As a sci fi reader, I of course hope that light speed is a breakable barrier.
As someone who studied physics, I'm not too hopeful. The speed limit isn't the result of a few shaky theories, but rather a pretty deeply engrained part of our understanding. If it turns out not to be true, then most of the physics that has been done for the past 150 years is flat out wrong. It would be like discovering that DNA isn't where the genetic code is held, as disasterous, and at this point in our study, as unlikely.
Yes, the end of the article goes into the investigations of the war records of America's German scientists that occurred in the 70s and 80s.
I've always thought that was a little unfair of us. Sure, they committed a grave moral crime in using concentration camp labor, but it's very convenient of us to only care about that after we've used them for every bit of knowledge and skill they had and the space program was on coast. If the information had become public in the 50s or 60s, I imagine the government would have instead done its best to cover it up. Actually, come to think of it, that probably did occur to some degree or another.
Re:Categories that Ken lost on...
on
They Killed Ken!
·
· Score: 1
I always find posts like this irritating. I know it's a joke, but it represents a sentiment that many people really hold, that people who work hard at their interests must in some way be deficient in the rest of their lives.
Sure Ken probably isn't a "regular Joe" but that's no reason to assume he doesn't get along well with women or enjoy hiking. I would think Slashdotters especially would resist this kind of stereotyping, since the world generally passes the same judgement on our kind.
As for the post 1970s pop culture, maybe or maybe not. But really, is he missing out on much?
Yeah, but who is going to call in our debts? Given our military supremacy, actually having to caugh up that 6 tril isn't going to be an immediate problem.
The real financial problem for the US is not the debt itself, but related to the debt.
For the past several decades, the US could get out of financial troubles by simply printing more money. Since we had the only currency that was universally accepted as a unit of international monetary excange, this seldom caused the kind of inflation it should have. Now that the Euro is challenging the Dollar as the international currency of choice, and east Asia is talking about a unified currency, it's unlikely that we'll be able to continue this strategy.
For a long time now, money has been growing on trees for the federal government, and that's stopping fast. This could spell real danger for the US economy.
No, but there's good inteligence that clearly shows Alderaan had a stockpile of WMDs that it planned to give to the Rebel Alliance. The new DVD further points out that its government was an anti-democratic dictatorship by a royal family, and goes on to document its sentient-rights abuses which while largely decades in the past, still play a part in building a convincing case for a pre-emptive planetary destruction by the Emp - er - Coalition Forces.
Oh I'm sure they'll get to that in a few years. Around the time they start making these fighting robots 7 feet tall and armed with weapons and fighting techniques other than shoving arms.
Really, Japan, does the world *need* fighting androids? What possible good will the development of this technology bring about? Don't you read your own comic books and watch your own cartoons? This can go nowhere but bad.
If you are referring to people of the Islamic faith from the Middle East and Northern Africa, you should probably be aware that there are nearly a *billion* of them.
England would have had as much luck trying to round up all the world's Catholics in attempt to curb IRA attacks.
And if we make Arab Americans second class citizens wave everyone else by security, it will only A) get them that much angrier and B) teach Al Quaeda to recruit caucasians with caucasian names.
No, a just law applies to all citizens equally. If we're going to be sacrificing freedom for safety, then we've all got to give it up.
That moon is really creepy, even more creepy when you consider the location of the third monolith in the book of 2001, which was (IIRC) in the middle of a giant circular crater on the dark side of one of Saturn's moons.
Galton only "blew it" if he loses his case and foots a big bill. He's a lawyer. I doubt very much he's sitting up at night really worrying about curbing those mean ol' internet insults. This guy's after the money. Most likely he will get a large out of court settlement from Yahoo, since I'm sure they don't even want to play around with the chance that their message boards could be regulated out of existance.
I own and have ripped nearly three hundred CDs and have about 400 more on MP3 alone. This is after selling the ones that I don't like, which isn't many.
I listen to all of them. Maybe not all of them on a regular basis, but I can't think of one that I'd be willing to say "I'm OK not listening to that ever again"
It's nice having a big chunk of that library be able to travel around with me.
While I'm certainly not everyone, there are people out there with even more than me. Just because most people are fine with a few hundred favorite songs, or a few dozen favorite albums, doesn't mean everyone is.
Also, how many 60 GB external harddrives let you play music? There may be more economical solutions out there, but the ipod is more likely to be in your pocket when you need it, and the two birds with one stone factor is pretty big for some people.
