Every honest Ph.D. shares a common belief in the pursuit of impartial truth in everything.
I don't really know the common beliefs of every PhD, and I don't really care. I do know that people can be partial and not even know it though. The most famous example of this is probbably n-rays. The short story is that several scientists claimed to observe them, but they turned out to be an illusion. People were literally seeing something that wasn't their. Lesser known examples are Millikan's oil drop experiment measuring the charge of an electron. Millikans answer turned out to be a little bit too small. The published results after that went up slightly with each published result until it got to the value we now know it to be. The point is that even though a scientist may not have any conscious bias, it's always easy to fool yourself.
The greatest power of science is simply repeatable experiments. Science is about verification and community. Everyone doesn't have to be (and realistically isn't) impartial.
Can someone tell me why the FDA is releasing a statement about this? Cell phones and RF are neither a food nor a drug, nor a medical device. Does this fall under some part of the FDA I'm not aware of?
Since when are government scientists the presidents "subordinates"? You really need to study how a democracy works, because it doesn't work through those at the top trying to stop any information they don't like from getting out. Ever heard of Government of the People, by the People? The President works for me, and you too. I want to hear what the scientists have to say, and it's actually the role of government to get that information out.
This administration is starting to look more like China that the United States. There's another regime that's famous for trying to control the flow of information.
Limbaugh is an entertainer who provides the same service for conservatives the NY Times editorial page provides for leftists, i.e. he tells them what they want to hear.
No, that job is reserved for Michael Moore, and George Clooney's oscar speech.
You've taken one poorly worded line and turned it into some dumb conspiracy theory about how "all liberals" think. I certainly wouldn't do the same thing about all conservatives, but I will make that statement about those two media idiots.
Stop posting like a reactionary talkshow host. Can we at least try to take things in context, realize people don't always speak perfectly, etc? I really don't know how you got from someone making an offhanded comment about an "anti-US" website to assuming he was talking about some kind of "attack the united states" website. The statement was very unclear and you should treat it that way.
Wonderfull sophistry you've constructed. Seriously, you should work in advertising or marketing. The practice of airline pilots is really irrelvent to driving a car. The two activities are really nowhere even near the same. I'd suggest you actually get a drivers license before you start making judgements about how impaired someone could possibly be at the very low level of.02.
Your idea is that if you're not operating at 100%, you should be stopped from driving a car. If that were the law, then people shouldn't be driving probbably 95% of the time. This idea is a bit kooky. Who's always at their best? What matters is your level of impairment, not that you're slightly (if that's even true) a worse driver. At a certain level of BAC people aren't fit to drive a car. That level is somewhere around.05.
Why do you give such a shit whether people pray, or believe in Bigfoot, or give money to Miss Cleo?
For one reason I live in a democracy, and an effective democracy is based on an educated public. I sure as hell don't want a populace that wants to give government grant money to studying Bigfoot, giving money to some kind of "prayer treatment", or having large segments of the population screwing up their lives because some psychic TV woman told them to give them all their money.
Your comments indicate a strong sense of individuality and "I don't care what people do", which is often a wonderful American value. But we individuals don't live in a vacuum either. Peoples beliefs influence other peoples beliefs. I think people should have the right to do dumb things, but I also think there should be sane voices talking people off the wall too. It wasn't that long ago that people drilled holes in other peoples heads to "let our the evil spirits". But we don't believe in that anymore. If you want to pray for someone and that makes you feel better, great. Honestly that's probbably what that whole praying thing was supposed to be about anyway. But putting all your hopes into a system that doesn't work is just wastefull and counterproductive. I don't know if this was really worth funding, but I do take issue with your general idea that beliefs should remain unquestioned.
The problem with the study, and Science is general, is that it takes one negative result to mean that the procedure is ineffective
That's simply not true in general, or in this case. If you had read the article this certainly isn't the first study on the effects of prayer. It's also not true at all that science relies on ONE negative result to make conclusions. Scientists are constantly testing theories in new ways. To say that science relies on one single experiment for anything is simply blind.
Just because one person fails to fly, doesn't mean flight is impossible.
