I have a lot more money and a lot more liking for music than those stupid punk teenagers that you pander to.
No, you as a segment audiance do not. Do you think you are smarter than everybody that works there? Do you think that if they pander to your tastes that'll automatically make them more money? Do you think they don't know what will maximize their profits? And you do?
You still can't see why, the older people get (read: people with jobs and MONEY!)
Err, teens today have a vast amount of discresionary income. By and large they spend it on music and clothing. Perhaps individually they don't spend like a grown music-phile, but in aggregate they do. So you matter less. It's not nice, but that's how it falls.
I do not want to listen to the manufactured boy bands.
So don't. You already are not the person the music industry is targeting. Support indie-music. Do *anything* else. But don't whine that you have money and they don't listen to you.
I don't know, popcorn seems expensive and hard to implement. If you're *really* looking for simple, easy to deploy and quick think crickets.
Really, you could easily buy a few thousand, maybe 10K. A senior class at my high school did this to the library over christmas break and though not a large place it took days to clean and there was the errant cricket for *months*.
Think about it.
1. Crickets are not static, hence, that much more fun to catch.
2. They will get everywhere. Everywhere.
3. The noise they make will be priceless.
4. Everytime you think you've got them all, you'll wake up at four o'clock in the morning to one that you missed.
I've had luck with small bamboo plants. I keep mine filled with water, so there's no overwatering. It doesn't require a lot of light, but they'll grow faster if there's more.
They do grow very slowly though. However, there are many very nicely arranged ones.
True, but then again, you don't need a lot of the eye candy that ubuntu has. Anaconda is more accessible and non-forboading like a ncurses-based install is.
2) ncurses based UIs are just as effective
They can be. But the debian installer that ubuntu uses isn't as easy as anaconda, especially in the partitioning stage. What is that a happy face? Skull and crossbones for partitions that you want to format? Anaconda is simply easier to read. Could there be a better ncurses-based installer? Sure, but why not use one that looks better, is already available, and ported to work for another debian distro?
3) Linux boot CDs are notorious for not running under an acceptable refresh rate on LCDs 4) You don't always have an X driver for your video card on the distro CD
That's why you keep the text version available in case of video failure. Also, live CD's are getting very good at X detection. Furthermore Ubuntu isn't targeted at the wide range of hardware that debian is. Most of the installs will have sane, popular video hardware. The technology is there to get almost all of the video hardware detected and handled correctly. Again, even if it fails, there's the ncurses backup.
The installer is the first impression that people get from a distro. With slick installers like those in SuSE, Mandrake and Fedora, why would you not what to go in that direction?
I was thinking the same thing. As for Ubuntu itself, it's a very pretty/polished version of debian. For this release, after some digging around I found the main Hoary wiki . On that page there is a link to the main goals of this release.
In short: Gnome 2.9/2.10, Xorg, LiveCD redesign, more package management ie. update notification, KickStart (auto-installation).
There are many smaller improvements (or ones that might not make it in) and of course updated versions of packages. There are no big bombshells and your desktop will likely look the same.
The killer feature I would like to see is the integration of RedHat/Fedora's Anaconda installer. , a la Progeny Linux. Why do we deal with Ncurses based installers anymore? Other than that, keep up the good work, I love the distro.
Yes, I agree. Mostly. There a lot of advantages of using one language, and a lot of disadvantages of using two of more. However sometimes the need arises.
Case in point: Interface with a legacy program written in FORTRAN. OK, we need a FORTRAN subroutine. The Business logic is done in Java. FORTRAN to JAVA? Serializing it out to the disk was to slow, so we have to take the FORTRAN subroutine and call it from C, do conversions on the datatypes then have JNI call that from the main app. In this case 4 languages was required. There are many more scenarios where more than one language is required.
Again, knowing when to used more than one language is what separates the men from the boys.
Can you tell me of any example where it would be easier to use XSL rather than just some CSS spit out based on some logic that something like PHP handles?
I have a large XML document. I want a PDF report of that information. With FOP I can write a couple stylesheets and get a PDF without having to use a browser.
My view is, why throw yet another programming language into the mix, just to do output?
If you're dealing in XML already the traditional route is XSL. If HTML than CSS+whatever. XHTML? Maybe XSL for transformations and CSS for formatting. But do you see that there are different problems that require different tools?
