Wow, you obviously haven't read the book. It has absolutely nothing to do with the so-called "Bible Code," which I'll agree is utter rubbish. "The daVinci Code" is fiction...so I suppose you're right, it's not true.
I doubt anyone cares, but most of the world's religions probably aren't too exclusive about the Earth being the only place with life on it. For example, in Islam, God is known as the Lord of all the Worlds, not just Earth. To my understanding, certain Hindu philosophies views the entire universe as being God. Pretty much the only people who would have a problem with life on other planets are the people who have a problem with understanding the idea that different people might have different ideas on a subject (i.e. Fundamentalists and Slashdot trolls).
Yeah, I'll agree it's a problem on the laptops. For a desktop, which is what I use most of the time, it doesn't bother me. It'd be nice to see them put out an iBook with two mouse buttons. And I do think there's a certain degree of "not invented here" syndrome.
Well, Apple does support the two-button mouse without any problem at all. They just don't manufacture them themselves. That's like saying that MS refuses to accept the usefulness of scanners just because they don't manufacture them.
Boot it up with the gentoo G5 LiveCD. There's no Linux support yet to control the fan speed, so they run at full-blast and they are LOUD! But of course, I've never actually heard them run close to that fast during normal usage under OS X. Overall, the G5 makes my old Athlon desktop sound like a jet engine by comparison. But then again, my old Athlon pretty much did sound like a jet engine all the time.
More than likely, it's simply a case of pirating whatever comes their way. So far as I can tell, the basic process for pirating stuff in SE Asia consists of making a good cover for the product with as many possible logos (DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, VCD, Windows, Microsoft, Logitech, Abercrombie, etc.), some misspelled/grammatically incorrect English, and then burning as many copies as the market will sustain. In my experience in the middle east, the copies were actually burnt on demand for customers. I don't think extensive market research and a serious analysis of product utility has much of a place in the business plans of pirates. Or of Microsoft for that matter.
Let me rephrase....I wouldn't want my eight-year-old playing either of those games. This whole "state raising your children" is a knee-jerk reaction that's totally unwarranted, especially in this case. While this may come as a surprise to you, once your children reach a certain age, they have the wherewithal to go out on their own without your direct supervision. All such a law ensures is that they can't buy these games without the parent's permission, just like they can't buy pornography or go see R-rated movies without parental permission.
Well, honestly, I wouldn't want 8 year olds playing GTA or Manhunt anyways. I've been carded buying games before, and it never really bothered me (though it bothered the kids in front of me). Of course, one doubts whether this will really keep violent games out of the hands of young kids anyway.
In all seriousness, this is already a policy at a lot of stores (like Target, probably Wal-mart too), and making it a law wouldn't be much different than rating movies. Kids who really want games will no doubt be able to get them, but at least adults will have a forum in which to enjoy more mature entertainment, as opposed to the alternative, which would probably be banning violent games.
Yeah, it's pretty much a synonym for poo in most languages. At least, I think it is.
Re:What are you talking about?
on
Effective XML
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Okay, fine XML isn't slow by nature. But it's a generalized solution. Not every set of data needs to be stored in a general tree, so putting every set into one will often create a lot of extra work. The benefit of XML is its portablity, and the price is the performance hit you take from packing and unpacking all that data.
Perhaps you all missed the part that the service is free if the iPod is still under warranty. The $99 fee is only for iPods that are no longer under warranty, at least based on the sentence from the page which says "If your iPod is no longer under warranty, there will be a fee for service."
Re:now even i want an iPod...
on
iPod-Jacked
·
· Score: 1
Learning is definitely something that you do. I think it's the goal of a teacher to teach his or her students to learn on their own. However, based on my own experience in high school (4 years ago now), I found this to be the opposite for nearly all the teachers I had. Usually, I think the students were partially to blame as well.