That's why you have to use cool "underground" music to announce the fact that your phone is ringing.
So yeah, you'll know who to kick the shit out of when you suddenly start hearing Mission of Burma's "That's When I Reach for my Revolver" in the middle of a movie.
But as I'm being killed by irritated people, I'll know in my heart of hearts that I am cooler than them, since I listen to obscure music.
(That was all sarcasm by the way, people who ride big egos because they're "cooler" than other people need to just die. Those assholes make me uncomfortable with my own tastes, I don't want people thinking I'm one of them.)
De Tocqueville was a late French Enlightenment writer who traveled America and wrote in praise of American civil society, as opposed to French (which after having just gone throught the first revolution, and the dictatorship of Napolean, was looking pretty shitty.)
Anyway, it's way too early in the morning for me to pull out a page reference, but one of the major themes in his _Democracy in America_ is that American society functions well due to the large number of volunteer organizations that Americans joined in, fire departments, sewing circles, sports clubs, free publications and that sort of thing. These things raise community awareness, and allow the democratic process to work, since he believed that it would fall apart if all democracy was was everyone voting their own pocketbook.
Anyway, I'd say the Free Software movement in America is certainly a continuation of that civic spirit.
There is not objective standard for what makes an interface intuitive or easy to use. As someone once said "the only intuitive interface is the nipple." That said, there's something of a responsibility to adhere to users' expectations, provided that no compelling reason not to do so exists.
Design software tends to have certain standard interface decisions. Adobe, Macromedia, Corel, and many other developers seem to have settled upon some rough standards as to the way things work. Somone familiar even with MS Paint could begin to find their way around Photoshop and maybe even Illustrator. If you know some film editing or even sound recording software, you could begin to work your way around Flash. Etc.
There is more than a mere familiarity issue here. Design professionals who routinely learn new design software have a very difficult time learning GIMP. GIMP deviates from interface conventions SIGNIFICANTLY. It isn't just a "this isn't like Photoshop" issue, it's a "this isn't like ANY OTHER DESIGN SOFTWARE ON THE MARKET" issue. Perhaps there is an overwhelmingly compelling reason to change the interface paradigm of design software, but I don't see it. I've used GIMP enough to know how to do most of what I want to do with it, and I don't find it any easier or faster than Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop.
In a project requiring the use of multiple pieces of design software, switching from one application to GIMP requires a mental leap that switching between any other two applications does not. This doesn't really get easier with famiarity, there's still always that moment of "OK, I'm doing THIS now" and your assumptions from using other software don't really go away.
GIMP badly needs, at the very least, an option to make it behave like normal design software.
Since I really don't need the Karma, I'm going to complain about this. What idiot gave me an "interesting" mod for asking a question?
I get the +1 bonus, so there aren't many people who are going to miss my post.
I asked it hoping to get "interesting" or better yet "informative" replies.
(incidentally, "interesting" is what I say when someone starts telling me something that I completely disagree with but don't feel like arguing. "So we should never encourage a peaceful division of land with Palestince, because then Jesus would have to return to a heathen state? That's interesting...")
If that's the case, then I think this is fine. If I'm going out of my way to use a chat program that doesn't have a logging or save function, then it's reasonable to assume that my conversation won't be saved.
I'm curious as to why, this time, Slashdot seems to be *against* privacy protection. Surely logging of conversations without you knowing is a more serious breach of privacy than google targeting your email account with ads based on trigger-words (What's the big surprise there, your email provider is able to read your messages? If you don't encript, then that's true no matter who you're dealing with)
Sometimes I worry that the tech community's sense of fairness and ethics has more to do with preserving the status quo that they're used to than a real consideration of rights.
In journalism "objectivity" means "neutrality." Even if objective evidence rationally leads you to the decision, you can't praise or condemn anything without losing your "objectivity."
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm over 21, and I'm certainly going to see the SpongeBob movie.
If I ever get too old for quality absurdist children's entertainment, then well...
Ah, I don't know what, but it isn't going to happen.
As a sci fi reader, I of course hope that light speed is a breakable barrier.
As someone who studied physics, I'm not too hopeful. The speed limit isn't the result of a few shaky theories, but rather a pretty deeply engrained part of our understanding. If it turns out not to be true, then most of the physics that has been done for the past 150 years is flat out wrong. It would be like discovering that DNA isn't where the genetic code is held, as disasterous, and at this point in our study, as unlikely.