This is true. And just because every person that's walked off a cliff has fallen doesn't mean that everyone always will. Maybe when the stars align is juuust the right way, and the moon is in the right position in the sky someone standing on the right cliff won't fall off it. I'm not going to try it, but if you want to perform the experiment just to be sure, be my guest.
The point is that at a certain point you've proven something "good enough" for most people to accept it as true. What's the standard? Testing the "walking off a cliff" theory is insane at this point because it happens every time. How many times do you have to do the "pray for person X" before you accept that it doesn't work?
As for "anomaly of it working in a few cases", how did you know it worked? People prayed for someone that wasn't supposed to survive, and the person got better? In that case you really have no evidence whatsoever that the praying had any effect. The explanation is simply that doctors don't always know everything. Why do you need some supernatural explanation when our simple lack of knowledge will suffice?
but at the same time, where is the spirit NASA used to have?
Did it go somewhere? I really don't understand this attitude at all. Nasa currently still has TWO robots roaming around Mars, just successfully deployed another orbiter around Mars, landed a probe (along with the ESA) on Titan, returned material from both a comet and interstellar space, returned material from the Sun (even though it smashed into the desert), and tentatively proved yet another prediction of general relativity (frame dragging). That's all happened within the last couple years!
I'd say the spirit of NASA is more alive than it's ever been!
What really worries me is what it'll be like in another 5 years if all these budget cuts and diverting funds away from science missions keeps happening.
Some of sweden's laws on alcohol purchase/consumption are much harsher than those in other countries too...
Very true. Sweden actually has gone WAY to far in drunk driving laws. The limit is.02, which basically means you can't have one beer and safely drive a half an hour later. That's just a bit bonkers. The rest of Europe has mostly settled on.05, which seems a lot more reasonable.
Quite frankly, people who keep pushing for computers to be put into 3rd world nations don't seem to actually visit the poorest (and hence the most populous parts) of those places.
I think you're right, but I also don't think this thing is for the poorest 3rd world nations. Like I said in a previous post "the developing nations" is a diverse group, and throwing them all together into one category can be very misleading. It seems to me that this PC is designed for countries like Mexico where they're going to be in environments without AC and very "dirty" power. Think Thailand, not Swaziland. The poorest of the poor countries can't really be helped by Big Business, since they don't have much of an economy and it's hard to get a foothold to be able to buy all the stuff that Big Business wants to sell.
It's not such a crazy idea, but I think it'd be more usefull to create multi-headed computers for 3rd world nations (as another poster suggested). That seems like it could reduce costs quite a bit for an internet cafe, or some kind of business. Does anyone know if Linux supports a multi-headed configuration?
Last time I checked murder, rape, and child abuse are still illegal in sweden. I'm fairly certain that the same drugs that aren't legal here are illegal in Sweden. I'd guess there's far less steep penalties for drugs though, and probbably just treatment.
One thing I do know about Sweden is they treat they take rehabilitation of criminals very seriously. In the US we throw people in a hole for a few years and try to forget about them. I saw something (can't remember which station) on TV about different justice systems around the world, and Sweden treats their criminals better than many Americans live. Even I thought it was a bit overboard, but if it works it works. The one really funny thing was that the inmates still complained about prison, even though it looked more like a day care than a prison. One guy complained about having his urine tested for drugs every day. I'd guess any US prisoner would jump at the chance to trade with that guy.
I don't think it's quite fair to compare Sweden to the US though. They're very different cultures, so picking out one factor and saying that's responsible for the lower crime rate isn't necessarily valid.
Lets see, high on a rational priority list would be (just off the top of my head here):
Contrary to popular belief, "the developing world" isn't a single place, but a vastly different collection of places and people at differing levels of development.
Help is also not a zero sum game. It's not as if Intel not doing this kind of development opens up greater possibilities for priorities 1-5 in your numbering scheme.
Is this something that can help some people in developing countries? I really don't know. But attacking the idea on the premise that there's other people with other problems is really missunderstanding the entire situation.
