You exaggerate. Currently I carry around nothing more than my cellphone and an iPod. Sure, sometimes I bring a camera, but generally my cellphone camera is adequate, but when I really want to take pictures a real camera is better. Sure, sometimes I bring my laptop, but most of the time my phone is adiquate (if not optimal) for quick browsing and email.
This is the point. All in one devices generally don't match specialty devices in terms of functionality. My phone is really good at being a phone, but isn't the best when it comes to playing music, taking photos, or general computing. My iPod is 100x better than my phone at playing music (especially when you consider there is no smart phones on the market that have nearly enough storage space to hold any decent amount of music). My camera is 100x better than my phones camera. My phone does have all the GPS I need, especially since I haven't found a need for it. My laptop is some order of magnitude better than my phone at being a computer. And having a portable DVD player is around infinitely better at playing video than any phone I've ever seen (don't own one, the laptop is actually better than most portable DVD devices). Why would I want only one device that fulfills one need rather well, but really sucks at doing everything else?
Why would I want to pay a shit ton extra for a phone that does a whole bunch of stuff that I can already do much better?
What gets me is that they are eroding storage space, and somehow expecting me to not notice thanks to being blinded by bloat. Looking at the latest iPod selection, only two models will actually hold all my music now (the $400 touch, and the Classic, which will probably go away in a year or so). The Zune page is being sucky right now, but I'm pretty sure they only have 2 players that could hold my library with room for growth. I don't think that the ability to "shuffle" my music collection is a feature, nor do I think being forced to choose what I might be in the mood for at some indeterminate point in the future is desirable (if I liked this, I would have stuck with lugging CDs with me, or a cheap flash player).
Its very nice that I can now continually spend money on my MP3 player for silly little apps that tell me things that Google would tell me for free on my phone. Its very nice that I can watch HD video on a microscopic screen, or take crappy videos to post to YouTube (which I can do on my phone, for free, as well). But what happened to being able to store a shit-ton of music?
Didn't there used to be a market for this? Where did it go? How many 80Gb+ players still exist? Did people suddenly all delete their music libraries?
But... how long have we been taking showers? Assuming that this isn't some emerging phenomena, this has been happening as long as we've been showering, and assuming this, why are we still mostly alive as a species? The important information here, this isn't contained in TFA, is how many cases of infection have been reported that can be sourced back to a shower?
Without that bit of information, this is completely meaningless. It is nothing more than silly sensationalist science-based FUD.
Anytime I hear the term "Scientific fact" or "Scientifically proven." Neither of which will ever happen.
Actually there are tons and tons of scientific facts, a fact is nothing more than a measurable observation. When I state "The atomic number for gold is 79," this is an scientific fact. Just like me saying, "water is a molecule comprised of 2 atoms of hydrogen, and 1 atom of oxygen". What bothers me is when people claim the linkages between these facts (theories) are True (in the capital "t" sense), or proven.
I doubt this, though I can see desktop PCs becoming a niche compared to middle of the road laptops. Netbooks, as they originally were conceived (low end, ultra portable) will still be a niche. You also have to define what a budget desktop is, I don't see the modern equivalent of the super-low end eMachine dominating the consumer market. It seems the middle range is still the dominant, though now the middle range is much cheaper, and comes damn close to high end products performance wise. Sure, most people don't have quad cores or Phenom's, but 1.8-2.3Ghz Core 2 Duos are the middle of the road now, as is 2GB of ram, which is pretty much good enough for anything. Things are slowing down a bit now, so the the high end is shrinking down, and the cost/performance curve is flatlining.
Anecdotal observation: most of the people I know are thinking of (or have) springing for a laptop as a main machine now. Some of those are wanting a netbook as well for travel, and novelty value. But most people don't want a netbook for the same reason they state they don't want a Mac or Linux box, compatability. Most netbooks are far to light to run what people want to run. And one can argue that when this isn't true anymore, they won't be buying a netbook, but a low end laptop.
Because it will be the best. Haiku already has something of that philosophy. People won't pay for something better if one OS is the best. And of all the possible pieces of software that should be free or nearly free (as in beer), the OS should be one of them.
The best for whom? The best for you (or me) is never going to be the best for everyone. I doubt that there will ever be a decent "1 size fits all" OS, just like I doubt that we'd ever settle on a single model of car. People have different needs and preferences, and because of this there will always be a market for different solutions.
You also have a slight fallacy (which I'm guessing in unintentional, or I'm misreading you), you seem to be implying that there is a highest level as far as OS quality is concerned, at which there is no room for improvement. This might be true when we stop developing hardware, but for the foreseeable future there will be needed improvement in OS design because of changes in hardware. In the world of tomorrow OOTRTA might be perfect with your 60TB throughput holographic ethernet, but then someone comes and invents a 1PT quantum channel.
