This makes plenty of sense. There's nothing inherent about feathers that make them flight promoters. Feathers have no 'lifiting quality'. These feathers were most likely insulation for a creature with thermoregulation, like fur on mammals. It was only later that feathers were co-opted into gliding aids and later lift creators.
Note that on a flying bird, there are only a few feathers used in flight, on the wing and tail, and the rest are insulation (albeit aerodymanic insulation). Flightless fowl such as penguin and ostriches have still kept their feathers, which shows that they are useful for tasks other than flight.
In a field study trip in Ecuador, we learned about a fugus that, as a spore, infects an insect and corrupts their nervous system, causing them to crawl to the top of whatever plant/tree they are on top of. Then, at the top, the fungus consumes the insect, while it is still clining to the branch. Then, the insect shell bursts open, spreading out spores from the upper canopy.
VERY scary, very science fiction. What if this happened to people, but the behavior was at least passable, until it was 'too late'?
The example you are suing is from conversation, which containts a lot of mutually shared assumptions and information. Take this example from Stephen Pinker:
"I'm leaving you."
"Who is she?"
However, in written text, where the author can assume that the reader brings no shared assumptions, nor can the author rely on any deefback, 'speakers' usually do a good job of including all necessary information in one way or another -- especially in texts meant to convince or promote a particular viewpoint. I'll bet these kinds of texts are more easily translatable than conversation.
IIRC, the part of Chomsky's theory that is relevant to this application is that universal grammar is a series of choices about grammar -- i.e. adjectives either come before or after nouns, there are or are not postpositions, etc. I think the actual 'choices' are more obscure, but I'm trying to make this understandable;)
According to the theory, children come with this universal grammar built-in to their mind (for some reason, Chomsky seems against genetic arguments, but good luck understanding his reasoning), and they only need to hear just a little bit of language in order to throw the choose the proper alternatives in the mind, and start building grammatically correct sentences -- the rest is just building vocabulary. What seems like a child learning language is actually the language part of the brain growing during development. I believe that these choices are called 'switches' by Chomsky.
(An easy argument for universal grammar is that children make mistakes that are more rule-following than the accepted grammar -- words such as 'breaked', 'speaked', 'foots' or 'mouses' are in a sense rule-based corrections of exceptions in the spoken language. So the children follow the rules more closely than the adults -- they certainly didn't learn them from adults, so the must be applying the rules in their minds.)
Anywho, to make a program like this, you would just have to put together the switches of universal grammar and then feed in sample data -- probably text spelled with those linguistic homophonic characters, instead of the horrendous English spelling non-system. Chinese characters might be a better sample data in that respect; I don't know.
Note that, contrary to other posters, this would not be a system for building grammatical rules for any 'language' or formal system, such as C++ or xml. It is based on universal grammar, which is a set of option for constructing a human language. So there are built in assumptions that there will be subject, verbs, objects, indirect objects, etc. in the language that this program is decoding.
Consider that IE is the entry point for most spy and malware. Perhaps they mean that the browser can either intercept the malware, or at least remove it soon after installation.
"But bitch away anyhow, it's surely helping the situation."
If our electred representatives have executed a poor idea, we should bitch, and bitch loudly and directly to them, so that they get the message and don't do it again, or face losing the next election.
Bitching is one of the best and most effective ways Joe American has to influence the political system. For the record, sending the national guard across the globe is a bad idea. That's what the armed forces are for. Make sure that your elected representatives at least going on record saying so.
The homeless people you see wandering the streets in America can beg enough change to get enough nutrition from the omnipresent fast-food restaurants. If things get really bad, they can get into the homeless shelter or the emergency rooms. Americans are so rich that a homeless person can pretty much find all the supplies they need in the trash to clothe themselves and create a decent dwelling
Fast food restaurants, homeless shelters, emergency rooms, and useful 'trash' simply do not exist in the third world.
I used to volunteer for a program through the Methodist Church called ASP -- Appalachian Service Project. We would have crews from our church go down to poor areas of Appalachia and repair and rebuild homes. These people were poor by our standards, but they would have refridgerators, microwaves, cards, etc. But certainly no extra income to fix a leaking roof or rotting floorboards.
Then I spen two summers in Ecuador. The first summer I was in the tourist section of Quito in a Spanish immersion class. I saw families -- families -- mom, dad, and kids -- living homeless on the street. On the street. The little girls would lift up their skirts, squat, and pee, right on the sidewalk. That's something you don't see very often in the US.
