get this- I rename the "music" directory inside the "collected" folder to "music2". Then I go back to the root folder and delete "collected\music" and it says "Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk". So I go back into the "collected" folder and create a folder called "music", then go back out and try deleting "collected\music". Lo and behold, the "music" folder disappears, but "collected\music" remains! It won't go away! aaagh!
I love this one- "Is there a vast market for cheaper stuff at reduced prices?"
Gee, I dunno- is there a vast market for cheaper stuff at increased prices? People buy more stuff when it costs less?! Somebody alert the news media! Somebody call the department of redundancy department!
So I have a directory on my Win2K box named "d:\collected", and in that I have directories for all the various items I have collected- video, music, pictures, software, etc. SOMEHOW, I managed to create a folder named "collected\music" that resides at the root level of the D drive. It just points directly to the "d:\collected\music" directory. If I try to delete it, I'm pretty sure it will delete my music collection, so I don't want to do that. If I try to rename it and delete the "\", it tells me "Cannot rename music: You cannot specify a different folder or disk when you rename a file or folder". If I try to rename it without removing the "\", it says a filename cannot contain the "\" character. So, basically I've just left it there. It's only really a nuisance when I run WinDirStat, because it ends up showing the music directory twice. Anyone know how to get rid of it?
IIRC, it was mostly a geography game, and we played it when we were in 4-5th grade. Getting 4th and 5th graders to know the locations of various countries, cities, and landmarks on a map is all they were striving for, and that they succeeded at that goal is quite an accomplishment in itself. It also succeeds at teaching kids how to use reference materials. The games came with almanacs and desk encyclopedias so that the player could look up the answers. I think that is quite often the case that knowing how to find an answer is a more important skill than knowing anything else. As information continues to become more and more readily accessible, what's the big deal if it's not all stored locally in the user's brain?
So you admit that behvior is deterministic, that people's behavior is the result of a physical process, and that one's personality and decisions are the result of the particular configuration of electrical and chemical signals which are bouncing around in their brain. So that's their soul? That ceases to exist when the person dies, and (as you admit) doesn't do anything independently. I'll agree with you, if that's how you're defining a soul, but that's not what religious people talk about when they talk about souls- they talk about the "ghost in the machine"- an ethereal creature which drives the body, with "free will", that survives after the physical death of the body.
Yeah, I don't think we're going to come to any agreement here. You want to believe we have free souls too badly. I'd prefer to think that we have free choices too, but that is not reality as I understand it, and wishing would not make it so. It's not so much that we're pre-programmed to decide certain things, but that our accumulated experiences end up programming us. Even if one were to consciously choose to do something that went against what their experience told them, that choice to disregard experience would be the logical result of some other predictable line of thinking. I don't know what your beliefs are, but could you choose to disregard them and believe something that is contrary to them just on a whim? Maybe you're a Christian- can you just decide to become a Muslim? If you had been raised a Muslim, do you think you would be any more free to go against the information you've been presented with all your life and become a Christian? Not until you had been presented with some serious evidence for Christianity's veracity, or something that cast Islam into great doubt. People don't just change their minds for no reason- they always have to be convinced- and that's what we call it when people are presented with information that tips the scales the other way. A being with true "free will" would have no scales, or would have the ability to make up that information to tip them, which would make them either lacking in discernment or delusional.
However, the fact that we have the ability to love or not cannot be a deterministic act, because if it were, it wouldn't be love
How so? It could very well be (and this is what I'm arguing) that our genetics and our prior experiences lead us to be attracted to certain types of people, both in terms of physical beauty and personalities. When we run across someone who fits the paramaters, all sorts of chemical signals and such get flooded into the brain. Once it becomes clear that feelings are mutual, and especially once the physical side of things kicks in, even more chemicals start working on you. It's part instinct, it's part social, but nothing in it seems particularly beyond the realm of the physical. Definitely not proof of a soul's existence. And no, it wouldn't have the same effect if your computer displayed a message of "love" for you, because your computer doesn't fit your brain's parameters for "lovable entity" (unless, maybe you're a mac person!)
