By looking at any television programming schedule, science fiction represents somewhat of a minority. Even though science fiction programs are exceedingly more popular than many more obscure genres (ie fantasy), it still seems that other, more general programs still have the upper hand (things like comedy, drama, news, sport, etc etc).
As is the reason why anything gets cancelled, the broadcaster probably feels that the show is getting lower ratings than expected. I disagree with the current rating system, and believe that the sampling done is most likely misleading, however, that isn't going to make the men upstairs think any different. Apparently not enough people are watching (or so they think), so it's got to go.
It's becoming a disgustingly popular trend in today's society that computers should be owned (and therefore paid for) by people who shouldn't have them. These people now constitute a large bulk of the computing population, however, there are also another group of people who own computers, and that group is the people who are educated on them and well versed in their use. Many of these people might be called geeks or hackers, but you need not be either of those things to be on the "deserving" end of the technological consumer continuum. I now use these groups to present two cases:
Your average human being: These people, originally feerful of computers and other things associated with magic, have been succored into buying and using computers because of flashy and glittering promises made to them either by corporations through advertising or from boastful or misunderstood friends/family members. They have very little patience; they want computers to do what they want, and they want it done immediately. A good many of them have given into the superstition that computers are some sort of life form capable of making deicisions and doing work for them, often becoming extremely hostile and bitter when the opposite becomes obvious, though they continue to deny the fact. These people, however, are not picky, and are willing to accept quick-fix solutions and botch jobs which would have otherwise been found unacceptable if they had actually done the work. Therefore, they flock to software that is easy to use and that gets something done (though what, they care little) regardless of reliability or effectivity. Therefore, this "mainstream population", flocks to over-priced software, often convinced that you get what you pay for (an example of faulty logic, their favorite kind); they are not concerned with open source software, usually either not knowing what it is or already having been convinced by their "friends" that it's somehow unhealthy.
Knowledgeable folk: These people range from hobbyists to professionals, generally having a good understanding of the form and function of computers. They buy computers with precise knowledge (usually) of what it is they want their computers to do for them, and how they are going to get that done. This computing culture has a great deal of experience with open source software, which has always been present throughout its development with good consistency. It's perfectly acceptable not to use open source all the time, and many might prefer commercial products of particular virtue, though most probably favor some open source programs to others. Only a small portion of these people are open source fanatics, the rest simply using open source software because it is particularly useful for their purpose. Needless to say, a great deal of open source software is considered mainstream among this group.
I, for one, am perfectly content with the current state of affairs; the former community can stick to its foolish and lemming-like ways, while the latter and more important will continue to use OSS, which is already mainstream to them.
I do not support Disney. HOWEVER, are you trying to say that it is our right to infringe upon the rights of others by stealing things which do not belong to us? Somehow that doesn't make sense. Sure, I steal music, but I'm also the first to admit it's wrong; I was never one to have problems with doing something "wrong" if I could get away with it.:D
Nobody is asking you not to sing in the shower. We are just telling what you can and cannot sing if you wish to charge people to listen to you singing in the shower. Produce all the music you want, just don't go galavanting around with ill-gotten music that wasn't produced by you.
Yes, Disney is in it for the money, but it may be argued that if the best way to get money is by appealing to the wants of us geeks, then how is it unreasonable to postulate that Disney is pro-geek?
I don't care about the environment
on
Green Geeks?
·
· Score: 1
I don't see why we should care about something that has been continuously trying to destroy us throughout our existance. I say we should continue screwing the environment, and laugh over our triumph.
I just hope we find ways to grow independant of it before we beat the last bit of life out of it, because we still need it. ^^:
Pop-ups are no different from spam, and should be made illegal. x.x I don't recall agreeing to allowing any websites the freedom of filling my screen with crap. Shouldn't they ask permission first, or at least give some kind of a warning?
e-wha!? DNA stands for "DeoxyriboNucleic Acid" Last time I checked, computers don't have these, and they never will. Also, if this so-called "eDNA" is supposed to be analogous to the real thing, I can't see how as DNA isn't used for anything remotely close to what they are suggesting as eDNA. It's just more buzzword BS.:(
The client/server relationship is one that has existed a long time before computers, and it was doubtless that computers would come to be used in such a manner also. Just think about it, do we not engage in client/server activites daily? There're televisions, radios, newspapers, teachers/students in a classroom environment, etc etc. Furthermore, these models I mentioned only apply to the propogation of information, just as computer programs function, but for the distribution of other things, there are many, many more examples to be found in the real world.
