Well, you'll probably get some flack from right-wingers for linking to a Marxist site, but whatever the politics Poincare certainly deserves some recognition. But still, much like Alfred Wallace, who discovered natural selection independently of Darwin but didn't want it to apply to humans, Poincare didn't really recognize how relativity changed everything. An in any case, what Poincare discovered was really only a form of Special Relativity. It was General Relativity which really made Einstein famous.
Seriously, PCs are loud. Both my PC Linux server at home (which I keep in a spare room so it doesn't annoy me), and my PC at work (which does annoy me) are loud. Really, without liquid cooling, what can be done? PCs need powerful fans because x86 chips generate tons of heat.
Just out of curiosity, why would you be annoyed at x86 hardware?
Well, X86 hardware tends to be loud (yes, I know you can buy special quiet liquid cooled systems, but the typical x86 box is as loud as an air conditioner). Macs (with few exceptions) are whisper quiet
The guy's an *astronaut*. Of course, he's going to be pro- (human) space exploration, etc. etc. But objectively, 1950's SF to the contrary, there's nowhere to go. Say, after spending billions of dollars on a Mars base that could have been spent on serious science, Earth gets wacked. So, the human species is saved? No. The Mars base just runs out of supplies and dies.
The thing though, even when technology *isn't* evil in Crichton's books (as in Congo) the books are still about how some discovery could change the world but doesn't (semi-intelligent apes, cloned dinosaurs, time travel, etc) -- in the end *always* the discovery gets lost and the world is no different than before. Wouldn't it be more interesting to read about how time travel or cloned dinosaurs would change society?
Several months ago there was a mini-scientific scandal when it was discovered that the former director of the American Chemical Society had been making $750,000/year and had a private chauffeur and limo, paid of course from ACS funds, which a large part derive from journal subscription fees and fees for things like like their 'scholar' service. If free services Google can take over the citation business from ACS and ISI, and the Public Library of Science can take over journal publishing, then I won't weep too much when these "professional societies" curl up and die, or at least shrink to more useful proportions.
Actually there are a many Mormon's (myself included) who believe in evolution...It's those fundamentalist Christians who are insistent on a literal interpretation of the Bible that can be the problem , not the Mormons (excluding Orrin Hatch he can goto Hell;-) ).
Sure and lots of Catholics use birth control. All that says is that many people who are roped into a religion don't let it control their lives as much as the leaders of the religion would like it to (good for them! ). But the fact is the lords of the sacred underwear have never accepted evolution, so technically you're an heretic.
Now that I have a doctorate in microbiology I like to look up relevant articles in encyclopedias and see how biased/incorrect they are -- and I find that they are considerbly more biased and wrong than Wikipedia's. BTW, "Britannica" no longer hails from the Royal Isles -- it's just a cheap American brand name, no different from Encarta.
Look at how many people pay money for the privilege of shilling products on their clothes.
Yeah, don't people know that the way to get T-shirts with advertising on them is to go to conventions? Then people *give* them to you...and the only reason to wear them is when you are too lazy to do laundry and you have nothing else to wear.
I'm unconvinced that "lack of community" causes crime. I live in a high-rise apartment complex, know none of my neighbors and yet neither I nor my neighbors cause the sort of criminal activity that goes on in projects.
It's more likely that crime is more likely due to 1) lack of money and 2) lack of education. Of course, it isn't obvious how to solve these problems, but wasting money creating "community centers" or getting rid of high-rises isn't likely to do the job.
I read Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" on my PDA -- carting around 1,000 page paper books is a pain -- literally! But with my PDA I could read them wherever and whenever I wanted.
Really, I'm surprised at the Luddite "paper forever" attitude that so many people have here on Slashdot -- it's the sort of attitude I'd expect people who still use typewriters and record players to have...
Why? What's wrong with a narrowly tailored subpoena in regards to a specific, discrete illegal act?
Er. how about this: the FBI should worry about crimes that *shock* actually matter *shock*,like serial killers, for instance. Maybe someday in the distant future when there are no more serious crimes, the FBI should get itself involved in utter trivialities like computer "crime".
