly, but politely about things that actually matter to people. I thought it was amazing to watch him during the first PMQ - no jeering, no cheap point scoring. You can respect a guy like that.
How much does it actually matter that she sent some emails from her home server? And before you get into hysterical overdrive, remember that the people of America actually elected a self-confessed ex-drunk like GWB into that office, and got perilously close to letting Sarah Palin into power. And there are people right now who seriously consider voting for a windbag like mr Trump. So, how much of this email hype is actually about the seriousness of having been a bit lax with her emails, and how much is about trying to paint her in a bad light no matter what the objective reality is?
It is no wonder that all your politicians seem to be somewhat out of contact with the real world, because nobody in possession of their full, mental capabilities would voluntarily subject themselves to the sort of treatment they get from the press and the lobbies - with the willing, not to say eager participation of You the People. As a side note, next time anybody from the US suggests that 'Democracy' should be introduced in country X, remember that the way you do those things does not look all that attractive to foreigners.
Oh, come on - it is just a bit of fun, of course it is silly. They guy isn't suggesting it was anything else. And in the process of making it all work, he has probably learned a lot of useful stuff, such as developing an idea, persisting with a project that was probably quite tedious at times, not to mention having to understand how keyboards work and how their data are transmitted and processed at the receiving end. There is a lot of this project that I find positive; don't be such a wet blanket.
As for 'Eastern languages' - what is normally called CJK (China, Japan and Korea) character sets: they are all input into computers using input methods. Off the top of my head, I can only recall one that I think is derived from strokes, plus a small number of handwriting recognition systems; the rest are based on transcription into ASCII. Popular input methods systems on the Linux desktop are SCIM, XIM and fcitx; have a look at them if you're interested.
Any company with the capacity to profitably mine the moon, or asteroids, isn't going to give a shit about the quaint laws of an individual nation state.
Unless said companies are able to base themselves outside the territories of all nations on the planet, they will have to pay attention to the laws of some country. And of course, since a large company requires to trade in many nations to survive, they will have to follow the rules in those nations. And so on.
But there is an interesting twist to this line of thought: if individual companies become, in effect, their own nation states, should we require that they are run more like nations - with all it entails, including citizenship, democracy, social security, infrastructure paid for by themselves etc?
And, if the difference between nations and businesses become ever smaller, why is it actually that nations are not allowed to compete in the market like businesses do? In the past, the argument was that the state would have an unfair advantage over national businesses both because of their size and the fact that they decide the laws etc, but if that national laws are now powerless against transnationals, there is no longer a good reason for states not to compete with business.
I think it is sad, looking around on the responses so far, to see, yet again, that the overwhelming response to this is to jeer at anything that is beyond people's comprehension. I guess what it boils down to is, that far too many who call themselves coders can't be bothered to sit down and work out a detailed plan before barging ahead. You get nothing but trouble from OOP if you think in terms of simple scripts, and that is particularly true of C++.
You're assuming, of course, that those who write the regulations come from this relatively rare species of intelligent people.
Assuming is such a strong word - I was merely hoping. It isn't entirely in the realm of dreams either - there has been instances in the past when good legislation has been designed by clearminded individuals, whose main interest was to provide a good, lasting solution to an important problem. It doesn't happen as often as it should, but it could, in principle.
The answer is no, we don't need special regulation. What we need are intelligent and informed persons.
However, seeing that intelligent and informed persons are not an abundant species, we probably need special regulation worked out by intelligent and informed persons. Regulations that mandate the use of open standards and so on.
The claim was that Java was no longer slow thank to JIT, with HotSpot making it possible for Java code to run faster than equivalent code written in C or C++.
Really? Sounds a bit rich to claim that an interpreted language would be faster than a compiled one, but I suppose if your interpreted program calls into some really well-written libraries, and you compiled program doesn't....
Be that as it may, I don't think it is all relevant any more. In many practical situations, Java is fast enough, and the fact that it defines and complies with a huge number of valuable standards - and is portable across HW and OS - is the main selling point. It is not a bad language to work with, and there are many practical applications for it. Good enough for the job at hand is, well, good enough.
Well, let's see. % means its a conversion code, l means the converted quantity is a long, i means its an integer, so a long integer, but e means it's a float to be converted to exponential notation. But it was supposed to be an integer. Does not compute.
