Yes, there are much better ways to spend our money
on
Is SETI Worth It?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
After all, aren't there better ways to use our monies and technical talents than trying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in the dark depths of space?"
Yes, we should instead use our monies and technical talents to engage in devotional activities that venerate something else that is only posited to exist: our magical sky grandpa. Then, we should use our monies and technical talents to build weapons to kill the people whose understanding of the magical sky grandpa differs in various insignificant ways from our own.
America has been anti-intellectual for a long time, though. Really, look at the residents we've had in the Oval Office. Woodrow Wilson was the last "intellectual" elected to the White House.
I'm not sure that American anti-intellectualism alone can explain the recent rise of an evangelical approach to the apprehension of the natural world.
A curious fact about Apple's choice of Intel over AMD, as I learned over on the Ars Technica forums -- AMD's CEO, Hector de Ruiz, was formerly the director of semiconductor products at Motorola.
I think this is one big reason why Steve Jobs and Apple could not / did not consider AMD -- they notoriously burned their bridges with Motorola/FreeScale over the G4's lackluster performance and slow development. Thus, Jobs and de Ruiz probably don't have a particularly good relationship.
The Honda ad was completely real, actually. There was only one logistically necessary camera cut in the middle of the sequence. It evidently took them hundreds of hours (and two entire, grudgingly provided Accord prototypes out of just a few in existence) to complete their "machine."
Back in 1994 when I was a junior in high school, I installed keylogger software of my own design on several public terminals at my high school.
Passwords piled up and soon I was exploring all sorts of interesting systems with administrative access. Not that I did anything illegal or even really immoral -- just poked around for the most part and read lots of boring email. I finally got caught when I tried to install an IRC server on the school's Internet-connected Unix box, which raised all sorts of red flags with the admin.
I got suspended for a day. I can't help but think that, ten years later, the tenor of the times encourages far more zealous prosecution of similarly minor misdeeds.
iWork isn't by any means an entirely new software package. Keynote is of course an existing product, though updated here to a new version.
More interestingly, Pages (the word processor) appears to be an update of a software package of the same name that was released for NeXT in 1994 by a company called Pages Software. So here we have yet MORE benefits of the NeXT purchase, albeit delayed by 8 years...
From the linked 1994 NeXTWorld article: The software, three years in the making, takes a new approach to word processing that doesn't include such conventional tools as rulers, font panels, and style sheets. Pages is being positioned as an easy-to-use word processor in light of NeXT's de-emphasis on publishing and a lack of available word-processing software for NEXTSTEP.
"The early view of the product was that it was more of a publishing product," said Larry Spelhaug, CEO of Pages Software. "Internally, we always assumed that it would have full word-processing capability but that wasn't perceived outside the company."
Pages' extensive feature set, roughly equivalent to the latest versions of WordPerfect and Microsoft Word, was entirely implemented in object-based code. The software uses design templates to ease document creation."
...let me be the first to suggest that the Slashdot community join me in constructing a beowulf cluster of beowulf clusters... to calculate Natalie Portman and Profit!!!
In seventh grade, during a physical science class, a friend of mine thought that it would be a funny joke to focus the sun onto my back using a Fresnel lens from an overhead projector. In the minute or so it took for me to notice (when the beam hit my skin), he had very efficiently burned through three layers of clothing!
Wow. Is that a Holocaust metaphor in the parent? We're talking about the IRS and the bloat of the US TAX CODE here. Let's keep a sense of perspective...
This is no surprise at all. Dexterity and coordination are a surgeon's most valuable assets, and any activity that enhances those is a huge plus.
My great-uncle was a well-known Boston cardiac surgeon. It was a funny sight to see him (a macho ex-college football player) continuously knitting sweaters, socks and hats, a fine-motor activity he said contributed tremendously to his success on the operating table... he fobbed his woolen creations off on all of us relatives constantly.
It seems like a shame to send an $800mil semi-autonomous rover mission to Mars whose power source limits it to a 3 month primary mission.
Aside from the political difficulty entailed in getting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (an nuclear decay electrical power source like that which powered the Gallileo mission) off the launchpad in this day and age, do we know of any good reasons why a more lasting power source like this would not have been feasible for the MER mission? Such a power source could probably keep a rover operating indefinitely on the surface of Mars, used in concert with solar.
Does anyone feel that JPL's official Mars rover site is a bit dumbed-down? Certainly it's more polished and professional than the 1997 Pathfinder site, but the Pathfinder site had a certain raw immediacy in their presentation, along with gigs of images and data seemingly straight from the downlink.
Is NASA planning to make that kind of detailed information available over the web? Even the Astrobiology magazine site seems a bit on the terse side.
ezPublish is a very sophisticated GPL-licensed CMS that I've used for several projects. Really worth a look; for some reason it's a lot better known among Europeans (perhaps because it's developed by a bunch of Norwegians).
The salience to this discussion is that's real simple to administrate an EZ site, and install/setup is more straightforward than other similar systems I've tried.
Slashdot Mirror
After all, aren't there better ways to use our monies and technical talents than trying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in the dark depths of space?"
Yes, we should instead use our monies and technical talents to engage in devotional activities that venerate something else that is only posited to exist: our magical sky grandpa. Then, we should use our monies and technical talents to build weapons to kill the people whose understanding of the magical sky grandpa differs in various insignificant ways from our own.
Why does the story link to a news article about the blog perpetrating this anti-419 caper? The 419eater blog itself is here:
http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm
America has been anti-intellectual for a long time, though. Really, look at the residents we've had in the Oval Office. Woodrow Wilson was the last "intellectual" elected to the White House. I'm not sure that American anti-intellectualism alone can explain the recent rise of an evangelical approach to the apprehension of the natural world.