As far as the rest goes, I think you're getting a bit "out there". We know that information is stored in certain parts of the brain. You destroy certain lobes, and you may destroy one's memories of certain events, etc. We also know that human functionality is determined by the physical brain- a stroke can take away one's ability to speak, brain damage in frontal lobes can turn someone into an asshole or a dolt. It's pretty clear that it's all physical. I wouldn't take "NDE"s very seriously. People very likely interpret those experiences in the light of what they expect to happen, or whatever. Not to mention at the time of those experiences their brains could be totally going haywire. I've had some interesting experiences with drugs, where I thought all sorts of crazy shit was going on, but that doesn't mean that that was reality.
But sure, some omnipotent being could back up our brains and recreate us. By the mere fact that he is omnipotent. He could also make us so that we are perfect. Or that we never die in the first place. There's no point in discussing what an omnipotent being can do, unless you've got evidence that one exists.
Isn't it somewhat ludicrous to think that an immaterial phenomenon can be observed using exclusively material mechanisms?
But human behavior ISN'T an immaterial phenomenon. When people sin, when their souls fall short of God's standard of perfection, they are almost always performing physical acts. In order for these physical behaviors to arise, there have to be either physical causes of those behaviors or else if the causes are immaterial there have to be some grand, unexplainable phenomena going on. We know very little about how the brain works, but at some point we will have to either come to the conclusion that it is some sort of deterministic, statistically adaptive decision-making machine, or else we will have to find the place where the soul interacts with the physical parts. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it seems highly unlikely.
But not counting all that physical/metaphysical crap, I just wonder- when was the last time you made a decision that wasn't really made for you, and how did that process work? Did you not consider your options and make an economic decision based on them? The idea of God, which may be thoroughly ingrained in one's mind, and consequently one's perceived notions about what he desires and what consequences he might impose for whatever choice you make just get added into the equations? I just don't see any decisions that are really independently made, so the idea that the soul is some free body that will make this or that decision based upon whether it has a good or evil nature just seems completely detached from what we experience when we actually make decisions.
The thing is, while the soul may not be limited to this time-space dimension and the laws of physics, the physical body is, and any interaction with it would have to be detectable in this time-space dimension. To follow your computer analogy, the hardware may not give you a clue as to what the software is doing, but you can follow changes in state back to routines or external interaction. Nothing that happens in a computer (especially software) is truly random, and yet computers can exhibit such complex behavior. What reason do we have to doubt that our "software" is not equally as deterministic? I don't deny that there is a "software" state of the brain which determines one's personality and decisions, but I see no reason to believe that it is not a part of the body, that it will go on after death, or that the mind in any way makes decisions that aren't entirely based on the experiential data at hand.
most scientificic advances since the middle-ages have came from judaic-christian cultures, so obviously christianity is not the problem
That is because Judeo-Christian cultures happened to fund monasteries and universities. The existence of the clergy was the only way an intellectual class could arise. This does not mean that the Church was not frequently at odds with scientific advancement (Copernicus, Galileo, Leonardo, anyone?).
Wrong, christians don't have to prove anything, their belief is based on faith, it is you who needs the proof not them
This is precisely the problem- no belief is truly based in faith. One's faith is dependent upon where they were born, the way their parents raised them, the kinds of experiences they had growing up, etc. It's not faith, it's an inability to look at their (or anyone's) situation objectively and realize that one's beliefs are determined by one's experiences. The existence of souls is necessary for them to judge all others for not making the same decision as they.
This is why when questions arise, they tell you to just have faith. Basically, you pretend something is true and interpret reality through that filter until the interpretation happens on its own. The brain has this loophole of weighing corroborating evidence more heavily than evidence which does not support a belief. You may pray ten times a day, and ask God for help with this or that, and when more often than not you don't get what you ask for you'll just write it off as "not being in God's will", but you'll REALLY remember those few times your wishes came true, and you'll attribute them to God without regard to whether you had anything to do with them coming true. I haven't made a study of it, but I'd wager that praying to the Sun is just as likely to yield results as praying to the Son.
But I agree with you about fanatacism. I think Christianity without fanatacism is a dead and pointless exercise, unfortunately, but it certainly beats mindless (yet so satisfying!) fanaticism. However, logical, rational, empirical thought trumps them all, as far as truth goes anyway.
