Parent should get Karma +6 for incisive discernment.
The first programming class I took was C and it was a wretched experience. I had no idea what I was doing, what the teacher was talking about when he said "addresses", and why I should care. I had a VERY basic electronics background - capacitors, resistors, boolean algebra - but it didn't help. It wasn't until I had gotten further into electronics-type classes and learned about state machines and had taken 2 semesters programming in Intel assembly that I was truly ready to appreciate the wonders of C and C++! And then, I still wasn't ready until one of my teachers beat it into my brain that doing design and drawing flowcharts before coding a line can save you a ton of frustration. That's when I was ready to write good code. Any mistakes I make now are all my own fault, and I am usually able to find them.
My husband and I have long referred to my husband's computer by the names "Sasquatch" and "The Space Heater". I'm just waiting for some enterprising geeks to figure out how to duct the heat from the computers to the ventilation system of one's house. I rub my hands each time I think of how that could eliminate the need for a bulky, costly heating system! (Granted, cranking the thermostat up is a little easier and faster than switching the CPU to overclock mode.);-) In the meantime, I keep my hands toasty holding them up next to the computer fan vents during those intervals before the heater kicks on again.
..Because if God is REALLY the all-powerful being that we believe him to be, it follows that He knows all about everything we know, and even more, which we are still endeavoring to discover. Just because we have the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle doesn't mean that God doesn't know what will happen anyway based His knowledge of more explicit and elegant laws of nature.
The question was previously posted about whether God knows everything that will happen or whether we have free will. My answer to that is that we are spirit children of God, and just as a parent knows the faults and virtues of each of their children, God knows how each of us will act in a given situation, because He knows us. He is also kind enough to let us do what we want to do, because He wanted us to learn by our own experience. But because He must be a just God too, He allows us to experience the consequences of our actions, good and bad. This is a big topic, so I can only be brief.
I personally believe that Creationism and Evolution are pretty much the same thing, but one theory leaves God completely out of it. There is no reason why the period of a day in the Bible has to be 24 hours long, just like the expression of doing something "in the 11th hour" doesn't necessary mean it was done at 11 o'clock or that it was an hour long. Just as "in the 11th hour" implies preparatory action taken just before it was too late, perhaps a day out of the week of creation was an age of working on a particular stage until it was done. How would a timeless God describe creation to a mortal?
Let's be careful here.
Firstly, others' treatment of us should not dictate our moral level of conduct toward them. Just because you suspect an industry or company is trying to screw you doesn't mean that you have an excuse for screwing them back. Ever hear of "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"? Wasn't that supposed to end with Christ's Beattitudes?
Secondly, the numbers of people who have or haven't acted morally can never change what IS moral, because moral truth never changes. The thing that changes so often is our PERCEPTION of what is moral or immoral. I've found that as I carefully consider how I will behave, the things I do that make me feel good inside and make me feel like I have been kind or helpful to someone are the things that are good and moral. I have to be very honest with myself and be able to admit to myself when I have done something that makes me feel bad inside but that my brain says was smart because it saved me money. Downloading movies and music off the internet so that I can get around having to buy the music or movies is one of those things that kind of makes me feel bad inside. That causes me to think that it is wrong to do. I've also noticed that when I download movies or music off the internet only to preview them to see if they are decent and worth buying I do not get a bad feeling inside. That causes me to think that the very same behavior that previously made me feel bad is the right thing to do because my intentions and motivations are different. (To prove it to you, the stuff I didn't intent to buy, I deleted.)
Ultimately, we ourselves know whether what we do gives us a good feeling inside or a bad feeling inside, and if we can always do things that make us feel good inside like we have helped someone else, then regardless of whether downloading stuff off the internet is outlawed or not, we will be happy.
Just wanted to bring the discussion to a little higher plane.
I too believe that microcredit payments are indeed the way to pay for music downloads. The trouble is that credit card companies charge merchants several dollars PER TRANSACTION for the merchant to be able to accept their credit card. I've looked into it and I think a completely separate credit card company concerned only with micro-level payments would need to be set up.
Further, I think this music distribution over the internet could be made into a combination of P2P and central website.
Let's say we set up a licensing-promotional system where composer/artist uploads a song to a website to distribute and promote. Let's say the website serves many music artists. For the promotion of the music, the people who keep up the website get half of the sales, and the artist gets the other half. Someone downloads the music and pays money for the priviledge of using the music. That's promotion, if other people hear it. I think it would be beneficial if the downloader could also post their newly downloaded music on their own personal website on the condition that they charge the very same price they themselves paid and that half of any revenue would go back to the artist. For promoting the artist, the downloader-now-promoter gets to keep half. Each person downloading from him would be able to offer the same song on their own website and get half revenue for promotion, while giving the other half back to the original artist. (yes, it is a bit of a ponzi scheme, but it would put the artist at the top of the "food chain" where they belong, and encourage more people to write music.)