Also, to be snaky; since when did corporations care that anything was the best?
Postmodern thought is mainly associated with a person's view on religion, but it can also impact non-religious related topics.
It depends on what definition of "post modern" your using. In a technical sense it has very little to do with religion, though, its more of a media studies thing, involving a lot of Derrida-esque deconstruction, and the analysis of our conceptions to social constructs. Post-modernism is very cynical, and this might rub off on religion, but this isn't an overt goal of the schools of thought traditionally called "post modern". In other words your conception of post-modernism is backwards, it is manly associated other topics, but can also impact religious topics.
"Post-modern" is also a somewhat meaningless term. Ask 100 people who define their thought as post-modern to define the term, and you will get 100 different (and sometimes conflicting) definitions. The definition also changes from field to field, so literary post-modernism is a VERY different beast than any flavor of philosophical post-modernism (which actually varies from author to author, and even from book to book by the same author).
Students that majored in social studies and philosophy, which are majors have have heavy influence from postmodern thought, became much less religious.
I'm guessing your an American talking about American curriculum? If so, you are wrong, especially when it comes to philosophy. Most of the philosophy taught in American (and British) schools are of the analytic school. Meaning they are very heavy on logic and systems, and rather weak on religion and cultural critique (ala post-modernism). The social sciences (as a whole) have also moved away from anything that can be considered post-modern, most fields of psychology have been gravitating more and more to a "hard" science model, with theories mostly based on studies and brain scans. Sure, for a while there was a lot of post-modern (ish) thought in the meta-disciplines attached to the social sciences (such as Adorno and Habermas), but this largely died out in the late 80's. Granted sociology is still lagging a bit behind.
I recommend taking some quick classes in the fields you talk about.
I do find this conclusion of yours to be highly amusing though, since the social sciences can focus on the intersect between our beliefs and society, and the potential social construction of things we call truth. I could see how this would weaken religion in may people, as they find their belief in this is largely due to social factors, and not revealed "truth". Philosophy, on the other hand, is largely based on critical thinking skills, logic, and skepticism, which all are the antithesis of unfounded beliefs, no matter how deeply held. If philosophy kills religion, it is doing its job as an analytic discipline. This doesn't, obviously, imply that it is overtly antagonistic to religion. In my experience, it isn't.
I was a dual philosophy (oriented towards epistemology/philosophy of science) and psychology (oriented towards research) major, to clear things up.
As for science not hurting religion, I'm not shocked. Science doesn't teach one to be critical of all beliefs. In college level classes you get a brief tutorial on method, and the rest of it is learning facts. It doesn't teach you, at that level at least, to analyze all beliefs, just the assumptions at hand.
But evolution being random isn't the only reason Dawkin's has for not thinking there is a god.
As far as evolution and God goes, saying that God shapes evolution adds nothing to the theory. This isn't explicitly denying that there is a God. If we accept God as a premise, evolution works the exact same observable way as it would without the premise of a God. Therefore God is a superfluous variable in the theory.
But in CSI these chemist good guys are running DNA samples gathered from shadows left on ultra-high-resolution 320x400 security videos through universal DNA databases.
There is almost no science in CSI, you could replace science with super powers and the show would remain the same.
Thank god that those nice Pirate Bay folk were nice enough to backup all of your install CD lacking software then. I hate doing clean installs because it messes up all the stupid tweaks I do (gah... moving my user folders to an second drive, etc...) with every copy I run, and it messes up the huge corpus of rarely used (except for rare, but necessary things) free software I keep around. And being that they all are small apps, that I only use every other month or so, I never really remember the whole set specifically. I also lose all my app specific settings. That and the general post-install cruft hunt.
The install process is fine, its the hours of small tweaking afterward that pisses me off.
How about if that OS really was great? Even better than 'Haiku great' with great security, great organization, lots of features but with minimal bloat, great responsiveness, idealized metadata filesystem, open source etc.?
But "lots of features" is synonymous with bloat. Different users have different needs, and thus need different features, so to any group a certain % of features are bloat. This would be especially true if you made the one OS to rule them all, since you'd need to cater to ALL groups, and thus include all the factors needed by everyone.
Perhaps the One OS to Rule Them All would need to have a very small, limited, but heavily extensible kernel, meaning at base it is pretty much useless, but each subclass of users can extend it to their needs. But this, then, doesn't fit into the ideal of having "lots of features".
