Two slight nits to pick here.
First, modern reptiles aren't descended from dinosaurs. They're descended from reptiles that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, but were not themselves dinosaurs. Some of those reptiles still exist in a nearly unchanged form -- famously, the crocodilians, the turtles and the tuataras. Snakes and lizards, on the other hand, have changed quite a bit since then.
Second, there are actually a few examples of reptiles that do nurture their young. It is common behaviour among crocodilians, for example. You are right, though, that it is very uncommon for reptiles in general (most reptile social behaviour is limited to territorial fights and mating rituals -- there are a few exceptions, such as the monogamous shingleback lizards, the hierarchic social groups of water dragons, and, again, the crocodiles).
I don't know whether there is evidence to support or disprove that Cretaceous-era crocodilians nurtured their young, like modern ones do.
They are differently abled, with men, on average, having greater mental facilities for math and science due to thousands of years of genetic evolution imparted by the roles that men and women have naturally assumed.
Except that's not how evolution works at all. Learned abilities aren't imparted into genes, evolution works through selection mechanisms. The only evolutionary explanations would be natural selection (males who do not have good mental facilities for math or science die before they get to reproduce -- unlikely) or by sexual selection (females favouring males who are good at math and science -- uh, check out the/. crowd and judge for yourself), and I don't really see either of those two happening.
It is possible that males are naturally more likely than females to be good at mathematics and science, but if it is so, it most certainly did not happen because behaviour got encoded into genes -- the belief that acquired characteristics can be passed into genes is Lamarckism, and has been thoroughly rebutted by now.
It appears, from sources I have long forgotten (Simon's incredibly credible sources strike again!) that males tend to have more specialized brains than females, because the presence of high amounts of testosterone in early fetal development subtly damages parts of the developing brain, causing other parts to compensate by overdeveloping -- the female brain, by comparison, is more harmoniously and "symmetrically" developed. That would be one possible biological explanation why males tend to go into a field like mathematics, which requires a specialist way of thinking -- and could also explain why those people tend to have poor skills in other areas.
However, if this is so, it doesn't mean that men are naturally better mathematicians or computer scientists than women, it just means that they're more likely to be exceptional mathematicians and computer scientists than women. The problem at hand is, in my opinion, that there are many things in the computer science community that discourages even those women who would make good computer scientists from entering it. In my experience, there's comparatively little blatant male chauvinism (let's face it, computer geeks tend to fall farther from the hooting Neanderthal archetype than sports freaks or motor heads), but a lot of little things that makes women feel less welcome. I think a large part of the reason might be because many of the guys in computer science simply don't have very much experience with interacting with women, which makes us inept at it. This is probably that specialist brain at work again -- we spent our younger years sitting about in dimly lit rooms hacking on code rather than developing our people skills (and, let's face it, many of the people who gravitate into geekdom are people who are shunned by others, especially the opposite sex).
I personally try to make my interaction with females in technology as close as possible to my interaction with males in technology. Eg. I try to explain how things work to everyone instead of talking guys through a problem and grabbing the keyboard and solving the problem for girls. When I need to ask someone for advice on something, I try to make sure I'm not "above" asking a woman if I think she has knowledge (or a useful different perspective) to help me.
Equal does not mean identical, but it sure as hell doesn't mean separatism either.
An excellent example of how 'Net file sharing can actually be used deliberately to boost sales, while also making the fans happy, was how Iron Maiden promoted their latest album, Dance of Death.
The album wasn't recorded all in one go, as albums usually are, but was recorded during the breaks between tours and gigs. When Maiden had written and recorded a new song for the coming album, they'd perform it on some of the subsequent tours. Whenever they were about to play some new material, frontman Bruce Dickinson would tell the gathered hordes of Maiden fans that if they wanted to record it and share it with their friends on the Net, that was OK, "just buy the album when it gets out, right?".
So in the months before the release, tons of concert bootlegs of Wildest Dreams, Rainmaker and the title track Dance of Death were floating around the net. People's anticipation of the new album was boosted to the boiling point, and Maiden had come across as sympathetic people who wanted to share their music with the world rather than greedy Lars Ulrich clones. When the album was released, it had killer sales. Lots of people who had come across one of the aforementioned bootlegs (with poor sound quality -- you don't drag your studio quality recorder to a concert, do you?;) ) just had to hear them in a studio version. It's likely that encouraging filesharing had actually boosted the sales of that record. At any rate, the move sure gained Maiden more respect from their fans, which I personally think is something that also translates to better sales.