Furthermore, say each song accumulated a rating of +s or -s according to whether the downloader felt they enjoyed listening to it. Let's say also that each rating was attached to the name of a website so that downloaders would be able to see what sites plussed or minused the songs. It would be an quick way to find websites to check for new songs you might like or to see what sites have taste in music that oppose your own.
Great. Hackers are going to start using palm pilots to hack into the network. *beam Klez* (system procedes to crash) (admins procede to commit hari kari)
Why don't they use this kind of thing for those small but ever-crowded student parking lots so that you can see where the empty parking spaces are as you enter the lot? How much time does a person waste cruising up and down searching desperately for a parking space five minutes before class starts?
Or what if they used these to notify people of traffic jams on the highway so that you could quickly take an alternate route?
Re:High Income = Good Roads?
on
Sensors Gone Wild
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· Score: 2, Funny
CONSPIRACY ALERT! CONSPIRACY ALERT!
Oh, wait. This is slashdot. Move along, please, move along.
Do you suppose there is a way to rig up computers and their fans to the ventilation system so that the house can be heated while the web servers run? I mean, hey, there's no point in paying to heat your house twice as hot, is there? That would be soooo neat!
Then, the question you need to ask yourself when you meet one of these very special women is, "Does she like me for me, or does she just want me for my geek room?"
Put earplugs in ears. Cover eyes with blindfold.
Ah, the bliss of not seeing those pop-up ads or oncoming cars......
CRASH!!...
Time is relative until you pull out a stopwatch
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
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· Score: 1
Is there any geek here that has used a stopwatch to time how long it takes for Mac OS X to do anything? I would have thought that you people would be all over that issue and comparing stats by now.
For the record, I have an iBook (have since May) and its 600 MHz romps on my old 486 laptop (Tee-hee!) , but is still a trifle draggy compared to my husband's 800MHz PC. I am pretty satisfied with it except when the beachball of death spins seemingly interminably on my screen. And when the internet via our cable modem has slowed to crawl.
I've always suspected that contrary to the disclaimers on the instructions ("Modifying this product invalidates the user's authority to operate this product") anyone who modifies their stuff to do something extra actually GAINS authority to operate that device. It's just that companies don't want you to have that authority.
Actually, it sounds to me like it is a cool way of very quickly finding out a whole mess of things users believe is wrong with the software. They must be very determined to improve it if they are willing to sift through all the silly bug posts for the real bugs. One wishes Microsoft would do the same..... But M$ doesn't really care, do they?
Yes, the internet seemed ot slow to a crawl right around 11:30 AM central standard time.... when I started reading/. Clicking on links seems to take 30+seconds to get anywhere.
Depending on whether customers retain their product warranties, this could end up being good or bad for the tech industry.
If the warranties were kept && the failures happen within the warranty period && if companies are nice,
this could really cost tech companies a pretty penny.
Else, there may be a surge in people spendng to replace failed devices.
Either way, people aren't going to be happy. How many devices do you suppose are affected by these failures?
They design them to look like a 3D rendering of a Disney character so that they can easy make the stuffed animals look like the character! And don't forget the full-sized characters that walk around at Disney World.
Undah da seeee....undah da seee..... since life is sweet here we got the beat here naturaleee,...(naturalee-ee-ee).... Gotta love it.
Actually, this film is very consistent with Pixar. In the trailer I noted at least 3 cliches of our culture turned to comic affect. THAT is Pixar's forte. Remember the Star Wars comedy worked into Toy Story 2? Same thing, laughing at culture icons.
Being the easily amused type, I found the trailer very funny.
Slashdot Mirror
The first programming class I took was C and it was a wretched experience. I had no idea what I was doing, what the teacher was talking about when he said "addresses", and why I should care. I had a VERY basic electronics background - capacitors, resistors, boolean algebra - but it didn't help. It wasn't until I had gotten further into electronics-type classes and learned about state machines and had taken 2 semesters programming in Intel assembly that I was truly ready to appreciate the wonders of C and C++! And then, I still wasn't ready until one of my teachers beat it into my brain that doing design and drawing flowcharts before coding a line can save you a ton of frustration. That's when I was ready to write good code. Any mistakes I make now are all my own fault, and I am usually able to find them.
Roses are red, Violets are blue, I'm schitzophrenic, and so am I.
