Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken.
The irony is that the same people who are for gun ownership rights, without compromise, are also usually in favor of maintaining a large military. If we didn't have such a big army all the time, maybe it wouldn't be necessary to have our civilians armed to the teeth.
But you miss the cleverness - bare arms exposed to the sun are more likely to accumulate DNA damage (through sun burns, UV light blah blah). DNA damage would throw off the tests! For once, living underground/away from sunlight and developing no tan has its distinct advantages... Or would getting a sunburn be thought of tampering with potential evidence? (yes, I know they can get DNA samples elsewhere, it's a joke).
It shouldn't matter how the bandwidth arises. If I use 1 megabyte, I shouldn't pay for 10. Or 100. It's that simple, really, when you have millions of people sharing the same resource. If usage goes down, they can lower the rates, and if it goes up, they can build more infrastructure. Competition should, in theory, keep them from raising the rates, although I'm not always so sure that's the case.
Furthermore, I'd like to see the end of unlimited plans, for all of these, and move to plan that resembles utilities. Pay for what you use! Imagine if we had "unlimited" electricity, gas and water plans. People would just leave their lights on all the time, and the whole system would be inefficient. I imagine the same goes for data usage.
Protecting and enforcing the values upon which the nation was founded does not require massive micro management.
(emphasis mine)
That does mean bringing back slavery, as slavery was a core institution at the time the US were founded. Too often people say "but it's not in the constitution!" either as a knee-jerk reaction or as a weak attempt to say that something is not permissible. How about instead of talking about the constitution all the time we have a real debate?
What bugs me is that so much of the so-called "states rights" movement is nothing more than a series of pick-and-choose ideas. We don't want federal programs (except Medicare! And agricultural subsidies! And small-business loans!) We don't want the federal government involved in schools (but we want school prayers! And no evolution!) We don't want environmental regulations (but now the Louisiana governor wants the government involved in cleaning the oil spill!) And on and on and on... The constant whining for small government has little credibility anymore.
That's because in the time it takes to optimize everything into itty-bitty pieces, the next generation of hardware comes out and is faster without bothering. There are operating systems out there written entirely in assembly, and assuming they're done properly I can imagine they are quite lean... but it takes forever to add features.
Considering I had never heard of them before, I'd say that by cancelling the contract Google has done the service the biggest favor yet! I imagine most people out there hadn't heard of it, either.
That depends on what you plan on using it for. I can run a composited desktop, torchlight, and civ 4 on a core i3 (1900x1200). It supports h264 decoding. It's low power. And if it gets too slow in a few years I can buy a $50 card to upgrade. So for me it's fine.
Absolutely! We must cease our dependence on foreign sources of oil! Stop giving money to nations that don't like us! Drill, baby, drill!
Seriously, why don't the media make fun of the Tea Partiers when it's so obvious how stupid their slogans are? (Answer: large media corporations don't want to pick a fight with large petroleum corporations)
I'm not sure it was a flop. Did Google make money on it? Did they get new customers onto the Android bandwagon?
Then, there's the other perspective. I just got one, my dad got one, and my brother is considering one too. It's cheaper over the lifetime of a 2-year contract than a subsidized phone. I'm not tied into a contract with T-mobile, and the price is reasonable. The phone works well and synchs with my google contacts, mail, calendar... And if I want, I can change phones whenever I feel like upgrading. Heck, it even plays Ogg Vorbis! For me, at least, it's a great success.
You raise a good point, namely that we have no idea even today how to quantify creativity. Bach was excellent at carrying out a theme and then throwing in a key change that dramatically altered the sense of the piece. See: Brandenburg concerto no 5, first movement, in the keyboard solo. Furthermore, a certain aspect of music is to show off the skill of the musician, and it's fun to see someone whiz along.
But I doubt the author of the music software ever intended to replace composers - he's just found a way of gleaning a better understanding of what harmonies and melodies are naturally appealing. Good music is more than "pleasant-sounding" melodies and harmonies, though - it should make you think. There's nothing wrong with pop music per se, but it certainly doesn't make you think hard about what's going on.
I would still be careful, though, to say that a computer will never compose something creative. We just haven't gotten there yet.
Assembly language isn't platform-independent. It's really easy to screw up and hard to optimize. And it's not much faster than C/C++. The issue at hand is balancing the cost of writing the code with the cost of running it. I don't see how the cost of writing and maintaining software in assembly language will ever compete with the costs of C/C++, potential speed increases and all. Object-oriented languages make small performance sacrifices in return for much greater maintenance, and that's how it should be. Scripting languages take this even further, and for these large websites have lost their advantage. The only time assembly will prevail is when we return to incredible memory constraints, but even embedded systems pack tons of memory now so I don't see that being an issue.
I was going to say, preventing outdoor light from entering the room is just another way of getting security through obscurity! We all knew in the back of our minds why working in dark basements was a good idea...