Even a 12 year old shouldn't be using an encyclopedia for school reports. When I was a grade schooler, teachers told me that we should only cite *books* in term papers. Encyclopedias are just for fun, much like the World Almanac, or or Guinness Book of world records.
I know this is somewhat contentious, but how exactly does an "education" (other than learning to read, write and perform basic mathematics) help? I don't see a connection between being able to run a business and knowing what the capital city of Brazil is, or who wrote Paradise Lost.
Er, what sort of business are we talking about? A corner sweet shop or a business that might actually have to deal with customers all over, including Brazil? Plus, maybe just knowing the name of Milton might not be very useful, but understanding the lesson of Paradise Lost, namely that even great bosses are going to have disgruntled employees, who are disgruntled merely because they *aren't* the boss, certainly is useful for *any* business,
A lot of the comments here seem to suggest that many people find the traditional NeXTStep (GNUStep) look ugly. But I can't believe that *all* people believe that -- look at the popularity of windowmanagers like WindowMaker and AfterStep. Plus practically every theming utility for every platform includes a NeXTStep theme. It might not be as flashy as Aqua, but I rather like the traditional NeXTStep look.
If you want to go back to the patronage model, please, feel free to stump up the money to do so yourself.
Do you pay taxes? In The US, there's the National Endowment for the Arts, in other countries there's often an even larger organization called the Ministry of Culture or some variation thereof. The point is every taxpayer *is* a patron of the arts.
Of course, the NEA has become rather infamous for funding the sort of thing that hardly anybody enjoys (tedious "advant-garde" performance art, grotesque paintings using one or more bodily fluids for shock value), but there's no intrinsic reason why the money, couldn't say, fund music of popular nature instead.
I live in Washington and often go to the LOC on Saturdays (it's closed Sundays) -- it has a large collection of books in lots of different languages -- even Esperanto and Volapuk!
It's exactly the same story -- the Medicine & Physiology prize rarely goes to physicians (or even the somewhat dying breed of non-molecular biologists that go by the name of "physiologist") -- instead both the Medicine and Chemistry prize tend to go to molecular biologists/cell biologists/biochemists (no real difference between those names).
Considering that I'm a genomicist, I should be happy -- my near infinitesimal chances of winning a Nobel are doubled, but still, I can see that actual physicians and chemists might be miffed that their prizes have been co-opted
This also means the voter knows something about how to write - legibly.
Which is why this is unfair. Many Southern states before the civil rights movement had literacy requirements to vote. At the surface it seems reasonable -- but the fact was far more blacks than whites were illiterate (they had bad black-only schools, plus many had to leave school to help support their parents), so the real reason the requirement was around was to disenfranchise blacks.
Being illiterate in the 20th or 21st century isn't nearly as big a problem as before because other media exist -- an illiterate person may still have a good grasp of issues.
The same is true for C#, using the platform invoke mechanism, it's even simpler.// import the C dll method signature [DllImport("myclib.dll")] static extern void DoSomething();// make a call into the C dll DoSomething();
The point isn't that lower level languages can call libraries -- I'd *hope* that any non-toy language can do it -- the point is if a higher level scripting language can do it, why *bother* with all the extra bother of low level languages?
Funny Mel Brooks movies are "The Producers", "Blazing Saddles", and "Young Frankenstein" . Pretty much everything that he's made since sucked. Much like Lucas and Woody Allen, he's basically used up every good idea he's had, and is just recycling.
Consider, say "High Anxiety", Brooks' spoof of "Vertigo" -- the funniest moment was when we hear dramatic music, and the main character looks around and sees the band playing it. Pretty clever, right? Well, it *would* be if he hadn't *already* used it in "Blazing Saddles"...
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Well, you'll probably get some flack from right-wingers for linking to a Marxist site, but whatever the politics Poincare certainly deserves some recognition. But still, much like Alfred Wallace, who discovered natural selection independently of Darwin but didn't want it to apply to humans, Poincare didn't really recognize how relativity changed everything. An in any case, what Poincare discovered was really only a form of Special Relativity. It was General Relativity which really made Einstein famous.