If people designed web apps like some advocate...
Web apps aren't the only apps. That's what I'm saying. Again, different problems require different tools.
you'd have to work in a million different langauges,
If you are a descent programmer, the languages don't matter. After you learn a few you pick up new ones quickly. You use the best ones for the job. Sometimes four languages is better than one. Sometimes not. Knowing which to pick separates you from the code monkeys.
Caveat: I don't like XSL. It's too verbose and even simple logic steps tend to take a while to implement. I want a better solution. However...
So while both have their uses, CSS in combination with Javascript (or any scripting language for that matter) has far more functionality and flexibility.
In presenting documents with a web browser, yes, I agree. But traditionally, XSL was a server side headless operation for producing print quality documents.
Where is the commandline CSS and javascript engine? In the article they mentioned Prince, but that's XML+CSS and not free software. Sure there's a perl API to access spidermonkey, the mozilla javascipt engine. There's Apache's Batik CSS engine. Is there an integrated solution out there in the OSS realm? Not when I looked a couple years ago, when I choose to implement a reporting engine in XSL.
Therefore it still depends on the task you are doing. CSS+Javascript tackles a narrower problem set than XSL. Does it do it well? Yes, but your assertation is still apples and oranges. Have you even used both?
For some things. XSL is much more widely scoped, (from the article), "Turing-complete language which, in principle, can be used for all programming tasks and is particularly suited for document transformations."
In the case of document presentation CSS is indeed a challenger, but mostly if the document is static. XSL has loops, branching, conditionals, and templates (akin to functions). If you have a report with some complex logic, ie. if this number is below a threshold, print this warning, otherwise show this table. Of course you could always do all transformations and logic before the final rendering step, but in a lot of cases it's easier to do it purely XSL. Yes, you could always bring Java-script or some other html-based functionality, but that's more than just CSS.
Furthermore, there was probably a number a transformations you've already done to get the data that you need. A more suiting comparision would be with XSL:FO and CSS, but again, they both have their place. Furthermore you can imbed graphics with SVG and tools like FOP will automatically render them. To say that CSS is definitely better is naive.
As in most other times when people compare languages, each has it strengths, and straight up conclusions (CSS is better!) is most often an apples to oranges comparison.
PC people think that everyone should have the same opportunity to be best at something.
If that's all that it means to be PC, then I agree, but there's often more connotations associated with it.
So why would I hire a women for a math job? They are bad at it, says it right here!
Not bad, but less genetically diposed. Does that have any applicability to an individual? NO. Why? Because people are made up of too many genes and go through too many upbringings to apply such a statement to an individual.
Therefore if we are armed with this information we can target education programs to make up for the genetic disposition. Is that not good?
In conclusion, I'm not agreeing with what the guy said, or what evidence he used or even whether is was a good thing for him to say. What I'm saying is that if facts point one way, then even if we don't like it, we accept it. Would I have any problems saying that males are indeed less disposed to math/science? Nope. Well founded and valid studies advance humanity. The problem is when people get all uppity when they don't like what they hear.
Therefore, typically, Gender is associated with one sex, and by extension, resultant by a physical trait.
I am not arguing your point that gender is more than sex, but to correct my language is pedantic. For the vast majority of people, sex is the largest contributor to what a person defines their gender as.
If I had said gender is just a physical condition, I would agree with your point. Is it a physical condition? Yes. Is it other things? Yes. Sorry about the pedantics, but you started it.;)
I agree, there may be two arguments going on here. The first one was my point of this sort of stuff being allowable to study. Many people here were making the knee jerk reaction that any such study is misguided, and I wanted to clear up what I thought was the point of greater impact, even if it wasn't what what most people were discussing.
Second, expect yourself in hot water if you say something as controversial with little or only anecdotal evidence.
Yes, I thought you might be kidding, but you didn't really differentiate yourself from a troll. You're correct in that the best trolls are quite subtle, I could still see somebody truthfully posting that.
Sorry about the mod points. For future reference it helps the mods if you embed sarcastic jokes in the <joke type="it's funny, laugh"> tag.
I will have no trouble believe that women are genentically better then man at math and science. If that's what the facts come out to be and the difference is entirely social, I will gladly accept it.
