"Oh, so you're the twit, not the other guy. If Slashdot doesn't parse it, then where does the bracketed domain insert come from? Magic fairies? "
If so, that was rather unnecessary. I mean you basically called me a twit because I didn't notice something which, by default, isn't enabled. It would have been fine for ya to say "Actually, Slashdot does parse, the evidence is when...".
That's not apples to apples. You can enjoy a sports game even if the team loses. Besides, you can watch most sports on TV.
Face it: Movies are not quality entertainment. The majority of movies out there don't spend enough time worrying about entertaining the audience like they did years ago. Give people a chance to say "I don't like it, here is your penalty", and hopefully we'll see the quality creep back up again. It'd certainly cause George Lucas to enlist some help in making Episode 3 to make sure it doesn't bore the shit out of everybody like 2 did.
"The vast majority of merchants (in ANY industry) will not give you 100% use out of a product or service and allow you to pay later with zero penalty"
Everything I buy at Fred Meyer or Best Buy has a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. Some places charge a restocking fee, fine. That's still better than what you get when you're unsatisfied with a movie.
"There might be a discrepancy, as I hear in the books that the ghost fades away into the force years later, Qui-Gonn might be too late... "
Don't put any faith into the books, even if they are 'canon'. Lucas certainly doesn't care about them. According to some people I know (who should go outside more, btw:P), there are loads of inconsistencies if you factor the books in too.
I wouldn't expect that little detail about 'Force Ghosts' has any bearing on the movie.
they do not belong to you. They do not belong to the fans. They do not belong to the merchandisers. They belong to LucasFilm, which in turn belongs to George Lucas."
We pay to watch those movies, we want good stuff. Thanks to the backwards movie industry, we pay for movies and THEN watch them. We can't get our money back because the movie was horribly written.
So yes, we own it. We don't pay for it, it don't exist. Lucas'd be smart to listen to us.
"I think what you mean to say is it doesn't affect something that's already happened..."
Hmm that's what I said, but I may have mixed up what I was saying and what I was thinking. I really need to spend more time clarifying ideas in my own mind before I post. I apologize.
I think it's a binary problem: Either life is out there, or it isn't. Probability gives us an idea of how hard it'll be to find it, or how likely it is that we'll be invaded by hostile aliens, but it won't tell us if life is out there or not. We can't prove that it is impossible for alien life to exist, therefore we have to assume that there is somewhere.
I agree with you that the higher the probability, the harder we should look. In a clearer sense, the probability of ET life directly affects the priority of searching for it above say building nuclear weapons.
I'm just concerned that if somebody cooks up some rationalization that life isn't out there, we'll restrict our search without realizing what we lose in the process. In an earlier example, I pointed out how SETI proved that the internet could becoming a big supercomputer. Other interesting questions and answers will arrive if we continue to ask things like "If life existed on this planet, how would it survive?" We may discover a way to naturally protect our bodies in the event of total Ozone Layer failure.
I'm also reminded of how diverse an ecology Earth is, yet life manages to survive in every crevice of it. We may not find monkeys on other planets, but we may find stuff that totally defies our idea of what life should be.
At this point, I'm not looking for probability or rationale, I'm looking for actual experiments done to prove/disprove ET life. Even if probability states that life has 0 chance of surviving anywhere but in our solar system, I won't be happy until we've sent a man to a machine to Alpha Centauri to find out why.
"I said that "D" that is probability of life on planet is nearly ZERO"
Question: Do you mean intelligent life like human beings, or are you including microbes, bacteria, and so on?
In the case of Human-esque 'intelligent' life, I agree that the scale of time indicates low probabilities of life existing within our own life time. (I mean human kind, not me and you...)
In the case of bacteria and so on, I find it unlikely that the Sol system is one of very few occupied planets. There's evidence that life can exist anywhere it is inclined to.
But you know, if you think about it, what good is probability? What are the odds of me arriving home safely tonight between 6:15 pm and 6:20 pm? Well, first there are a number of intersections I have to cross. Then there's the factor of me leaving the office at the right time. Somebody might want a last minute change. There's the factor of my speed, which is a little inconsistent since it is raining today.
If you sum up all of the various factors, the odds of me arriving home between 6:15 and 6:20 today are heavily against my favor. Yet, if I work at it, I'll manage it.
I'm not saying you're wrong about the possibility of life, I'm simply stating that probability doesn't affect outcome. If life exists, it's already out there. In this case, it's just a matter of finding it, not proving it does or doesn't exist.
I do agree with you, though, that we have needs ahead of looking for ET life. But I don't agree that SETI should be shut down. The benefits of SETI have already been worthwhile, like the massive supercomputer they created with the internet to process their data.
Technically you could just hold the shift key and do that too.