Another problem is that we're dealing with individuals, so perhaps you find the standard One OS to Rule Them All install to be sufficient to your needs, but I don't, and thus I'd want a different OS. Being OSS would only make this worse, since I could just fork it. Also what about seperate needs? Is the OOTRTA going to be good for servers, embedded systems, devices, and home computers at the same time?
We're also ignoring capitalism and greed. Why would someone want to adhere to OOTRTA if they could come out with something else that might make them money? A diverse market means there is more money to spread around, so I really doubt that a free monopoly will happen.
This is wishful thinking. In the far far future things will be just about exactly like they are now, with hopefully even more diversity. I'd rather see a world with ten different (but good) OSs floating around, than a world with one, that way people have choice, and can pick whatever they feel works for them. This also keeps the amusing time honored passtime of OS trolling alive, which is a bonus.
Yes, most people that get tasered are innocently standing there, hands in the air, asking how the weather is
Actually yes... All people getting tazed are innocent, and are only guilty after that strange thing called a jury decides it. Not all people arrested are guilty. And getting arrested while innocent, or doing something that is not a violent crime, is a pretty shocking moment of your life. You might even try to ask the police officer "what did I do", and when they tell you to shut up, you'll probably continue to ask, and plea, especially when you realize that your going to spend a night in jail. Hell, you might even struggle when the police shove your arms behind your back to "subdue" and cuff you... not because your criminal scum, but for the simple fact that your arms DON'T bend that way. Actually, it hurts, and 99.9% of humans would probably stuggle to get out of a painful situation.
I've been arrested twice, once wrongfully, and once for something incredibly minor (using a bathroom I wasn't supposed to use, ala trespassing). Both times I was not acting in a threatening manner, neither time did I back talk the police or throw insults at them, much less try to act violently towards them. And both times they used a rather uncomfortable amount of force, even though I was completely complying with their commands. In the case where I was actually guilty they decided the slam my head rather brutally into a bathroom wall, while twisting my arms around in very unnatural positions, before putting on cuffs so tight that my hands were purple, and my wrists bloody. Again, no resistance, and lots of "yes sir" on my behalf. In the case where I was wrongfull arrested (and got to spend fun 7-8 hours in jail), they refused to tell me what I was being arrested of the whole time. This obviously was somewhat stressful to me.
Imagine, some day your minding your own business, and have three police officers approach you, throw you on the ground, cuff you, and throw you in a car... but won't tell you why, or where your going. In fact they scream at you for even asking.
The people the police arrest have the exact same amount of rights as the police do. And police are just as big idiotic, mean, law breaking, assholes as the population as a whole. Police are just people too, putting on a badge does not make you some noble God of a man. Getting cuffed doesn't make you a criminal either. Not all police are jerks, but some are, in roughly the same proportion as the population as a whole.
Could we all please stop using the "PCP guy" argument. What percentage of stops involve someone on PCP? What percentage of cases that have a degree of escalation of force involve someone on PCP? I'm guessing it is a VERY low number. PCP was never a common street drug, I'm guessing 99% of drug cases involve marijuana, methamphetamine, or crack, or heroine... you know the normal street drugs.
The PCP argument is just an ad hoc justification for thinking police should be allowed to use as much force as they want, when they want. At least be honest about it.
Odd, I get to argue in favor of clubbing people, this is a rare (and somewhat amusing) day.
I'd actually prefer it if police clubbed people to subdue them, rather than tase(?) them, for a couple reasons. Police need to think twice before hopping in with a club, a TASER is somewhat different in that it is a point and click weapon (branded as being as safe as throwing twinkies at whoever is being arrested), it lowers the threshold of use. It makes it easier to use force, and opens it up to be used in places where not even a baton would be used. While it might be a bit safer to the person its being used on than a club, this might be outweighed by the fact that it is used more than the baton would have been used, for situations requiring much less escalation.
Call me a namby pamby liberal who likes his rights, but officer safety is only HALF of the equation, being that the people their stopping, no matter how much they resist, are innocent and and have equal rights, to the officer until it is found otherwise in a court of law. Also the bar to "resisting" or "stuggling" is far more cloudy than we'd like to realize. Hell, even watch Cops, which is nothing but friendly to the police, and see how resisting can be very nonresiting looking, if it is convenient. Hell, struggling against strange restraint positions is resisting somehow, even though I'm guessing anyone would struggle with some of them. Its a high stress enviroment for cops and the people they are arresting (guilty or not), but somehow we expect everyone to turn into a limp bean bag when an attacker puts out arms behind our back as a restraint. As a person who has been wrongfully arrested, it would be a miracle of someone DIDN'T struggle. Trying being surprised and thrown against a wall by someone who just screams "POLICE!" at you, and not trying to struggle a bit.