Well, yes and no - this is obviously a python string formatting operator and ile is the variable they want to format into the string; the error is laughable, really: 99 is not a valid string. Talk about clueless.
Citation: Not being involved in the reasearch myself, I can't refer you directly to articles, but prof. Nick Lane's book: 'The Vital Question' not only gives good, easlily explanation, but also consists of the desired references to scientic articles - I was amazed to find that references make up something like half the book. To me it looks very solid, but read it and make up your own mind.
Engineer: I think this word is used far too much. People are not engineers just because they can write code or install applications or whatever. 'Engineer' should describe a mindset, I think: the sort of analytical can-do attitude that some people seem to have quite naturally, which makes them look at structure and seek rational solutions. The archetypical engineer, to me, would be the magnificantly named Isombard Kingdom Brunel.
Effective: This, if I remember correctly, describes the fact that something works. An effective solution is one that gives the desired result - it may not be efficient, though, meaning that it works well, quickly or whatever. No, I couldn't be bothered reaching for one of the countless, online dictionaries, because when you are old, you just know you are right, never mind the facts;-)
So, that out of the way, and assuming that we are talking about real SW engineers and their efficiency - is that really what holds back projects? Looking at other sectors of production in wider sense, like manufacturing or building construction, the role of the engineer is not actually to whip out as many engineering solutions as possible, but to find the relatively small number of good solutions to structural problems, and to communicate this effectively (and not necessarily efficiently) to the workers. I think it is the same situation we have in software production; calling the everyday coding staff 'engineers' is little more than a bluff - a trick to make people feel they are somehow at a higher level than the common factory worker, so they don't notice how they are actually treated in a rather shoddy way.
Don't get me wrong, though, I think being a SW worker is a very worthy profession; I am one myself, and I think it is something to be proud of. I also think it is a load of nonsense to say that it is somehow our fault that SW projects don't go as well as management would like - at the end of the day, this is a management issue. As a coder, developer, or if you must, engineer, you should be able to rely on managers to make sure that things like good communication and documentation practices as well as other best practices are worked into the team. I think this is what the article is saying as well, although from the 30secs of skimming I didn't see him actually pointing the finger at management as such.
There may be plenty of life in the universe but I suspect the number of technological civilisations is tiny.
Perhaps; my feeling, though, is that life exists here because it "must" exist - just like all the other things that in the minute detail seem to happen by chance, but which in bulk turn out to have a high enough probability to make them virtually certain to happen in a large number of instances. We seem to getting close to having some quite clear ideas about how life developed from simple chemicals to primitive cells, and we have a good understanding of how life evolved from early eukaryotes (cells with mitochondria) to life as we know it now. The big hurdle to explain now is how the first eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes; that really is a major step, and it could be that it is the one that is almost impossibly unlikely - but I think we will find a way through that one as well, that will turn out to be "unavoidable".
I have no doubt that intelligent life "must" evolve and some sort of civilization as well; after all, we are far from the only intelligent species on Earth, and if we hadn't made it, others would. I'm sure they are out there, but considering the enormity of traveling to another star, and even communicating within our own system, it is hardly surprising that we have found nothing yet.
Well, it is certainly going to be what the Chinese would call interesting. I like Jeremy Corbyn, and I hope he will manage to get things together in time. To my mind, politics should be idealistic and inspiring, although of course realistic - perhaps not an easy balance to strike. It is not surprising that the Tories have been hemorhaging towards Mr Toad of of UKIP, and that Labour has simply been losing their voters, because they have both been slippery old-boys clubs for too long.
I heard on the news this morning how Corbyn had said one thing and some of the shadow ministers had contradicted him; I actually thought that was nice, in a way. We all know that they can't really fully agree all the time, and that any policy must be a compromise - how refreshing that they feel they can be open about it. It seems honest. Yeah, I like what I am seeing so far. It would be good if this can work out.
The current labour leadership are a total joke who will never be elected,...
Perhaps - if so, then I suggest you grab some popcorn and enjoy the show. Personally, I'm not sot so sure; nobody expected that Corbyn would be anything more than a loser in the leadership election, yet he won. A part of the reason is probably that the well-established elite in Labour have become too polished and woolly-mouthed; too clever at not actually expressing any views that can't later be revamped as something else - and they have been good at keeping the "less desirable elements" away from any chance at running for anything. And then they became too sure of their positions. As far as I can see, Corbyn was elected because Labour's leadership has lost contact with their grassroots.