That's the thing- it's a God of the gaps sort of thing. Believers (in the idea of souls, not all Christians) start off with the assumption that we have them, and squeeze them into whatever information gap reality leaves them. At first we had the humunculus, oh wait- well, it's in the brain somewhere. What? The brain seems to obey the laws of physics, and acts in a somewhat mechanical way? Hm... Well, it's in there somewhere, I'm sure of it! It must be at the level of quantum mechanics!
Sure, I'll tell you that it's entirely possible that the ethereal soul interacts with the physical body via quantum-mechanical wobbling of particles throughout the body. Ooh- or maybe there's one single "soul cell" that the soul interacts with, from which behavior cascades throughout the body. Either way, it may be possible, but HIGHLY, HIGHLY improbable, given that the overall behavior appears to be deterministic. We may someday find out that quantum behavior is not random, either. I'd say that history trends in favor of it being someday deemed deterministic. Of course, at that point the lack of understanding will be at the level of strings or something, at which point it will be THERE that our souls reside...
I'm not a Christian, but I grew up in a Christian family, and I can't understand why anyone would think souls exist. Is there a single behavior which humans exist that cannot be explained as the result of either a biologically-ingrained process (instinct, genetics, etc) or as something that is entirely consistent with what the individual's internal logic dictates as a purely economic decision? When you "choose" to do something, you're only doing what your prior experience indicates is the optimal thing to do. It may be completely illogical from an external viewpoint, but it's always internally consistent.
Consider the choice to try smoking- people can be told how it's bad for them and addictive, and that it will kill them, but for some people the novelty value, or the perceived increase in social status, or some other factor outweighs the negatives and they end up trying it. After trying it a while, the physical addiction can kick in, further tipping the internal scales in the direction of smoking. Often it is not until a heart attack, a cancer scare, emphysema, the birth of a child, or some significant amount of new information comes along that the scales finally get tipped back the other way. So is smoking an indicator of moral deficiency? If the Bible said it was a sin, would smokers be sinners? Does one really "choose" to smoke?
I posit that all human activities boil down to basic economic decisions that are determined by the individual's biology informed by their individual experience. There's no room for a "soul" there. We don't make our decisions, our decisions make us.
And that's looking at a macrosocopic level- if we look at the particle level, we see that human activity is the result of basic, deterministic chemical interactions. Sure, they are chaotic and thus impossible to predict on any usable scale, but that does not mean that they are not deterministic. If there is a soul in there, it would have to interact with the physical body on the level of quarks or something. I just don't see it, and I think the burden of proof really lies with those who believe.
As far as I can tell, at least with regard to Christianity, nobody bases any of their claims on any independently verifiable evidence. While one is welcome to provide me with some sort of proof, I would think that if such a thing existed it would be pretty well known. So if demanding real evidence to believe something makes me a zealot, then I'm guilty as charged.
somebody mod parent up. the mere fact that he addresses them as "youngsters" indicates that he is likely an old fogey. i bet he drives a buick, too...:)
It will be a great day when I can make a comment on slashdot without one person dissecting information in it.
Yeah, don't hold your breath- that day is never gonna come. The greater day (and certainly more plausible one) will be the day you accept that people will dissect whatever you post on slashdot. Let things go, indeed.
While having liberals pick up their Bibles to shut up the wacky people on the right may be an effective strategy, I'll be saddened if it ever comes to that. Religion already gets way too much clout in people's decision-making processes. I'd much prefer logic and reason taking over. How about a discussion on whether the Bible, or anyone citing the Bible, or any other religious book, have any basis in reality or should have any bearing on how our country is governed? We need an awakening in this country of scientific, rational thought grounded in empiricism, not more knee-jerk religious zealoutry.
"We are stronger than ever because we have a research lab in Cambridge, we have one now in China, one in India and that is where the top problems in computer science are going to be solved."
I'm not sure what Mr. Gates is implying here. But if I were on one of the U.S. campuses, I'd be pissed, and a little nervous.