Is it trivial? Perhaps. Is it worth getting shitty with somebody? No. It's not the type of thing where I'd say "I hate Slashdot because they won't set the link to open new windows...". It's more like "It'd be nice if Slashdot did do this..."
If I got treated like that for a simple request like that, I'd be fumin too.
*Nods* I understand what you're saying. I could easily have phrased the question better.
I'm just really frustrated that the Gov't is going at this backwards. I'd really like our rights defined before they go passing stupid laws like the DMCA.
Not sure if I expressed it too well, but I basically wanted to know what's going to be done to secure our rights.
I personally don't believe that this whole piracy issue can be sorted out until the law spells out what we can legally do. If the law says that we can legally backup a DVD, for example, then the law says that somebody copying a DVD is not a pirate.
Unfortunately, I got a little heated when I started writing that, so I have no doubt that I wasn't very good at expressing myself.
I think you make interesting points, but this particular one caught my eye...
"Tivo and it's like is already killing TV advertising revenue..."
What's killing advertising is the advertisers. Tivo was responding to market demand, not firing shots at advertisers. If the advertisers listened to their audience, then there'd be some agreeance on what to do about it.
"I'm guessing you're basing these assumptions on laptops from a few years ago. "
Um no, Im basing it on a flight I took 5 days ago. I have a Toshiba Portege that is like TINY and it was still a pain to use it on the flight.
"I tried using a Palm to write a memo once during a cross-country flight, just to see how it would work, and I gave up after about a paragraph."
Understandable, but you can get a laptop sized keyboard for it that folds up and fits in your pocket.
"You're using your PDA in the bathroom? I'm confused. Surely you can't be saying this is an advantage on an airplane - nobody's stealing laptops off airplanes."
Damn, I had that thought clearly in my mind and didn't express it too well. Sorry about that. Here's what I meant to say: When on an airplane using a laptop, it's a bit of a tetris game to get up and go to the bathroom. In order to get up, I had to lift up my laptop, replace my tray with one hand (I was in an emergency row, so it was one of those funky fold up trays..), and then do a little dance to get out into the aisle and put my laptop back on my chair. A PDA I can just pop in my pocket, get up and go.
I didn't mean to imply that I would use the PDA in the bathroom, heh.
"Based on your parameters, an ordinary $25 tape recorder would work even better. You still haven't explained why you would use a PDA. "
To be honest, I thought that'd be obvious. If I record my voice, I can write out a short description of that note using the filename, and then back it up. With a tape recorder, I have to jump around the tape for basic ideas. Not that useful.
Ah, the clamshell design. I have a PDA like that somewhere. I used to use that for jotting down story ideas. I agree, the keyboard is better for writing stuff.
However, what became a problem is that I am on my feet quite a bit. The mini-keyboard is definitely very useful on a hard surface, but on your feet it becomes a huge drawback. I finally gave in and got me a Jornada (don't laugh:P) and I use the voice recording feature on it alot while I'm walking home.
I'm not telling you that you're wrong, just saying there are alternate requirements for these devices.:)
My cell phone has an 'internet connection'. I've found that useful a couple of times. Once when there was an earthquake and our net connection was down, and the other was when I was bored at a restaraunt and got up to speed on the news.
If my cell phone had a PDA built into it, simply being able to touch my choices would be a huge improvement over having to use a rocker switch.
Another potential use of PDA's involves an always-on wireless net connection. I like the idea of using something like a Treo where I get email updates and so on. This may sound silly, but I like the idea of checking my messages while I'm sitting through commercials on TV. Eventually I'll get a wireless card for my PDA so I can do that.
In other words, PDA's aren't quite there yet, but they're really becoming attractive.
My girlfriend has a pager with a similar keyboard on it (perhaps a little smaller?) and she emails me a lot. She even uses it in lieu of a cell phone.
Not sure what you expect them to do, but what they provide is fine for the size. Altho that projected keyboard that was at a recent trade show was pretty cool.:)
B.) What's wrong with what I asked? If you're going to say what I said is stupid, how about backing that claim up? If it's stupid, fine, but give me reason so I can understand why.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm... I'm a little confused. Did you write this:
"Oh, so you're the twit, not the other guy. If Slashdot doesn't parse it, then where does the bracketed domain insert come from? Magic fairies? "
If so, that was rather unnecessary. I mean you basically called me a twit because I didn't notice something which, by default, isn't enabled. It would have been fine for ya to say "Actually, Slashdot does parse, the evidence is when...".
See what I mean?
That's not apples to apples. You can enjoy a sports game even if the team loses. Besides, you can watch most sports on TV.
Face it: Movies are not quality entertainment. The majority of movies out there don't spend enough time worrying about entertaining the audience like they did years ago. Give people a chance to say "I don't like it, here is your penalty", and hopefully we'll see the quality creep back up again. It'd certainly cause George Lucas to enlist some help in making Episode 3 to make sure it doesn't bore the shit out of everybody like 2 did.