Whatever the outcome in the long run, I think it will be good for Labour and for British politics that things are shaken up a bit, because the establishment has become far too smug. And I think it is too early to dismiss Corbyn; he may yet prove himself worthy. Stranger things happen at sea, as they say.
What does abiogenesis have to do with evolution? Those are 2 different questions. One is how life came from non-life, the other is how living things formed different species.
Evolution is not something that is strictly confined to life - not least because we don't have a good, crystal clear definition of what life actually is. Evolution is, loosely speaking, the process of 'weeding out' a portion of 'something' in an environment where those 'somethings' are continually generated in some fashion or other. Some might even argue that this is in fact the essence of what life is, but that is another matter. What this tells us is, that we should expect life to have arisen gradually from simple precursors.
And to anwer the gp, the physical and chemical processes involved have been explored (and are still being researched) in ever greater detail. A good popularisation that I expect most slashdotters should be able to enjoy, is Nick Lane's book: "The Vital Question: Why Is Life The Way It Is?". Nobody claims to know all the details, but we now know enough that we are able to guess at a plausible path from simple chemicals to complex life.
Probably the latter - this is one of the usual, vapid glossies that are too often posted here as 'relevant'; they always contain a sensationalised write-up of something well-known, if not trivial, with loads of enormous illustrations and smalltalk-like text. They are sort of the homoeopathic version of science articles: diluted in the extreme, but believed to be much more powerful than the real thing.
There is one, small grain of interesting news, that somehow snuck in, presumably by mistake: physicists may now have made some progress towards combining topological knot-theory and friction to characterise physical properties of physical knots; I'm guessing this from the subject line, as I couldn't bear reading through the article. I'm sure this wasn't supposed to happen - they will have to amend it by adding at least 10GB of inconsequential chit-chat.
I actually disagree a LOT with the notion that Apple nailed it.
So do I, although I can see why you might think otherwise. I think tablets as they have developed so far, are a load of crap, but Apple certainly took over the market and managed to define the whole concept. Tablets could potentially be great, but they aren't, not least because of the captivity of the audience and the built-in spy-ware, which is present even in Android, it seems.
This is really sad, because it could have been a very useful device for when you are out and about, but instead tablet computers seem to be mostly for games and useless gimmicks. I have several ideas that could be interesting to try out, but I just can't be bothered, if the device basically can't be trusted to work according to my demands.
I think what you are saying goes a long way to illustrate what an amazingly adaptable creature the average human is; personally, I would have thrown it away in a howling rage long ago, if I'd had that sort of trouble.
Apart from that, I think the whole tablet concept has come to the end of it development, really; there probably won't be many more useful features that can be added. Apple nailed it, Android managed to wedge themselves in because Apple's business model iss too exclusive, and Microsoft were simply too slow to jump on board. Tablets have their use, no doubt, in the niches where portability is a distinct advantage, but I can't see them really replacing the traditional, desk-based HW. Why pay for features that you won't need and which add to the complexity (and therefore vulnerability and instability) of an all-important tool like your workplace computer? It doesn't make much sense to me.
But since most of the world is experiencing economic malaise, collapsing exports and high youth unemployment -- we'll likely hear many more silly stories of "technology capitals" sprouting up in every corner of the world.
Well, I think we all know somewhere in our hearts, that on a planet of finite size, there will by necessity be a limit to how much any population can grow. I don't know if it is just around the next corner or many decades/centuries away, but the limit is there, that much is simple, common sense. We have already reached the point in the West - and increasingly in China and India - where economic growth hangs on people consuming ever more, and far more than is good for our health; this, in my view, demonstrates just how vulnerable our economic setup really is.
At the moment, I don't think the most threatening limit to growth is resources - although it will be soon enough - but consumer saturation; I think we already see people beginning to reject overconsumption, searching for a healthier lifestyle, and many seem to be increasingly skeptical about so-called lifestyle product. Much as people hate to hear it, Marx was right in that respect: capitalism's blind insistence on unlimited growth will end, one way or another, and we will learn to live within the limitations of our natural environment. The question is only how we get there - we still have some choice in the matter and can opt for a soft landing of sorts.
And please note, before you start calling me a communist, that I am not against freedom, self-determination, democracy or all the other things, but I am very much against willful, blind idiocy. Show me where me thinking is wrong - convince me with sensible, logical arguments, and I will change my views, but go away, if all you have on offer is faith based optimism.