The next summer I spent with an indigenous family, living in thatch-roof huts, playing cards by candle-light at night. These people had absolutely nothing. Their huts were built of wood they had cut down themselves. They carried babies around in shoulder sacks made of sheets. Their children were malnourished -- a 5 year old kid looked like a 3 year old.
I'll bet you're one of those Americans who have never been in a 3rd world country, witnessing actual poverty -- people literally living in dirt. Americans are incredibly, incredibly wealthy. Even the 'poor' ones.
"... what can be done to prevent and/or lessen such disasters in the future?"
How about keeping the national guard at home so that we have a trained and able bodied army of people available to actually do the work? Right now I've heard that there's anywhere from 3K-6K Louisiana national guard troops following the story from Iraq.
Give thanks again to the GWB administration's inability to govern.
I have a Nokia 6230, which I bought in the last 3 months. Making a call is very easy; just type in the number and hit the green 'call' button.
Of course, if you want to use the address book, you will have to navigate through a bit of menus, which I think would be true of any phone.
I haven't tried recent phones from other makers, but I will bet they are just as easy to dial with. My last phone was a motorola i60, and if you hit the down arrow on the navigation pad, you got the recent calls list. Nice! Too bad the 6230 doesn't do it like that.
C'mon, dude, you're exagerating. They are phones first and foremost. Just punch in the number and hit dial. I challenge you to present me with any phone on the market which doesn't work that way.
True. But, if the Nokia 770, which retails for $350 IIRC, will be as big as I think it will be, it will become what Apple's Newton should have been.
Nokia's 770 is supposed to have automatic handwriting recognition, and its only input is a stylus. If the handwriting recognition is good, then it will be the succcessor to the Newton as far as handwriting recog capability.
The 770 is larger than a palmtop computer, but still small and portable. It has a decent processor and therefore can have decent software on it, not like crappy palm.
It goes for $350, and I think it's powerful enough to replace a laptop. With the small form factor, and the possibility of great handwriting recognition, then I think it has all the makings of a killer product. Nokia has a long history of making easy to use, high-quality product.
If Apple's cell phone is as popular and easy to use as the iPod, and Nokia's 770 portable computer is just as popular and easy to use, then it will be time to turn in your compass -- the world really will have turned up side down;)
"If it's about as expensive as synthetic diamond (an oxymoron - synthetic diamond is just as real as "real" diamonds)"
Synthetic just means 'man-made', not imaginary or fake. 'Synthetic diamond' is not an oxymoron; it just means that the diamond was created by people instead of geological forces.
The point for IT certifications is to filter out candidates when your a large organization and you get a dozen applications a day.
It makes it easier for an HR person who knows absolutely nothing about technology to know that the person sitting across from them is not just spouting bullshit, but can actually *follow the manual* and get something working. It also shows that the candidate is willing and able to tow the line and jump through the hoops, which are inevitable in organizing a large group of people.
For most managers and vice-presidents, IT workers are commidities -- they're all basically the same, replaceable parts. Some may be better or worse in the end, but overall they're doing the same basic job. A certification is a double-check against work experience on a resume. If you are the greatest admin ever, bonus. However, all they are worried about is getting someone who doesn't jack everthing up.
Imagine you are an HR person and you know nothing about computers. However, you have to bring a new admin on board in a month. Let's look at your strategies:
It's to risky to bring someone on board before you know that they can actually do the work. So, you have to get a resume, check references, and interview the person. The resume says that they have 10 years experience with X. Do their references agree with that? Do they sound like they know what they're talking about? If they *really do* know what they're doing, why can't they spend a few hundred to get the cert? It sounds like that person would be someone who may not be a team player, or not be able to handle the bullshit that you have to effectively deal wtih in a large organization.
"So we don't have to "deal with" the cashiers at a store? We're eliminating the need for human contact."
I remember people using this argument against ATMs, that not having to make polite smalltalk with the teller at the bank would turn us all into antisocial hermits.
I don't think that the strangers we are forced to interact with and pretend to like count as 'real human interaction'. It's the people that you live, work, and socialize with everyday -- your family, co-workers and friends. Taking away petty interactions with strangers will give us more time to spend with the people in our lives who really count.
" Why do they want to be faster? So they can continue to work a 40-hour week and rush home to...to what? The internet?"
Uh... do you have any family or friends? Is the supermarket teller really your only human interaction outside of work?
Oh thank god. I prefer Moo-g, but the geek in me wants to be a know-it-all pedantic stickler for language. So now I know enough correct to get me uninvited to any future party!
