Re:Tag this article deathofcreationism
on
The Human Mutation
·
· Score: 1
I don't believe in god, but I'll be damned if some of you atheist evangelicals aren't just as fucking annoying as the Christian variety.
That's something you'll just have to accept in a free society.
The alternative is a society where people are not free to promote their ideas and beliefs. And I have to hand it to the infidels: the majority of such societies are deeply religious and theocratic (even North Korea, the Kims are practically divine beings over there).
You'd be surprised how any 'average' college behavior can jeopardize any teaching career. Sex before marriage, if it is found out, can be enough reason in some areas.
I'm not, because it works both ways. Some jobs just blend better with a certain lifestyle than others. It's not surprising or worrisome at all that the field of education aims at 'clean' people, there are plenty of jobs in industries (recreation, entertainment) where the rest of us can work. And to be honest, if all employers are going to be like this they'd be running out of employees quite soon. People who haven't had at least one out of sex, drugs or booze in high school let alone college are a minority (especially here in Europe).
But that's still the assumption that Earth-like conditions uphold elsewhere, in this case *our* heavy correlation between life and oxygen. Which isn't even true for our early past because life existed here (as primitive as the purple and green bacteria were) long before there was a serious presence of oxygen, these bacteria did photosynthesis without producing any of it. Oxygen production nor oxygen tolerance is required for life, in fact there are still plenty of examples of that on earth.
So I figured GP had patterns such as prime numbers when he said unnatural - and even math could be considered a similarity to Earth.
Sci-fi is a bit broader than just Star Trek, although it is true that for obvious purposes humanoids are the primary choice of alien lifeform in most productions. Maybe that's one reason I liked Farscape so much, compared to other shows it definitely had a high amount of non-humanoid species.
I can't understand people who think that to find life on other planets we have to look for conditions similar to Earth. All of the hubbub over liquid water seems so silly to me.
It would be silly to exclude conditions not similar to Earth alltogether, but it is definitely reasonable to focus on conditions that are similar. Other conditions could qualify but that's pure speculation, for the conditions we live in we actually have a proof of concept. I'll take the refined "it works here, so why not elsewhere" over "anything could work" any day.
Your idea of looking for non-natural patterns is interesting but note that it would very much limit search results to life so intelligent that like ourselves we would consider it above natural. You wouldn't find any microbes on Europe because in our frame of reference they too would be very natural.
If we use cellphones, then TEH TERRORISTS HAVE WON!!!!11!!eleven!!
No one with even half a clue would buy that message, though.
See, were cellphones and similar equipment to seriously pose even the tiniest chance of interference, they would simply not even be allowed in your hand luggage. The mere fact that all airliners do is asking you politely to turn off your mobile strongly implies there's no risk at all, especially when you've just been in a one-hour security holdup where they take your lighter, scan your shoes and check for liquids. Yet I haven't encountered a single person who seemed to care enough to at least ask me why I was playing with my phone (flight mode for MP3s) on the plane and whether indeed the cellular functions were turned off.
I haven't tried out any of the products, but it's safe to assume they do most of the work client-side and therefore they must have some Javascript image manipulation functions. I wonder if any of those exist as a free/open resource. For a long time I've been looking for a Javascript JPEG library which would allow me to scale an image client-side before uploading it to a CMS. Sure, server side checks and manipulations are available, but there's really no point in uploading a three Megabyte digital camera picture to a community site which won't show the images larger than 800x600 anyway.
For games where different races represent different starting properties: I'd care only because of those properties.
For games where different races exist with the purpose of having a more personal experience by means of an avatar: hell yes and not just race either. Kind of pointless to have a customised avatar if you can't even customise these basic differences in appearance.
For any other game: not at all. I'm no hedgehog, Japanese prince(ss) or Italian plumber either, but that that never stopped me from playing any of those games.
Applies for nationalities as well, playing some loony state in C&C Red Alert squirmish was more fun than being US/Russia *once* again, while when properties don't matter I'd surely pick a nation I actually like.
In my opinion, there should be a third legal status in between "child" and "adult" for teens so shit like this doesn't explode.
Although I agree with that because there's a major difference between actual children and adolescents, that's not going to solve the problem. The problem here is not legal status but legal interpretation. A lot of freedom has been taken away from people this way because in the world of lawyers it matters not whether your actions harm anyone else or put anyone else at risk of harm. No, it solely matters whether they go against what has been written down.
Sure, technically this is child pornography and technically there's a risk these pictures made it to the public. In reality however this prosecution alone did more harm than the bit of candid photography ever could.