I believe this is the way to do it if you're a major band -- adapting to the new reality of 'net file sharing (legal or not -- the illegal status of sharing copyrighted music obviously isn't stopping anyone) rather than whining about it.
I don't doubt that MS did sabotage Windows 3.1x to quash competition from DR-DOS, but it makes little sense that Caldera is able to collect money on that. They hadn't been damaged financially from MS' actions, since they didn't own DR-DOS at that time.
I hate the Evil Empire as much as the next guy, but this is one of the cases where the other side was even more loathsome.
'Feeling' does not necessarily mean emotion, it can also mean gut instinct, intuition, alogical value judgment and the like, all of which are useful abilities to have for a CEO. Computers can automate applied logic, but they can't convincingly simulate any of the above 'feeling' type abilities, which is why a computer wouldn't be a good replacement for a human CEO. Unless, of course, the human CEO was devoid of those abilities in the first place, which is what I think the above was getting at.
No worries, I usually get mine from suppliers in military labs in various oil countries, I can probably set you up for some too if you want. If you need lots, I'm sure we can find out how you can make your own.
Perhaps he has joint hypermobility? That's the thing that used to be called "double-jointed", and it's a hereditary, genetic condition that seriously affects a couple percent of the population.
People who have some degree of joint hypermobility can do such things with their joints (often without being aware of it -- in that photo, RMS seems to be leaning on his hand in a way that probably feels natural for him), and have a larger than normal tendency of developing arthritis (exactly because they tend to overextend joints without noticing), especially if they don't pay a lot of attention to ergonomy and neglect to exercise their joints regularly. RMS doesn't code anymore, not because he's grown into a lazy old politician, but because he has a serious case of arthritis that makes typing for extended periods of time painful for him. Joint hypermobility might explain that. And the picture, too.:)
He said that over a year ago, however, when desktop Linux wasn't looking so hot. A large part of his point was that the desktop itself would be going away in the future, except as hackers' and enthusiasts' systems. In fact, he went on to state that if this is the case, Linux has a huge advantage over Windows, since Linux is not nearly as tied into the desktop as Windows is, and will have an easier time adapting to such a setting. So he ported his canvas library to run on embedded as well, without axing it for the desktop. Sounds to me like a wholly reasonable thing to do.
Decided to give it a try for my Matrox G400, but unfortunately, as soon as I ran his program, it died with a memory fault. It was apparently checking which XRENDER filters were available, then promptly died. All output I got was: Available XRENDER filters: Memory fault
This was on Debian sid. Anyone else get something similar?
Since I recently reinstalled my Debian system, I decided to put some effort into implementing my filesystems right. I decided on XFS for various reasons, mainly that it has always been rock solid for me (I've had some problems with ReiserFS causing heavy data corruption -- it's a long time ago and they've undoubtedly improved the system since, but still I prefer XFS since I've never even once had a problem with it, and know nobody who has), and that its good large-file performance is more useful to me than Reiser's kickass small-file performance. Also EAs and ACLs are neat. What sucks about XFS is poor small-file performance and abysmal delete performance.
Anyways, I made a few bonnie++ runs and messed around with some of the many mkfs and mount options of XFS. In the end, my tweaked XFS filesystems beat ext3 (mode=ordered) for delete performance, which was a substantial improvement over a standard XFS mount.
I made a writeup about the whole procedure at Everything2. Go slashdot the poor bastards. Warning: The language is tailored to the fact that not all E2 users are geek hardcore.
They have a much better chance of squishing RH due to their size.
Yes, and an ant has a much better chance of squishing an elephant than it has of squishing a blue whale.
Slashdot Mirror
I see your Battlefield Earth and raise you one Manos: The Hands of Fate.
Two slight nits to pick here. First, modern reptiles aren't descended from dinosaurs. They're descended from reptiles that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, but were not themselves dinosaurs. Some of those reptiles still exist in a nearly unchanged form -- famously, the crocodilians, the turtles and the tuataras. Snakes and lizards, on the other hand, have changed quite a bit since then. Second, there are actually a few examples of reptiles that do nurture their young. It is common behaviour among crocodilians, for example. You are right, though, that it is very uncommon for reptiles in general (most reptile social behaviour is limited to territorial fights and mating rituals -- there are a few exceptions, such as the monogamous shingleback lizards, the hierarchic social groups of water dragons, and, again, the crocodiles). I don't know whether there is evidence to support or disprove that Cretaceous-era crocodilians nurtured their young, like modern ones do.