No, I'm not anti-police, but I realize that police are humans, and thus are not infallible, and their ranks contain a fair share of bad eggs. And also not all crooks are violent sociopaths out to kill the police and innocent bystanders. Hell, not all people who are arrested are violent, much less actually guilty of a crime. Also not all cases of "resisting" are actually people actively being antagonistic to the police, sometimes its just an expedient way of jailing them for otherwise banal things, or a way to escalate charges, or a way to vent some frustration of the person being arrested. Yes, this isn't the majority of times, but even in the minority of times when the police go too far, we should protect the innocent and others from the police.
We also don't know how lethal the TASER actually is. We can't really judge whether it is more or less lethal than the common baton. We really shouldn't be saying it is equal to a baton when we have no proof of it, and what proof that might exist is being actively blocked by the corporation whose job it is to sell the device. This corporation is also saying that no one has EVER died from a TASER, just some mythical pre-existing condition that mysteriously appeared at the same time the TASER was developed and sold to law enforcement.
Um...the letter needs a writer. Who "writes" the virus?
Hijacked cells. If we must use a letter analogy, think of them as nothing more than self-propagating chain letters. You (a cell) get the letter, which instructs you to write 1000's of copies of it, if you don't... well you have to... In making thousands of copies you (the cell) die. So, in reality who made the copies? You, the cell, did, not the letter.
A virus out in the world, all alone, can't do anything. Its as dead as a door nail. Only by having a host cell handy, and having some form of genetics to hijack can it do anything. Viruses are basically stupid protein machines with a reproductive payload.
Axons aren't quite like wires, though. Its been awhile, but don't they use current via ion channels, and not an actual current? When activated they suck up a bunch of positive ions (I think calcium, might be wrong though), and expel the negative ones (potassium, might be wrong though) creating a charge. They aren't llike little wires.
If they were, I imagine that MRI's would be much more interesting though.
I'm sorry, again, for implying that all cases of this (and other food allergies) are purely mental, or trendy. But MOST of them are, you might not fall into this group, and then I have genuine sympathy for you. Again, also, my choice in wording was a bit harsh, since I chose the term "also" to say "sans the people with actual, proven, medical problems not related to modern trends", this was bad word choice on my behalf.
I feel, though, that you and the person I was responding too originally are a minority. A lot of people won't eat gluten (or whatever exceedingly common food they claim to be allergic to) for reasons that have nothing to do with actual medicine. These are the people I was writing my rather misplaced rant against. If I had to guess, I'd say perhaps around 5-10% of people who claim odd food problems actually have a real problem, the rest are just morons looking for some way to be special, or ways to justify whatever idiotic special dietary trend there is at the moment. These, obviously, are the people I was mocking in my moment of caffeine deprived, and somewhat jaded, weakness.
If you have a real problem, I have no issue with going out to eat with you. I'm just rather distrustful since your a minority. Though I do have a problem if you try to influence my food choices, since then the odds of you having a problem drops exponentially, and your chances of having the holier-than-thou illness increases by a similar rate. All the "you's" here are obviously rhetorical.
Please, cut us some slack or at least acknowledge that people may really suffer from something like this and are not just 'food fadsters'.
I did... I used the term "also", I recognize that their are people who are adversely effected by gluten, and people who have genuine food allergies, but they a minority. Most of the people I know with food allergies have insubstantial complaints like "it gives me gas", or "it makes my palms slightly itchy).
Sorry for sounding cranky, it seemed like a good time for a rant.
It kind of makes me mad that they basically only make one model now that has enough storage space for my music collection, outside of the $399 64GB touch. I have around 50GB of music (not counting audiobooks, pictures, and videos, which brings me to the top of the Touch), and my only option is the classic (which is overkill), or spending $400 for something that has a bunch of functionality I don't want/need (I have a smart phone to do all that for me). And they'll probably kill the touch in the next year or so, forcing me to buy a Zune (or such), and pirate all the AACs I bought from Apple.
Do they think everyone likes their crappy "shuffle" idea? I hate the idea of only being able to carry around 1/10th of my music at any given time, either chosen at random, or tediously hand selected by me (which is why I got an iPod over CDs or smaller capacity MP3 players).
Slashdot Mirror
You exaggerate. Currently I carry around nothing more than my cellphone and an iPod. Sure, sometimes I bring a camera, but generally my cellphone camera is adequate, but when I really want to take pictures a real camera is better. Sure, sometimes I bring my laptop, but most of the time my phone is adiquate (if not optimal) for quick browsing and email.
