I work lasers on a daily basis. At 1000 mW, I would avoid looking even at a diffuse reflex at any reasonably close distance. I would never handle one of those without protective glasses and it mounted towards a beam stop.
The main problem is, we honestly have no clue what's going on.
Oh, come on. We may not understand every minute detail, but we most certainly have "a clue" what's going on.
Anyone who says we have this all figured out is either an idiot or someone pandering for funding.
Disregarding the obvious straw man here, why on Earth would someone pandering for funding claim to have it all figured out already in advance? You are not making sense.
For learning purposes, I find C++ to be a very good language. Its confusing enough that most people not up to it will leave once you cover the basics of pointers, yet not so difficult or complicated that it would take too long to learn.
I would rather say about the opposite -- C++ is far down the list of languages I recommend to people that want to start learning programming. I've learnt most programming languages that I use myself in a matter of days or weeks, but it took me several years to master the ins and outs of C++. And you really need to know it well to avoid shooting yourself in the foot all the time.
C++ is a very powerful and useful language, and I like the possibility to get zero runtime cost abstractions, but were it designed today it would be a very different language. The meta-programming features for example could most appropriately be described as "design by accident".
FUD or not, making yourself a competitor to your own customers is generally a very dangerous move to make, for any business. I'd say much of the success of Android has been possible because none of the device manufacturers have had to depend on one of their competitors for software (unlike for example Symbian). Google has been a neutral party, something they no longer will be. I'm a bit unsure as to what the strategy is here. To get under the Motorola patent umbrella, perhaps?
Yeah, I've seen his speech. It's not life I'm concerned about, though, it's us. They way I see it, we are destroying a valuable treasure that has been given to us. In a sense, we are using the Library of Alexandria for firewood.
I noticed you mentioned the 25 million combinations in another post, but to me it seems 25 million is still a very large number in this context. From a statistical standpoint, I would expect the probability of none of those receptors encoding for a native molecule, while at the same time covering a reasonable portion of all possible pathogen molecules we might come across, to be almost zero.
"[A] bunch of mechanisms for detecting and protecting native molecules" seems like a key, though.
Or to put it all in a computer analogy (as per your sig): Either you can detect threats using a black list, in which case you're only able to respond to a tiny subset of all possible threats, or you can fire more broadly and have a white list to avoid hitting the good guys. Randomly generating receptors, even if it's "only" out of 25 million combinations, seems more like setting up for the white list scenario, unless there is some very systematic bias in the randomness.
[...] the body makes them up at semi-random when generating new T cells; it does the same for antibodies.
This made me wonder why autoimmune diseases aren't more common. How does the body avoid accidentally producing a receptor that responds to some useful molecule?
The OP is totally disingenuous -- the Google+ service having trouble due to it being overrun by interested users is hardly a sign that it's about to die a slow death due to lack of interest.
I do think Facebook is overvalued, but that said, I'd say most of their value is in the fact that they own a pretty extensive database with very detailed information on a fair percentage of the worlds population. And that's gotta be worth something to someone.
The stock value of a company is tied to the analyst's expectations, not the money they earn.
The money a company earns is just a proxy for expected future earnings. Investments have always been based on expectations. And what else should it be based on? It doesn't matter if a company has made lots of money before -- the whole point of investing is that you think it will make money some time after you invest.
You missed the biggest pro of them all, central to the Unix philosophy: Composition of simple tools to do complex tasks.
With a GUI, you are bound to whatever the GUI designer has included, and basic features are replicated endlessly in different GUI:s. For example: If I want to process five files with some program in a command line, I can list them with ls or find, type them manually, or cat the list from a file, just to name a few ways. With a GUI, you often have only the Open File Dialog, built right into the processing program, and that's it. In that case, creating the list of files is not separated from processing them.
Google Document is okay, but lacks basic things like a side ruler and good insert table by paste support.
And a few other really basic things, such as automatic numbering of section headings, last time I checked. I kind of like the support for collaboration and to have "instant access" from anywhere though, so I hope they'll continue to improve it at a steady rate. MS Office could use some competition.
[...] so who's to say they wouldn't buy out Ericsson's stake in the future and take it over?