VS is definitely a very nice IDE for C++. It would be awesome to have in Linux especially to work on projects with Unreal 4.
I haven't been anywhere near VS since the late 90es, so I don't know what it is like now, but I do know there are several IDEs that look a lot like what I remember, and in some cases are better: NetBeans, Eclipse and what is now called "Oracle Solaris Studio" are all free to use. I know Netbeans quite well - I use it for Java EE, although I still prefer vi for C/C++. I am not an expert in Java, so NetBeans' ability to spot errors and fix them intelligently (if you choose to do so) help me a lot. Plus, it somehow knows how to deploy to an application server and can debug remotely. I'm sure it handles C++ equally well - it would surprise me if VS was better.
I suspect that a barrier to VS going outside Windows is that its toolset is built up around Windows specific APIs, that simply have no direct equivalent in Linux. Remember that Windows is deliberately built to be incompatible with its competitors. You could conceivably move many user tools, like MS Office, to Linux, but a developer tool would be really hard.
I think many folks would like to be able to clone a lost dog that was a dear pet. Is the govt going to tell us we can do that? WTF did they get the rights to tell us we can't have a clone of our pets?
This is not 'the government telling us we can't do...' some thing randomly. There are in fact very good reasons why we should not uncritically clone animals: our techniques are still very immature, and there are too many factors we don't understand well enough. If we could safely take a few stem cells and grow a new, healthy individual from them, like we can with plants, then perhaps it wouldn't be such an issue, but we can't at the moment. I bet you would have heard about it if we could - it would also mean that we could grow new organs, for one thing.
One problem with our current cloning techniques is incompatibility between the genomes of the donated nucleus and the mitochondria of the egg cell into which it is implanted. We now know that the respiratory chain relies on electrons tunneling from site to site inside a large protein complex consisting of proteins produced from genes in the nucleus as well as the mitochonria, and if they don't fit together well enough, the distance between sites in the chain can become too large, and energy production becomes too inefficient; in most cases, it seems, that results in free radicals leaking out and triggering apoptosis: the cell dies. And if the fetus develops to term, it is very likely to be severely ill.
And on top of that - a clone is a best an identical twin; even identical twins are not identical. A clone of your favourite pet would easily just be a sad parody of what you knew. We all know it is hard to loose a loved pet, but death is part of life, and the trick is to learn to let go and move on.
I'm not quite sure what to call this, but I think all IP rights should be dependent on the rights holder actively using their rights, to avoid companies just sitting on beneficial technology or publishers sitting on old, but good literature etc. So, perhaps if a patent is passive, it should go into the public domain after a relatively short time. There are many patents that are kept off the market simply because the owners think it would not be pritable enough, and it would hurt their competitiveness.
Universities in UK have an interesting way to address this issue: when they help research teams set up spin-off companies based on research results, they tend to hold on to the IP rights and only sell a licence to the spin-off; if the licence isn't actively used to develop a product, it is revoked and sold to somebody else. I think that is a very good idea.
It's clear that the leadership of our country is illiterate on the fundamental technology...
Yes, there is no doubt that most politicians in most countries know pretty little about technology, science, maths, medicine etc. Being a successful politician - and even more, being a successful president - requires skills that are very far removed from what it takes to be a good engineer. They may not be skills that we as engineers appreciate or admire, but that is to some degree because we simply don't have those skills. And of course, in recognition of that, they have advisors to help them make decisions in those areas. A good politician or president is not necessarily someone who knows everything, but somebody who knows how little he understands, who is able to find good advisors and listens to them.
The same thing can be said about business leaders - just because you have been able to build up a big company and made a lot of money, it doesn't mean that you have any of the skills that would make you a good politician. In a democracy, you need to be able to make people believe that you are the right person for the job and that you will be able to unite the nation and work for the benefit of everybody, even your opponents.
Slashdot Mirror
What's wrong with voting for a self-confessed ex-drunk?
Perhaps nothing - but it illustrates how little American voters actually care about real issues. Alcoholism, or any other form of drug addiction, is not something that simply goes away, nor is it something that you can easily shrug off. I think, if people cared about what kind of person became president, they would have taken an interest, since it strikes as important to know whether the guy has actually kicked the habit, or just replaced it with something else. I don't mean this in a hostile sense - but the US would not be well served by a Yeltsin-type of president.