This is the point. All in one devices generally don't match specialty devices in terms of functionality. My phone is really good at being a phone, but isn't the best when it comes to playing music, taking photos, or general computing. My iPod is 100x better than my phone at playing music (especially when you consider there is no smart phones on the market that have nearly enough storage space to hold any decent amount of music). My camera is 100x better than my phones camera. My phone does have all the GPS I need, especially since I haven't found a need for it. My laptop is some order of magnitude better than my phone at being a computer. And having a portable DVD player is around infinitely better at playing video than any phone I've ever seen (don't own one, the laptop is actually better than most portable DVD devices). Why would I want only one device that fulfills one need rather well, but really sucks at doing everything else?
Why would I want to pay a shit ton extra for a phone that does a whole bunch of stuff that I can already do much better?
What gets me is that they are eroding storage space, and somehow expecting me to not notice thanks to being blinded by bloat. Looking at the latest iPod selection, only two models will actually hold all my music now (the $400 touch, and the Classic, which will probably go away in a year or so). The Zune page is being sucky right now, but I'm pretty sure they only have 2 players that could hold my library with room for growth. I don't think that the ability to "shuffle" my music collection is a feature, nor do I think being forced to choose what I might be in the mood for at some indeterminate point in the future is desirable (if I liked this, I would have stuck with lugging CDs with me, or a cheap flash player).
Its very nice that I can now continually spend money on my MP3 player for silly little apps that tell me things that Google would tell me for free on my phone. Its very nice that I can watch HD video on a microscopic screen, or take crappy videos to post to YouTube (which I can do on my phone, for free, as well). But what happened to being able to store a shit-ton of music?
Didn't there used to be a market for this? Where did it go? How many 80Gb+ players still exist? Did people suddenly all delete their music libraries?
But... how long have we been taking showers? Assuming that this isn't some emerging phenomena, this has been happening as long as we've been showering, and assuming this, why are we still mostly alive as a species? The important information here, this isn't contained in TFA, is how many cases of infection have been reported that can be sourced back to a shower?
Without that bit of information, this is completely meaningless. It is nothing more than silly sensationalist science-based FUD.
Anytime I hear the term "Scientific fact" or "Scientifically proven." Neither of which will ever happen.
Actually there are tons and tons of scientific facts, a fact is nothing more than a measurable observation. When I state "The atomic number for gold is 79," this is an scientific fact. Just like me saying, "water is a molecule comprised of 2 atoms of hydrogen, and 1 atom of oxygen". What bothers me is when people claim the linkages between these facts (theories) are True (in the capital "t" sense), or proven.
Welcome to the gap between anecdote and statistics... Enjoy your stay. :)
I doubt this, though I can see desktop PCs becoming a niche compared to middle of the road laptops. Netbooks, as they originally were conceived (low end, ultra portable) will still be a niche. You also have to define what a budget desktop is, I don't see the modern equivalent of the super-low end eMachine dominating the consumer market. It seems the middle range is still the dominant, though now the middle range is much cheaper, and comes damn close to high end products performance wise. Sure, most people don't have quad cores or Phenom's, but 1.8-2.3Ghz Core 2 Duos are the middle of the road now, as is 2GB of ram, which is pretty much good enough for anything. Things are slowing down a bit now, so the the high end is shrinking down, and the cost/performance curve is flatlining.
Anecdotal observation: most of the people I know are thinking of (or have) springing for a laptop as a main machine now. Some of those are wanting a netbook as well for travel, and novelty value. But most people don't want a netbook for the same reason they state they don't want a Mac or Linux box, compatability. Most netbooks are far to light to run what people want to run. And one can argue that when this isn't true anymore, they won't be buying a netbook, but a low end laptop.
Because it will be the best. Haiku already has something of that philosophy. People won't pay for something better if one OS is the best. And of all the possible pieces of software that should be free or nearly free (as in beer), the OS should be one of them.
The best for whom? The best for you (or me) is never going to be the best for everyone. I doubt that there will ever be a decent "1 size fits all" OS, just like I doubt that we'd ever settle on a single model of car. People have different needs and preferences, and because of this there will always be a market for different solutions.
You also have a slight fallacy (which I'm guessing in unintentional, or I'm misreading you), you seem to be implying that there is a highest level as far as OS quality is concerned, at which there is no room for improvement. This might be true when we stop developing hardware, but for the foreseeable future there will be needed improvement in OS design because of changes in hardware. In the world of tomorrow OOTRTA might be perfect with your 60TB throughput holographic ethernet, but then someone comes and invents a 1PT quantum channel.