I had a beiag box 20 years ago, why do you think the next 20 will be different?
Because in twenty years (or more likely five to ten) you can have all the computing power and application/data storage you want in a device the size of your.. phone. People are already use their phones for one or more of playing music, taking pictures, reading e-mail and web browsing. The missing link are the peripherals, but as soon as we can cradle our phones into a home/office or laptop-like cradle to have a proper screen and keyboard, we'd be able to get rid of that clumsy box for ever.
All user data and applications will be backed up on memory sticks. All or most user data will be encrypted to prevent unauthorised access. You have all your data and all your applications with you anytime, anytime. If you don't recognise this trend, you've not been watching the progress of portable devices at all.
It varies more than I thought, I guess. I got the latest My Chemical Romance CD (and that definitely is mainstream for an important audience) for just £10 at HMV when was just released and in Holland where I buy most CD's for around 15 which is also ten pounds. Probably would have been around $12 had I ordered it somewhere in the US, which is even less (10/£8).
I suppose it matters a lot what kind of music you like and if you like current day rock you're fortunate, because it's easier to find good stuff from undiscovered bands and smaller labels which force the price down for the acts that do make it (semi-)mainstream.
But I still maintain the prices have dropped significantly, back in 1990 we paid 40-45 guilders for CD's here, which was roughly $22. That's half the price or even better adjusted for inflation. Production is cheaper these days but there's no way it ever comprised half the value in the first place, so no reason to really complain.
You're right about the fluctuations even within stores, but what's so bad about the hit and miss situation? If you really like a band, you would probably get their new stuff right away, if not pre-order. If you don't care too much, you'll find a good deal sooner or later and won't have an instant craving to satisfy.
CD's came down to about $12 when there was still such a thing as a small music chain. Other than that, they never really came down. I was waiting for CD's to break $10 but it never happened.
I have to disagree. CD's are not just matter, they contain content. You'll find that a lot of music that is not chart material has become way cheaper and that prices for chart material drop significantly once the popularity drops and promotional costs shift to the latest hits of the week.
Sure, you can spend anywhere between $12 and $20 for the latest billboard record, but the majority of CD's cost far less, while back in the 1990s practically all CD's costed the same and "nice price" offerings or stock clearings were only just beginning to happen.
Dude, no one denies that global warming is happening. The real debate is about human influence and I for one would be very upset if my under-sea-level Dutch home would flood because money that should have gone to dikes went to emission control when it turns out it's solar activity after all.
A decade is actually a very long time. We went from consumer market Pong to Netscape 1.0 in a decade and from Netscape 1.0 to a a fully functional J2ME Opera for mobiles in another. I'd be very, very surprised if we wouldn't have a useful J2ME (or equivalent) Visual Studio or KDevelop for mobiles in 2016, let alone vi(m), joe and emacs.
(You might be right about my memory. I like syntax highlighting (when it works), but I can do without looking up methods. I don't even attempt to write down anything significant until I am 99% sure of how a specific task or stand-alone part of it should look like. By the time I launch an editor, I'm usually already done coding and pretty much all I do is type to translate my thoughts to computer-readable form. Maybe I'm just lucky, maybe it's what happens when you start on a Commodore 64 and have almost 20 years of programming experience before you hit 30.. writing the actual code just isn't the hard part anymore.)
Sorry, I forgot that all software is written using Visual Studio. I suppose what I write in a simple text editor could not possibly qualify as software.
Within a decade, mobile phones will be the primary computing device for the majority of the market. Yes, you'd connect it to a docking station at home and at the office so there's a proper input device (keyboard/mouse) and output device (TV/monitor).. but for 90% mobile devices will be powerful enough to handle e-mail, the interweb and calendar/groupware functionality.
Heck, even as a software engineer the only reason I use a laptop is the lack of a proper Wifi, keyboard and screen for my phone.
Let's see.. a handful of security people, some management, PR agencies, tons of waiters and flight attendents, probably a real estate agent and some housekeepers.. it's called "the trickle down effect" and guess what, that's how our world really works.
A multi-process PHP daemon ref-counting background-forking syslogging application server that reuses 90% of the web interface classes/objects. Around 5 times the performance of the mod_perl predecessor, one third LOC (compile in what you need and forget about a gazillion require lines).. yeah, pretty sweet.
It's not rocket science but it reliably enables television stations (MTV, TMF and the likes) to broadcast SMS/text message content on screen. Simple chat (including moderation, white/blacklisting) and vote remain the most popular applications but the design is so clean that we could easily do as-live-as-it-gets streams from Hubble on CBS if anyone would be bothered to buy the product and give us a week time to implement it as turn-key solution.