I remember reading that BBC article when it came out. In my opinion, it's a complete misinterpretation of the phrase "Paris se libere." Yes, it could mean that Paris is liberating itself... but it's also the way of saying "Paris is being liberated." An example would be "La maison se vide", which means "the house empties itself." Of course, the house can't actually empty itself, as a house can't do much of anything. What it means is that people or things inside are leaving.
The French understand what happened during WWII. Every year on June 6 they haul out American and British flags. De Gaulle wanted to avoid becoming America's pawn in Europe and pushed for strong French independence (which is related to the whole NATO debacle talked about in the article). From the point of view of any sovereign nation this is natural. Arguably, the Brits have become more subjected to America's will than any other European nation, for they were incapable of not joining us in lock-step in our contrived war in Iraq.
I don't have a problem with cracking jokes on other nations, but the main issue with the ones targeted on France and related to surrendering is that they are rooted in ignorance of history. You can make fun of them for smelly cheese, for going on strike all the time, for wanting lots of vacation... whatever, but to say that they just surrender is disrespectful of the millions of French soldiers and underground forces who fought and died for their country. And surely a country as militaristic as the US, which always demands we "support our troops" could understand how to respect another nation's troops.
I'll finish with some simple statistics: in World War I, 4.29% of all French people died. Assuming that most of those were young men fighting in the trenches, and that the ratio of men-women is 50/50, that's nearly 10% of all French men who died. That doesn't include the several million more wounded. France also lost half a million people in World War II.
This might get really dangerous, because the whole parasite reaction cascade (like dilating blood vessel and lowering blood-pression) was never designed to happen everywhere at the same time => anaphylaxis.
(emphasis mine)
The "parasite reaction cascade," and all other biological features, were not "designed." Choose your words carefully!
Still you have to wonder why it wasn't ported to some other platform if nothing else as an exercise in disaster preparedness.
Sadly, part of the reason is we Americans spend lots of money on our military, which prevents us from spending on infrastructure. This and the bridge collapse are just examples of what happens when you let your infrastructure lag.
You are correct in that a lot of English spelling carries a lot of baggage. Mark Twain once proposed a reform of the English language to improve the situation. I quote:
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x"â" bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez â"tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Take the check for $1,250 and use it to buy a new laptop. You get a free laptop that you use for work-only, and keep the other one for personal stuff. I call that the best of both worlds.
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Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken.
-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,
"Looking God in the Eye"
The irony is that the same people who are for gun ownership rights, without compromise, are also usually in favor of maintaining a large military. If we didn't have such a big army all the time, maybe it wouldn't be necessary to have our civilians armed to the teeth.
But you miss the cleverness - bare arms exposed to the sun are more likely to accumulate DNA damage (through sun burns, UV light blah blah). DNA damage would throw off the tests! For once, living underground/away from sunlight and developing no tan has its distinct advantages... Or would getting a sunburn be thought of tampering with potential evidence? (yes, I know they can get DNA samples elsewhere, it's a joke).
It shouldn't matter how the bandwidth arises. If I use 1 megabyte, I shouldn't pay for 10. Or 100. It's that simple, really, when you have millions of people sharing the same resource. If usage goes down, they can lower the rates, and if it goes up, they can build more infrastructure. Competition should, in theory, keep them from raising the rates, although I'm not always so sure that's the case.
Furthermore, I'd like to see the end of unlimited plans, for all of these, and move to plan that resembles utilities. Pay for what you use! Imagine if we had "unlimited" electricity, gas and water plans. People would just leave their lights on all the time, and the whole system would be inefficient. I imagine the same goes for data usage.
Protecting and enforcing the values upon which the nation was founded does not require massive micro management.
(emphasis mine)
That does mean bringing back slavery, as slavery was a core institution at the time the US were founded. Too often people say "but it's not in the constitution!" either as a knee-jerk reaction or as a weak attempt to say that something is not permissible. How about instead of talking about the constitution all the time we have a real debate?
What bugs me is that so much of the so-called "states rights" movement is nothing more than a series of pick-and-choose ideas. We don't want federal programs (except Medicare! And agricultural subsidies! And small-business loans!) We don't want the federal government involved in schools (but we want school prayers! And no evolution!) We don't want environmental regulations (but now the Louisiana governor wants the government involved in cleaning the oil spill!) And on and on and on... The constant whining for small government has little credibility anymore.
Maybe they use the wrong gauge for bandwidth?
That's because in the time it takes to optimize everything into itty-bitty pieces, the next generation of hardware comes out and is faster without bothering. There are operating systems out there written entirely in assembly, and assuming they're done properly I can imagine they are quite lean... but it takes forever to add features.
So then compare Canada with the Northeast Corridor (Boston, New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Delaware, Baltimore, DC, Richmond).
Considering I had never heard of them before, I'd say that by cancelling the contract Google has done the service the biggest favor yet! I imagine most people out there hadn't heard of it, either.
That depends on what you plan on using it for. I can run a composited desktop, torchlight, and civ 4 on a core i3 (1900x1200). It supports h264 decoding. It's low power. And if it gets too slow in a few years I can buy a $50 card to upgrade. So for me it's fine.