I think he just misspoke and meant that the top CS problems would be solved in their research labs all over the world. I don't think the implication was that the top problems would only be solved in their labs in India and China. He's just trying to stress that tough problems are solved in research labs, and that they've built labs in these various locales so that they can attract the best researchers. I don't know if it will succeed, but I think MS really is making an effort foster more theoretical research where they used to just build business software. Hopefully MS's and Google's labs will be the Bell labs of this generation, pushing the envelope of theoretical research, eventually leading to great advances in technology that will make their way into our everyday lives.
Re:Promising shift in user interfaces
on
Slacker or Sick
·
· Score: 1
Thank God that site wasn't around back in the day when the mac was being invented. Apple users would be stuck using a 0-button mouse now! What is need is not less ways to interact with the interface, but more- more buttons, more wheels, dials, etc. The greater variety of manipulative tasks the interface offers you, the less repetitive stress you will suffer and the increased functionality of the UI will increase efficiency. Anyone who has adapted to make full use a good mouse, such as the logitech models that have 2 buttons, scroll wheel, and forward/back buttons for the thumb, knows that the extra buttons and wheel save you from constantly moving back and forth across the screen to select things. Once you get adjusted to the buttons, it's annoying as hell to have to go up to the menu bar every time you want to copy/paste something, or to move over to the scroll bar every time you want to scroll down, or up to the upper-left hand corner forward/back buttons every time.
Yeah. Bitch about it all you want, but that's not going to happen. I tolerate others' bitching most of the time because I often concur, but expecting it to change is not realistic. The editors are less interested in what is "good science" or what is "news" than what will generate a conversation, and what will pay the bills. I honestly don't know if Slashdot would be nearly as fun if it were the straight up news site that we so often wish it were. This place just wouldn't be the same without the regular groaners from Dvorak or Roland Piquepaille, the Apple/Google fanboyism, the knee-jerk MS bashing, etc. Love it or hate it, it's part of the slashdot aesthetic.
Slashdot Mirror
get this- I rename the "music" directory inside the "collected" folder to "music2". Then I go back to the root folder and delete "collected\music" and it says "Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk". So I go back into the "collected" folder and create a folder called "music", then go back out and try deleting "collected\music". Lo and behold, the "music" folder disappears, but "collected\music" remains! It won't go away! aaagh!
I love this one- "Is there a vast market for cheaper stuff at reduced prices?"
Gee, I dunno- is there a vast market for cheaper stuff at increased prices? People buy more stuff when it costs less?! Somebody alert the news media! Somebody call the department of redundancy department!
So I have a directory on my Win2K box named "d:\collected", and in that I have directories for all the various items I have collected- video, music, pictures, software, etc. SOMEHOW, I managed to create a folder named "collected\music" that resides at the root level of the D drive. It just points directly to the "d:\collected\music" directory. If I try to delete it, I'm pretty sure it will delete my music collection, so I don't want to do that. If I try to rename it and delete the "\", it tells me "Cannot rename music: You cannot specify a different folder or disk when you rename a file or folder". If I try to rename it without removing the "\", it says a filename cannot contain the "\" character. So, basically I've just left it there. It's only really a nuisance when I run WinDirStat, because it ends up showing the music directory twice. Anyone know how to get rid of it?
IIRC, it was mostly a geography game, and we played it when we were in 4-5th grade. Getting 4th and 5th graders to know the locations of various countries, cities, and landmarks on a map is all they were striving for, and that they succeeded at that goal is quite an accomplishment in itself. It also succeeds at teaching kids how to use reference materials. The games came with almanacs and desk encyclopedias so that the player could look up the answers. I think that is quite often the case that knowing how to find an answer is a more important skill than knowing anything else. As information continues to become more and more readily accessible, what's the big deal if it's not all stored locally in the user's brain?
So you admit that behvior is deterministic, that people's behavior is the result of a physical process, and that one's personality and decisions are the result of the particular configuration of electrical and chemical signals which are bouncing around in their brain. So that's their soul? That ceases to exist when the person dies, and (as you admit) doesn't do anything independently. I'll agree with you, if that's how you're defining a soul, but that's not what religious people talk about when they talk about souls- they talk about the "ghost in the machine"- an ethereal creature which drives the body, with "free will", that survives after the physical death of the body.