But you still haven't answered the most glaring problem with the whole thing. Why believe a story that has no source? If I make up a lie, and it gets printed on a website without any attribution whatsover, why even bother believing it? I see no reason why the original article was credible at all. The article should be ignored.
As far as Microsoft being late with software, Microsoft is hardly the only ones that do that. Look at all the other famously delayed software projects. Copeland, Duke Nukem, Forever, Daikatana. Are they all headed by liars who knew the project would never be done anywhere near when it was scheduled, or is it just software projects are notoriously hard to predict completion dates? It could be a little of both. I can't look into the heart of Microsoft execs, and honestly I don't really care what their intentions are. Microsoft can only lie or self deceive so far once the beta's have come out, and I believe the Vista betas have been out for a while. If they look horrible it's going to be obvious that it isn't ready yet. If they look good, then a near future release is probbably very likely.
That 60% of the code needs to be ripped out and completely rewritten does relatively preposterous -- but if this 'couple of weeks delay' ultimately gets stretched out to late 2008, then it might not be so preposterous.
Ignoring for the moment that this story has no source for the whole 60% thing (so it should be just ignored like any other random rumor), It would absolutely TERRIBLE business practice to outright lie about a two week delay to your system builders (Dell, HP, etc) when it is in fact a year delay. They base a lot of decisions on what Microsoft says, so Microsoft would only be shooting themselves in the foot about such a big lie. Remember that the Microsoft empire is largely built on partnerships with other companies. Microsoft may not make deadlines, they may not produce the best software, but they do run a very successfull business. You don't get that way from making business decisions that dumb.
There being no credible source for this rumor, you should be just as apt to believe %random generated fact% and then try to justify it being true or not true.
Well, I think if you'll look at all the evidence it becomes clear that re-writing 60% of the code in Vista in 6 months is simply a preposterous idea. While Microsoft executives themselves may not be a totally reliable source, generally they don't lie about something that can get them caught only shortly afterward. If the story were true you'd probbably just seem everyone clamming up until some official response comes out. The fact that the article didn't list any source for the rumour only makes the story even less plausible. This is simply irresponsible reporting that just got repeated in the echo-chamber that's become the media.
Sorry, but I don't agree on harassing someone over e-mail.
The poster GP post didn't call for harassment, he only posted his email for people to give replies to. Do you really think that the only possible use for email is harassment? His public shame is enough, don't you think?
Not really. His latest responses of trying to deny he was responsible for the whole mess only show that he doesn't get it. He still thinks threatening to call the FBI is a Good Thing. Clearly the man has learned little through public shame. On the other hand I don't think this guy can learn anything because he's obviously too thick headed. By that I don't mean dumb, in which case he might be able to learn something. I mean that he's insulated himself so far from reality that it's too hard to penetrate into his skull. For that reason I won't email him because I believe it to be a waste of my time and effort.
As far as the spam goes, as others have pointed out you can't un-ring the bell. The email address has already been posted publically so they already have a spam problem.
I good response, but I doubt it'll get through the thick skull of this guy. It seems to me the fatal flaw of many elected officials (and boy oh boy has this become BLINDINGLY obvious in the last 5 years) is they can't live up to their own mistakes. That gets to be a HUGE problem when you elect someone that makes a lot of mistakes.
If this guy had simply eaten a huge helping of crow after he acted like a total jerk, you can bet that this story would never have made The Register or Slashdot. Who wants to read a story about some random guy who is truly sorry about making a mistake, and has learned from it? Publishing a story such as that would only make the publication look mean spirited, as if they're trying to rub it in. That's not "news", but everyone loves to poke fun at the bullheaded guy who can't admit to failure.
The most interesting thing I found from the race was the different approaches of the Stanford team who won, and the other teams. Stanford chose to work on the more difficult of the problems, which is the software side of things. They left the hardware of the car to people more adept at such things (Volkswagon). It was interesting to see the other teams focusing on the hardware problem, and leaving the software as less of a problem. The other interesting thing was seeing the different managerial approaches. The CMU team was headed by a former Marine with this "RA RA RA!" macho attitude. I thought the programmer who commented that he had "pretty much given up on sleep" was really telling to this approach. I'm a believer that pushing this hard only leads to bigger problems in the end (it's been scientifically shown time and time again that people make more and more mistakes with less sleep). Maybe the Macho RA RA RA attitude works well on battlefields, but it doesn't sound like it works well for developing science and technology. The CMU team basically lost because their vehicle broke down. The Stanford car sounded like it had no serious problems, and worked like the Stanford guys designed it.