The problem I see, though this guy's research may be suspect, is any valid research to the contrary will be disguarded because we don't like it. How dangerous is it to science if we knowingly disguard facts? Or worse, if it's not allowable to study them in the first place?
I mean I'm sure there are physical conditions that pre-disposes someone to be good at math/science.
Gender is a phyisical condition.
I just don't think they're gender specific. I think more than anything social pressure is the culprit for any "lacking in numbers" the females might have.
Prove it. What you've said is an unsubstantiated hypothesis and will not hold up in scientific circles. What happens if your studies *do* show an innate difference? Does that automatically make you sexist?
But to suggest that it's gender specific is really lame and very 1950s'ish.
Why? There are *many* differences between men and women. And so what? It doesn't mean that women can't do math, it just says that they are not genetically apt to be good at it because of their gender.
This negative disposition is probably small and can be offset by other genetic factors. It's not suggesting women can't be good at math, but another attempt to help explain why the math/science field isn't 50/50. If the facts are there but you ignore them because it's not popular, who wins? Surely not science, and not women.
Troll. But dammit, I'll bite anyway. Why is it that according to P.C. all people are equally best at everything? People are different, and if you study them and it comes out that men are better at something than women, why must it be that you are immediately misogynist?
I read a study a while back that suggested that women are better suited for field command roles because of their innate demeanor and communications skills. No one cryed "feminisim attacks!!". Why should you? Why can't you accept that different sets of people have different innate strengths?
It doesn't mean that you can't do something in math if you're a women. Far from it, and I know several brilliant women in the fields of science and math. It's just that it explains the likelyhood of a math or science major being male. It's there, why do you ignore it?
He threw in the, "it's not necessarily my personal view", because he didn't want to be labeled by people such as yourself.
Thank you for pointing that out, I always though it stupid as well. You might as well say, "Even though a majority of people who use drugs and drive use mary jane, they cause only 30% of accidents."
Same numbers. I made up the majority part though;)
A List Apart did an article on how to fix it but nothing seems to have happened.
If you lurk around at #slashcode or #slash @freenode.net, I can't remember which, you'll find a couple people working on it. I once tried to help but there wasn't a consistent web page or CVS access.
Also, it's a lot of grunt work retooling the slashcode templates and thus not very sexy. However, given the amount of bandwidth slashdot can save (maybe get rid of those 502-service unavailable errors!), and the fact that it probably wouldn't be more than a couple man-months of work, I don't understand why/. hasn't funded the retooling. They'd make the cash back in a couple months in bandwidth fees.
Also it looks bad having the uber-geek site have terrible programming for so long with nobody setting up to fix it.
Your list is a good start, many of my old bosses should take that to heart. Why do managers not accept that the final pre-release (when we have no beta testers) will be a beta? Why the hell call it "1.0" and then have users be angry that it's buggy, and/or incomplete? I *hate* that.
Rant mode off, I think you catagorization is a bit off. I agree with pre-alpha with the added stipulation that non-developers shouldn't be working with it yet. Alpha, means a useful feature set that still has enough bugs that it shouldn't be used by non-developers yet. Note that it's not a fully featured. Beta is core features are usefull and few critical bugs remain. , and is ready for testers. Final is all major features usable with no known critical bugs. If one waits until no known bugs, your product will never go gold. There will always be known issues. That's why there's 1.1.
Re:Deity does not help analyze things
on
Bad Science Awards
·
· Score: 1
BS. As an explanation, God is merely an added layer of complexity. If God made the universe spring into existence, what made Him/Her/It spring into existence?
It's hard to defend 'god' when you have 'begining' (or 'sprung into') as a tennant to your argument. However, across numerous religions the 'god' means 'that which is', or 'that is,was and shall be', etc. Why does god have to begin. What if god always was? What if the universe always has been?
Just because we have no notion of infinate existance, because everything we sees dies or changes, does that mean it is impossible? By using carefully constructed tennats to ones argument one could make the case to introduce a 'god' concept into the world of science. Is it iconoclastic to suggest such? Sure, but then was every other major scientific advancement of the past 1000 years. In short, does the watch imply and prove the existence of the watchmaker?