I could think of some awesome things that teachers could do if every student had a laptop computer, but, more than likely, the computers will be used to exchange porn and IMs and not much else. Some industrious kid will crack the probably trivial security on the laptop (this is a public school district after all, OS X notwithstanding). For example, one can boot up the laptop with the OS X install disk and change the root password, then make any changes they like.
The problem is, that sort of thinking is what schools should be enouraging. "This restriction is a problem, how can I solve it?" I mean, honestly, what's the purpose of owning a computer if you can't install software onto yourself? I could understand if they were school desktop machines, but they're laptops that the students will be taking home.
I'm somewhat pessimistic about the whole idea. I have an iBook and I'm a CS major, and, in all honesty, I barely ever use the thing for anything more than websurfing, IMing and checking email in class. And when there are abundant machines all around me, it seems kind of superfluous. I still love the thing tho.:-)
Well...Latin became a liturgical language, but I don't know if it's spoken conversationally anymore (probably not, except in Latin classes). An interesting hybrid is Modern Standard Arabic, which is very similar to classical Arabic from 1400 years ago.
However, no one actually speaks the standard language in conversation, it's only used in books, prayers, and formal speeches. The colloquial dialects have evolved to be very different from the standard dialect. So is the classical arabic language dead? Hard to say. I'm tempted to say that the dead/living language is something of a false dichotomy; if we know about the language it's probably not really dead.
My experience has been different. Lately, the merchants don't even take my card. I walk into the grocery store/wal-mart and use the debit card scanner to scan my credit card. I sign the receipt w/o the cashier even looking at my card. At a place like Subway, for example, for smaller transactions, they don't even require a signature. It seems to me like it's getting easier to use someone else's card, not harder.
Uh, I might be wrong here, but, as I understand the definition of "double-blind," it means that neither the subject, nor the person administering the test, know the purpose of the test. Hence, you don't say, "Hey, I'm doing a double-blind test on audio formats, want to participate?" Instead, you just invite people into to listen to some stuff and answer some questions. And you hire some undergrads to ask the questions who don't know the purpose of the study.
While it may actually be the case that audiophiles would prefer not to find out that they were ripped off for their audio equipment, a "double-blind" is not the kind of study you're looking for.
Have you actually been to Iraq to verify that "the Iraqi people befar are happier to see the torture chambers gone and Saddam no where to be found"? Perhaps you have, but I'll operate under the assumption that you haven't.
Your information is also being filtered through various sources, each with their inherant biases (being run by humans). I personally believe that it's impossible to eliminate bias from the system, so people should just be upfront about their biases. That's the reason why Fox News makes me mad, because they claim to be fair and balanced, when that claim is, I believe, unachieveable.
I'll read Salon, because they never claim to be fair and balanced. They're to the left and they know it. Generally speaking, I've found that liberals are much more apt to admit to their biases than conservatives, but of course, your experience might be different.
Re the iPod, once again - lovely UI choices... lets see... oh plug it on a new computer and have it format itself - that is a sure fire winner.
It's not been my experience that this happens at all. I'll dump some files on my iPod and use it as a portable hard drive to copy files onto some other computer. I've never even been given the option to reformat my iPod when I plug it into another computer. This may have been a problem with earlier firmware versions, but I've never seen it. Perhaps what you're referring to is the fact that each iPod "belongs" to only one computer, which is the one that syncs its mp3s with the iPod. In order to "give" the iPod to another computer, it needs to be reformatted. It's a minor DRM feature, and one easily avoided by simply backing up your music, and copying it back over after you reassign the iPod.
Well, really it takes one step to burn. Three steps to convert protected AAC into an unprotected MP3/OGG/Whatever. That is, unless you just hijack the audiostream and put it straight into a WAV or whatever. Which is ultimately the problem with DRM anyways. If you can actually listen to the music, then it will be possible to copy it to some unprotected format and distribute it.
Re:Has apparently has worked?
on
Free-Floating UNIX
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Well, really it's called the subjunctive "mood," not tense. We do have it in English, but only in very specific situations. For example, "I wish this webpage were available." Normally you'd use "was," but the wishing puts the verb into the subjuctive mood. It's really a minor thing.