Yes, the end of the article goes into the investigations of the war records of America's German scientists that occurred in the 70s and 80s.
I've always thought that was a little unfair of us. Sure, they committed a grave moral crime in using concentration camp labor, but it's very convenient of us to only care about that after we've used them for every bit of knowledge and skill they had and the space program was on coast. If the information had become public in the 50s or 60s, I imagine the government would have instead done its best to cover it up. Actually, come to think of it, that probably did occur to some degree or another.
I always find posts like this irritating. I know it's a joke, but it represents a sentiment that many people really hold, that people who work hard at their interests must in some way be deficient in the rest of their lives.
Sure Ken probably isn't a "regular Joe" but that's no reason to assume he doesn't get along well with women or enjoy hiking. I would think Slashdotters especially would resist this kind of stereotyping, since the world generally passes the same judgement on our kind.
As for the post 1970s pop culture, maybe or maybe not. But really, is he missing out on much?
In the community's defense,
1) While there may be no excuse for IE, there are still lots of reasons for "real nerds" to use Windows.
2) I imagine a pretty high percentage of Slashdotters are reading at work.
Yeah, but who is going to call in our debts? Given our military supremacy, actually having to caugh up that 6 tril isn't going to be an immediate problem.
The real financial problem for the US is not the debt itself, but related to the debt.
For the past several decades, the US could get out of financial troubles by simply printing more money. Since we had the only currency that was universally accepted as a unit of international monetary excange, this seldom caused the kind of inflation it should have. Now that the Euro is challenging the Dollar as the international currency of choice, and east Asia is talking about a unified currency, it's unlikely that we'll be able to continue this strategy.
For a long time now, money has been growing on trees for the federal government, and that's stopping fast. This could spell real danger for the US economy.
No, but there's good inteligence that clearly shows Alderaan had a stockpile of WMDs that it planned to give to the Rebel Alliance. The new DVD further points out that its government was an anti-democratic dictatorship by a royal family, and goes on to document its sentient-rights abuses which while largely decades in the past, still play a part in building a convincing case for a pre-emptive planetary destruction by the Emp - er - Coalition Forces.
Oh I'm sure they'll get to that in a few years. Around the time they start making these fighting robots 7 feet tall and armed with weapons and fighting techniques other than shoving arms.
Really, Japan, does the world *need* fighting androids? What possible good will the development of this technology bring about? Don't you read your own comic books and watch your own cartoons? This can go nowhere but bad.
If you are referring to people of the Islamic faith from the Middle East and Northern Africa, you should probably be aware that there are nearly a *billion* of them.
England would have had as much luck trying to round up all the world's Catholics in attempt to curb IRA attacks.
And if we make Arab Americans second class citizens wave everyone else by security, it will only A) get them that much angrier and B) teach Al Quaeda to recruit caucasians with caucasian names.
No, a just law applies to all citizens equally. If we're going to be sacrificing freedom for safety, then we've all got to give it up.
That moon is really creepy, even more creepy when you consider the location of the third monolith in the book of 2001, which was (IIRC) in the middle of a giant circular crater on the dark side of one of Saturn's moons.
OEM in countries that might otherwise just start selling Linux or OS-less PCs.
Sure, everyone will then upgrade to a pirated Corporate edition, but at least MS gets some cash out of the deal.
Galton only "blew it" if he loses his case and foots a big bill. He's a lawyer. I doubt very much he's sitting up at night really worrying about curbing those mean ol' internet insults. This guy's after the money. Most likely he will get a large out of court settlement from Yahoo, since I'm sure they don't even want to play around with the chance that their message boards could be regulated out of existance.
See I was more thinking along the lines of a guy who dumps his irritating New Jersey / Long Island girlfriend for someone better...
History isn't what he "wanted" to do but what he did.
I believe that was a joke making fun of "Think Tanks."
I own and have ripped nearly three hundred CDs and have about 400 more on MP3 alone. This is after selling the ones that I don't like, which isn't many.
I listen to all of them. Maybe not all of them on a regular basis, but I can't think of one that I'd be willing to say "I'm OK not listening to that ever again"
It's nice having a big chunk of that library be able to travel around with me.