Yeah, I don't think we're going to come to any agreement here. You want to believe we have free souls too badly. I'd prefer to think that we have free choices too, but that is not reality as I understand it, and wishing would not make it so. It's not so much that we're pre-programmed to decide certain things, but that our accumulated experiences end up programming us. Even if one were to consciously choose to do something that went against what their experience told them, that choice to disregard experience would be the logical result of some other predictable line of thinking. I don't know what your beliefs are, but could you choose to disregard them and believe something that is contrary to them just on a whim? Maybe you're a Christian- can you just decide to become a Muslim? If you had been raised a Muslim, do you think you would be any more free to go against the information you've been presented with all your life and become a Christian? Not until you had been presented with some serious evidence for Christianity's veracity, or something that cast Islam into great doubt. People don't just change their minds for no reason- they always have to be convinced- and that's what we call it when people are presented with information that tips the scales the other way. A being with true "free will" would have no scales, or would have the ability to make up that information to tip them, which would make them either lacking in discernment or delusional.
However, the fact that we have the ability to love or not cannot be a deterministic act, because if it were, it wouldn't be love
How so? It could very well be (and this is what I'm arguing) that our genetics and our prior experiences lead us to be attracted to certain types of people, both in terms of physical beauty and personalities. When we run across someone who fits the paramaters, all sorts of chemical signals and such get flooded into the brain. Once it becomes clear that feelings are mutual, and especially once the physical side of things kicks in, even more chemicals start working on you. It's part instinct, it's part social, but nothing in it seems particularly beyond the realm of the physical. Definitely not proof of a soul's existence. And no, it wouldn't have the same effect if your computer displayed a message of "love" for you, because your computer doesn't fit your brain's parameters for "lovable entity" (unless, maybe you're a mac person!)
As far as the rest goes, I think you're getting a bit "out there". We know that information is stored in certain parts of the brain. You destroy certain lobes, and you may destroy one's memories of certain events, etc. We also know that human functionality is determined by the physical brain- a stroke can take away one's ability to speak, brain damage in frontal lobes can turn someone into an asshole or a dolt. It's pretty clear that it's all physical. I wouldn't take "NDE"s very seriously. People very likely interpret those experiences in the light of what they expect to happen, or whatever. Not to mention at the time of those experiences their brains could be totally going haywire. I've had some interesting experiences with drugs, where I thought all sorts of crazy shit was going on, but that doesn't mean that that was reality.
But sure, some omnipotent being could back up our brains and recreate us. By the mere fact that he is omnipotent. He could also make us so that we are perfect. Or that we never die in the first place. There's no point in discussing what an omnipotent being can do, unless you've got evidence that one exists.
Isn't it somewhat ludicrous to think that an immaterial phenomenon can be observed using exclusively material mechanisms?
But human behavior ISN'T an immaterial phenomenon. When people sin, when their souls fall short of God's standard of perfection, they are almost always performing physical acts. In order for these physical behaviors to arise, there have to be either physical causes of those behaviors or else if the causes are immaterial there have to be some grand, unexplainable phenomena going on. We know very little about how the brain works, but at some point we will have to either come to the conclusion that it is some sort of deterministic, statistically adaptive decision-making machine, or else we will have to find the place where the soul interacts with the physical parts. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it seems highly unlikely.
But not counting all that physical/metaphysical crap, I just wonder- when was the last time you made a decision that wasn't really made for you, and how did that process work? Did you not consider your options and make an economic decision based on them? The idea of God, which may be thoroughly ingrained in one's mind, and consequently one's perceived notions about what he desires and what consequences he might impose for whatever choice you make just get added into the equations? I just don't see any decisions that are really independently made, so the idea that the soul is some free body that will make this or that decision based upon whether it has a good or evil nature just seems completely detached from what we experience when we actually make decisions.
I didn't say all Christians did.