Slashdot Mirror
That's something you'll just have to accept in a free society.
The alternative is a society where people are not free to promote their ideas and beliefs. And I have to hand it to the infidels: the majority of such societies are deeply religious and theocratic (even North Korea, the Kims are practically divine beings over there).
I'm not, because it works both ways. Some jobs just blend better with a certain lifestyle than others. It's not surprising or worrisome at all that the field of education aims at 'clean' people, there are plenty of jobs in industries (recreation, entertainment) where the rest of us can work. And to be honest, if all employers are going to be like this they'd be running out of employees quite soon. People who haven't had at least one out of sex, drugs or booze in high school let alone college are a minority (especially here in Europe).
But that's still the assumption that Earth-like conditions uphold elsewhere, in this case *our* heavy correlation between life and oxygen. Which isn't even true for our early past because life existed here (as primitive as the purple and green bacteria were) long before there was a serious presence of oxygen, these bacteria did photosynthesis without producing any of it. Oxygen production nor oxygen tolerance is required for life, in fact there are still plenty of examples of that on earth.
So I figured GP had patterns such as prime numbers when he said unnatural - and even math could be considered a similarity to Earth.
Sci-fi is a bit broader than just Star Trek, although it is true that for obvious purposes humanoids are the primary choice of alien lifeform in most productions. Maybe that's one reason I liked Farscape so much, compared to other shows it definitely had a high amount of non-humanoid species.
It would be silly to exclude conditions not similar to Earth alltogether, but it is definitely reasonable to focus on conditions that are similar. Other conditions could qualify but that's pure speculation, for the conditions we live in we actually have a proof of concept. I'll take the refined "it works here, so why not elsewhere" over "anything could work" any day.
Your idea of looking for non-natural patterns is interesting but note that it would very much limit search results to life so intelligent that like ourselves we would consider it above natural. You wouldn't find any microbes on Europe because in our frame of reference they too would be very natural.
That's a brain-dead user interface, or a very smart way of tricking people into submitting the "more than one" answer. Chuckle.
No one with even half a clue would buy that message, though.
See, were cellphones and similar equipment to seriously pose even the tiniest chance of interference, they would simply not even be allowed in your hand luggage. The mere fact that all airliners do is asking you politely to turn off your mobile strongly implies there's no risk at all, especially when you've just been in a one-hour security holdup where they take your lighter, scan your shoes and check for liquids. Yet I haven't encountered a single person who seemed to care enough to at least ask me why I was playing with my phone (flight mode for MP3s) on the plane and whether indeed the cellular functions were turned off.
Ergo, it's not a risk at all.
I haven't tried out any of the products, but it's safe to assume they do most of the work client-side and therefore they must have some Javascript image manipulation functions. I wonder if any of those exist as a free/open resource. For a long time I've been looking for a Javascript JPEG library which would allow me to scale an image client-side before uploading it to a CMS. Sure, server side checks and manipulations are available, but there's really no point in uploading a three Megabyte digital camera picture to a community site which won't show the images larger than 800x600 anyway.
Has anyone ever accomplished something like this?
For games where different races represent different starting properties: I'd care only because of those properties.
For games where different races exist with the purpose of having a more personal experience by means of an avatar: hell yes and not just race either. Kind of pointless to have a customised avatar if you can't even customise these basic differences in appearance.
For any other game: not at all. I'm no hedgehog, Japanese prince(ss) or Italian plumber either, but that that never stopped me from playing any of those games.
Applies for nationalities as well, playing some loony state in C&C Red Alert squirmish was more fun than being US/Russia *once* again, while when properties don't matter I'd surely pick a nation I actually like.
So it would also be illegal to publish any kind of sexual education? (school books, adolescent magazines with write-in advice columns)
Although I agree with that because there's a major difference between actual children and adolescents, that's not going to solve the problem. The problem here is not legal status but legal interpretation. A lot of freedom has been taken away from people this way because in the world of lawyers it matters not whether your actions harm anyone else or put anyone else at risk of harm. No, it solely matters whether they go against what has been written down.
Sure, technically this is child pornography and technically there's a risk these pictures made it to the public. In reality however this prosecution alone did more harm than the bit of candid photography ever could.