Well, if you are like me and would want to both avoid the hastle of washing your shirt daily in order have better personal hygene and still be respected by your fellow geeks, you will find it very convenient to buy multiple copies of the same shirt. No one will ever know that it's not the same shirt.;)
The age old problem of people asking you to help them out with their gadgets or begging you to fix their computer for them, either over the phone or in person. Over the years, I have discovered a twofold solution to this problem:
Pretend like you don't know what the solution is and tell them you can't help them.
Buy one of those handy t-shirts that read, "No, I will not fix your computer." Wear this shirt daily for best results.
Net Nanny might be good software for uptight parents, but I don't see why a libarary has to use censorship. As the demonstration proves, most cencorship efforts end up going horribly wrong, usually censoring things you don't want cencored and then not cencoring things you do.
If I were running a library (which I'm not), of course I wouldn't cencor the internet...I would let the people look at whatever they wanted. I would moniter their activities preiodically, and if I suspected the resources were being abused, I would simply stop the service for that individual.
Anyway you look at it, cencorship is a crackpot solution to problems that should be dealt with using more care than people are willing to put forth.
Being a member of a local biotechnology program at my school, I have attended several biotechnology courses, this already being my third year. When first learning about DNA, I laughed at the idea of "junk DNA," basically rejecting the whole idea from the start.
It shouldn't take anyone very long to realize that the scientific field of genetics is in such an infantile state, and all the biotech buzz going around so far (to me personally) seems to be rather much ado about nothing. Albeit, we can make insulin, clone sheep, and poke the human genome, but really, other than the recombinant DNA technology we've developed to use with bacteria and a few crop-altering techniques, I really don't find biotechnology to be a very applicable science, or even practical for that matter.
Now, I'm not going to claim the theory, because I come up with many hairball theories about stuff all the time, not really having proof behind any of it, however, I always did suspect that this "junk DNA" was good for something, and I found it rather peculiar that fractitions (made the term up myself ^^) have found correlations between certain morphological structures and fractals. I actually attributed the fractal behaivor to be the result of some abstract physical phenomenon resulting from the cells themselves, not DNA, but this guy's theory holds a lot of weight with me as he is much more highly educated and obviously knows what he's talking about. I advise everyone to pay heed to this theory, because it has great potential to change the face of the WORLD as we know it.;)
While on the subject of biotechnology, I would like to defend the genetecists' position against religious fanatics. From my studies, I have concluded that genetics is a subject of absolutely no spiritual/religious/moral import whatsoever. The moral dilemas in biotechnology can be considered very minute in comparison to that of other situation that politicions engage in. Obviously, anyone can agree that risky human experimentation is immoral (which is the same for any field of science), but other than that, I don't see any other relevant issues that are practical at the same time.
Also, just to set the records straight, cloning is a science that is centuries old. It brought us the Irish Potatoe Famine, and yet it also saved the wild orchid. I always hope to believe the benefits outweigh the losses.
I take it that you didn't actually read my post, did you?
From what I have seen out of the owls thus far, they seem to be almost as speedy as e-mail, and they can carry packages as well! I haven't seen anything today that can beat that kind of service without charging a very hefty price.
Also, wizards do not use electricity and other stuff particularly because they have no real use for them. However, even wizards poop, and I guess conjuring away feces was just too much of a bother not to use conventional plumbing. After all, wizards do live in muggle-like homes and often wear muggle clothing, correct? They don't have to differ in every aspect.
This is a very funny argument, by the way. XD I hope you're not taking it seriously, because I'm not either.
I never claimed to be a porponant of linux coding habits. Just because I have a slashdot account (unlike some people around here), it does not mean I am pro-linux on EVERY issue. ^^
Moving forwards (not backwards), I think good coding habits should be observed and maintained by all programmers, open source as well, but especially coders of proprietary software. I think we should be getting superior code while we are paying money, though sadly this is not always the case.
If Microsoft ever does release any source, they might want to clean some of it up in order to make it presentable to the public. They wouldn't want us to get any bad ideas about their coding habits.;)
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going to happen. It reminds me of a programming trick where you seed a random number generator with a series of numbers produced by itself. Anyway, the fact that Alice lasted as long as she did is quite impressive. I would have thought the breakdown would have occurred much sooner.
Well, you see, wizards had probably already developed indoor plumbing, (not to mention the fact that many civilizations had rough equivilents a few thousand years ago), and plus the original entrance to the chamber was something else that became turned into a bathroom later on.:-/
Have you ever seen a Japanese keyboard? Most of them have a mixture of both English character as well as Kana, characters that the Japanese use to write phonetically. You didn't actually think they had a single button for every Kanji character, did you?