So what? Most people change cell phones every other year or so, and realistically that kind of deal would take some time to take effect, so there'd be plenty of time to jump ship later, if that's what you care about.
Pretty much nothing, it's easily doable if Sony decides it wants to, and they're obviously interested in the venture or they wouldn't have a stake in it.
By that logic, Ericsson might equally well be the one buying out Sony's share.
When Sony and Ericsson went into the joint venture in 2001, Ericsson was the one making the phones. Sony didn't have any market share to speak of. On the other hand, Sony owned a huge patent portfolio and camera technology, something Ericsson wanted to have access to at the time (or so the word went). So Sony Ericsson was essentially created out of Ericsson's mobile phone division, with both parent companies owning 50% each. Nevertheless, I'd say the phones still remain more Ericsson than Sony.
On the other hand, the majority of people generally just dislike change in itself, so I'm not sure whether that reaction towards GNOME 3 is really indicative of its inherent quality (or lack thereof).
Nope. Higher gravity attracts more water, so the sea level is higher (compared to the surface of a perfect sphere the size of the Earth).
Or you can think about it in this way: The sea level forms a surface of equal gravity (otherwise there would be a "slope" somewhere, and the water would move down it). Where there is higher gravity, the sea level needs to be farther from the Earth's center to be on that surface and experience the same gravity.
Stating that Freedesktop is a broken standards body doesn't help anyone or anything, and is the usual classic excuse - as I'd stated.
If you're going to discuss how to improve collaboration, doesn't it help to establish what the facts are?
I'm also not sure why you interpreted it as an excuse. Maybe my lack of involvement in any of the Linux desktop camps robs me of the ability to properly read between the lines. But if there is ambiguity, why choose to interpret it in the worst possible way and assume bad intentions, instead of responding to what is actually being said?
The fact that TFA is met with that kind of non-constructive attitude actually rather lends the author credibility that anything else. Maybe the Gnome people are the only unreasonable ones, but you don't make it seem that way by calling what at least appears to be a well reasoned article "expected bullshit".
Uh... how is this +5 Insightful? The parent has clearly not RTFA, and is contributing nothing to this discussion except making broad statements about people associated with Gnome and assuming bad will.
The article, which I actually found was a rather good read, states that "FreeDesktop.org is broken as a standards body". Considering that the front page of freedesktop.org says "freedesktop.org is not a formal standards organization", this doesn't seem like an overly controversial statement.
And by the way, how can Gnome even claim anything? It is a project, not a person. It would be more to the point to say "what you'd expect from Dave Neary" (the article author), although equally uninformative unless you tell me why.
I am personally not involved with any Linux desktop development, but as an "outsider" reading about this debate and trying to understand what is going on, the parent's post doesn't give me any insight.
i would imagine that his libertarian viewpoint informs him that while he has come to that conclusion, reasonable people may possibly disagree. since he acknowledges that his conclusion is a philosophical one, and his ideology values individuality and independence, then it is not necessarily logical to make abortion illegal even though the individual is opposed to abortions.
Of course this all hinges on how you define reasonable people. Is it the majority? The problem is that when discussing moral and ethics, there is no truth you can arrive at through reason. There have been many cultures throughout history that have had views that we would find deeply immoral. If you lived in such a culture, would you not strive to change the laws? Would a libertarian not have supported laws against slavery two hundred years ago? Or would a libertarian living in certain parts of Africa not oppose female genital cutting of minors?
My point is, that even with libertarian views, I suspect that there has to be cases where my interest in protecting a third parties from what I find is grave injustice overrides my value for individuality, even if reasonable people disagree with me.
Now assume, for the sake of argument, that we are convinced that abortion is murder. Or, equivalently, assume that some reasonable people think that murder of adults is fine as long as you have a reason to kill them. Are you then arguing that it is still not logical for a libertarian to vote for criminalization of murder, simply because others, who we find reasonable, disagree?
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I work lasers on a daily basis. At 1000 mW, I would avoid looking even at a diffuse reflex at any reasonably close distance. I would never handle one of those without protective glasses and it mounted towards a beam stop.
Oh, come on. We may not understand every minute detail, but we most certainly have "a clue" what's going on.
Disregarding the obvious straw man here, why on Earth would someone pandering for funding claim to have it all figured out already in advance? You are not making sense.