While I'm certainly not everyone, there are people out there with even more than me. Just because most people are fine with a few hundred favorite songs, or a few dozen favorite albums, doesn't mean everyone is.
Also, how many 60 GB external harddrives let you play music? There may be more economical solutions out there, but the ipod is more likely to be in your pocket when you need it, and the two birds with one stone factor is pretty big for some people.
That's why you have to use cool "underground" music to announce the fact that your phone is ringing.
So yeah, you'll know who to kick the shit out of when you suddenly start hearing Mission of Burma's "That's When I Reach for my Revolver" in the middle of a movie.
But as I'm being killed by irritated people, I'll know in my heart of hearts that I am cooler than them, since I listen to obscure music.
(That was all sarcasm by the way, people who ride big egos because they're "cooler" than other people need to just die. Those assholes make me uncomfortable with my own tastes, I don't want people thinking I'm one of them.)
De Tocqueville was a late French Enlightenment writer who traveled America and wrote in praise of American civil society, as opposed to French (which after having just gone throught the first revolution, and the dictatorship of Napolean, was looking pretty shitty.)
Anyway, it's way too early in the morning for me to pull out a page reference, but one of the major themes in his _Democracy in America_ is that American society functions well due to the large number of volunteer organizations that Americans joined in, fire departments, sewing circles, sports clubs, free publications and that sort of thing. These things raise community awareness, and allow the democratic process to work, since he believed that it would fall apart if all democracy was was everyone voting their own pocketbook.
Anyway, I'd say the Free Software movement in America is certainly a continuation of that civic spirit.
There is not objective standard for what makes an interface intuitive or easy to use. As someone once said "the only intuitive interface is the nipple." That said, there's something of a responsibility to adhere to users' expectations, provided that no compelling reason not to do so exists.
Design software tends to have certain standard interface decisions. Adobe, Macromedia, Corel, and many other developers seem to have settled upon some rough standards as to the way things work. Somone familiar even with MS Paint could begin to find their way around Photoshop and maybe even Illustrator. If you know some film editing or even sound recording software, you could begin to work your way around Flash. Etc.
There is more than a mere familiarity issue here. Design professionals who routinely learn new design software have a very difficult time learning GIMP. GIMP deviates from interface conventions SIGNIFICANTLY. It isn't just a "this isn't like Photoshop" issue, it's a "this isn't like ANY OTHER DESIGN SOFTWARE ON THE MARKET" issue. Perhaps there is an overwhelmingly compelling reason to change the interface paradigm of design software, but I don't see it. I've used GIMP enough to know how to do most of what I want to do with it, and I don't find it any easier or faster than Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop.
In a project requiring the use of multiple pieces of design software, switching from one application to GIMP requires a mental leap that switching between any other two applications does not. This doesn't really get easier with famiarity, there's still always that moment of "OK, I'm doing THIS now" and your assumptions from using other software don't really go away.
GIMP badly needs, at the very least, an option to make it behave like normal design software.
Since I really don't need the Karma, I'm going to complain about this. What idiot gave me an "interesting" mod for asking a question?
I get the +1 bonus, so there aren't many people who are going to miss my post.
I asked it hoping to get "interesting" or better yet "informative" replies.
(incidentally, "interesting" is what I say when someone starts telling me something that I completely disagree with but don't feel like arguing. "So we should never encourage a peaceful division of land with Palestince, because then Jesus would have to return to a heathen state? That's interesting...")
I'm curious, is this the first time a court has acted to enforce the GPL as legally binding?
And the nice thing about Pricewatch vs. Iomega is you get about the same reliability!
The article was down when I tried,
If that's the case, then I think this is fine. If I'm going out of my way to use a chat program that doesn't have a logging or save function, then it's reasonable to assume that my conversation won't be saved.
I'm curious as to why, this time, Slashdot seems to be *against* privacy protection. Surely logging of conversations without you knowing is a more serious breach of privacy than google targeting your email account with ads based on trigger-words (What's the big surprise there, your email provider is able to read your messages? If you don't encript, then that's true no matter who you're dealing with)
Sometimes I worry that the tech community's sense of fairness and ethics has more to do with preserving the status quo that they're used to than a real consideration of rights.
In journalism "objectivity" means "neutrality." Even if objective evidence rationally leads you to the decision, you can't praise or condemn anything without losing your "objectivity."
this just made me think...
has anyone ever tried adopting the old infocom interface as a shell?