"The vast majority of merchants (in ANY industry) will not give you 100% use out of a product or service and allow you to pay later with zero penalty"
Everything I buy at Fred Meyer or Best Buy has a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. Some places charge a restocking fee, fine. That's still better than what you get when you're unsatisfied with a movie.
"There might be a discrepancy, as I hear in the books that the ghost fades away into the force years later, Qui-Gonn might be too late... "
:P), there are loads of inconsistencies if you factor the books in too.
Don't put any faith into the books, even if they are 'canon'. Lucas certainly doesn't care about them. According to some people I know (who should go outside more, btw
I wouldn't expect that little detail about 'Force Ghosts' has any bearing on the movie.
they do not belong to you. They do not belong to the fans. They do not belong to the merchandisers. They belong to LucasFilm, which in turn belongs to George Lucas."
We pay to watch those movies, we want good stuff. Thanks to the backwards movie industry, we pay for movies and THEN watch them. We can't get our money back because the movie was horribly written.
So yes, we own it. We don't pay for it, it don't exist. Lucas'd be smart to listen to us.
Funny, I haven't paid anything.
"I think what you mean to say is it doesn't affect something that's already happened..."
Hmm that's what I said, but I may have mixed up what I was saying and what I was thinking. I really need to spend more time clarifying ideas in my own mind before I post. I apologize.
I think it's a binary problem: Either life is out there, or it isn't. Probability gives us an idea of how hard it'll be to find it, or how likely it is that we'll be invaded by hostile aliens, but it won't tell us if life is out there or not. We can't prove that it is impossible for alien life to exist, therefore we have to assume that there is somewhere.
I agree with you that the higher the probability, the harder we should look. In a clearer sense, the probability of ET life directly affects the priority of searching for it above say building nuclear weapons.
I'm just concerned that if somebody cooks up some rationalization that life isn't out there, we'll restrict our search without realizing what we lose in the process. In an earlier example, I pointed out how SETI proved that the internet could becoming a big supercomputer. Other interesting questions and answers will arrive if we continue to ask things like "If life existed on this planet, how would it survive?" We may discover a way to naturally protect our bodies in the event of total Ozone Layer failure.
I'm also reminded of how diverse an ecology Earth is, yet life manages to survive in every crevice of it. We may not find monkeys on other planets, but we may find stuff that totally defies our idea of what life should be.
At this point, I'm not looking for probability or rationale, I'm looking for actual experiments done to prove/disprove ET life. Even if probability states that life has 0 chance of surviving anywhere but in our solar system, I won't be happy until we've sent a man to a machine to Alpha Centauri to find out why.
What are the odds of it raining wherever you are in the world at the same time it is raining on my side of the planet?
Isn't that sorta what Milli Vanilli did?
"I said that "D" that is probability of life on planet is nearly ZERO"
Question: Do you mean intelligent life like human beings, or are you including microbes, bacteria, and so on?
In the case of Human-esque 'intelligent' life, I agree that the scale of time indicates low probabilities of life existing within our own life time. (I mean human kind, not me and you...)
In the case of bacteria and so on, I find it unlikely that the Sol system is one of very few occupied planets. There's evidence that life can exist anywhere it is inclined to.
But you know, if you think about it, what good is probability? What are the odds of me arriving home safely tonight between 6:15 pm and 6:20 pm? Well, first there are a number of intersections I have to cross. Then there's the factor of me leaving the office at the right time. Somebody might want a last minute change. There's the factor of my speed, which is a little inconsistent since it is raining today.
If you sum up all of the various factors, the odds of me arriving home between 6:15 and 6:20 today are heavily against my favor. Yet, if I work at it, I'll manage it.
I'm not saying you're wrong about the possibility of life, I'm simply stating that probability doesn't affect outcome. If life exists, it's already out there. In this case, it's just a matter of finding it, not proving it does or doesn't exist.
I do agree with you, though, that we have needs ahead of looking for ET life. But I don't agree that SETI should be shut down. The benefits of SETI have already been worthwhile, like the massive supercomputer they created with the internet to process their data.
Technically you could just hold the shift key and do that too.
Is it trivial? Perhaps. Is it worth getting shitty with somebody? No. It's not the type of thing where I'd say "I hate Slashdot because they won't set the link to open new windows...". It's more like "It'd be nice if Slashdot did do this..."
If I got treated like that for a simple request like that, I'd be fumin too.
*Nods* I understand what you're saying. I could easily have phrased the question better.
I'm just really frustrated that the Gov't is going at this backwards. I'd really like our rights defined before they go passing stupid laws like the DMCA.
Not sure if I expressed it too well, but I basically wanted to know what's going to be done to secure our rights.