Dear me, what is actually wrong with Americans and their politics? Maybe you guys need a Jeremy Corbyn to change the tone - somebody who has the temerity to shuffle along in slippers and speak plainly, but politely about things that actually matter to people. I thought it was amazing to watch him during the first PMQ - no jeering, no cheap point scoring. You can respect a guy like that.
How much does it actually matter that she sent some emails from her home server? And before you get into hysterical overdrive, remember that the people of America actually elected a self-confessed ex-drunk like GWB into that office, and got perilously close to letting Sarah Palin into power. And there are people right now who seriously consider voting for a windbag like mr Trump. So, how much of this email hype is actually about the seriousness of having been a bit lax with her emails, and how much is about trying to paint her in a bad light no matter what the objective reality is?
It is no wonder that all your politicians seem to be somewhat out of contact with the real world, because nobody in possession of their full, mental capabilities would voluntarily subject themselves to the sort of treatment they get from the press and the lobbies - with the willing, not to say eager participation of You the People. As a side note, next time anybody from the US suggests that 'Democracy' should be introduced in country X, remember that the way you do those things does not look all that attractive to foreigners.
Oh, come on - it is just a bit of fun, of course it is silly. They guy isn't suggesting it was anything else. And in the process of making it all work, he has probably learned a lot of useful stuff, such as developing an idea, persisting with a project that was probably quite tedious at times, not to mention having to understand how keyboards work and how their data are transmitted and processed at the receiving end. There is a lot of this project that I find positive; don't be such a wet blanket.
As for 'Eastern languages' - what is normally called CJK (China, Japan and Korea) character sets: they are all input into computers using input methods. Off the top of my head, I can only recall one that I think is derived from strokes, plus a small number of handwriting recognition systems; the rest are based on transcription into ASCII. Popular input methods systems on the Linux desktop are SCIM, XIM and fcitx; have a look at them if you're interested.
Any company with the capacity to profitably mine the moon, or asteroids, isn't going to give a shit about the quaint laws of an individual nation state.
Unless said companies are able to base themselves outside the territories of all nations on the planet, they will have to pay attention to the laws of some country. And of course, since a large company requires to trade in many nations to survive, they will have to follow the rules in those nations. And so on.
But there is an interesting twist to this line of thought: if individual companies become, in effect, their own nation states, should we require that they are run more like nations - with all it entails, including citizenship, democracy, social security, infrastructure paid for by themselves etc?
And, if the difference between nations and businesses become ever smaller, why is it actually that nations are not allowed to compete in the market like businesses do? In the past, the argument was that the state would have an unfair advantage over national businesses both because of their size and the fact that they decide the laws etc, but if that national laws are now powerless against transnationals, there is no longer a good reason for states not to compete with business.
I think it is sad, looking around on the responses so far, to see, yet again, that the overwhelming response to this is to jeer at anything that is beyond people's comprehension. I guess what it boils down to is, that far too many who call themselves coders can't be bothered to sit down and work out a detailed plan before barging ahead. You get nothing but trouble from OOP if you think in terms of simple scripts, and that is particularly true of C++.
You're assuming, of course, that those who write the regulations come from this relatively rare species of intelligent people.
Assuming is such a strong word - I was merely hoping. It isn't entirely in the realm of dreams either - there has been instances in the past when good legislation has been designed by clearminded individuals, whose main interest was to provide a good, lasting solution to an important problem. It doesn't happen as often as it should, but it could, in principle.
The answer is no, we don't need special regulation. What we need are intelligent and informed persons.
However, seeing that intelligent and informed persons are not an abundant species, we probably need special regulation worked out by intelligent and informed persons. Regulations that mandate the use of open standards and so on.
The claim was that Java was no longer slow thank to JIT, with HotSpot making it possible for Java code to run faster than equivalent code written in C or C++.
Really? Sounds a bit rich to claim that an interpreted language would be faster than a compiled one, but I suppose if your interpreted program calls into some really well-written libraries, and you compiled program doesn't....
Be that as it may, I don't think it is all relevant any more. In many practical situations, Java is fast enough, and the fact that it defines and complies with a huge number of valuable standards - and is portable across HW and OS - is the main selling point. It is not a bad language to work with, and there are many practical applications for it. Good enough for the job at hand is, well, good enough.