"Yes, the name is pronounced Moag, but Mr. Moag has said that his instruments can be pronounced either way..."
Then you should have a problem with in vitro fertilization, because that process creates dozens of embryos which are never implanted. There are thousands of embryos in the blastocyst stage sitting in freezers, and they will be thrown out sooner or later.
Stem cell research does not have to pull stem cells from aborted fetuses, but can get stem cells from unused blastocysts from the in vitro fertilization process, ones that would be thrown out otherwise. They are not aborted.
So you have no problem with that, right? Or if you do, you are then opposed to in vitro fertilization?
The fact that water is more expensive per gallon than oil is a red herring. Bottled water at retail grocery stores are a high-end luxury item. Brands with the word 'spring' in it are often taken straight from municipal taps, with no processing whatsoever.
If you are really interested in buying water for commercial purposes, you can buy reverse osmossis filtered, 99.999% pure H20 for about $0.13 per gallon.
Oil will never be cheaper than water in any serious economic consideration.
Basically psychopaths have been organizing society for about 6,000 years.
Anthropologically speaking, before about 6,000 years ago, ultimate authority resided in the nuclear family. Mom, and Dad, could independently decide what to do. Other people in the tribe, likely to be part of your extended family, could offer advice, and even beat on you if things really got hairy, but ulimately, they couldn't force you to do something that you really didn't want to. In some remote places this is still the case -- I recommend reading Napoleon Chagnon's work with the Yanomamo if you want to get a good idea about life with no ultimate authority to execute justice.
Then, once you have agriculture and food you can store and transport, you have people submitting to a stranger as an authority, pledging their life to them, and accepting their judgement as ultimate justice -- because if you don't, off with your head. These priest kings thought they were divinity on Earth, and the fact that they ruled over people was just the natural course of things, as surely as the sun moves across the sky. For reference, see the decription of any god-king. God-Kings got their place through the military, either rising to rulership, or usurping some family member in the throne. The person who would do best in this role is a psychopath.
Fast forward to modern democracies. Government isn't the domain of military leaders anymore, but supposedly more enlightened speakers who rule with the consent of the masses. Those psychopathic people now see their opportunity in business, where they can bully people in the privacy of offices and meeting rooms, and underlings live as undignified yesmen. Again, the people who do best as bosses are psychopaths.
Now, I'm not saying that all bosses are bad, or that all jobs suck. There are good bosses and enlightened companies, but the best bosses are psychopaths, and the companies that do the best are headed by people who can get their underlings to knuckle and do whatever they're told.
I've had two bad bosses in my short (15 years) time in the workplace -- after several fuckups and yelling matches, I've found out that these two bosses both believed that the rules didn't apply to them. One would berate us employees for not doing a good enough job following up on delinquent accounts, complaining about customers who refused to pay us, while he had creditors calling us constantly for his *own* delinquent accounts. As the company was running out of money, and we confronted him about late and bouncing checks, he told us it wasn't our place to call him on it. He believed on some deep level that it was very wrong for other people to owe him money -- but if he owed other people money, he should be allowed to slide. The rules just didn't apply to him.
"Bison look like hairy cows with dreadlocks. They are slow moving, typically boring, and will eat hay out of your hand if you stick it through the fence. Not much fun for tourists."
That sounds like a perfect tourist attraction. Pleistocene petting zoo! Feed a bison with your hand! Kick a giant sloth in the shin and watch it slowly turn its head as you run away! Work yourself into giggles as you try to prnounce 'glyptodon'!
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Note that on a flying bird, there are only a few feathers used in flight, on the wing and tail, and the rest are insulation (albeit aerodymanic insulation). Flightless fowl such as penguin and ostriches have still kept their feathers, which shows that they are useful for tasks other than flight.
VERY scary, very science fiction. What if this happened to people, but the behavior was at least passable, until it was 'too late'?
So that would be about 4,540 millions of years.
"I'm leaving you."
"Who is she?"
However, in written text, where the author can assume that the reader brings no shared assumptions, nor can the author rely on any deefback, 'speakers' usually do a good job of including all necessary information in one way or another -- especially in texts meant to convince or promote a particular viewpoint. I'll bet these kinds of texts are more easily translatable than conversation.
According to the theory, children come with this universal grammar built-in to their mind (for some reason, Chomsky seems against genetic arguments, but good luck understanding his reasoning), and they only need to hear just a little bit of language in order to throw the choose the proper alternatives in the mind, and start building grammatically correct sentences -- the rest is just building vocabulary. What seems like a child learning language is actually the language part of the brain growing during development. I believe that these choices are called 'switches' by Chomsky.