One of the intended of GNU/Linux was to great a good replacement unix system, and so it is not surprising was the focus on making linux easier to migrate to from unix.
Though I can't say for certain, I'd like to think that Linux was not originally intended for widespread Desktop use like operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and MacOS, and it is kind of a fluke that linux has won as much of a share of this market as it has, however small.
Linux, like any other unix clone, was designed to be used for the same purposes as (you guessed it) unix, not windows! ^^; Linux does compete *more* with operating systems like, HP-UX, Solaris, and BSD than windows. This is true simply because of the fact that, in the standard biology definition, that these organisms (ie operating systems;) are competing for the same niche.
Let's face it, the bulk of the windows user base consists of bitter hating people who spit on linux (because microsoft told them to) and Apple computers (because...well things went downhill after Apple ][, didn't they?). I don't think they are interested in switching, so lets focus on converting the people who are actually open to the idea..
I'm glad to see that they got thier money back after all. I do use Abiword, and it really is one of the best free word processors, and in my opinion almost as good as OpenOffice.org, even though Abiword wins hands down when it comes to speed (as it is much smaller). Of course, the windows version of Abiword has quite a few bugs (x.x), preventing me from using it and windows at the same time, but under most unix platforms it works great.
Thank you, my hoity-toity friend, but though I do consider myself inexperienced, I'm very tough on myself, and what you are trying to explain to me is something that I am already well familiar with.
Would have made you feel better if I said "GNU/Linux"? Formally this is correct, but for the sake of brevity, I just say "Linux," as one might say "RedHat Linux" or "SuSE Linux."
Linux, as any kernel, does not function (well) without the rest of the system that comes with it. Every linux distribution I have ever used (and that's quite a few) have always come with the same software packages: GNU. It is almost always assumed that you are using GNU/Linux when running a desktop (with embedded systems and other such truck that may be something different).
As far as "sticking it to the man," I am a programming student thank you, and I am more used to programming in a unix environment than anywhere else. I find the GNU programming tools to be extremely useful, and therefore use them personally for thier true value rather than to satisfy some random act of rebellion. Though Microsoft is not my favorite company in the world, I do respect them, and I do use a few of thier products.
I've made several attempts to use FreeBSD, but it never worked out.;_; I will never give up on the OS and still insist that it rocks, but no matter what I do X-Windows does not configure right for me whereas in all linux distros it does. Hmm...I guess because linux is more often geared towards the more inexperienced people (that would be me).
If I were a guru I bet I could make it work, but alas, woe is me...
I can remember that when I firsted started learning how to program, a common mistake would be that my programs would get stuck in infinite loops. @_@ This is not so big of a deal with a sophisticated, multitaskig operating system, but back when I was using DOS and had no way to break the code, I had to reboot!
I think it would be interesting to know when the first infinite loop occured in the early days of programming, and how the programers dealt with it. Obviously, back then they only had single-tasking machines.
Let's say you turned in some bad FORTRAN code to the university computer on a time share. What if nobody noticed for hours that your program was taking up all the processing time? That would make some people pretty pissed.:p
In my opinion, the project holds great promise, but it certainly needs to be refined. I believe it would be possible to mathematically generate music that people would enjoy, but it requires a more in-depth knowledge of different scales, rhythms, the technicals of different musical styles, and other nuiances that would make a huge different in the listenability of the randomly generated works.
Though technically sound, the human mind is as capable of piecing it together as an English-speaker is able to understand Cantonese right out of the box. Not to say that he could not learn eventually, but would always be more suited to his native language.
And that's why we need to remember our audience when composing music!
Slashdot Mirror
As is the reason why anything gets cancelled, the broadcaster probably feels that the show is getting lower ratings than expected. I disagree with the current rating system, and believe that the sampling done is most likely misleading, however, that isn't going to make the men upstairs think any different. Apparently not enough people are watching (or so they think), so it's got to go.
Never watched it myself, but I heard it was good.
- Your average human being:
- Knowledgeable folk:
I, for one, am perfectly content with the current state of affairs; the former community can stick to its foolish and lemming-like ways, while the latter and more important will continue to use OSS, which is already mainstream to them.These people, originally feerful of computers and other things associated with magic, have been succored into buying and using computers because of flashy and glittering promises made to them either by corporations through advertising or from boastful or misunderstood friends/family members. They have very little patience; they want computers to do what they want, and they want it done immediately. A good many of them have given into the superstition that computers are some sort of life form capable of making deicisions and doing work for them, often becoming extremely hostile and bitter when the opposite becomes obvious, though they continue to deny the fact. These people, however, are not picky, and are willing to accept quick-fix solutions and botch jobs which would have otherwise been found unacceptable if they had actually done the work. Therefore, they flock to software that is easy to use and that gets something done (though what, they care little) regardless of reliability or effectivity. Therefore, this "mainstream population", flocks to over-priced software, often convinced that you get what you pay for (an example of faulty logic, their favorite kind); they are not concerned with open source software, usually either not knowing what it is or already having been convinced by their "friends" that it's somehow unhealthy.