Well, let's see. % means its a conversion code, l means the converted quantity is a long, i means its an integer, so a long integer, but e means it's a float to be converted to exponential notation. But it was supposed to be an integer. Does not compute.
Well, yes and no - this is obviously a python string formatting operator and ile is the variable they want to format into the string; the error is laughable, really: 99 is not a valid string. Talk about clueless.
Citation: Not being involved in the reasearch myself, I can't refer you directly to articles, but prof. Nick Lane's book: 'The Vital Question' not only gives good, easlily explanation, but also consists of the desired references to scientic articles - I was amazed to find that references make up something like half the book. To me it looks very solid, but read it and make up your own mind.
Time for a couple of rants from an old man.
Engineer: I think this word is used far too much. People are not engineers just because they can write code or install applications or whatever. 'Engineer' should describe a mindset, I think: the sort of analytical can-do attitude that some people seem to have quite naturally, which makes them look at structure and seek rational solutions. The archetypical engineer, to me, would be the magnificantly named Isombard Kingdom Brunel.
Effective: This, if I remember correctly, describes the fact that something works. An effective solution is one that gives the desired result - it may not be efficient, though, meaning that it works well, quickly or whatever. No, I couldn't be bothered reaching for one of the countless, online dictionaries, because when you are old, you just know you are right, never mind the facts ;-)
So, that out of the way, and assuming that we are talking about real SW engineers and their efficiency - is that really what holds back projects? Looking at other sectors of production in wider sense, like manufacturing or building construction, the role of the engineer is not actually to whip out as many engineering solutions as possible, but to find the relatively small number of good solutions to structural problems, and to communicate this effectively (and not necessarily efficiently) to the workers. I think it is the same situation we have in software production; calling the everyday coding staff 'engineers' is little more than a bluff - a trick to make people feel they are somehow at a higher level than the common factory worker, so they don't notice how they are actually treated in a rather shoddy way.
Don't get me wrong, though, I think being a SW worker is a very worthy profession; I am one myself, and I think it is something to be proud of. I also think it is a load of nonsense to say that it is somehow our fault that SW projects don't go as well as management would like - at the end of the day, this is a management issue. As a coder, developer, or if you must, engineer, you should be able to rely on managers to make sure that things like good communication and documentation practices as well as other best practices are worked into the team. I think this is what the article is saying as well, although from the 30secs of skimming I didn't see him actually pointing the finger at management as such.
There may be plenty of life in the universe but I suspect the number of technological civilisations is tiny.
Perhaps; my feeling, though, is that life exists here because it "must" exist - just like all the other things that in the minute detail seem to happen by chance, but which in bulk turn out to have a high enough probability to make them virtually certain to happen in a large number of instances. We seem to getting close to having some quite clear ideas about how life developed from simple chemicals to primitive cells, and we have a good understanding of how life evolved from early eukaryotes (cells with mitochondria) to life as we know it now. The big hurdle to explain now is how the first eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes; that really is a major step, and it could be that it is the one that is almost impossibly unlikely - but I think we will find a way through that one as well, that will turn out to be "unavoidable".
I have no doubt that intelligent life "must" evolve and some sort of civilization as well; after all, we are far from the only intelligent species on Earth, and if we hadn't made it, others would. I'm sure they are out there, but considering the enormity of traveling to another star, and even communicating within our own system, it is hardly surprising that we have found nothing yet.
There isn't much evidence of advanced civilization on Earth, so why would we expect to find it in nearby starsystems?
Yeah, I call it Chad. You got a problem with that?
Nope, but I thought you might, considering that most chads are supposed to be cut off...
Well, it is certainly going to be what the Chinese would call interesting. I like Jeremy Corbyn, and I hope he will manage to get things together in time. To my mind, politics should be idealistic and inspiring, although of course realistic - perhaps not an easy balance to strike. It is not surprising that the Tories have been hemorhaging towards Mr Toad of of UKIP, and that Labour has simply been losing their voters, because they have both been slippery old-boys clubs for too long.
I heard on the news this morning how Corbyn had said one thing and some of the shadow ministers had contradicted him; I actually thought that was nice, in a way. We all know that they can't really fully agree all the time, and that any policy must be a compromise - how refreshing that they feel they can be open about it. It seems honest. Yeah, I like what I am seeing so far. It would be good if this can work out.
The current labour leadership are a total joke who will never be elected, ...