In the end focusing on your strengths, and letting others do what you lack paid off for Stanford. Knowing your limitations (and not simply denying them) is a good attitude for success at anything. It's great fun to see a team with an approach you like beat everyone else.
Some is not all, which means that any percentage they block meets the requirement. If they delete one, and pass 1000 - that fits the definition of some.
Lawyers may be evil, but they're not idiots. If there's a law that says the have to offer spam filtering, you can bet that that means it actually has to be somewhat effective. The means to filter out 99% of spam is available, and relatively cheap. Any sane judge when given a spam filtering scheme that removes only 1 out of 1000 spam mails is going to say that it's not an honest effort at a filtering scheme.
Well, I think what they might be usefull for is in many of the African countries where AIDS rates are extremely high, and the drugs would be sold at cost. Provide the drugs for free to prostitutes and you'll lower the rate the disease spreads at. It probbably even works for preventing disease transmission for someone who has AIDS, since it sounds like it lowers the HIV virus load.
I would agree that no one is going to buy these drugs at the retail rate of several hundred dollars/month as a prohylactic though.
I didn't know Sendmail sucked until I used Postfix.
You must be a massochist. I remember using sendmail and simply wanting to change my outgoing mail so the from address was me@domain.com instead of me@machine.domain.com. I delved into it like any other project, but decided it wasn't worth it when I found out I had to learn an entire language (m4 or whatever it is), then compile that into another language just to do this one stupid thing. No thanks! A friend recommened postfix, and I've never looked back.
I sure hope this is an open standard. Personally I don't want to make and receive calls from my computer, but I'd certainly install an Asterisk plugin and make and receive calls on a normal phone.
Slashdot Mirror
Every honest Ph.D. shares a common belief in the pursuit of impartial truth in everything.
I don't really know the common beliefs of every PhD, and I don't really care. I do know that people can be partial and not even know it though. The most famous example of this is probbably n-rays. The short story is that several scientists claimed to observe them, but they turned out to be an illusion. People were literally seeing something that wasn't their. Lesser known examples are Millikan's oil drop experiment measuring the charge of an electron. Millikans answer turned out to be a little bit too small. The published results after that went up slightly with each published result until it got to the value we now know it to be. The point is that even though a scientist may not have any conscious bias, it's always easy to fool yourself.
The greatest power of science is simply repeatable experiments. Science is about verification and community. Everyone doesn't have to be (and realistically isn't) impartial.
Can someone tell me why the FDA is releasing a statement about this? Cell phones and RF are neither a food nor a drug, nor a medical device. Does this fall under some part of the FDA I'm not aware of?
Since when are government scientists the presidents "subordinates"? You really need to study how a democracy works, because it doesn't work through those at the top trying to stop any information they don't like from getting out. Ever heard of Government of the People, by the People? The President works for me, and you too. I want to hear what the scientists have to say, and it's actually the role of government to get that information out.
This administration is starting to look more like China that the United States. There's another regime that's famous for trying to control the flow of information.
Limbaugh is an entertainer who provides the same service for conservatives the NY Times editorial page provides for leftists, i.e. he tells them what they want to hear.
No, that job is reserved for Michael Moore, and George Clooney's oscar speech.
You've taken one poorly worded line and turned it into some dumb conspiracy theory about how "all liberals" think. I certainly wouldn't do the same thing about all conservatives, but I will make that statement about those two media idiots.
Stop posting like a reactionary talkshow host. Can we at least try to take things in context, realize people don't always speak perfectly, etc? I really don't know how you got from someone making an offhanded comment about an "anti-US" website to assuming he was talking about some kind of "attack the united states" website. The statement was very unclear and you should treat it that way.
My mistake. I thought the probe was Nasa's and the orbiter was ESA.
