'Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,' wrote one of the students, who blogged about their reactions. 'When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life.'
I just thought it was a bit ironic to blog about one's Internet addiction
"Phoning and writing letters to my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort" - clearly a phone and postal service addict. "Talking to my friends face to face gives me a constant feeling of comfort" - clearly a face-to-face talking addict.
I guess the only non-addicts are autistic people...
Well, if you think the tools are worth the information you give them, well, great. I don't think they are, and therefore I don't use the tools (apart from search and maps).
The poster child for this is Internet Explorer, which was developed and handed out free, for a 100% monetary loss. Various people have suggested that the intent was never to charge for it. The motive wasn't profit; it was control.
The motive almost certainly was money. It's called network effect. IE by itself may not have made money, but through network effects it improved sales of other MS products.
Market dominance of IE with proprietary Microsoft technologies helps sales for Microsoft web servers providing those technologies.
Improved MS web server sales also means more Windows server sales, because it only runs on Windows.
Many IE-only sites mean greater demand for IE, which only runs on Windows, thus also securing the Windows platform client-side (one more hurdle for moving away).
MS Office can create HTML, which almost certainly looks good on IE. Supporting IE otherwise is reportedly a pain for web developers. That may well be intended: Office is one of the cash-cows of MS, and Office being the easiest was to create IE compatible web pages may increase Office sales when IE is the dominant browser.
Having the dominant platform allows to easily introduce new proprietary technologies (.NET, Silverlight, etc.) which in turn allows to sell corresponding developer tools (Visual Studio.NET).
Controlling the browser also has you in control of the browser's default home page, initial bookmarks, etc., which you can use to further direct customers to your products.
Google has shown in the past that they care allot about protecting they customer information
From others. Not from themselves. Which makes sense, because that data is their most valuable asset, so they are very interested to not give it away. While a company collecting data and not giving it away is still better than one collecting it and giving it away, the company shouldn't collect it to begin with.
But in the case of the written word, there is no harm being done, no one's rights being infringed upon.
Well, that's where some people disagree. For example, Hitler's "Mein Kampf" may not be printed and sold in Germany, because it is considered harmful. The harm is exactly the same as in the fire example: People may be led to believe it and act accordingly, and thereby cause explicit harm.
Your logic is similar to the one used by people who argue that if the big meteorite wouldn't have hit earth, that Dinosaurs would still rule the planet.
No, my argumentation is more in the line that just from the fact that dinosaurs don't exist today you cannot conclude that a meteor has hit.
I for one have seen "Russian Tech" close up during my younger years and many of you folks who are so fascinated with paper articles got no clue how utterly primitive Russian "high tech" was.
I've not seen any of the paper articles you mention (nor the hardware), so I can't be fascinated by them. And I also didn't argue for three-valued logic (I even explicitly stated that I don't know whether it would have been an advantage), I argued against the arguments against ternary logic of the post I answered to. And I still stand to what I've written, despite the fact that he now, in a followup post, did make reasonable arguments why binary is better than ternary.
You can't advance any advantage, fact or whatever tangible, and you tell me i'm wrong. How interesting. *yawn*
Basic Logic failure. If you say the sky is blue because it's made by Microsoft, you are wrong. Even if the sky is indeed blue.
OK, now in your reply to me you did make substantial points. So based on what you said now the conclusion that binary is superior makes sense. However this still doesn't affect the validity or strength of the points you made in the previous post.
You don't know about the projectile until it's approaching you (good luck spotting an asteroid being accelerated 10 lightyears away!). And then there's not much time left.
Then there's the automated colony ship. Wipe us out and start initial !terraforming and begin growing colonists.
I don't think it would go to the trouble to wipe us out first. It may not even detect us as intelligent life form. It just starts to transform the atmosphere; the wiping out will be a side effect.
Well, if your instruments are so that they simply cannot detect earth-like planets at most stars, it's no surprise that the planets they find mostly are not earth-like. It's like saying there are no bees far away from you, because you only see bees near to you.
And how would that be beneficial to the survival of the creature, so that it has greater chance of reproducing and spreading that quality than those who didn't develop it?
You don't see how being poisonous to every other creature would be evolutionary advantageous? It's clearly an advantage if no one can eat you.
However I doubt that could be stable: As soon as a species splits into two, they would not be poisonous to each other. Moreover, the first species which evolved immunity to the poison of others would have a huge advantage.
Your mistake is to assume that they got there through a human-like stage. What if their path of evolution never passed through an individual stage? The key is who gets the children. The ant colony model is evolutionary stable because only the queen has children. So evolution favours everything which makes the queen and her children more likely to survive, even at the cost of other individuals. Now imagine an intelligent species evolving from such an colonizing animal. They would be the born nationalists.
Step 2 is all but easy. Just calculate the force we would need to apply to move the earth by a substantial amount (say, an earth diameter) during the time until the thing hits. Hint: The earth's mass is about 6*10^24 kg.
The UN also has a flag and leaders, and you wouldn't call it a country. The EU doesn't even have an official hymn (although Beethoven's "Ode an die Freude" is played whereever a hymn would be, making it an inofficial hymn). The Euro is not currently a currency of all EU members (especially the UK has the option to keep out even if they meet the conditions for entry; others are not yet in just because they don't meet the conditions). There's also not really an EU government. Most EU institutions are just people sent by the member countries. The Lisbon treaty made it a bit closer to a country, but it still isn't. There's no European army. The EU cannot even collect its own taxes. Also, the EU doesn't exactly make laws, it makes directives which have to translated into national laws. There's usually some freedom in how this is done, so even for EU regulations, the laws of the member countries can differ.
The EU clearly is more than the typical federation of countries, but it as clearly is not a country of its own.