Also, to be snaky; since when did corporations care that anything was the best?
Postmodern thought is mainly associated with a person's view on religion, but it can also impact non-religious related topics.
It depends on what definition of "post modern" your using. In a technical sense it has very little to do with religion, though, its more of a media studies thing, involving a lot of Derrida-esque deconstruction, and the analysis of our conceptions to social constructs. Post-modernism is very cynical, and this might rub off on religion, but this isn't an overt goal of the schools of thought traditionally called "post modern". In other words your conception of post-modernism is backwards, it is manly associated other topics, but can also impact religious topics.
"Post-modern" is also a somewhat meaningless term. Ask 100 people who define their thought as post-modern to define the term, and you will get 100 different (and sometimes conflicting) definitions. The definition also changes from field to field, so literary post-modernism is a VERY different beast than any flavor of philosophical post-modernism (which actually varies from author to author, and even from book to book by the same author).
Students that majored in social studies and philosophy, which are majors have have heavy influence from postmodern thought, became much less religious.
I'm guessing your an American talking about American curriculum? If so, you are wrong, especially when it comes to philosophy. Most of the philosophy taught in American (and British) schools are of the analytic school. Meaning they are very heavy on logic and systems, and rather weak on religion and cultural critique (ala post-modernism). The social sciences (as a whole) have also moved away from anything that can be considered post-modern, most fields of psychology have been gravitating more and more to a "hard" science model, with theories mostly based on studies and brain scans. Sure, for a while there was a lot of post-modern (ish) thought in the meta-disciplines attached to the social sciences (such as Adorno and Habermas), but this largely died out in the late 80's. Granted sociology is still lagging a bit behind.
I recommend taking some quick classes in the fields you talk about.
I do find this conclusion of yours to be highly amusing though, since the social sciences can focus on the intersect between our beliefs and society, and the potential social construction of things we call truth. I could see how this would weaken religion in may people, as they find their belief in this is largely due to social factors, and not revealed "truth". Philosophy, on the other hand, is largely based on critical thinking skills, logic, and skepticism, which all are the antithesis of unfounded beliefs, no matter how deeply held. If philosophy kills religion, it is doing its job as an analytic discipline. This doesn't, obviously, imply that it is overtly antagonistic to religion. In my experience, it isn't.
I was a dual philosophy (oriented towards epistemology/philosophy of science) and psychology (oriented towards research) major, to clear things up.
As for science not hurting religion, I'm not shocked. Science doesn't teach one to be critical of all beliefs. In college level classes you get a brief tutorial on method, and the rest of it is learning facts. It doesn't teach you, at that level at least, to analyze all beliefs, just the assumptions at hand.
But evolution being random isn't the only reason Dawkin's has for not thinking there is a god.
As far as evolution and God goes, saying that God shapes evolution adds nothing to the theory. This isn't explicitly denying that there is a God. If we accept God as a premise, evolution works the exact same observable way as it would without the premise of a God. Therefore God is a superfluous variable in the theory.
But in CSI these chemist good guys are running DNA samples gathered from shadows left on ultra-high-resolution 320x400 security videos through universal DNA databases.
There is almost no science in CSI, you could replace science with super powers and the show would remain the same.
Thank god that those nice Pirate Bay folk were nice enough to backup all of your install CD lacking software then. I hate doing clean installs because it messes up all the stupid tweaks I do (gah... moving my user folders to an second drive, etc...) with every copy I run, and it messes up the huge corpus of rarely used (except for rare, but necessary things) free software I keep around. And being that they all are small apps, that I only use every other month or so, I never really remember the whole set specifically. I also lose all my app specific settings. That and the general post-install cruft hunt.
The install process is fine, its the hours of small tweaking afterward that pisses me off.
Er... OS X is basically Unix (BSD), with a pretty shell on top. Windows is really the only major player who isn't heavily based on Unix.
How about if that OS really was great? Even better than 'Haiku great' with great security, great organization, lots of features but with minimal bloat, great responsiveness, idealized metadata filesystem, open source etc.?
But "lots of features" is synonymous with bloat. Different users have different needs, and thus need different features, so to any group a certain % of features are bloat. This would be especially true if you made the one OS to rule them all, since you'd need to cater to ALL groups, and thus include all the factors needed by everyone.
Perhaps the One OS to Rule Them All would need to have a very small, limited, but heavily extensible kernel, meaning at base it is pretty much useless, but each subclass of users can extend it to their needs. But this, then, doesn't fit into the ideal of having "lots of features".