One's answer to that statement has a profound effect on one's argument. Will conjecture ever give enough insight to propell repeatable experiments to construct a theory? Probably, not, but I can't discount it. As for intelligent design? Well, not that I can discount it from the realm of science, but niether can I defend it.
However, I do agree that until we can include 'god' into science through science, it has no place in that arena.
It's newsworthy primarily because it's in humanoid form
As I replied below, replicating human form and movement is a tremendously difficult engineering task. A PR move? I don't think so. I believe I've heard that honda is planning to move human-like robots into their factories to revolutionize efficiency. General purpose robots that can move like humans and react intellegently to narrow tasks could drive down manufacturing costs through the floor.
Plus they are doing world-leading research on the advancement of human-like movement. Sorry if I sound like a fanboy, but they've put little advertizing dollars into it for it to be a PR move. However, they've spent billions developing it. They sure expect that investment to pay off down the line. I'm not sure I blame them.
As I gathered from a discovery channel program about robots, ASIMO is revolutionary in it's advanced bipedal movement. Walking on
two legs is an extremely difficult problem to engineer, and it took Honda billions of dollars to develop a robot that could do it.
It might not have been the first, but it sure is state of the art, and helps in advancing human-like automotons. IIRC it was the first robot that could walk like a human and climb stairs, but somebody correct me if I'm wrong. Therefore, as far as I can tell, it's not a marketing ploy or toy, but world-leading research into true "android" like locomotion.
As my Electric Engineering teacher once told us, "If you use 5% of what we've taught you, we've done a good job." The point being that a school's (aside from trade schools) primary focus is not teaching a particular knowledge-set but teaching how to learn. This is a non-trival point. A country that teaches subjects well therefore enables their students, by extention, to more easily learn what they want to learn. Does the USA by and large recognize this acspect? No. But it also helps to debunks your statement.
I hate the why-do-i-need-to-learn-this-because-i'll-never-use -it argument. School simply sets out to make you an intellegent, well rounded person. This enables a broader job base than not. Even if you wind up in a job not requiring a lot of brainpower, you still have the option of performing one that does.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a lot more money and a lot more liking for music than those stupid punk teenagers that you pander to.
No, you as a segment audiance do not. Do you think you are smarter than everybody that works there? Do you think that if they pander to your tastes that'll automatically make them more money? Do you think they don't know what will maximize their profits? And you do?
You still can't see why, the older people get (read: people with jobs and MONEY!)
Err, teens today have a vast amount of discresionary income. By and large they spend it on music and clothing. Perhaps individually they don't spend like a grown music-phile, but in aggregate they do. So you matter less. It's not nice, but that's how it falls.
I do not want to listen to the manufactured boy bands.
So don't. You already are not the person the music industry is targeting. Support indie-music. Do *anything* else. But don't whine that you have money and they don't listen to you.
I don't know, popcorn seems expensive and hard to implement. If you're *really* looking for simple, easy to deploy and quick think crickets.
Really, you could easily buy a few thousand, maybe 10K. A senior class at my high school did this to the library over christmas break and though not a large place it took days to clean and there was the errant cricket for *months*.
Think about it.
1. Crickets are not static, hence, that much more fun to catch.
2. They will get everywhere. Everywhere.
3. The noise they make will be priceless.
4. Everytime you think you've got them all, you'll wake up at four o'clock in the morning to one that you missed.
My favorite: VHDL: VHSIC Hardware Description Language.
Then everybody is happy.
I've had luck with small bamboo plants. I keep mine filled with water, so there's no overwatering. It doesn't require a lot of light, but they'll grow faster if there's more.
They do grow very slowly though. However, there are many very nicely arranged ones.
1) You don't need GUI elements for an installer
True, but then again, you don't need a lot of the eye candy that ubuntu has. Anaconda is more accessible and non-forboading like a ncurses-based install is.
2) ncurses based UIs are just as effective
They can be. But the debian installer that ubuntu uses isn't as easy as anaconda, especially in the partitioning stage. What is that a happy face? Skull and crossbones for partitions that you want to format? Anaconda is simply easier to read. Could there be a better ncurses-based installer? Sure, but why not use one that looks better, is already available, and ported to work for another debian distro?