Wonderfull sophistry you've constructed. Seriously, you should work in advertising or marketing. The practice of airline pilots is really irrelvent to driving a car. The two activities are really nowhere even near the same. I'd suggest you actually get a drivers license before you start making judgements about how impaired someone could possibly be at the very low level of .02.
.05.
Your idea is that if you're not operating at 100%, you should be stopped from driving a car. If that were the law, then people shouldn't be driving probbably 95% of the time. This idea is a bit kooky. Who's always at their best? What matters is your level of impairment, not that you're slightly (if that's even true) a worse driver. At a certain level of BAC people aren't fit to drive a car. That level is somewhere around
Why do you give such a shit whether people pray, or believe in Bigfoot, or give money to Miss Cleo?
For one reason I live in a democracy, and an effective democracy is based on an educated public. I sure as hell don't want a populace that wants to give government grant money to studying Bigfoot, giving money to some kind of "prayer treatment", or having large segments of the population screwing up their lives because some psychic TV woman told them to give them all their money.
Your comments indicate a strong sense of individuality and "I don't care what people do", which is often a wonderful American value. But we individuals don't live in a vacuum either. Peoples beliefs influence other peoples beliefs. I think people should have the right to do dumb things, but I also think there should be sane voices talking people off the wall too. It wasn't that long ago that people drilled holes in other peoples heads to "let our the evil spirits". But we don't believe in that anymore. If you want to pray for someone and that makes you feel better, great. Honestly that's probbably what that whole praying thing was supposed to be about anyway. But putting all your hopes into a system that doesn't work is just wastefull and counterproductive. I don't know if this was really worth funding, but I do take issue with your general idea that beliefs should remain unquestioned.
The problem with the study, and Science is general, is that it takes one negative result to mean that the procedure is ineffective
That's simply not true in general, or in this case. If you had read the article this certainly isn't the first study on the effects of prayer. It's also not true at all that science relies on ONE negative result to make conclusions. Scientists are constantly testing theories in new ways. To say that science relies on one single experiment for anything is simply blind.
Just because one person fails to fly, doesn't mean flight is impossible.
This is true. And just because every person that's walked off a cliff has fallen doesn't mean that everyone always will. Maybe when the stars align is juuust the right way, and the moon is in the right position in the sky someone standing on the right cliff won't fall off it. I'm not going to try it, but if you want to perform the experiment just to be sure, be my guest.
The point is that at a certain point you've proven something "good enough" for most people to accept it as true. What's the standard? Testing the "walking off a cliff" theory is insane at this point because it happens every time. How many times do you have to do the "pray for person X" before you accept that it doesn't work?
As for "anomaly of it working in a few cases", how did you know it worked? People prayed for someone that wasn't supposed to survive, and the person got better? In that case you really have no evidence whatsoever that the praying had any effect. The explanation is simply that doctors don't always know everything. Why do you need some supernatural explanation when our simple lack of knowledge will suffice?
but at the same time, where is the spirit NASA used to have?
Did it go somewhere? I really don't understand this attitude at all. Nasa currently still has TWO robots roaming around Mars, just successfully deployed another orbiter around Mars, landed a probe (along with the ESA) on Titan, returned material from both a comet and interstellar space, returned material from the Sun (even though it smashed into the desert), and tentatively proved yet another prediction of general relativity (frame dragging). That's all happened within the last couple years!
I'd say the spirit of NASA is more alive than it's ever been!
What really worries me is what it'll be like in another 5 years if all these budget cuts and diverting funds away from science missions keeps happening.
Some of sweden's laws on alcohol purchase/consumption are much harsher than those in other countries too...
Very true. Sweden actually has gone WAY to far in drunk driving laws. The limit is
Quite frankly, people who keep pushing for computers to be put into 3rd world nations don't seem to actually visit the poorest (and hence the most populous parts) of those places.