(An easy argument for universal grammar is that children make mistakes that are more rule-following than the accepted grammar -- words such as 'breaked', 'speaked', 'foots' or 'mouses' are in a sense rule-based corrections of exceptions in the spoken language. So the children follow the rules more closely than the adults -- they certainly didn't learn them from adults, so the must be applying the rules in their minds.)
Anywho, to make a program like this, you would just have to put together the switches of universal grammar and then feed in sample data -- probably text spelled with those linguistic homophonic characters, instead of the horrendous English spelling non-system. Chinese characters might be a better sample data in that respect; I don't know.
Note that, contrary to other posters, this would not be a system for building grammatical rules for any 'language' or formal system, such as C++ or xml. It is based on universal grammar, which is a set of option for constructing a human language. So there are built in assumptions that there will be subject, verbs, objects, indirect objects, etc. in the language that this program is decoding.
Consider that IE is the entry point for most spy and malware. Perhaps they mean that the browser can either intercept the malware, or at least remove it soon after installation.
If our electred representatives have executed a poor idea, we should bitch, and bitch loudly and directly to them, so that they get the message and don't do it again, or face losing the next election.
Bitching is one of the best and most effective ways Joe American has to influence the political system. For the record, sending the national guard across the globe is a bad idea. That's what the armed forces are for. Make sure that your elected representatives at least going on record saying so.
Fast food restaurants, homeless shelters, emergency rooms, and useful 'trash' simply do not exist in the third world.
Then I spen two summers in Ecuador. The first summer I was in the tourist section of Quito in a Spanish immersion class. I saw families -- families -- mom, dad, and kids -- living homeless on the street. On the street. The little girls would lift up their skirts, squat, and pee, right on the sidewalk. That's something you don't see very often in the US.
The next summer I spent with an indigenous family, living in thatch-roof huts, playing cards by candle-light at night. These people had absolutely nothing. Their huts were built of wood they had cut down themselves. They carried babies around in shoulder sacks made of sheets. Their children were malnourished -- a 5 year old kid looked like a 3 year old.
I'll bet you're one of those Americans who have never been in a 3rd world country, witnessing actual poverty -- people literally living in dirt. Americans are incredibly, incredibly wealthy. Even the 'poor' ones.
How about keeping the national guard at home so that we have a trained and able bodied army of people available to actually do the work? Right now I've heard that there's anywhere from 3K-6K Louisiana national guard troops following the story from Iraq.
Give thanks again to the GWB administration's inability to govern.
Of course, if you want to use the address book, you will have to navigate through a bit of menus, which I think would be true of any phone.
I haven't tried recent phones from other makers, but I will bet they are just as easy to dial with. My last phone was a motorola i60, and if you hit the down arrow on the navigation pad, you got the recent calls list. Nice! Too bad the 6230 doesn't do it like that.
C'mon, dude, you're exagerating. They are phones first and foremost. Just punch in the number and hit dial. I challenge you to present me with any phone on the market which doesn't work that way.
Nokia's 770 is supposed to have automatic handwriting recognition, and its only input is a stylus. If the handwriting recognition is good, then it will be the succcessor to the Newton as far as handwriting recog capability.
The 770 is larger than a palmtop computer, but still small and portable. It has a decent processor and therefore can have decent software on it, not like crappy palm.
It goes for $350, and I think it's powerful enough to replace a laptop. With the small form factor, and the possibility of great handwriting recognition, then I think it has all the makings of a killer product. Nokia has a long history of making easy to use, high-quality product.
If Apple's cell phone is as popular and easy to use as the iPod, and Nokia's 770 portable computer is just as popular and easy to use, then it will be time to turn in your compass -- the world really will have turned up side down ;)
Apple is releasing an iPod cell phone, while Nokia is releasing a tablet computer with no cell phone capabilities.
Synthetic just means 'man-made', not imaginary or fake. 'Synthetic diamond' is not an oxymoron; it just means that the diamond was created by people instead of geological forces.
It makes it easier for an HR person who knows absolutely nothing about technology to know that the person sitting across from them is not just spouting bullshit, but can actually *follow the manual* and get something working. It also shows that the candidate is willing and able to tow the line and jump through the hoops, which are inevitable in organizing a large group of people.
For most managers and vice-presidents, IT workers are commidities -- they're all basically the same, replaceable parts. Some may be better or worse in the end, but overall they're doing the same basic job. A certification is a double-check against work experience on a resume. If you are the greatest admin ever, bonus. However, all they are worried about is getting someone who doesn't jack everthing up.