Yeah, except, as I understand it, the difference is that 10.3 will actually run faster than 10.2 on the same system. As opposed to Win2k and WinXP on the same machine, where the converse is most definitely true.
Well, it's not really so much of an urban legend, as a way of explaining chaos theory (thanks Jurassic Park). The idea is that, no matter how accurate your initial data are, there will still be some round-off errors (basically) in your numbers. When you do a lot of calculations on these data, small differences in the initial data manifest themselves as large-scale phenomena down the road. Hence, a butterfly's position now determines whether or not a hurricane occurs three weeks later.
Actually, you know, the Earth Simulator has its own power plant, so, theoretically, a cluster of Earth Simulators would each possess their own power plants, so they'd leave the power grid of the host country unaffected.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, you obviously haven't read the book. It has absolutely nothing to do with the so-called "Bible Code," which I'll agree is utter rubbish. "The daVinci Code" is fiction...so I suppose you're right, it's not true.
I doubt anyone cares, but most of the world's religions probably aren't too exclusive about the Earth being the only place with life on it. For example, in Islam, God is known as the Lord of all the Worlds, not just Earth. To my understanding, certain Hindu philosophies views the entire universe as being God. Pretty much the only people who would have a problem with life on other planets are the people who have a problem with understanding the idea that different people might have different ideas on a subject (i.e. Fundamentalists and Slashdot trolls).
Yeah, I'll agree it's a problem on the laptops. For a desktop, which is what I use most of the time, it doesn't bother me. It'd be nice to see them put out an iBook with two mouse buttons. And I do think there's a certain degree of "not invented here" syndrome.
Well, Apple does support the two-button mouse without any problem at all. They just don't manufacture them themselves. That's like saying that MS refuses to accept the usefulness of scanners just because they don't manufacture them.
Boot it up with the gentoo G5 LiveCD. There's no Linux support yet to control the fan speed, so they run at full-blast and they are LOUD! But of course, I've never actually heard them run close to that fast during normal usage under OS X. Overall, the G5 makes my old Athlon desktop sound like a jet engine by comparison. But then again, my old Athlon pretty much did sound like a jet engine all the time.
More than likely, it's simply a case of pirating whatever comes their way. So far as I can tell, the basic process for pirating stuff in SE Asia consists of making a good cover for the product with as many possible logos (DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, VCD, Windows, Microsoft, Logitech, Abercrombie, etc.), some misspelled/grammatically incorrect English, and then burning as many copies as the market will sustain. In my experience in the middle east, the copies were actually burnt on demand for customers. I don't think extensive market research and a serious analysis of product utility has much of a place in the business plans of pirates. Or of Microsoft for that matter.
In all seriousness, this is already a policy at a lot of stores (like Target, probably Wal-mart too), and making it a law wouldn't be much different than rating movies. Kids who really want games will no doubt be able to get them, but at least adults will have a forum in which to enjoy more mature entertainment, as opposed to the alternative, which would probably be banning violent games.
Yeah, it's pretty much a synonym for poo in most languages. At least, I think it is.
Okay, fine XML isn't slow by nature. But it's a generalized solution. Not every set of data needs to be stored in a general tree, so putting every set into one will often create a lot of extra work. The benefit of XML is its portablity, and the price is the performance hit you take from packing and unpacking all that data.
Perhaps you all missed the part that the service is free if the iPod is still under warranty. The $99 fee is only for iPods that are no longer under warranty, at least based on the sentence from the page which says "If your iPod is no longer under warranty, there will be a fee for service."
Yeah, took me all of 10 seconds: http://www.lyricsdir.com/t/tool/prison-sex.php
I could think of some awesome things that teachers could do if every student had a laptop computer, but, more than likely, the computers will be used to exchange porn and IMs and not much else. Some industrious kid will crack the probably trivial security on the laptop (this is a public school district after all, OS X notwithstanding). For example, one can boot up the laptop with the OS X install disk and change the root password, then make any changes they like.