For learning purposes, I find C++ to be a very good language. Its confusing enough that most people not up to it will leave once you cover the basics of pointers, yet not so difficult or complicated that it would take too long to learn.
I would rather say about the opposite -- C++ is far down the list of languages I recommend to people that want to start learning programming. I've learnt most programming languages that I use myself in a matter of days or weeks, but it took me several years to master the ins and outs of C++. And you really need to know it well to avoid shooting yourself in the foot all the time.
C++ is a very powerful and useful language, and I like the possibility to get zero runtime cost abstractions, but were it designed today it would be a very different language. The meta-programming features for example could most appropriately be described as "design by accident".
FUD or not, making yourself a competitor to your own customers is generally a very dangerous move to make, for any business. I'd say much of the success of Android has been possible because none of the device manufacturers have had to depend on one of their competitors for software (unlike for example Symbian). Google has been a neutral party, something they no longer will be. I'm a bit unsure as to what the strategy is here. To get under the Motorola patent umbrella, perhaps?
Yeah, I've seen his speech. It's not life I'm concerned about, though, it's us. They way I see it, we are destroying a valuable treasure that has been given to us. In a sense, we are using the Library of Alexandria for firewood.
It's a bit sad then that we are destroying much of it in just a couple of generations (a blink of an eye on a geological time scale)...
Thanks for the links!
I noticed you mentioned the 25 million combinations in another post, but to me it seems 25 million is still a very large number in this context. From a statistical standpoint, I would expect the probability of none of those receptors encoding for a native molecule, while at the same time covering a reasonable portion of all possible pathogen molecules we might come across, to be almost zero.
"[A] bunch of mechanisms for detecting and protecting native molecules" seems like a key, though.
Or to put it all in a computer analogy (as per your sig): Either you can detect threats using a black list, in which case you're only able to respond to a tiny subset of all possible threats, or you can fire more broadly and have a white list to avoid hitting the good guys. Randomly generating receptors, even if it's "only" out of 25 million combinations, seems more like setting up for the white list scenario, unless there is some very systematic bias in the randomness.
[...] the body makes them up at semi-random when generating new T cells; it does the same for antibodies.
This made me wonder why autoimmune diseases aren't more common. How does the body avoid accidentally producing a receptor that responds to some useful molecule?
I mean, Pasteur, Salk and Fleming all retired multi-billionaires, right?
What is your point? We still have polio vaccine, penicillin and pasteurization.
There is a lack of interest in Google+ among mainstream users [...]
And exactly how does the story indicate that this is the case and will remain the case?
The OP is totally disingenuous -- the Google+ service having trouble due to it being overrun by interested users is hardly a sign that it's about to die a slow death due to lack of interest.
(FTFA, he is a consultant for EFF)
No, TFA says he is consulting with EFF, not that he is a consultant for EFF. He is asking them for legal advice.
As someone who have been using Chrome to Phone for a while, I somehow feel that the lastest xkcd illustrates what I would like to say...
I do think Facebook is overvalued, but that said, I'd say most of their value is in the fact that they own a pretty extensive database with very detailed information on a fair percentage of the worlds population. And that's gotta be worth something to someone.
The stock value of a company is tied to the analyst's expectations, not the money they earn.
The money a company earns is just a proxy for expected future earnings. Investments have always been based on expectations. And what else should it be based on? It doesn't matter if a company has made lots of money before -- the whole point of investing is that you think it will make money some time after you invest.
You missed the biggest pro of them all, central to the Unix philosophy: Composition of simple tools to do complex tasks.
With a GUI, you are bound to whatever the GUI designer has included, and basic features are replicated endlessly in different GUI:s. For example: If I want to process five files with some program in a command line, I can list them with ls or find, type them manually, or cat the list from a file, just to name a few ways. With a GUI, you often have only the Open File Dialog, built right into the processing program, and that's it. In that case, creating the list of files is not separated from processing them.
I don't know, but some evidently do. May I ask, why do you care who cares?
Google Document is okay, but lacks basic things like a side ruler and good insert table by paste support.