Exactly. That's why non-realtime trivia contents are meaningless in the modern epoch.
Seriously, PCs are loud. Both my PC Linux server at home (which I keep in a spare room so it doesn't annoy me), and my PC at work (which does annoy me) are loud. Really, without liquid cooling, what can be done? PCs need powerful fans because x86 chips generate tons of heat.
Just out of curiosity, why would you be annoyed at x86 hardware?
Well, X86 hardware tends to be loud (yes, I know you can buy special quiet liquid cooled systems, but the typical x86 box is as loud as an air conditioner). Macs (with few exceptions) are whisper quiet
The guy's an *astronaut*. Of course, he's going to be pro- (human) space exploration, etc. etc. But objectively, 1950's SF to the contrary, there's nowhere to go. Say, after spending billions of dollars on a Mars base that could have been spent on serious science, Earth gets wacked. So, the human species is saved? No. The Mars base just runs out of supplies and dies.
Mormons don't practice polygamy anymore. The practice is forbidden by the church and violators are promptly excommunicated
In other news, there's no piracy going on the Internet. No sir! It's *illegal* to download RIAA and MPAA property!
The thing though, even when technology *isn't* evil in Crichton's books (as in Congo) the books are still about how some discovery could change the world but doesn't (semi-intelligent apes, cloned dinosaurs, time travel, etc) -- in the end *always* the discovery gets lost and the world is no different than before. Wouldn't it be more interesting to read about how time travel or cloned dinosaurs would change society?
Have you discovered Perseus? Actually somewhat more useful that the Loebs -- you can click on words to see the translation, case, etc.
Several months ago there was a mini-scientific scandal when it was discovered that the former director of the American Chemical Society had been making $750,000/year and had a private chauffeur and limo, paid of course from ACS funds, which a large part derive from journal subscription fees and fees for things like like their 'scholar' service. If free services Google can take over the citation business from ACS and ISI, and the Public Library of Science can take over journal publishing, then I won't weep too much when these "professional societies" curl up and die, or at least shrink to more useful proportions.
Actually there are a many Mormon's (myself included) who believe in evolution...It's those fundamentalist Christians who are insistent on a literal interpretation of the Bible that can be the problem , not the Mormons (excluding Orrin Hatch he can goto Hell ;-) ).
Sure and lots of Catholics use birth control. All that says is that many people who are roped into a religion don't let it control their lives as much as the leaders of the religion would like it to (good for them! ). But the fact is the lords of the sacred underwear have never accepted evolution, so technically you're an heretic.
Now that I have a doctorate in microbiology I like to look up relevant articles in encyclopedias and see how biased/incorrect they are -- and I find that they are considerbly more biased and wrong than Wikipedia's. BTW, "Britannica" no longer hails from the Royal Isles -- it's just a cheap American brand name, no different from Encarta.
Look at how many people pay money for the privilege of shilling products on their clothes.
Yeah, don't people know that the way to get T-shirts with advertising on them is to go to conventions? Then people *give* them to you...and the only reason to wear them is when you are too lazy to do laundry and you have nothing else to wear.
I'm unconvinced that "lack of community" causes crime. I live in a high-rise apartment complex, know none of my neighbors and yet neither I nor my neighbors cause the sort of criminal activity that goes on in projects.
It's more likely that crime is more likely due to 1) lack of money and 2) lack of education. Of course, it isn't obvious how to solve these problems, but wasting money creating "community centers" or getting rid of high-rises isn't likely to do the job.
I read Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" on my PDA -- carting around 1,000 page paper books is a pain -- literally! But with my PDA I could read them wherever and whenever I wanted.
Really, I'm surprised at the Luddite "paper forever" attitude that so many people have here on Slashdot -- it's the sort of attitude I'd expect people who still use typewriters and record players to have...
Why? What's wrong with a narrowly tailored subpoena in regards to a specific, discrete illegal act?