These people range from hobbyists to professionals, generally having a good understanding of the form and function of computers. They buy computers with precise knowledge (usually) of what it is they want their computers to do for them, and how they are going to get that done. This computing culture has a great deal of experience with open source software, which has always been present throughout its development with good consistency. It's perfectly acceptable not to use open source all the time, and many might prefer commercial products of particular virtue, though most probably favor some open source programs to others. Only a small portion of these people are open source fanatics, the rest simply using open source software because it is particularly useful for their purpose. Needless to say, a great deal of open source software is considered mainstream among this group.
Because you didn't produce those files.
Nobody is asking you not to sing in the shower. We are just telling what you can and cannot sing if you wish to charge people to listen to you singing in the shower. Produce all the music you want, just don't go galavanting around with ill-gotten music that wasn't produced by you.
Yes, Disney is in it for the money, but it may be argued that if the best way to get money is by appealing to the wants of us geeks, then how is it unreasonable to postulate that Disney is pro-geek?
I just hope we find ways to grow independant of it before we beat the last bit of life out of it, because we still need it. ^^:
Pop-ups are no different from spam, and should be made illegal. x.x I don't recall agreeing to allowing any websites the freedom of filling my screen with crap. Shouldn't they ask permission first, or at least give some kind of a warning?
e-wha!? DNA stands for "DeoxyriboNucleic Acid" Last time I checked, computers don't have these, and they never will. Also, if this so-called "eDNA" is supposed to be analogous to the real thing, I can't see how as DNA isn't used for anything remotely close to what they are suggesting as eDNA. It's just more buzzword BS. :(
Why assume that these shirtless people are all men? I, for one, encourage toplessness for both sexes. :)
The client/server relationship is one that has existed a long time before computers, and it was doubtless that computers would come to be used in such a manner also. Just think about it, do we not engage in client/server activites daily? There're televisions, radios, newspapers, teachers/students in a classroom environment, etc etc. Furthermore, these models I mentioned only apply to the propogation of information, just as computer programs function, but for the distribution of other things, there are many, many more examples to be found in the real world.
Well, if you are like me and would want to both avoid the hastle of washing your shirt daily in order have better personal hygene and still be respected by your fellow geeks, you will find it very convenient to buy multiple copies of the same shirt. No one will ever know that it's not the same shirt. ;)
If I were running a library (which I'm not), of course I wouldn't cencor the internet...I would let the people look at whatever they wanted. I would moniter their activities preiodically, and if I suspected the resources were being abused, I would simply stop the service for that individual.
Anyway you look at it, cencorship is a crackpot solution to problems that should be dealt with using more care than people are willing to put forth.
It shouldn't take anyone very long to realize that the scientific field of genetics is in such an infantile state, and all the biotech buzz going around so far (to me personally) seems to be rather much ado about nothing. Albeit, we can make insulin, clone sheep, and poke the human genome, but really, other than the recombinant DNA technology we've developed to use with bacteria and a few crop-altering techniques, I really don't find biotechnology to be a very applicable science, or even practical for that matter.
Now, I'm not going to claim the theory, because I come up with many hairball theories about stuff all the time, not really having proof behind any of it, however, I always did suspect that this "junk DNA" was good for something, and I found it rather peculiar that fractitions (made the term up myself ^^) have found correlations between certain morphological structures and fractals. I actually attributed the fractal behaivor to be the result of some abstract physical phenomenon resulting from the cells themselves, not DNA, but this guy's theory holds a lot of weight with me as he is much more highly educated and obviously knows what he's talking about. I advise everyone to pay heed to this theory, because it has great potential to change the face of the WORLD as we know it. ;)
While on the subject of biotechnology, I would like to defend the genetecists' position against religious fanatics. From my studies, I have concluded that genetics is a subject of absolutely no spiritual/religious/moral import whatsoever. The moral dilemas in biotechnology can be considered very minute in comparison to that of other situation that politicions engage in. Obviously, anyone can agree that risky human experimentation is immoral (which is the same for any field of science), but other than that, I don't see any other relevant issues that are practical at the same time.