Because having your cousin die somewhere in someplace for other reasons is ok?
Don't you suppose Intel is aware of it, and would like to sell you their SSDs? In a few years nearly all new PCs will sport an SSD.
Absolutely! We must cease our dependence on foreign sources of oil! Stop giving money to nations that don't like us! Drill, baby, drill!
Seriously, why don't the media make fun of the Tea Partiers when it's so obvious how stupid their slogans are? (Answer: large media corporations don't want to pick a fight with large petroleum corporations)
I'm not sure it was a flop. Did Google make money on it? Did they get new customers onto the Android bandwagon?
Then, there's the other perspective. I just got one, my dad got one, and my brother is considering one too. It's cheaper over the lifetime of a 2-year contract than a subsidized phone. I'm not tied into a contract with T-mobile, and the price is reasonable. The phone works well and synchs with my google contacts, mail, calendar... And if I want, I can change phones whenever I feel like upgrading. Heck, it even plays Ogg Vorbis! For me, at least, it's a great success.
You raise a good point, namely that we have no idea even today how to quantify creativity. Bach was excellent at carrying out a theme and then throwing in a key change that dramatically altered the sense of the piece. See: Brandenburg concerto no 5, first movement, in the keyboard solo. Furthermore, a certain aspect of music is to show off the skill of the musician, and it's fun to see someone whiz along.
But I doubt the author of the music software ever intended to replace composers - he's just found a way of gleaning a better understanding of what harmonies and melodies are naturally appealing. Good music is more than "pleasant-sounding" melodies and harmonies, though - it should make you think. There's nothing wrong with pop music per se, but it certainly doesn't make you think hard about what's going on.
I would still be careful, though, to say that a computer will never compose something creative. We just haven't gotten there yet.
Assembly language isn't platform-independent. It's really easy to screw up and hard to optimize. And it's not much faster than C/C++. The issue at hand is balancing the cost of writing the code with the cost of running it. I don't see how the cost of writing and maintaining software in assembly language will ever compete with the costs of C/C++, potential speed increases and all. Object-oriented languages make small performance sacrifices in return for much greater maintenance, and that's how it should be. Scripting languages take this even further, and for these large websites have lost their advantage. The only time assembly will prevail is when we return to incredible memory constraints, but even embedded systems pack tons of memory now so I don't see that being an issue.
I was going to say, preventing outdoor light from entering the room is just another way of getting security through obscurity! We all knew in the back of our minds why working in dark basements was a good idea...
I remember reading that BBC article when it came out. In my opinion, it's a complete misinterpretation of the phrase "Paris se libere." Yes, it could mean that Paris is liberating itself... but it's also the way of saying "Paris is being liberated." An example would be "La maison se vide", which means "the house empties itself." Of course, the house can't actually empty itself, as a house can't do much of anything. What it means is that people or things inside are leaving.
The French understand what happened during WWII. Every year on June 6 they haul out American and British flags. De Gaulle wanted to avoid becoming America's pawn in Europe and pushed for strong French independence (which is related to the whole NATO debacle talked about in the article). From the point of view of any sovereign nation this is natural. Arguably, the Brits have become more subjected to America's will than any other European nation, for they were incapable of not joining us in lock-step in our contrived war in Iraq.
I don't have a problem with cracking jokes on other nations, but the main issue with the ones targeted on France and related to surrendering is that they are rooted in ignorance of history. You can make fun of them for smelly cheese, for going on strike all the time, for wanting lots of vacation... whatever, but to say that they just surrender is disrespectful of the millions of French soldiers and underground forces who fought and died for their country. And surely a country as militaristic as the US, which always demands we "support our troops" could understand how to respect another nation's troops.
I'll finish with some simple statistics: in World War I, 4.29% of all French people died. Assuming that most of those were young men fighting in the trenches, and that the ratio of men-women is 50/50, that's nearly 10% of all French men who died. That doesn't include the several million more wounded. France also lost half a million people in World War II.
This might get really dangerous, because the whole parasite reaction cascade (like dilating blood vessel and lowering blood-pression) was never designed to happen everywhere at the same time => anaphylaxis.
(emphasis mine)
The "parasite reaction cascade," and all other biological features, were not "designed." Choose your words carefully!
Still you have to wonder why it wasn't ported to some other platform if nothing else as an exercise in disaster preparedness.
Sadly, part of the reason is we Americans spend lots of money on our military, which prevents us from spending on infrastructure. This and the bridge collapse are just examples of what happens when you let your infrastructure lag.
That was mind-bloggling!
Your numbers are way off for the early 1900s. Russia: closer to 88 million million
United Kingdom: 41 million
You are correct in that a lot of English spelling carries a lot of baggage. Mark Twain once proposed a reform of the English language to improve the situation. I quote:
Take the check for $1,250 and use it to buy a new laptop. You get a free laptop that you use for work-only, and keep the other one for personal stuff. I call that the best of both worlds.