I think you're right, but I also don't think this thing is for the poorest 3rd world nations. Like I said in a previous post "the developing nations" is a diverse group, and throwing them all together into one category can be very misleading. It seems to me that this PC is designed for countries like Mexico where they're going to be in environments without AC and very "dirty" power. Think Thailand, not Swaziland. The poorest of the poor countries can't really be helped by Big Business, since they don't have much of an economy and it's hard to get a foothold to be able to buy all the stuff that Big Business wants to sell.
It's not such a crazy idea, but I think it'd be more usefull to create multi-headed computers for 3rd world nations (as another poster suggested). That seems like it could reduce costs quite a bit for an internet cafe, or some kind of business. Does anyone know if Linux supports a multi-headed configuration?
Last time I checked murder, rape, and child abuse are still illegal in sweden. I'm fairly certain that the same drugs that aren't legal here are illegal in Sweden. I'd guess there's far less steep penalties for drugs though, and probbably just treatment.
One thing I do know about Sweden is they treat they take rehabilitation of criminals very seriously. In the US we throw people in a hole for a few years and try to forget about them. I saw something (can't remember which station) on TV about different justice systems around the world, and Sweden treats their criminals better than many Americans live. Even I thought it was a bit overboard, but if it works it works. The one really funny thing was that the inmates still complained about prison, even though it looked more like a day care than a prison. One guy complained about having his urine tested for drugs every day. I'd guess any US prisoner would jump at the chance to trade with that guy.
I don't think it's quite fair to compare Sweden to the US though. They're very different cultures, so picking out one factor and saying that's responsible for the lower crime rate isn't necessarily valid.
Lets see, high on a rational priority list would be (just off the top of my head here):
Contrary to popular belief, "the developing world" isn't a single place, but a vastly different collection of places and people at differing levels of development.
Help is also not a zero sum game. It's not as if Intel not doing this kind of development opens up greater possibilities for priorities 1-5 in your numbering scheme.
Is this something that can help some people in developing countries? I really don't know. But attacking the idea on the premise that there's other people with other problems is really missunderstanding the entire situation.
Reading the above warning will make you sick! Much like reading the OT III of Scientology before you're ready!
But you still haven't answered the most glaring problem with the whole thing. Why believe a story that has no source? If I make up a lie, and it gets printed on a website without any attribution whatsover, why even bother believing it? I see no reason why the original article was credible at all. The article should be ignored.
As far as Microsoft being late with software, Microsoft is hardly the only ones that do that. Look at all the other famously delayed software projects. Copeland, Duke Nukem, Forever, Daikatana. Are they all headed by liars who knew the project would never be done anywhere near when it was scheduled, or is it just software projects are notoriously hard to predict completion dates? It could be a little of both. I can't look into the heart of Microsoft execs, and honestly I don't really care what their intentions are. Microsoft can only lie or self deceive so far once the beta's have come out, and I believe the Vista betas have been out for a while. If they look horrible it's going to be obvious that it isn't ready yet. If they look good, then a near future release is probbably very likely.
That 60% of the code needs to be ripped out and completely rewritten does relatively preposterous -- but if this 'couple of weeks delay' ultimately gets stretched out to late 2008, then it might not be so preposterous.
Ignoring for the moment that this story has no source for the whole 60% thing (so it should be just ignored like any other random rumor), It would absolutely TERRIBLE business practice to outright lie about a two week delay to your system builders (Dell, HP, etc) when it is in fact a year delay. They base a lot of decisions on what Microsoft says, so Microsoft would only be shooting themselves in the foot about such a big lie. Remember that the Microsoft empire is largely built on partnerships with other companies. Microsoft may not make deadlines, they may not produce the best software, but they do run a very successfull business. You don't get that way from making business decisions that dumb.
There being no credible source for this rumor, you should be just as apt to believe %random generated fact% and then try to justify it being true or not true.
Well, I think if you'll look at all the evidence it becomes clear that re-writing 60% of the code in Vista in 6 months is simply a preposterous idea. While Microsoft executives themselves may not be a totally reliable source, generally they don't lie about something that can get them caught only shortly afterward. If the story were true you'd probbably just seem everyone clamming up until some official response comes out. The fact that the article didn't list any source for the rumour only makes the story even less plausible. This is simply irresponsible reporting that just got repeated in the echo-chamber that's become the media.