....and on the same day I finally switched to Ubuntu. First time I read /. after installing Ubuntu, I see this! Typical. :-)
They are differently abled, with men, on average, having greater mental facilities for math and science due to thousands of years of genetic evolution imparted by the roles that men and women have naturally assumed.
/. crowd and judge for yourself), and I don't really see either of those two happening.
Except that's not how evolution works at all. Learned abilities aren't imparted into genes, evolution works through selection mechanisms. The only evolutionary explanations would be natural selection (males who do not have good mental facilities for math or science die before they get to reproduce -- unlikely) or by sexual selection (females favouring males who are good at math and science -- uh, check out the
It is possible that males are naturally more likely than females to be good at mathematics and science, but if it is so, it most certainly did not happen because behaviour got encoded into genes -- the belief that acquired characteristics can be passed into genes is Lamarckism, and has been thoroughly rebutted by now.
It appears, from sources I have long forgotten (Simon's incredibly credible sources strike again!) that males tend to have more specialized brains than females, because the presence of high amounts of testosterone in early fetal development subtly damages parts of the developing brain, causing other parts to compensate by overdeveloping -- the female brain, by comparison, is more harmoniously and "symmetrically" developed. That would be one possible biological explanation why males tend to go into a field like mathematics, which requires a specialist way of thinking -- and could also explain why those people tend to have poor skills in other areas.
However, if this is so, it doesn't mean that men are naturally better mathematicians or computer scientists than women, it just means that they're more likely to be exceptional mathematicians and computer scientists than women. The problem at hand is, in my opinion, that there are many things in the computer science community that discourages even those women who would make good computer scientists from entering it. In my experience, there's comparatively little blatant male chauvinism (let's face it, computer geeks tend to fall farther from the hooting Neanderthal archetype than sports freaks or motor heads), but a lot of little things that makes women feel less welcome. I think a large part of the reason might be because many of the guys in computer science simply don't have very much experience with interacting with women, which makes us inept at it. This is probably that specialist brain at work again -- we spent our younger years sitting about in dimly lit rooms hacking on code rather than developing our people skills (and, let's face it, many of the people who gravitate into geekdom are people who are shunned by others, especially the opposite sex).
I personally try to make my interaction with females in technology as close as possible to my interaction with males in technology. Eg. I try to explain how things work to everyone instead of talking guys through a problem and grabbing the keyboard and solving the problem for girls. When I need to ask someone for advice on something, I try to make sure I'm not "above" asking a woman if I think she has knowledge (or a useful different perspective) to help me.
Equal does not mean identical, but it sure as hell doesn't mean separatism either.
Microsoft need to adopt the slogan.. Security Security Security
And that could even be shouted by Monkeyboy Ballmer with the same rhythm as "Developers Developers Developers"!
Actually it appears that it's Furious George.
Blargh.
#include <irony.h>
Sorry 'bout that.
#include
What do you propose we replace them with? Paenguins?
An excellent example of how 'Net file sharing can actually be used deliberately to boost sales, while also making the fans happy, was how Iron Maiden promoted their latest album, Dance of Death.
The album wasn't recorded all in one go, as albums usually are, but was recorded during the breaks between tours and gigs. When Maiden had written and recorded a new song for the coming album, they'd perform it on some of the subsequent tours. Whenever they were about to play some new material, frontman Bruce Dickinson would tell the gathered hordes of Maiden fans that if they wanted to record it and share it with their friends on the Net, that was OK, "just buy the album when it gets out, right?".
So in the months before the release, tons of concert bootlegs of Wildest Dreams, Rainmaker and the title track Dance of Death were floating around the net. People's anticipation of the new album was boosted to the boiling point, and Maiden had come across as sympathetic people who wanted to share their music with the world rather than greedy Lars Ulrich clones. When the album was released, it had killer sales. Lots of people who had come across one of the aforementioned bootlegs (with poor sound quality -- you don't drag your studio quality recorder to a concert, do you? ;) ) just had to hear them in a studio version. It's likely that encouraging filesharing had actually boosted the sales of that record. At any rate, the move sure gained Maiden more respect from their fans, which I personally think is something that also translates to better sales.