Perhaps - if so, then I suggest you grab some popcorn and enjoy the show. Personally, I'm not sot so sure; nobody expected that Corbyn would be anything more than a loser in the leadership election, yet he won. A part of the reason is probably that the well-established elite in Labour have become too polished and woolly-mouthed; too clever at not actually expressing any views that can't later be revamped as something else - and they have been good at keeping the "less desirable elements" away from any chance at running for anything. And then they became too sure of their positions. As far as I can see, Corbyn was elected because Labour's leadership has lost contact with their grassroots.
Whatever the outcome in the long run, I think it will be good for Labour and for British politics that things are shaken up a bit, because the establishment has become far too smug. And I think it is too early to dismiss Corbyn; he may yet prove himself worthy. Stranger things happen at sea, as they say.
What does abiogenesis have to do with evolution? Those are 2 different questions. One is how life came from non-life, the other is how living things formed different species.
Evolution is not something that is strictly confined to life - not least because we don't have a good, crystal clear definition of what life actually is. Evolution is, loosely speaking, the process of 'weeding out' a portion of 'something' in an environment where those 'somethings' are continually generated in some fashion or other. Some might even argue that this is in fact the essence of what life is, but that is another matter. What this tells us is, that we should expect life to have arisen gradually from simple precursors.
And to anwer the gp, the physical and chemical processes involved have been explored (and are still being researched) in ever greater detail. A good popularisation that I expect most slashdotters should be able to enjoy, is Nick Lane's book: "The Vital Question: Why Is Life The Way It Is?". Nobody claims to know all the details, but we now know enough that we are able to guess at a plausible path from simple chemicals to complex life.
are you joking or just ignorant?
Probably the latter - this is one of the usual, vapid glossies that are too often posted here as 'relevant'; they always contain a sensationalised write-up of something well-known, if not trivial, with loads of enormous illustrations and smalltalk-like text. They are sort of the homoeopathic version of science articles: diluted in the extreme, but believed to be much more powerful than the real thing.
There is one, small grain of interesting news, that somehow snuck in, presumably by mistake: physicists may now have made some progress towards combining topological knot-theory and friction to characterise physical properties of physical knots; I'm guessing this from the subject line, as I couldn't bear reading through the article. I'm sure this wasn't supposed to happen - they will have to amend it by adding at least 10GB of inconsequential chit-chat.
I actually disagree a LOT with the notion that Apple nailed it.
So do I, although I can see why you might think otherwise. I think tablets as they have developed so far, are a load of crap, but Apple certainly took over the market and managed to define the whole concept. Tablets could potentially be great, but they aren't, not least because of the captivity of the audience and the built-in spy-ware, which is present even in Android, it seems.
This is really sad, because it could have been a very useful device for when you are out and about, but instead tablet computers seem to be mostly for games and useless gimmicks. I have several ideas that could be interesting to try out, but I just can't be bothered, if the device basically can't be trusted to work according to my demands.
I think what you are saying goes a long way to illustrate what an amazingly adaptable creature the average human is; personally, I would have thrown it away in a howling rage long ago, if I'd had that sort of trouble.
Apart from that, I think the whole tablet concept has come to the end of it development, really; there probably won't be many more useful features that can be added. Apple nailed it, Android managed to wedge themselves in because Apple's business model iss too exclusive, and Microsoft were simply too slow to jump on board. Tablets have their use, no doubt, in the niches where portability is a distinct advantage, but I can't see them really replacing the traditional, desk-based HW. Why pay for features that you won't need and which add to the complexity (and therefore vulnerability and instability) of an all-important tool like your workplace computer? It doesn't make much sense to me.
But since most of the world is experiencing economic malaise, collapsing exports and high youth unemployment -- we'll likely hear many more silly stories of "technology capitals" sprouting up in every corner of the world.
Well, I think we all know somewhere in our hearts, that on a planet of finite size, there will by necessity be a limit to how much any population can grow. I don't know if it is just around the next corner or many decades/centuries away, but the limit is there, that much is simple, common sense. We have already reached the point in the West - and increasingly in China and India - where economic growth hangs on people consuming ever more, and far more than is good for our health; this, in my view, demonstrates just how vulnerable our economic setup really is.