3) Linux boot CDs are notorious for not running under an acceptable refresh rate on LCDs 4) You don't always have an X driver for your video card on the distro CD
That's why you keep the text version available in case of video failure. Also, live CD's are getting very good at X detection. Furthermore Ubuntu isn't targeted at the wide range of hardware that debian is. Most of the installs will have sane, popular video hardware. The technology is there to get almost all of the video hardware detected and handled correctly. Again, even if it fails, there's the ncurses backup.
The installer is the first impression that people get from a distro. With slick installers like those in SuSE, Mandrake and Fedora, why would you not what to go in that direction?
I was thinking the same thing. As for Ubuntu itself, it's a very pretty/polished version of debian. For this release, after some digging around I found the main Hoary wiki . On that page there is a link to the main goals of this release.
In short: Gnome 2.9/2.10, Xorg, LiveCD redesign, more package management ie. update notification, KickStart (auto-installation).
There are many smaller improvements (or ones that might not make it in) and of course updated versions of packages. There are no big bombshells and your desktop will likely look the same.
The killer feature I would like to see is the integration of RedHat/Fedora's Anaconda installer. , a la Progeny Linux. Why do we deal with Ncurses based installers anymore? Other than that, keep up the good work, I love the distro.
are mostly done in ONE language
Yes, I agree. Mostly. There a lot of advantages of using one language, and a lot of disadvantages of using two of more. However sometimes the need arises.
Case in point: Interface with a legacy program written in FORTRAN. OK, we need a FORTRAN subroutine. The Business logic is done in Java. FORTRAN to JAVA? Serializing it out to the disk was to slow, so we have to take the FORTRAN subroutine and call it from C, do conversions on the datatypes then have JNI call that from the main app. In this case 4 languages was required. There are many more scenarios where more than one language is required.
Again, knowing when to used more than one language is what separates the men from the boys.
Can you tell me of any example where it would be easier to use XSL rather than just some CSS spit out based on some logic that something like PHP handles?
I have a large XML document. I want a PDF report of that information. With FOP I can write a couple stylesheets and get a PDF without having to use a browser.
My view is, why throw yet another programming language into the mix, just to do output?
If you're dealing in XML already the traditional route is XSL. If HTML than CSS+whatever. XHTML? Maybe XSL for transformations and CSS for formatting. But do you see that there are different problems that require different tools?
If people designed web apps like some advocate...
Web apps aren't the only apps. That's what I'm saying. Again, different problems require different tools.
you'd have to work in a million different langauges,
If you are a descent programmer, the languages don't matter. After you learn a few you pick up new ones quickly. You use the best ones for the job. Sometimes four languages is better than one. Sometimes not. Knowing which to pick separates you from the code monkeys.
Caveat: I don't like XSL. It's too verbose and even simple logic steps tend to take a while to implement. I want a better solution. However...
So while both have their uses, CSS in combination with Javascript (or any scripting language for that matter) has far more functionality and flexibility.
In presenting documents with a web browser, yes, I agree. But traditionally, XSL was a server side headless operation for producing print quality documents.
Where is the commandline CSS and javascript engine? In the article they mentioned Prince, but that's XML+CSS and not free software. Sure there's a perl API to access spidermonkey, the mozilla javascipt engine. There's Apache's Batik CSS engine. Is there an integrated solution out there in the OSS realm? Not when I looked a couple years ago, when I choose to implement a reporting engine in XSL.
Therefore it still depends on the task you are doing. CSS+Javascript tackles a narrower problem set than XSL. Does it do it well? Yes, but your assertation is still apples and oranges. Have you even used both?
I agree. CSS is definitely better...
For some things. XSL is much more widely scoped, (from the article), "Turing-complete language which, in principle, can be used for all programming tasks and is particularly suited for document transformations."
In the case of document presentation CSS is indeed a challenger, but mostly if the document is static. XSL has loops, branching, conditionals, and templates (akin to functions). If you have a report with some complex logic, ie. if this number is below a threshold, print this warning, otherwise show this table. Of course you could always do all transformations and logic before the final rendering step, but in a lot of cases it's easier to do it purely XSL. Yes, you could always bring Java-script or some other html-based functionality, but that's more than just CSS.
Furthermore, there was probably a number a transformations you've already done to get the data that you need. A more suiting comparision would be with XSL:FO and CSS, but again, they both have their place. Furthermore you can imbed graphics with SVG and tools like FOP will automatically render them. To say that CSS is definitely better is naive.