The thing is, while the soul may not be limited to this time-space dimension and the laws of physics, the physical body is, and any interaction with it would have to be detectable in this time-space dimension. To follow your computer analogy, the hardware may not give you a clue as to what the software is doing, but you can follow changes in state back to routines or external interaction. Nothing that happens in a computer (especially software) is truly random, and yet computers can exhibit such complex behavior. What reason do we have to doubt that our "software" is not equally as deterministic? I don't deny that there is a "software" state of the brain which determines one's personality and decisions, but I see no reason to believe that it is not a part of the body, that it will go on after death, or that the mind in any way makes decisions that aren't entirely based on the experiential data at hand.
most scientificic advances since the middle-ages have came from judaic-christian cultures, so obviously christianity is not the problem
That is because Judeo-Christian cultures happened to fund monasteries and universities. The existence of the clergy was the only way an intellectual class could arise. This does not mean that the Church was not frequently at odds with scientific advancement (Copernicus, Galileo, Leonardo, anyone?).
Wrong, christians don't have to prove anything, their belief is based on faith, it is you who needs the proof not them
This is precisely the problem- no belief is truly based in faith. One's faith is dependent upon where they were born, the way their parents raised them, the kinds of experiences they had growing up, etc. It's not faith, it's an inability to look at their (or anyone's) situation objectively and realize that one's beliefs are determined by one's experiences. The existence of souls is necessary for them to judge all others for not making the same decision as they.
This is why when questions arise, they tell you to just have faith. Basically, you pretend something is true and interpret reality through that filter until the interpretation happens on its own. The brain has this loophole of weighing corroborating evidence more heavily than evidence which does not support a belief. You may pray ten times a day, and ask God for help with this or that, and when more often than not you don't get what you ask for you'll just write it off as "not being in God's will", but you'll REALLY remember those few times your wishes came true, and you'll attribute them to God without regard to whether you had anything to do with them coming true. I haven't made a study of it, but I'd wager that praying to the Sun is just as likely to yield results as praying to the Son.
But I agree with you about fanatacism. I think Christianity without fanatacism is a dead and pointless exercise, unfortunately, but it certainly beats mindless (yet so satisfying!) fanaticism. However, logical, rational, empirical thought trumps them all, as far as truth goes anyway.
That's the thing- it's a God of the gaps sort of thing. Believers (in the idea of souls, not all Christians) start off with the assumption that we have them, and squeeze them into whatever information gap reality leaves them. At first we had the humunculus, oh wait- well, it's in the brain somewhere. What? The brain seems to obey the laws of physics, and acts in a somewhat mechanical way? Hm... Well, it's in there somewhere, I'm sure of it! It must be at the level of quantum mechanics!
Sure, I'll tell you that it's entirely possible that the ethereal soul interacts with the physical body via quantum-mechanical wobbling of particles throughout the body. Ooh- or maybe there's one single "soul cell" that the soul interacts with, from which behavior cascades throughout the body. Either way, it may be possible, but HIGHLY, HIGHLY improbable, given that the overall behavior appears to be deterministic. We may someday find out that quantum behavior is not random, either. I'd say that history trends in favor of it being someday deemed deterministic. Of course, at that point the lack of understanding will be at the level of strings or something, at which point it will be THERE that our souls reside...
I'm not a Christian, but I grew up in a Christian family, and I can't understand why anyone would think souls exist. Is there a single behavior which humans exist that cannot be explained as the result of either a biologically-ingrained process (instinct, genetics, etc) or as something that is entirely consistent with what the individual's internal logic dictates as a purely economic decision? When you "choose" to do something, you're only doing what your prior experience indicates is the optimal thing to do. It may be completely illogical from an external viewpoint, but it's always internally consistent.
Consider the choice to try smoking- people can be told how it's bad for them and addictive, and that it will kill them, but for some people the novelty value, or the perceived increase in social status, or some other factor outweighs the negatives and they end up trying it. After trying it a while, the physical addiction can kick in, further tipping the internal scales in the direction of smoking. Often it is not until a heart attack, a cancer scare, emphysema, the birth of a child, or some significant amount of new information comes along that the scales finally get tipped back the other way. So is smoking an indicator of moral deficiency? If the Bible said it was a sin, would smokers be sinners? Does one really "choose" to smoke?