I believe this is the way to do it if you're a major band -- adapting to the new reality of 'net file sharing (legal or not -- the illegal status of sharing copyrighted music obviously isn't stopping anyone) rather than whining about it.
I don't doubt that MS did sabotage Windows 3.1x to quash competition from DR-DOS, but it makes little sense that Caldera is able to collect money on that. They hadn't been damaged financially from MS' actions, since they didn't own DR-DOS at that time. I hate the Evil Empire as much as the next guy, but this is one of the cases where the other side was even more loathsome.
Wow. Those are probably the most insightful words I have yet to read on this site. Thumbs up.
....and Enlightenment 0.17 will still be ready for feature freeze Real Soon Now.
'Feeling' does not necessarily mean emotion, it can also mean gut instinct, intuition, alogical value judgment and the like, all of which are useful abilities to have for a CEO. Computers can automate applied logic, but they can't convincingly simulate any of the above 'feeling' type abilities, which is why a computer wouldn't be a good replacement for a human CEO. Unless, of course, the human CEO was devoid of those abilities in the first place, which is what I think the above was getting at.
No worries, I usually get mine from suppliers in military labs in various oil countries, I can probably set you up for some too if you want. If you need lots, I'm sure we can find out how you can make your own.
Yes, and what they're spreading is Fraudulent Unsubstantiated Drivel.
Perhaps he has joint hypermobility? That's the thing that used to be called "double-jointed", and it's a hereditary, genetic condition that seriously affects a couple percent of the population.
:)
People who have some degree of joint hypermobility can do such things with their joints (often without being aware of it -- in that photo, RMS seems to be leaning on his hand in a way that probably feels natural for him), and have a larger than normal tendency of developing arthritis (exactly because they tend to overextend joints without noticing), especially if they don't pay a lot of attention to ergonomy and neglect to exercise their joints regularly. RMS doesn't code anymore, not because he's grown into a lazy old politician, but because he has a serious case of arthritis that makes typing for extended periods of time painful for him. Joint hypermobility might explain that. And the picture, too.
He said that over a year ago, however, when desktop Linux wasn't looking so hot. A large part of his point was that the desktop itself would be going away in the future, except as hackers' and enthusiasts' systems. In fact, he went on to state that if this is the case, Linux has a huge advantage over Windows, since Linux is not nearly as tied into the desktop as Windows is, and will have an easier time adapting to such a setting. So he ported his canvas library to run on embedded as well, without axing it for the desktop. Sounds to me like a wholly reasonable thing to do.
Decided to give it a try for my Matrox G400, but unfortunately, as soon as I ran his program, it died with a memory fault. It was apparently checking which XRENDER filters were available, then promptly died. All output I got was:
Available XRENDER filters:
Memory fault
This was on Debian sid. Anyone else get something similar?
So, basically, it's the political equivalent of the r-tools?
Jesus Christ on acid. Are you insane, on drugs or a terrorist? Next you'll be advocating the metric system or something.
Greetings gentlebeings,
Since I recently reinstalled my Debian system, I decided to put some effort into implementing my filesystems right. I decided on XFS for various reasons, mainly that it has always been rock solid for me (I've had some problems with ReiserFS causing heavy data corruption -- it's a long time ago and they've undoubtedly improved the system since, but still I prefer XFS since I've never even once had a problem with it, and know nobody who has), and that its good large-file performance is more useful to me than Reiser's kickass small-file performance. Also EAs and ACLs are neat. What sucks about XFS is poor small-file performance and abysmal delete performance.
Anyways, I made a few bonnie++ runs and messed around with some of the many mkfs and mount options of XFS. In the end, my tweaked XFS filesystems beat ext3 (mode=ordered) for delete performance, which was a substantial improvement over a standard XFS mount.
I made a writeup about the whole procedure at Everything2. Go slashdot the poor bastards. Warning: The language is tailored to the fact that not all E2 users are geek hardcore.
McBribe's career after SCO will involve a dunk tank and every major Linux expo after the court settlement.
They have a much better chance of squishing RH due to their size. Yes, and an ant has a much better chance of squishing an elephant than it has of squishing a blue whale.