Because in twenty years (or more likely five to ten) you can have all the computing power and application/data storage you want in a device the size of your.. phone. People are already use their phones for one or more of playing music, taking pictures, reading e-mail and web browsing. The missing link are the peripherals, but as soon as we can cradle our phones into a home/office or laptop-like cradle to have a proper screen and keyboard, we'd be able to get rid of that clumsy box for ever.
All user data and applications will be backed up on memory sticks. All or most user data will be encrypted to prevent unauthorised access. You have all your data and all your applications with you anytime, anytime. If you don't recognise this trend, you've not been watching the progress of portable devices at all.
It varies more than I thought, I guess. I got the latest My Chemical Romance CD (and that definitely is mainstream for an important audience) for just £10 at HMV when was just released and in Holland where I buy most CD's for around 15 which is also ten pounds. Probably would have been around $12 had I ordered it somewhere in the US, which is even less (10/£8).
I suppose it matters a lot what kind of music you like and if you like current day rock you're fortunate, because it's easier to find good stuff from undiscovered bands and smaller labels which force the price down for the acts that do make it (semi-)mainstream.
But I still maintain the prices have dropped significantly, back in 1990 we paid 40-45 guilders for CD's here, which was roughly $22. That's half the price or even better adjusted for inflation. Production is cheaper these days but there's no way it ever comprised half the value in the first place, so no reason to really complain.
You're right about the fluctuations even within stores, but what's so bad about the hit and miss situation? If you really like a band, you would probably get their new stuff right away, if not pre-order. If you don't care too much, you'll find a good deal sooner or later and won't have an instant craving to satisfy.
Sure, you can spend anywhere between $12 and $20 for the latest billboard record, but the majority of CD's cost far less, while back in the 1990s practically all CD's costed the same and "nice price" offerings or stock clearings were only just beginning to happen.
Or anyone who has smoked pot in the Netherlands or bought alcohol abroad before the age of 21.
Relocate. Here in Rotterdam it'd be more like:
15 minutes to (space|air)port.
15 minutes check-in including security.
120 minutes flight time.
15 minutes bagage claim.
15 minutes to location.
Don't consider budget options (major airports, living in the USA, etc.) as the norm.
Dude, no one denies that global warming is happening. The real debate is about human influence and I for one would be very upset if my under-sea-level Dutch home would flood because money that should have gone to dikes went to emission control when it turns out it's solar activity after all.
A decade is actually a very long time. We went from consumer market Pong to Netscape 1.0 in a decade and from Netscape 1.0 to a a fully functional J2ME Opera for mobiles in another. I'd be very, very surprised if we wouldn't have a useful J2ME (or equivalent) Visual Studio or KDevelop for mobiles in 2016, let alone vi(m), joe and emacs.
(You might be right about my memory. I like syntax highlighting (when it works), but I can do without looking up methods. I don't even attempt to write down anything significant until I am 99% sure of how a specific task or stand-alone part of it should look like. By the time I launch an editor, I'm usually already done coding and pretty much all I do is type to translate my thoughts to computer-readable form. Maybe I'm just lucky, maybe it's what happens when you start on a Commodore 64 and have almost 20 years of programming experience before you hit 30.. writing the actual code just isn't the hard part anymore.)
Sorry, I forgot that all software is written using Visual Studio. I suppose what I write in a simple text editor could not possibly qualify as software.
Within a decade, mobile phones will be the primary computing device for the majority of the market. Yes, you'd connect it to a docking station at home and at the office so there's a proper input device (keyboard/mouse) and output device (TV/monitor).. but for 90% mobile devices will be powerful enough to handle e-mail, the interweb and calendar/groupware functionality.
Heck, even as a software engineer the only reason I use a laptop is the lack of a proper Wifi, keyboard and screen for my phone.
Let's see.. a handful of security people, some management, PR agencies, tons of waiters and flight attendents, probably a real estate agent and some housekeepers.. it's called "the trickle down effect" and guess what, that's how our world really works.
And on top of that, the top 2% of the rich probably also fund the employment of half the world.
A multi-process PHP daemon ref-counting background-forking syslogging application server that reuses 90% of the web interface classes/objects. Around 5 times the performance of the mod_perl predecessor, one third LOC (compile in what you need and forget about a gazillion require lines).. yeah, pretty sweet.
It's not rocket science but it reliably enables television stations (MTV, TMF and the likes) to broadcast SMS/text message content on screen. Simple chat (including moderation, white/blacklisting) and vote remain the most popular applications but the design is so clean that we could easily do as-live-as-it-gets streams from Hubble on CBS if anyone would be bothered to buy the product and give us a week time to implement it as turn-key solution.
But rm without -r refuses to delete directories. No oops.