Er. how about this: the FBI should worry about crimes that *shock* actually matter *shock*,like serial killers, for instance. Maybe someday in the distant future when there are no more serious crimes, the FBI should get itself involved in utter trivialities like computer "crime".
Even a 12 year old shouldn't be using an encyclopedia for school reports. When I was a grade schooler, teachers told me that we should only cite *books* in term papers. Encyclopedias are just for fun, much like the World Almanac, or or Guinness Book of world records.
I know this is somewhat contentious, but how exactly does an "education" (other than learning to read, write and perform basic mathematics) help? I don't see a connection between being able to run a business and knowing what the capital city of Brazil is, or who wrote Paradise Lost.
Er, what sort of business are we talking about? A corner sweet shop or a business that might actually have to deal with customers all over, including Brazil? Plus, maybe just knowing the name of Milton might not be very useful, but understanding the lesson of Paradise Lost, namely that even great bosses are going to have disgruntled employees, who are disgruntled merely because they *aren't* the boss, certainly is useful for *any* business,
A lot of the comments here seem to suggest that many people find the traditional NeXTStep (GNUStep) look ugly. But I can't believe that *all* people believe that -- look at the popularity of windowmanagers like WindowMaker and AfterStep. Plus practically every theming utility for every platform includes a NeXTStep theme. It might not be as flashy as Aqua, but I rather like the traditional NeXTStep look.
It's the right-wingers who want to hinder science because it threatens their cherished judeo-christian mythology...
If you want to go back to the patronage model, please, feel free to stump up the money to do so yourself.
Do you pay taxes? In The US, there's the National Endowment for the Arts, in other countries there's often an even larger organization called the Ministry of Culture or some variation thereof. The point is every taxpayer *is* a patron of the arts.
Of course, the NEA has become rather infamous for funding the sort of thing that hardly anybody enjoys (tedious "advant-garde" performance art, grotesque paintings using one or more bodily fluids for shock value), but there's no intrinsic reason why the money, couldn't say, fund music of popular nature instead.
I live in Washington and often go to the LOC on Saturdays (it's closed Sundays) -- it has a large collection of books in lots of different languages -- even Esperanto and Volapuk!
It's exactly the same story -- the Medicine & Physiology prize rarely goes to physicians (or even the somewhat dying breed of non-molecular biologists that go by the name of "physiologist") -- instead both the Medicine and Chemistry prize tend to go to molecular biologists/cell biologists/biochemists (no real difference between those names).
Considering that I'm a genomicist, I should be happy -- my near infinitesimal chances of winning a Nobel are doubled, but still, I can see that actual physicians and chemists might be miffed that their prizes have been co-opted
This also means the voter knows something about how to write - legibly.
Which is why this is unfair. Many Southern states before the civil rights movement had literacy requirements to vote. At the surface it seems reasonable -- but the fact was far more blacks than whites were illiterate (they had bad black-only schools, plus many had to leave school to help support their parents), so the real reason the requirement was around was to disenfranchise blacks.
Being illiterate in the 20th or 21st century isn't nearly as big a problem as before because other media exist -- an illiterate person may still have a good grasp of issues.
The same is true for C#, using the platform invoke mechanism, it's even simpler.
[DllImport("myclib.dll")]
static extern void DoSomething();
DoSomething();
The point isn't that lower level languages can call libraries -- I'd *hope* that any non-toy language can do it -- the point is if a higher level scripting language can do it, why *bother* with all the extra bother of low level languages?
Funny Mel Brooks movies are "The Producers", "Blazing Saddles", and "Young Frankenstein" . Pretty much everything that he's made since sucked. Much like Lucas and Woody Allen, he's basically used up every good idea he's had, and is just recycling.
Consider, say "High Anxiety", Brooks' spoof of "Vertigo" -- the funniest moment was when we hear dramatic music, and the main character looks around and sees the band playing it. Pretty clever, right? Well, it *would* be if he hadn't *already* used it in "Blazing Saddles"...