As in most other times when people compare languages, each has it strengths, and straight up conclusions (CSS is better!) is most often an apples to oranges comparison.
You miss the point I was making.
PC people think that everyone should have the same opportunity to be best at something.
If that's all that it means to be PC, then I agree, but there's often more connotations associated with it.
So why would I hire a women for a math job? They are bad at it, says it right here!
Not bad, but less genetically diposed. Does that have any applicability to an individual? NO. Why? Because people are made up of too many genes and go through too many upbringings to apply such a statement to an individual.
Therefore if we are armed with this information we can target education programs to make up for the genetic disposition. Is that not good?
In conclusion, I'm not agreeing with what the guy said, or what evidence he used or even whether is was a good thing for him to say. What I'm saying is that if facts point one way, then even if we don't like it, we accept it. Would I have any problems saying that males are indeed less disposed to math/science? Nope. Well founded and valid studies advance humanity. The problem is when people get all uppity when they don't like what they hear.
...typically associated with one sex
;)
Therefore, typically, Gender is associated with one sex, and by extension, resultant by a physical trait.
I am not arguing your point that gender is more than sex, but to correct my language is pedantic. For the vast majority of people, sex is the largest contributor to what a person defines their gender as.
If I had said gender is just a physical condition, I would agree with your point. Is it a physical condition? Yes. Is it other things? Yes. Sorry about the pedantics, but you started it.
I agree, there may be two arguments going on here. The first one was my point of this sort of stuff being allowable to study. Many people here were making the knee jerk reaction that any such study is misguided, and I wanted to clear up what I thought was the point of greater impact, even if it wasn't what what most people were discussing.
Second, expect yourself in hot water if you say something as controversial with little or only anecdotal evidence.
In conclusion, I agree totally.
Yes, I thought you might be kidding, but you didn't really differentiate yourself from a troll. You're correct in that the best trolls are quite subtle, I could still see somebody truthfully posting that.
Sorry about the mod points. For future reference it helps the mods if you embed sarcastic jokes in the
<joke type="it's funny, laugh"> tag.
Even if it's not funny, it will still validate.
I will have no trouble believe that women are genentically better then man at math and science. If that's what the facts come out to be and the difference is entirely social, I will gladly accept it.
The problem I see, though this guy's research may be suspect, is any valid research to the contrary will be disguarded because we don't like it. How dangerous is it to science if we knowingly disguard facts? Or worse, if it's not allowable to study them in the first place?
I mean I'm sure there are physical conditions that pre-disposes someone to be good at math/science.
Gender is a phyisical condition.
I just don't think they're gender specific. I think more than anything social pressure is the culprit for any "lacking in numbers" the females might have.
Prove it. What you've said is an unsubstantiated hypothesis and will not hold up in scientific circles. What happens if your studies *do* show an innate difference? Does that automatically make you sexist?
But to suggest that it's gender specific is really lame and very 1950s'ish.
Why? There are *many* differences between men and women. And so what? It doesn't mean that women can't do math, it just says that they are not genetically apt to be good at it because of their gender.
This negative disposition is probably small and can be offset by other genetic factors. It's not suggesting women can't be good at math, but another attempt to help explain why the math/science field isn't 50/50. If the facts are there but you ignore them because it's not popular, who wins? Surely not science, and not women.
Troll. But dammit, I'll bite anyway. Why is it that according to P.C. all people are equally best at everything? People are different, and if you study them and it comes out that men are better at something than women, why must it be that you are immediately misogynist?
I read a study a while back that suggested that women are better suited for field command roles because of their innate demeanor and communications skills. No one cryed "feminisim attacks!!". Why should you? Why can't you accept that different sets of people have different innate strengths?
It doesn't mean that you can't do something in math if you're a women. Far from it, and I know several brilliant women in the fields of science and math. It's just that it explains the likelyhood of a math or science major being male. It's there, why do you ignore it?
He threw in the, "it's not necessarily my personal view", because he didn't want to be labeled by people such as yourself.
Thank you for pointing that out, I always though it stupid as well. You might as well say, "Even though a majority of people who use drugs and drive use mary jane, they cause only 30% of accidents."