Another problem is that we're dealing with individuals, so perhaps you find the standard One OS to Rule Them All install to be sufficient to your needs, but I don't, and thus I'd want a different OS. Being OSS would only make this worse, since I could just fork it. Also what about seperate needs? Is the OOTRTA going to be good for servers, embedded systems, devices, and home computers at the same time?
We're also ignoring capitalism and greed. Why would someone want to adhere to OOTRTA if they could come out with something else that might make them money? A diverse market means there is more money to spread around, so I really doubt that a free monopoly will happen.
This is wishful thinking. In the far far future things will be just about exactly like they are now, with hopefully even more diversity. I'd rather see a world with ten different (but good) OSs floating around, than a world with one, that way people have choice, and can pick whatever they feel works for them. This also keeps the amusing time honored passtime of OS trolling alive, which is a bonus.
Damn you, explain "interesting" and "odd"! Don't leave us all hanging.
I'd go with (d), with the "find cover, and call for backup" caveat. Of course using their guns as a deterrent to guarantee their safety.
Yes, most people that get tasered are innocently standing there, hands in the air, asking how the weather is
Actually yes... All people getting tazed are innocent, and are only guilty after that strange thing called a jury decides it. Not all people arrested are guilty. And getting arrested while innocent, or doing something that is not a violent crime, is a pretty shocking moment of your life. You might even try to ask the police officer "what did I do", and when they tell you to shut up, you'll probably continue to ask, and plea, especially when you realize that your going to spend a night in jail. Hell, you might even struggle when the police shove your arms behind your back to "subdue" and cuff you... not because your criminal scum, but for the simple fact that your arms DON'T bend that way. Actually, it hurts, and 99.9% of humans would probably stuggle to get out of a painful situation.
I've been arrested twice, once wrongfully, and once for something incredibly minor (using a bathroom I wasn't supposed to use, ala trespassing). Both times I was not acting in a threatening manner, neither time did I back talk the police or throw insults at them, much less try to act violently towards them. And both times they used a rather uncomfortable amount of force, even though I was completely complying with their commands. In the case where I was actually guilty they decided the slam my head rather brutally into a bathroom wall, while twisting my arms around in very unnatural positions, before putting on cuffs so tight that my hands were purple, and my wrists bloody. Again, no resistance, and lots of "yes sir" on my behalf. In the case where I was wrongfull arrested (and got to spend fun 7-8 hours in jail), they refused to tell me what I was being arrested of the whole time. This obviously was somewhat stressful to me.
Imagine, some day your minding your own business, and have three police officers approach you, throw you on the ground, cuff you, and throw you in a car... but won't tell you why, or where your going. In fact they scream at you for even asking.
The people the police arrest have the exact same amount of rights as the police do. And police are just as big idiotic, mean, law breaking, assholes as the population as a whole. Police are just people too, putting on a badge does not make you some noble God of a man. Getting cuffed doesn't make you a criminal either. Not all police are jerks, but some are, in roughly the same proportion as the population as a whole.
You wouldn't use an electric fence for crowd control; why use an electric mine?
the sadly plausable answer here, is of course: "Because we can."
Could we all please stop using the "PCP guy" argument. What percentage of stops involve someone on PCP? What percentage of cases that have a degree of escalation of force involve someone on PCP? I'm guessing it is a VERY low number. PCP was never a common street drug, I'm guessing 99% of drug cases involve marijuana, methamphetamine, or crack, or heroine... you know the normal street drugs.
The PCP argument is just an ad hoc justification for thinking police should be allowed to use as much force as they want, when they want. At least be honest about it.
Odd, I get to argue in favor of clubbing people, this is a rare (and somewhat amusing) day.
I'd actually prefer it if police clubbed people to subdue them, rather than tase(?) them, for a couple reasons. Police need to think twice before hopping in with a club, a TASER is somewhat different in that it is a point and click weapon (branded as being as safe as throwing twinkies at whoever is being arrested), it lowers the threshold of use. It makes it easier to use force, and opens it up to be used in places where not even a baton would be used. While it might be a bit safer to the person its being used on than a club, this might be outweighed by the fact that it is used more than the baton would have been used, for situations requiring much less escalation.
Call me a namby pamby liberal who likes his rights, but officer safety is only HALF of the equation, being that the people their stopping, no matter how much they resist, are innocent and and have equal rights, to the officer until it is found otherwise in a court of law. Also the bar to "resisting" or "stuggling" is far more cloudy than we'd like to realize. Hell, even watch Cops, which is nothing but friendly to the police, and see how resisting can be very nonresiting looking, if it is convenient. Hell, struggling against strange restraint positions is resisting somehow, even though I'm guessing anyone would struggle with some of them. Its a high stress enviroment for cops and the people they are arresting (guilty or not), but somehow we expect everyone to turn into a limp bean bag when an attacker puts out arms behind our back as a restraint. As a person who has been wrongfully arrested, it would be a miracle of someone DIDN'T struggle. Trying being surprised and thrown against a wall by someone who just screams "POLICE!" at you, and not trying to struggle a bit.