I posit that all human activities boil down to basic economic decisions that are determined by the individual's biology informed by their individual experience. There's no room for a "soul" there. We don't make our decisions, our decisions make us.
And that's looking at a macrosocopic level- if we look at the particle level, we see that human activity is the result of basic, deterministic chemical interactions. Sure, they are chaotic and thus impossible to predict on any usable scale, but that does not mean that they are not deterministic. If there is a soul in there, it would have to interact with the physical body on the level of quarks or something. I just don't see it, and I think the burden of proof really lies with those who believe.
As far as I can tell, at least with regard to Christianity, nobody bases any of their claims on any independently verifiable evidence. While one is welcome to provide me with some sort of proof, I would think that if such a thing existed it would be pretty well known. So if demanding real evidence to believe something makes me a zealot, then I'm guilty as charged.
somebody mod parent up. the mere fact that he addresses them as "youngsters" indicates that he is likely an old fogey. i bet he drives a buick, too... :)
It will be a great day when I can make a comment on slashdot without one person dissecting information in it.
Yeah, don't hold your breath- that day is never gonna come. The greater day (and certainly more plausible one) will be the day you accept that people will dissect whatever you post on slashdot. Let things go, indeed.
While having liberals pick up their Bibles to shut up the wacky people on the right may be an effective strategy, I'll be saddened if it ever comes to that. Religion already gets way too much clout in people's decision-making processes. I'd much prefer logic and reason taking over. How about a discussion on whether the Bible, or anyone citing the Bible, or any other religious book, have any basis in reality or should have any bearing on how our country is governed? We need an awakening in this country of scientific, rational thought grounded in empiricism, not more knee-jerk religious zealoutry.
My sentiments exactly. Somebody mod parent up...
And, finally, from the article:
"We are stronger than ever because we have a research lab in Cambridge, we have one now in China, one in India and that is where the top problems in computer science are going to be solved."
I'm not sure what Mr. Gates is implying here. But if I were on one of the U.S. campuses, I'd be pissed, and a little nervous.
I think he just misspoke and meant that the top CS problems would be solved in their research labs all over the world. I don't think the implication was that the top problems would only be solved in their labs in India and China. He's just trying to stress that tough problems are solved in research labs, and that they've built labs in these various locales so that they can attract the best researchers. I don't know if it will succeed, but I think MS really is making an effort foster more theoretical research where they used to just build business software. Hopefully MS's and Google's labs will be the Bell labs of this generation, pushing the envelope of theoretical research, eventually leading to great advances in technology that will make their way into our everyday lives.
Thank God that site wasn't around back in the day when the mac was being invented. Apple users would be stuck using a 0-button mouse now! What is need is not less ways to interact with the interface, but more- more buttons, more wheels, dials, etc. The greater variety of manipulative tasks the interface offers you, the less repetitive stress you will suffer and the increased functionality of the UI will increase efficiency. Anyone who has adapted to make full use a good mouse, such as the logitech models that have 2 buttons, scroll wheel, and forward/back buttons for the thumb, knows that the extra buttons and wheel save you from constantly moving back and forth across the screen to select things. Once you get adjusted to the buttons, it's annoying as hell to have to go up to the menu bar every time you want to copy/paste something, or to move over to the scroll bar every time you want to scroll down, or up to the upper-left hand corner forward/back buttons every time.
What we'd need are decent hydrocarbon fuel cells
I hear these work pretty well...
It's called Gusev crater.
Whatever happened to reading a book?
AFAIK, reading a book is still an option. We just have more options now. Nothing wrong with that.
and an eagle decided to eat a pigeon in the doorway.
Well, come on, let's see it!
Yeah. Bitch about it all you want, but that's not going to happen. I tolerate others' bitching most of the time because I often concur, but expecting it to change is not realistic. The editors are less interested in what is "good science" or what is "news" than what will generate a conversation, and what will pay the bills. I honestly don't know if Slashdot would be nearly as fun if it were the straight up news site that we so often wish it were. This place just wouldn't be the same without the regular groaners from Dvorak or Roland Piquepaille, the Apple/Google fanboyism, the knee-jerk MS bashing, etc. Love it or hate it, it's part of the slashdot aesthetic.