At the moment, I don't think the most threatening limit to growth is resources - although it will be soon enough - but consumer saturation; I think we already see people beginning to reject overconsumption, searching for a healthier lifestyle, and many seem to be increasingly skeptical about so-called lifestyle product. Much as people hate to hear it, Marx was right in that respect: capitalism's blind insistence on unlimited growth will end, one way or another, and we will learn to live within the limitations of our natural environment. The question is only how we get there - we still have some choice in the matter and can opt for a soft landing of sorts.
And please note, before you start calling me a communist, that I am not against freedom, self-determination, democracy or all the other things, but I am very much against willful, blind idiocy. Show me where me thinking is wrong - convince me with sensible, logical arguments, and I will change my views, but go away, if all you have on offer is faith based optimism.
VS is definitely a very nice IDE for C++. It would be awesome to have in Linux especially to work on projects with Unreal 4.
I haven't been anywhere near VS since the late 90es, so I don't know what it is like now, but I do know there are several IDEs that look a lot like what I remember, and in some cases are better: NetBeans, Eclipse and what is now called "Oracle Solaris Studio" are all free to use. I know Netbeans quite well - I use it for Java EE, although I still prefer vi for C/C++. I am not an expert in Java, so NetBeans' ability to spot errors and fix them intelligently (if you choose to do so) help me a lot. Plus, it somehow knows how to deploy to an application server and can debug remotely. I'm sure it handles C++ equally well - it would surprise me if VS was better.
I suspect that a barrier to VS going outside Windows is that its toolset is built up around Windows specific APIs, that simply have no direct equivalent in Linux. Remember that Windows is deliberately built to be incompatible with its competitors. You could conceivably move many user tools, like MS Office, to Linux, but a developer tool would be really hard.
I think many folks would like to be able to clone a lost dog that was a dear pet.
Is the govt going to tell us we can do that? WTF did they get the rights to tell us we can't have a clone of our pets?
This is not 'the government telling us we can't do ...' some thing randomly. There are in fact very good reasons why we should not uncritically clone animals: our techniques are still very immature, and there are too many factors we don't understand well enough. If we could safely take a few stem cells and grow a new, healthy individual from them, like we can with plants, then perhaps it wouldn't be such an issue, but we can't at the moment. I bet you would have heard about it if we could - it would also mean that we could grow new organs, for one thing.
One problem with our current cloning techniques is incompatibility between the genomes of the donated nucleus and the mitochondria of the egg cell into which it is implanted. We now know that the respiratory chain relies on electrons tunneling from site to site inside a large protein complex consisting of proteins produced from genes in the nucleus as well as the mitochonria, and if they don't fit together well enough, the distance between sites in the chain can become too large, and energy production becomes too inefficient; in most cases, it seems, that results in free radicals leaking out and triggering apoptosis: the cell dies. And if the fetus develops to term, it is very likely to be severely ill.
And on top of that - a clone is a best an identical twin; even identical twins are not identical. A clone of your favourite pet would easily just be a sad parody of what you knew. We all know it is hard to loose a loved pet, but death is part of life, and the trick is to learn to let go and move on.
I'm not quite sure what to call this, but I think all IP rights should be dependent on the rights holder actively using their rights, to avoid companies just sitting on beneficial technology or publishers sitting on old, but good literature etc. So, perhaps if a patent is passive, it should go into the public domain after a relatively short time. There are many patents that are kept off the market simply because the owners think it would not be pritable enough, and it would hurt their competitiveness.
Universities in UK have an interesting way to address this issue: when they help research teams set up spin-off companies based on research results, they tend to hold on to the IP rights and only sell a licence to the spin-off; if the licence isn't actively used to develop a product, it is revoked and sold to somebody else. I think that is a very good idea.
It's clear that the leadership of our country is illiterate on the fundamental technology ...
Yes, there is no doubt that most politicians in most countries know pretty little about technology, science, maths, medicine etc. Being a successful politician - and even more, being a successful president - requires skills that are very far removed from what it takes to be a good engineer. They may not be skills that we as engineers appreciate or admire, but that is to some degree because we simply don't have those skills. And of course, in recognition of that, they have advisors to help them make decisions in those areas. A good politician or president is not necessarily someone who knows everything, but somebody who knows how little he understands, who is able to find good advisors and listens to them.
The same thing can be said about business leaders - just because you have been able to build up a big company and made a lot of money, it doesn't mean that you have any of the skills that would make you a good politician. In a democracy, you need to be able to make people believe that you are the right person for the job and that you will be able to unite the nation and work for the benefit of everybody, even your opponents.