The question was previously posted about whether God knows everything that will happen or whether we have free will. My answer to that is that we are spirit children of God, and just as a parent knows the faults and virtues of each of their children, God knows how each of us will act in a given situation, because He knows us. He is also kind enough to let us do what we want to do, because He wanted us to learn by our own experience. But because He must be a just God too, He allows us to experience the consequences of our actions, good and bad. This is a big topic, so I can only be brief.
I personally believe that Creationism and Evolution are pretty much the same thing, but one theory leaves God completely out of it. There is no reason why the period of a day in the Bible has to be 24 hours long, just like the expression of doing something "in the 11th hour" doesn't necessary mean it was done at 11 o'clock or that it was an hour long. Just as "in the 11th hour" implies preparatory action taken just before it was too late, perhaps a day out of the week of creation was an age of working on a particular stage until it was done. How would a timeless God describe creation to a mortal?
Secondly, the numbers of people who have or haven't acted morally can never change what IS moral, because moral truth never changes. The thing that changes so often is our PERCEPTION of what is moral or immoral. I've found that as I carefully consider how I will behave, the things I do that make me feel good inside and make me feel like I have been kind or helpful to someone are the things that are good and moral. I have to be very honest with myself and be able to admit to myself when I have done something that makes me feel bad inside but that my brain says was smart because it saved me money. Downloading movies and music off the internet so that I can get around having to buy the music or movies is one of those things that kind of makes me feel bad inside. That causes me to think that it is wrong to do. I've also noticed that when I download movies or music off the internet only to preview them to see if they are decent and worth buying I do not get a bad feeling inside. That causes me to think that the very same behavior that previously made me feel bad is the right thing to do because my intentions and motivations are different. (To prove it to you, the stuff I didn't intent to buy, I deleted.)
Ultimately, we ourselves know whether what we do gives us a good feeling inside or a bad feeling inside, and if we can always do things that make us feel good inside like we have helped someone else, then regardless of whether downloading stuff off the internet is outlawed or not, we will be happy.
Just wanted to bring the discussion to a little higher plane.
Further, I think this music distribution over the internet could be made into a combination of P2P and central website.
Let's say we set up a licensing-promotional system where composer/artist uploads a song to a website to distribute and promote. Let's say the website serves many music artists. For the promotion of the music, the people who keep up the website get half of the sales, and the artist gets the other half. Someone downloads the music and pays money for the priviledge of using the music. That's promotion, if other people hear it. I think it would be beneficial if the downloader could also post their newly downloaded music on their own personal website on the condition that they charge the very same price they themselves paid and that half of any revenue would go back to the artist. For promoting the artist, the downloader-now-promoter gets to keep half. Each person downloading from him would be able to offer the same song on their own website and get half revenue for promotion, while giving the other half back to the original artist. (yes, it is a bit of a ponzi scheme, but it would put the artist at the top of the "food chain" where they belong, and encourage more people to write music.)
Furthermore, say each song accumulated a rating of +s or -s according to whether the downloader felt they enjoyed listening to it. Let's say also that each rating was attached to the name of a website so that downloaders would be able to see what sites plussed or minused the songs. It would be an quick way to find websites to check for new songs you might like or to see what sites have taste in music that oppose your own.
Or what if they used these to notify people of traffic jams on the highway so that you could quickly take an alternate route?
Oh, wait. This is slashdot. Move along, please, move along.
Put earplugs in ears. Cover eyes with blindfold. Ah, the bliss of not seeing those pop-up ads or oncoming cars...... CRASH!!...
For the record, I have an iBook (have since May) and its 600 MHz romps on my old 486 laptop (Tee-hee!) , but is still a trifle draggy compared to my husband's 800MHz PC. I am pretty satisfied with it except when the beachball of death spins seemingly interminably on my screen. And when the internet via our cable modem has slowed to crawl.
Red Alert - "You've probably already been hacked, but install this anyway"
Yellow Alert - "Quick, install this before anyone notices you're worth hacking"
Green Alert - "Some extra features we couldn't finish before having to release our software"
If the warranties were kept && the failures happen within the warranty period && if companies are nice, this could really cost tech companies a pretty penny.
Else, there may be a surge in people spendng to replace failed devices.
Either way, people aren't going to be happy. How many devices do you suppose are affected by these failures?
SheWhoWalksWithToesLikeCobras
Actually, this film is very consistent with Pixar. In the trailer I noted at least 3 cliches of our culture turned to comic affect. THAT is Pixar's forte. Remember the Star Wars comedy worked into Toy Story 2? Same thing, laughing at culture icons.
Being the easily amused type, I found the trailer very funny.
-SheWhoWalksWithToesLikeCobras
Crtl + Alt + Del. Wait a few minutes.
Crtl + Alt + Del. Wait a few minutes.
Laugh maniacally. Repeat.
-SheWhoWalksWithToesLikeCobras