... you will be assimilated. Yes, this is creepy.
Yes, clearly "Skype" is a much dumber name than "Google."
Here is Google's cache of the actual Python script used to generate the wallpapers:
g merge.2ni.net/gmerge.py+gmerge.py&hl=en&client=fir efox-a
g merge.2ni.net/gmerge.py.nyud.net
:)
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:fWrAVd4XgzUJ:
And here is a coralized version:
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:fWrAVd4XgzUJ:
For informational use only
A curious fact about Apple's choice of Intel over AMD, as I learned over on the Ars Technica forums -- AMD's CEO, Hector de Ruiz, was formerly the director of semiconductor products at Motorola.
I think this is one big reason why Steve Jobs and Apple could not / did not consider AMD -- they notoriously burned their bridges with Motorola/FreeScale over the G4's lackluster performance and slow development. Thus, Jobs and de Ruiz probably don't have a particularly good relationship.
Wow... the nerd James Bond.
The Honda ad was completely real, actually. There was only one logistically necessary camera cut in the middle of the sequence. It evidently took them hundreds of hours (and two entire, grudgingly provided Accord prototypes out of just a few in existence) to complete their "machine."
Back in 1994 when I was a junior in high school, I installed keylogger software of my own design on several public terminals at my high school. Passwords piled up and soon I was exploring all sorts of interesting systems with administrative access. Not that I did anything illegal or even really immoral -- just poked around for the most part and read lots of boring email. I finally got caught when I tried to install an IRC server on the school's Internet-connected Unix box, which raised all sorts of red flags with the admin. I got suspended for a day. I can't help but think that, ten years later, the tenor of the times encourages far more zealous prosecution of similarly minor misdeeds.
Here's a picture of A380 #2 just after painting...
Lots of great pictures of the A380 are accessible from this search page. Pictures cover part shipment by barge and truck, as well as the build and rollout of the first two A380s (#1 an engineering test platform that won't fly, and #2 that WILL fly).
iWork isn't by any means an entirely new software package. Keynote is of course an existing product, though updated here to a new version.
More interestingly, Pages (the word processor) appears to be an update of a software package of the same name that was released for NeXT in 1994 by a company called Pages Software. So here we have yet MORE benefits of the NeXT purchase, albeit delayed by 8 years...
From the linked 1994 NeXTWorld article: The software, three years in the making, takes a new approach to word processing that doesn't include such conventional tools as rulers, font panels, and style sheets. Pages is being positioned as an easy-to-use word processor in light of NeXT's de-emphasis on publishing and a lack of available word-processing software for NEXTSTEP.
"The early view of the product was that it was more of a publishing product," said Larry Spelhaug, CEO of Pages Software. "Internally, we always assumed that it would have full word-processing capability but that wasn't perceived outside the company."
Pages' extensive feature set, roughly equivalent to the latest versions of WordPerfect and Microsoft Word, was entirely implemented in object-based code. The software uses design templates to ease document creation."
Google's cache of the site...
Windows-based ATM crashes happen all the time.
Windows ATMs have been everywhere for awhile -- the days of OS/2 cash machines being the only story in town are long gone.
Nothing to see here, move along.
One thing I haven't seen here yet is a link to any screenshots of the leaked game -- anyone care to step up and deliver?
...let me be the first to suggest that the Slashdot community join me in constructing a beowulf cluster of beowulf clusters... to calculate Natalie Portman and Profit!!!
"Worcester... the Paris of the 1980s." Official civic booster tagline back when...
In seventh grade, during a physical science class, a friend of mine thought that it would be a funny joke to focus the sun onto my back using a Fresnel lens from an overhead projector. In the minute or so it took for me to notice (when the beam hit my skin), he had very efficiently burned through three layers of clothing!
Good times.
Wow. Is that a Holocaust metaphor in the parent? We're talking about the IRS and the bloat of the US TAX CODE here. Let's keep a sense of perspective...
This is no surprise at all. Dexterity and coordination are a surgeon's most valuable assets, and any activity that enhances those is a huge plus.
My great-uncle was a well-known Boston cardiac surgeon. It was a funny sight to see him (a macho ex-college football player) continuously knitting sweaters, socks and hats, a fine-motor activity he said contributed tremendously to his success on the operating table... he fobbed his woolen creations off on all of us relatives constantly.
"As most of us know, a longer pipeline can lead to slowdowns in the form of branch mispredictions and pipeline stalls."
Sigh... most of the people I know cannot place the planets of the Solar System in their correct order. What a rarefied realm we inhabit here...
It seems like a shame to send an $800mil semi-autonomous rover mission to Mars whose power source limits it to a 3 month primary mission.
Aside from the political difficulty entailed in getting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (an nuclear decay electrical power source like that which powered the Gallileo mission) off the launchpad in this day and age, do we know of any good reasons why a more lasting power source like this would not have been feasible for the MER mission? Such a power source could probably keep a rover operating indefinitely on the surface of Mars, used in concert with solar.
Does anyone feel that JPL's official Mars rover site is a bit dumbed-down? Certainly it's more polished and professional than the 1997 Pathfinder site, but the Pathfinder site had a certain raw immediacy in their presentation, along with gigs of images and data seemingly straight from the downlink.
Is NASA planning to make that kind of detailed information available over the web? Even the Astrobiology magazine site seems a bit on the terse side.
ezPublish is a very sophisticated GPL-licensed CMS that I've used for several projects. Really worth a look; for some reason it's a lot better known among Europeans (perhaps because it's developed by a bunch of Norwegians).
The salience to this discussion is that's real simple to administrate an EZ site, and install/setup is more straightforward than other similar systems I've tried.