Imagine you are an HR person and you know nothing about computers. However, you have to bring a new admin on board in a month. Let's look at your strategies:
It's to risky to bring someone on board before you know that they can actually do the work. So, you have to get a resume, check references, and interview the person. The resume says that they have 10 years experience with X. Do their references agree with that? Do they sound like they know what they're talking about? If they *really do* know what they're doing, why can't they spend a few hundred to get the cert? It sounds like that person would be someone who may not be a team player, or not be able to handle the bullshit that you have to effectively deal wtih in a large organization.
I remember people using this argument against ATMs, that not having to make polite smalltalk with the teller at the bank would turn us all into antisocial hermits.
I don't think that the strangers we are forced to interact with and pretend to like count as 'real human interaction'. It's the people that you live, work, and socialize with everyday -- your family, co-workers and friends. Taking away petty interactions with strangers will give us more time to spend with the people in our lives who really count.
" Why do they want to be faster? So they can continue to work a 40-hour week and rush home to...to what? The internet?"
Uh... do you have any family or friends? Is the supermarket teller really your only human interaction outside of work?
Seriously, you do this by candlelight?
"Yes, the name is pronounced Moag, but Mr. Moag has said that his instruments can be pronounced either way..."
FYI, proper pronunciaction of Moog is 'Moag', like 'moat' with a 'g', and not like 'Moo'-g, like a cow would say it.
Stem cell research does not have to pull stem cells from aborted fetuses, but can get stem cells from unused blastocysts from the in vitro fertilization process, ones that would be thrown out otherwise. They are not aborted.
So you have no problem with that, right? Or if you do, you are then opposed to in vitro fertilization?
If you are really interested in buying water for commercial purposes, you can buy reverse osmossis filtered, 99.999% pure H20 for about $0.13 per gallon.
Oil will never be cheaper than water in any serious economic consideration.
Anthropologically speaking, before about 6,000 years ago, ultimate authority resided in the nuclear family. Mom, and Dad, could independently decide what to do. Other people in the tribe, likely to be part of your extended family, could offer advice, and even beat on you if things really got hairy, but ulimately, they couldn't force you to do something that you really didn't want to. In some remote places this is still the case -- I recommend reading Napoleon Chagnon's work with the Yanomamo if you want to get a good idea about life with no ultimate authority to execute justice.
Then, once you have agriculture and food you can store and transport, you have people submitting to a stranger as an authority, pledging their life to them, and accepting their judgement as ultimate justice -- because if you don't, off with your head. These priest kings thought they were divinity on Earth, and the fact that they ruled over people was just the natural course of things, as surely as the sun moves across the sky. For reference, see the decription of any god-king. God-Kings got their place through the military, either rising to rulership, or usurping some family member in the throne. The person who would do best in this role is a psychopath.
Fast forward to modern democracies. Government isn't the domain of military leaders anymore, but supposedly more enlightened speakers who rule with the consent of the masses. Those psychopathic people now see their opportunity in business, where they can bully people in the privacy of offices and meeting rooms, and underlings live as undignified yesmen. Again, the people who do best as bosses are psychopaths.
Now, I'm not saying that all bosses are bad, or that all jobs suck. There are good bosses and enlightened companies, but the best bosses are psychopaths, and the companies that do the best are headed by people who can get their underlings to knuckle and do whatever they're told.
I've had two bad bosses in my short (15 years) time in the workplace -- after several fuckups and yelling matches, I've found out that these two bosses both believed that the rules didn't apply to them. One would berate us employees for not doing a good enough job following up on delinquent accounts, complaining about customers who refused to pay us, while he had creditors calling us constantly for his *own* delinquent accounts. As the company was running out of money, and we confronted him about late and bouncing checks, he told us it wasn't our place to call him on it. He believed on some deep level that it was very wrong for other people to owe him money -- but if he owed other people money, he should be allowed to slide. The rules just didn't apply to him.
That sounds like a perfect tourist attraction. Pleistocene petting zoo! Feed a bison with your hand! Kick a giant sloth in the shin and watch it slowly turn its head as you run away! Work yourself into giggles as you try to prnounce 'glyptodon'!
And, will we see a MMORPG of Starcraft? How about a 2D birds-eye-view MMORPG of Starcraft, ala the original PC/Mac game?
How about TPA? Wikipedia gives irrelevant results -- wasn't it the report from Office Space?