Sorry, but I don't agree on harassing someone over e-mail.
The poster GP post didn't call for harassment, he only posted his email for people to give replies to. Do you really think that the only possible use for email is harassment?
His public shame is enough, don't you think?
Not really. His latest responses of trying to deny he was responsible for the whole mess only show that he doesn't get it. He still thinks threatening to call the FBI is a Good Thing. Clearly the man has learned little through public shame. On the other hand I don't think this guy can learn anything because he's obviously too thick headed. By that I don't mean dumb, in which case he might be able to learn something. I mean that he's insulated himself so far from reality that it's too hard to penetrate into his skull. For that reason I won't email him because I believe it to be a waste of my time and effort.
As far as the spam goes, as others have pointed out you can't un-ring the bell. The email address has already been posted publically so they already have a spam problem.
I good response, but I doubt it'll get through the thick skull of this guy. It seems to me the fatal flaw of many elected officials (and boy oh boy has this become BLINDINGLY obvious in the last 5 years) is they can't live up to their own mistakes. That gets to be a HUGE problem when you elect someone that makes a lot of mistakes.
If this guy had simply eaten a huge helping of crow after he acted like a total jerk, you can bet that this story would never have made The Register or Slashdot. Who wants to read a story about some random guy who is truly sorry about making a mistake, and has learned from it? Publishing a story such as that would only make the publication look mean spirited, as if they're trying to rub it in. That's not "news", but everyone loves to poke fun at the bullheaded guy who can't admit to failure.
The most interesting thing I found from the race was the different approaches of the Stanford team who won, and the other teams. Stanford chose to work on the more difficult of the problems, which is the software side of things. They left the hardware of the car to people more adept at such things (Volkswagon). It was interesting to see the other teams focusing on the hardware problem, and leaving the software as less of a problem. The other interesting thing was seeing the different managerial approaches. The CMU team was headed by a former Marine with this "RA RA RA!" macho attitude. I thought the programmer who commented that he had "pretty much given up on sleep" was really telling to this approach. I'm a believer that pushing this hard only leads to bigger problems in the end (it's been scientifically shown time and time again that people make more and more mistakes with less sleep). Maybe the Macho RA RA RA attitude works well on battlefields, but it doesn't sound like it works well for developing science and technology. The CMU team basically lost because their vehicle broke down. The Stanford car sounded like it had no serious problems, and worked like the Stanford guys designed it.
In the end focusing on your strengths, and letting others do what you lack paid off for Stanford. Knowing your limitations (and not simply denying them) is a good attitude for success at anything. It's great fun to see a team with an approach you like beat everyone else.
Some is not all, which means that any percentage they block meets the requirement. If they delete one, and pass 1000 - that fits the definition of some.
Lawyers may be evil, but they're not idiots. If there's a law that says the have to offer spam filtering, you can bet that that means it actually has to be somewhat effective. The means to filter out 99% of spam is available, and relatively cheap. Any sane judge when given a spam filtering scheme that removes only 1 out of 1000 spam mails is going to say that it's not an honest effort at a filtering scheme.
Well, I think what they might be usefull for is in many of the African countries where AIDS rates are extremely high, and the drugs would be sold at cost. Provide the drugs for free to prostitutes and you'll lower the rate the disease spreads at. It probbably even works for preventing disease transmission for someone who has AIDS, since it sounds like it lowers the HIV virus load.
I would agree that no one is going to buy these drugs at the retail rate of several hundred dollars/month as a prohylactic though.
I didn't know Sendmail sucked until I used Postfix.
You must be a massochist. I remember using sendmail and simply wanting to change my outgoing mail so the from address was me@domain.com instead of me@machine.domain.com. I delved into it like any other project, but decided it wasn't worth it when I found out I had to learn an entire language (m4 or whatever it is), then compile that into another language just to do this one stupid thing. No thanks! A friend recommened postfix, and I've never looked back.
I sure hope this is an open standard. Personally I don't want to make and receive calls from my computer, but I'd certainly install an Asterisk plugin and make and receive calls on a normal phone.