;)
Same numbers. I made up the majority part though
A List Apart did an article on how to fix it but nothing seems to have happened.
/. hasn't funded the retooling. They'd make the cash back in a couple months in bandwidth fees.
If you lurk around at #slashcode or #slash @freenode.net, I can't remember which, you'll find a couple people working on it. I once tried to help but there wasn't a consistent web page or CVS access.
Also, it's a lot of grunt work retooling the slashcode templates and thus not very sexy. However, given the amount of bandwidth slashdot can save (maybe get rid of those 502-service unavailable errors!), and the fact that it probably wouldn't be more than a couple man-months of work, I don't understand why
Also it looks bad having the uber-geek site have terrible programming for so long with nobody setting up to fix it.
Your list is a good start, many of my old bosses should take that to heart. Why do managers not accept that the final pre-release (when we have no beta testers) will be a beta? Why the hell call it "1.0" and then have users be angry that it's buggy, and/or incomplete? I *hate* that.
Rant mode off, I think you catagorization is a bit off. I agree with pre-alpha with the added stipulation that non-developers shouldn't be working with it yet. Alpha, means a useful feature set that still has enough bugs that it shouldn't be used by non-developers yet. Note that it's not a fully featured. Beta is core features are usefull and few critical bugs remain. , and is ready for testers. Final is all major features usable with no known critical bugs. If one waits until no known bugs, your product will never go gold. There will always be known issues. That's why there's 1.1.
BS. As an explanation, God is merely an added layer of complexity. If God made the universe spring into existence, what made Him/Her/It spring into existence?
It's hard to defend 'god' when you have 'begining' (or 'sprung into') as a tennant to your argument. However, across numerous religions the 'god' means 'that which is', or 'that is,was and shall be', etc. Why does god have to begin. What if god always was? What if the universe always has been?
Just because we have no notion of infinate existance, because everything we sees dies or changes, does that mean it is impossible? By using carefully constructed tennats to ones argument one could make the case to introduce a 'god' concept into the world of science. Is it iconoclastic to suggest such? Sure, but then was every other major scientific advancement of the past 1000 years. In short, does the watch imply and prove the existence of the watchmaker?
One's answer to that statement has a profound effect on one's argument. Will conjecture ever give enough insight to propell repeatable experiments to construct a theory? Probably, not, but I can't discount it. As for intelligent design? Well, not that I can discount it from the realm of science, but niether can I defend it.
However, I do agree that until we can include 'god' into science through science, it has no place in that arena.
It's newsworthy primarily because it's in humanoid form
As I replied below, replicating human form and movement is a tremendously difficult engineering task. A PR move? I don't think so. I believe I've heard that honda is planning to move human-like robots into their factories to revolutionize efficiency. General purpose robots that can move like humans and react intellegently to narrow tasks could drive down manufacturing costs through the floor.
Plus they are doing world-leading research on the advancement of human-like movement. Sorry if I sound like a fanboy, but they've put little advertizing dollars into it for it to be a PR move. However, they've spent billions developing it. They sure expect that investment to pay off down the line. I'm not sure I blame them.
As I gathered from a discovery channel program about robots, ASIMO is revolutionary in it's advanced bipedal movement. Walking on two legs is an extremely difficult problem to engineer, and it took Honda billions of dollars to develop a robot that could do it.
It might not have been the first, but it sure is state of the art, and helps in advancing human-like automotons. IIRC it was the first robot that could walk like a human and climb stairs, but somebody correct me if I'm wrong. Therefore, as far as I can tell, it's not a marketing ploy or toy, but world-leading research into true "android" like locomotion.
As my Electric Engineering teacher once told us, "If you use 5% of what we've taught you, we've done a good job." The point being that a school's (aside from trade schools) primary focus is not teaching a particular knowledge-set but teaching how to learn. This is a non-trival point. A country that teaches subjects well therefore enables their students, by extention, to more easily learn what they want to learn. Does the USA by and large recognize this acspect? No. But it also helps to debunks your statement.
e -it argument. School simply sets out to make you an intellegent, well rounded person. This enables a broader job base than not. Even if you wind up in a job not requiring a lot of brainpower, you still have the option of performing one that does.
I hate the why-do-i-need-to-learn-this-because-i'll-never-us