I personally don't believe that this whole piracy issue can be sorted out until the law spells out what we can legally do. If the law says that we can legally backup a DVD, for example, then the law says that somebody copying a DVD is not a pirate.
Unfortunately, I got a little heated when I started writing that, so I have no doubt that I wasn't very good at expressing myself.
I think you make interesting points, but this particular one caught my eye...
:)
"Tivo and it's like is already killing TV advertising revenue..."
What's killing advertising is the advertisers. Tivo was responding to market demand, not firing shots at advertisers. If the advertisers listened to their audience, then there'd be some agreeance on what to do about it.
Just wanted to point that out.
"I'm guessing you're basing these assumptions on laptops from a few years ago. "
Um no, Im basing it on a flight I took 5 days ago. I have a Toshiba Portege that is like TINY and it was still a pain to use it on the flight.
"I tried using a Palm to write a memo once during a cross-country flight, just to see how it would work, and I gave up after about a paragraph."
Understandable, but you can get a laptop sized keyboard for it that folds up and fits in your pocket.
"You're using your PDA in the bathroom? I'm confused. Surely you can't be saying this is an advantage on an airplane - nobody's stealing laptops off airplanes."
Damn, I had that thought clearly in my mind and didn't express it too well. Sorry about that. Here's what I meant to say: When on an airplane using a laptop, it's a bit of a tetris game to get up and go to the bathroom. In order to get up, I had to lift up my laptop, replace my tray with one hand (I was in an emergency row, so it was one of those funky fold up trays..), and then do a little dance to get out into the aisle and put my laptop back on my chair. A PDA I can just pop in my pocket, get up and go.
I didn't mean to imply that I would use the PDA in the bathroom, heh.
"Based on your parameters, an ordinary $25 tape recorder would work even better. You still haven't explained why you would use a PDA. "
To be honest, I thought that'd be obvious. If I record my voice, I can write out a short description of that note using the filename, and then back it up. With a tape recorder, I have to jump around the tape for basic ideas. Not that useful.
And yes, I did explain it.
Ah, the clamshell design. I have a PDA like that somewhere. I used to use that for jotting down story ideas. I agree, the keyboard is better for writing stuff.
:P) and I use the voice recording feature on it alot while I'm walking home.
:)
However, what became a problem is that I am on my feet quite a bit. The mini-keyboard is definitely very useful on a hard surface, but on your feet it becomes a huge drawback. I finally gave in and got me a Jornada (don't laugh
I'm not telling you that you're wrong, just saying there are alternate requirements for these devices.
Fortunately, another mod gave you a second-opinion. *Appreciates whoever it was that did that. :)*
And yah, I had a feeling you had calculated that heh.
Ever tried using a laptop on a plane?
a.) Battery life sucks
b.) Tray-tables can BARELY support a laptop. You can breat your screen if the guy in front of you leans back
c.) A PDA fits in your pocket. That's surprisingly useful when you have to go to the bathroom.
I use a PDA to record (voice no less) story inspirations. I'm not carrying a laptop on my daily 4-mile walk just to do that.
People don't use PDA's because they're masochists, they use them because they are useful.
My cell phone has an 'internet connection'. I've found that useful a couple of times. Once when there was an earthquake and our net connection was down, and the other was when I was bored at a restaraunt and got up to speed on the news.
If my cell phone had a PDA built into it, simply being able to touch my choices would be a huge improvement over having to use a rocker switch.
Another potential use of PDA's involves an always-on wireless net connection. I like the idea of using something like a Treo where I get email updates and so on. This may sound silly, but I like the idea of checking my messages while I'm sitting through commercials on TV. Eventually I'll get a wireless card for my PDA so I can do that.
In other words, PDA's aren't quite there yet, but they're really becoming attractive.
My girlfriend has a pager with a similar keyboard on it (perhaps a little smaller?) and she emails me a lot. She even uses it in lieu of a cell phone.
:)
Not sure what you expect them to do, but what they provide is fine for the size. Altho that projected keyboard that was at a recent trade show was pretty cool.
I use a PocketPC to capture random story inspirations. I doubt I'm in the majority, but I've found it useful.
I've also found it useful as a system administration tool for keeping things like IP addies etc.
RMFP: "AT&T Broadband is my provider so I'm pretty sure that this article doesn't affect me yet..."
A.) Yes I would ask him that.
B.) What's wrong with what I asked? If you're going to say what I said is stupid, how about backing that claim up? If it's stupid, fine, but give me reason so I can understand why.
I don't want to say no to the ads. I've seen 3 ads for stuff I was looking for. It sure beats watching Tampon ads during Star Trek.
It's important because at least with yahii.com you know that there's something wrong with the address, ie the typo.
But with this unicode spoof, then you could go to a site you think is legitimate, and you'd have no way of knowing it's not.