The problem is, that sort of thinking is what schools should be enouraging. "This restriction is a problem, how can I solve it?" I mean, honestly, what's the purpose of owning a computer if you can't install software onto yourself? I could understand if they were school desktop machines, but they're laptops that the students will be taking home.
I'm somewhat pessimistic about the whole idea. I have an iBook and I'm a CS major, and, in all honesty, I barely ever use the thing for anything more than websurfing, IMing and checking email in class. And when there are abundant machines all around me, it seems kind of superfluous. I still love the thing tho. :-)
However, no one actually speaks the standard language in conversation, it's only used in books, prayers, and formal speeches. The colloquial dialects have evolved to be very different from the standard dialect. So is the classical arabic language dead? Hard to say. I'm tempted to say that the dead/living language is something of a false dichotomy; if we know about the language it's probably not really dead.
My experience has been different. Lately, the merchants don't even take my card. I walk into the grocery store/wal-mart and use the debit card scanner to scan my credit card. I sign the receipt w/o the cashier even looking at my card. At a place like Subway, for example, for smaller transactions, they don't even require a signature. It seems to me like it's getting easier to use someone else's card, not harder.
They only have the 'Clean' version of the latest Outkast album. Which also has the #1 selling song on iTMS right now.
While it may actually be the case that audiophiles would prefer not to find out that they were ripped off for their audio equipment, a "double-blind" is not the kind of study you're looking for.
Your information is also being filtered through various sources, each with their inherant biases (being run by humans). I personally believe that it's impossible to eliminate bias from the system, so people should just be upfront about their biases. That's the reason why Fox News makes me mad, because they claim to be fair and balanced, when that claim is, I believe, unachieveable.
I'll read Salon, because they never claim to be fair and balanced. They're to the left and they know it. Generally speaking, I've found that liberals are much more apt to admit to their biases than conservatives, but of course, your experience might be different.
Re the iPod, once again - lovely UI choices... lets see... oh plug it on a new computer and have it format itself - that is a sure fire winner.
It's not been my experience that this happens at all. I'll dump some files on my iPod and use it as a portable hard drive to copy files onto some other computer. I've never even been given the option to reformat my iPod when I plug it into another computer. This may have been a problem with earlier firmware versions, but I've never seen it. Perhaps what you're referring to is the fact that each iPod "belongs" to only one computer, which is the one that syncs its mp3s with the iPod. In order to "give" the iPod to another computer, it needs to be reformatted. It's a minor DRM feature, and one easily avoided by simply backing up your music, and copying it back over after you reassign the iPod.
Well, really it takes one step to burn. Three steps to convert protected AAC into an unprotected MP3/OGG/Whatever. That is, unless you just hijack the audiostream and put it straight into a WAV or whatever. Which is ultimately the problem with DRM anyways. If you can actually listen to the music, then it will be possible to copy it to some unprotected format and distribute it.
Well, really it's called the subjunctive "mood," not tense. We do have it in English, but only in very specific situations. For example, "I wish this webpage were available." Normally you'd use "was," but the wishing puts the verb into the subjuctive mood. It's really a minor thing.
Yeah, except, as I understand it, the difference is that 10.3 will actually run faster than 10.2 on the same system. As opposed to Win2k and WinXP on the same machine, where the converse is most definitely true.
Well, it's not really so much of an urban legend, as a way of explaining chaos theory (thanks Jurassic Park). The idea is that, no matter how accurate your initial data are, there will still be some round-off errors (basically) in your numbers. When you do a lot of calculations on these data, small differences in the initial data manifest themselves as large-scale phenomena down the road. Hence, a butterfly's position now determines whether or not a hurricane occurs three weeks later.
Actually, you know, the Earth Simulator has its own power plant, so, theoretically, a cluster of Earth Simulators would each possess their own power plants, so they'd leave the power grid of the host country unaffected.
Well of course not! Don't be silly! And 640K of RAM ought to be enough for anyone!