In my experience that's normally only true for the "extra" links it provides (i.e. if directly below the main link, there's links to specific subjects on that site). For example, if you search for Wikipedia, the first hit is the Wikipedia main page, which is a direct link, and below there are links to specific subject areas, which are Google redirection links.
BTW, it shouldn't be too hard to turn them into real links through a Greasemonkey script.
I think a video compressed to 1.44MB will not be very useful anyway. And even with MP3, if you want any half-decent quality you'd not get more than a single song on a floppy (unless the song is very short, of course).
Slashdot Mirror
'Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,' wrote one of the students, who blogged about their reactions. 'When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life.'
I just thought it was a bit ironic to blog about one's Internet addiction
"Phoning and writing letters to my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort" - clearly a phone and postal service addict.
"Talking to my friends face to face gives me a constant feeling of comfort" - clearly a face-to-face talking addict.
I guess the only non-addicts are autistic people ...
Well, if you think the tools are worth the information you give them, well, great. I don't think they are, and therefore I don't use the tools (apart from search and maps).
The motive almost certainly was money. It's called network effect.
IE by itself may not have made money, but through network effects it improved sales of other MS products.
From others. Not from themselves. Which makes sense, because that data is their most valuable asset, so they are very interested to not give it away.
While a company collecting data and not giving it away is still better than one collecting it and giving it away, the company shouldn't collect it to begin with.
There should be a version of Godwin's law as applied to asking for new versions of Godwin's law.
Well, that's where some people disagree. For example, Hitler's "Mein Kampf" may not be printed and sold in Germany, because it is considered harmful. The harm is exactly the same as in the fire example: People may be led to believe it and act accordingly, and thereby cause explicit harm.
So what if you say it face to face, but someone records it without your knowledge?
No, my argumentation is more in the line that just from the fact that dinosaurs don't exist today you cannot conclude that a meteor has hit.
I've not seen any of the paper articles you mention (nor the hardware), so I can't be fascinated by them. And I also didn't argue for three-valued logic (I even explicitly stated that I don't know whether it would have been an advantage), I argued against the arguments against ternary logic of the post I answered to. And I still stand to what I've written, despite the fact that he now, in a followup post, did make reasonable arguments why binary is better than ternary.
Basic Logic failure. If you say the sky is blue because it's made by Microsoft, you are wrong. Even if the sky is indeed blue.
OK, now in your reply to me you did make substantial points. So based on what you said now the conclusion that binary is superior makes sense. However this still doesn't affect the validity or strength of the points you made in the previous post.
You don't know about the projectile until it's approaching you (good luck spotting an asteroid being accelerated 10 lightyears away!). And then there's not much time left.
Does rot13 encryption suffice?
The site is a bit outdated. The format war is over. Blu-Ray won.
The other problems of course remain.
Maybe they just want galactic domination. Why, you might ask. Well, don't ask me, ask _them_.
Bad idea. As it turns out, they just hate people who ask too much. That's why they seek galactic domination: To stop everybody asking.
I don't think it would go to the trouble to wipe us out first. It may not even detect us as intelligent life form. It just starts to transform the atmosphere; the wiping out will be a side effect.
Well, if your instruments are so that they simply cannot detect earth-like planets at most stars, it's no surprise that the planets they find mostly are not earth-like.
It's like saying there are no bees far away from you, because you only see bees near to you.
You don't see how being poisonous to every other creature would be evolutionary advantageous? It's clearly an advantage if no one can eat you.
However I doubt that could be stable: As soon as a species splits into two, they would not be poisonous to each other. Moreover, the first species which evolved immunity to the poison of others would have a huge advantage.
Your mistake is to assume that they got there through a human-like stage. What if their path of evolution never passed through an individual stage?
The key is who gets the children. The ant colony model is evolutionary stable because only the queen has children. So evolution favours everything which makes the queen and her children more likely to survive, even at the cost of other individuals. Now imagine an intelligent species evolving from such an colonizing animal. They would be the born nationalists.
Step 2 is all but easy. Just calculate the force we would need to apply to move the earth by a substantial amount (say, an earth diameter) during the time until the thing hits. Hint: The earth's mass is about 6*10^24 kg.
Because if they focused on rice, it wouldn't give a good argument for vegetarians. :-)
The center of earth is a myth.
Methane is an important source of energy. Obviously there's an alien species which has used up all the methane from that planet.
The UN also has a flag and leaders, and you wouldn't call it a country.
The EU doesn't even have an official hymn (although Beethoven's "Ode an die Freude" is played whereever a hymn would be, making it an inofficial hymn).
The Euro is not currently a currency of all EU members (especially the UK has the option to keep out even if they meet the conditions for entry; others are not yet in just because they don't meet the conditions).
There's also not really an EU government. Most EU institutions are just people sent by the member countries. The Lisbon treaty made it a bit closer to a country, but it still isn't.
There's no European army. The EU cannot even collect its own taxes. Also, the EU doesn't exactly make laws, it makes directives which have to translated into national laws. There's usually some freedom in how this is done, so even for EU regulations, the laws of the member countries can differ.
The EU clearly is more than the typical federation of countries, but it as clearly is not a country of its own.
In my experience that's normally only true for the "extra" links it provides (i.e. if directly below the main link, there's links to specific subjects on that site). For example, if you search for Wikipedia, the first hit is the Wikipedia main page, which is a direct link, and below there are links to specific subject areas, which are Google redirection links.
BTW, it shouldn't be too hard to turn them into real links through a Greasemonkey script.
I think a video compressed to 1.44MB will not be very useful anyway. And even with MP3, if you want any half-decent quality you'd not get more than a single song on a floppy (unless the song is very short, of course).
You don't need Jewel cases for CDs either. There are paper hulls for them which work quite fine.