No, I'm not anti-police, but I realize that police are humans, and thus are not infallible, and their ranks contain a fair share of bad eggs. And also not all crooks are violent sociopaths out to kill the police and innocent bystanders. Hell, not all people who are arrested are violent, much less actually guilty of a crime. Also not all cases of "resisting" are actually people actively being antagonistic to the police, sometimes its just an expedient way of jailing them for otherwise banal things, or a way to escalate charges, or a way to vent some frustration of the person being arrested. Yes, this isn't the majority of times, but even in the minority of times when the police go too far, we should protect the innocent and others from the police.
We also don't know how lethal the TASER actually is. We can't really judge whether it is more or less lethal than the common baton. We really shouldn't be saying it is equal to a baton when we have no proof of it, and what proof that might exist is being actively blocked by the corporation whose job it is to sell the device. This corporation is also saying that no one has EVER died from a TASER, just some mythical pre-existing condition that mysteriously appeared at the same time the TASER was developed and sold to law enforcement.
Um...the letter needs a writer. Who "writes" the virus?
Hijacked cells. If we must use a letter analogy, think of them as nothing more than self-propagating chain letters. You (a cell) get the letter, which instructs you to write 1000's of copies of it, if you don't... well you have to... In making thousands of copies you (the cell) die. So, in reality who made the copies? You, the cell, did, not the letter.
A virus out in the world, all alone, can't do anything. Its as dead as a door nail. Only by having a host cell handy, and having some form of genetics to hijack can it do anything. Viruses are basically stupid protein machines with a reproductive payload.
Axons aren't quite like wires, though. Its been awhile, but don't they use current via ion channels, and not an actual current? When activated they suck up a bunch of positive ions (I think calcium, might be wrong though), and expel the negative ones (potassium, might be wrong though) creating a charge. They aren't llike little wires.
If they were, I imagine that MRI's would be much more interesting though.
It's not a fad, and it's not a choice.
I'm sorry, again, for implying that all cases of this (and other food allergies) are purely mental, or trendy. But MOST of them are, you might not fall into this group, and then I have genuine sympathy for you. Again, also, my choice in wording was a bit harsh, since I chose the term "also" to say "sans the people with actual, proven, medical problems not related to modern trends", this was bad word choice on my behalf.
I feel, though, that you and the person I was responding too originally are a minority. A lot of people won't eat gluten (or whatever exceedingly common food they claim to be allergic to) for reasons that have nothing to do with actual medicine. These are the people I was writing my rather misplaced rant against. If I had to guess, I'd say perhaps around 5-10% of people who claim odd food problems actually have a real problem, the rest are just morons looking for some way to be special, or ways to justify whatever idiotic special dietary trend there is at the moment. These, obviously, are the people I was mocking in my moment of caffeine deprived, and somewhat jaded, weakness.
If you have a real problem, I have no issue with going out to eat with you. I'm just rather distrustful since your a minority. Though I do have a problem if you try to influence my food choices, since then the odds of you having a problem drops exponentially, and your chances of having the holier-than-thou illness increases by a similar rate. All the "you's" here are obviously rhetorical.
Please, cut us some slack or at least acknowledge that people may really suffer from something like this and are not just 'food fadsters'.
I did... I used the term "also", I recognize that their are people who are adversely effected by gluten, and people who have genuine food allergies, but they a minority. Most of the people I know with food allergies have insubstantial complaints like "it gives me gas", or "it makes my palms slightly itchy).
Sorry for sounding cranky, it seemed like a good time for a rant.
The future is tomorrow you mean?
It kind of makes me mad that they basically only make one model now that has enough storage space for my music collection, outside of the $399 64GB touch. I have around 50GB of music (not counting audiobooks, pictures, and videos, which brings me to the top of the Touch), and my only option is the classic (which is overkill), or spending $400 for something that has a bunch of functionality I don't want/need (I have a smart phone to do all that for me). And they'll probably kill the touch in the next year or so, forcing me to buy a Zune (or such), and pirate all the AACs I bought from Apple.
Do they think everyone likes their crappy "shuffle" idea? I hate the idea of only being able to carry around 1/10th of my music at any given time, either chosen at random, or tediously hand selected by me (which is why I got an iPod over CDs or smaller capacity MP3 players).