And a few other really basic things, such as automatic numbering of section headings, last time I checked. I kind of like the support for collaboration and to have "instant access" from anywhere though, so I hope they'll continue to improve it at a steady rate. MS Office could use some competition.
[...] so who's to say they wouldn't buy out Ericsson's stake in the future and take it over?
So what? Most people change cell phones every other year or so, and realistically that kind of deal would take some time to take effect, so there'd be plenty of time to jump ship later, if that's what you care about.
Pretty much nothing, it's easily doable if Sony decides it wants to, and they're obviously interested in the venture or they wouldn't have a stake in it.
By that logic, Ericsson might equally well be the one buying out Sony's share.
When Sony and Ericsson went into the joint venture in 2001, Ericsson was the one making the phones. Sony didn't have any market share to speak of. On the other hand, Sony owned a huge patent portfolio and camera technology, something Ericsson wanted to have access to at the time (or so the word went). So Sony Ericsson was essentially created out of Ericsson's mobile phone division, with both parent companies owning 50% each. Nevertheless, I'd say the phones still remain more Ericsson than Sony.
Even if others already know it, it's still stigmatizing to put them in a special line.
(One could quite easily invoke Godwin's law here...)
On the other hand, the majority of people generally just dislike change in itself, so I'm not sure whether that reaction towards GNOME 3 is really indicative of its inherent quality (or lack thereof).
Nope. Higher gravity attracts more water, so the sea level is higher (compared to the surface of a perfect sphere the size of the Earth).
Or you can think about it in this way: The sea level forms a surface of equal gravity (otherwise there would be a "slope" somewhere, and the water would move down it). Where there is higher gravity, the sea level needs to be farther from the Earth's center to be on that surface and experience the same gravity.
Stating that Freedesktop is a broken standards body doesn't help anyone or anything, and is the usual classic excuse - as I'd stated.
If you're going to discuss how to improve collaboration, doesn't it help to establish what the facts are?
I'm also not sure why you interpreted it as an excuse. Maybe my lack of involvement in any of the Linux desktop camps robs me of the ability to properly read between the lines. But if there is ambiguity, why choose to interpret it in the worst possible way and assume bad intentions, instead of responding to what is actually being said?
The fact that TFA is met with that kind of non-constructive attitude actually rather lends the author credibility that anything else. Maybe the Gnome people are the only unreasonable ones, but you don't make it seem that way by calling what at least appears to be a well reasoned article "expected bullshit".
Uh... how is this +5 Insightful? The parent has clearly not RTFA, and is contributing nothing to this discussion except making broad statements about people associated with Gnome and assuming bad will.
The article, which I actually found was a rather good read, states that "FreeDesktop.org is broken as a standards body". Considering that the front page of freedesktop.org says "freedesktop.org is not a formal standards organization", this doesn't seem like an overly controversial statement.
And by the way, how can Gnome even claim anything? It is a project, not a person. It would be more to the point to say "what you'd expect from Dave Neary" (the article author), although equally uninformative unless you tell me why.
I am personally not involved with any Linux desktop development, but as an "outsider" reading about this debate and trying to understand what is going on, the parent's post doesn't give me any insight.
i would imagine that his libertarian viewpoint informs him that while he has come to that conclusion, reasonable people may possibly disagree. since he acknowledges that his conclusion is a philosophical one, and his ideology values individuality and independence, then it is not necessarily logical to make abortion illegal even though the individual is opposed to abortions.
Of course this all hinges on how you define reasonable people. Is it the majority? The problem is that when discussing moral and ethics, there is no truth you can arrive at through reason. There have been many cultures throughout history that have had views that we would find deeply immoral. If you lived in such a culture, would you not strive to change the laws? Would a libertarian not have supported laws against slavery two hundred years ago? Or would a libertarian living in certain parts of Africa not oppose female genital cutting of minors?
My point is, that even with libertarian views, I suspect that there has to be cases where my interest in protecting a third parties from what I find is grave injustice overrides my value for individuality, even if reasonable people disagree with me.
Now assume, for the sake of argument, that we are convinced that abortion is murder. Or, equivalently, assume that some reasonable people think that murder of adults is fine as long as you have a reason to kill them. Are you then arguing that it is still not logical for a libertarian to vote for criminalization of murder, simply because others, who we find reasonable, disagree?