Also, just to set the records straight, cloning is a science that is centuries old. It brought us the Irish Potatoe Famine, and yet it also saved the wild orchid. I always hope to believe the benefits outweigh the losses.
From what I have seen out of the owls thus far, they seem to be almost as speedy as e-mail, and they can carry packages as well! I haven't seen anything today that can beat that kind of service without charging a very hefty price.
Also, wizards do not use electricity and other stuff particularly because they have no real use for them. However, even wizards poop, and I guess conjuring away feces was just too much of a bother not to use conventional plumbing. After all, wizards do live in muggle-like homes and often wear muggle clothing, correct? They don't have to differ in every aspect.
This is a very funny argument, by the way. XD I hope you're not taking it seriously, because I'm not either.
Moving forwards (not backwards), I think good coding habits should be observed and maintained by all programmers, open source as well, but especially coders of proprietary software. I think we should be getting superior code while we are paying money, though sadly this is not always the case.
If Microsoft ever does release any source, they might want to clean some of it up in order to make it presentable to the public. They wouldn't want us to get any bad ideas about their coding habits. ;)
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going to happen. It reminds me of a programming trick where you seed a random number generator with a series of numbers produced by itself. Anyway, the fact that Alice lasted as long as she did is quite impressive. I would have thought the breakdown would have occurred much sooner.
Well, you see, wizards had probably already developed indoor plumbing, (not to mention the fact that many civilizations had rough equivilents a few thousand years ago), and plus the original entrance to the chamber was something else that became turned into a bathroom later on. :-/
Have you ever seen a Japanese keyboard? Most of them have a mixture of both English character as well as Kana, characters that the Japanese use to write phonetically. You didn't actually think they had a single button for every Kanji character, did you?
One of the intended of GNU/Linux was to great a good replacement unix system, and so it is not surprising was the focus on making linux easier to migrate to from unix.
Though I can't say for certain, I'd like to think that Linux was not originally intended for widespread Desktop use like operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and MacOS, and it is kind of a fluke that linux has won as much of a share of this market as it has, however small.
Linux, like any other unix clone, was designed to be used for the same purposes as (you guessed it) unix, not windows! ^^; Linux does compete *more* with operating systems like, HP-UX, Solaris, and BSD than windows. This is true simply because of the fact that, in the standard biology definition, that these organisms (ie operating systems ;) are competing for the same niche.
Let's face it, the bulk of the windows user base consists of bitter hating people who spit on linux (because microsoft told them to) and Apple computers (because...well things went downhill after Apple ][, didn't they?). I don't think they are interested in switching, so lets focus on converting the people who are actually open to the idea..
I'm glad to see that they got thier money back after all. I do use Abiword, and it really is one of the best free word processors, and in my opinion almost as good as OpenOffice.org, even though Abiword wins hands down when it comes to speed (as it is much smaller). Of course, the windows version of Abiword has quite a few bugs (x.x), preventing me from using it and windows at the same time, but under most unix platforms it works great.
Would have made you feel better if I said "GNU/Linux"? Formally this is correct, but for the sake of brevity, I just say "Linux," as one might say "RedHat Linux" or "SuSE Linux."
Linux, as any kernel, does not function (well) without the rest of the system that comes with it. Every linux distribution I have ever used (and that's quite a few) have always come with the same software packages: GNU. It is almost always assumed that you are using GNU/Linux when running a desktop (with embedded systems and other such truck that may be something different).
As far as "sticking it to the man," I am a programming student thank you, and I am more used to programming in a unix environment than anywhere else. I find the GNU programming tools to be extremely useful, and therefore use them personally for thier true value rather than to satisfy some random act of rebellion. Though Microsoft is not my favorite company in the world, I do respect them, and I do use a few of thier products.
If I were a guru I bet I could make it work, but alas, woe is me...
I think it would be interesting to know when the first infinite loop occured in the early days of programming, and how the programers dealt with it. Obviously, back then they only had single-tasking machines.
Let's say you turned in some bad FORTRAN code to the university computer on a time share. What if nobody noticed for hours that your program was taking up all the processing time? That would make some people pretty pissed. :p
In my opinion, the project holds great promise, but it certainly needs to be refined. I believe it would be possible to mathematically generate music that people would enjoy, but it requires a more in-depth knowledge of different scales, rhythms, the technicals of different musical styles, and other nuiances that would make a huge different in the listenability of the randomly generated works.
Though technically sound, the human mind is as capable of piecing it together as an English-speaker is able to understand Cantonese right out of the box. Not to say that he could not learn eventually, but would always be more suited to his native language.
And that's why we need to remember our audience when composing music!