Apparently, the water in our bodies may be responsible for the health risks of high voltage power lines."
Nothing like a little begging the question fallacy to get your day started. (Hint: there is no demonstrated evidence that being anywhere near a high power line is harmful at all. Witness the astounding lack of corpses of all varieties along the millions of miles of high power lines crossing the United States.)
I hope, as part of your tracking the history, you learn something about statistical sampling. Hint: polling slashdot is NOT a valid sample from which you can draw any meaningful conclusion.
Re:What does 'different mathmetics' mean?
on
The Golden Ratio
·
· Score: 1
True enough, but the basic axioms will be enough to establish a common framework to learn/teach a more proper language like English, which is specifically designed for communication as opposed to describing quantities and their relationships.
The common mathematical language is simply used as a starting point, not as the whole language of communication, a purpose to which is it not well suited.
Then it would be very easy to communicate with them mathematically, because they would have a language to EXPRESS their instinctive mathematical cognitive functions. All we'd have to do is send them some images with quantities along with OUR language for the SAME mental processes. So, they'd look at our beeps and pulses and say: Ah, they are blagzapping. They must call a blagzapp pi*r^2.
Re:How does one dispute math as a universal concep
on
The Golden Ratio
·
· Score: 1
Causality would tend to preclude this type of sensory perception.
Please, let's confine our hypotheticals to reality and not fantasy.
If you mean irrational in the sense of cannot be proven through rational deduction, then you are correct. But that does not necessarily make it a non-reality.
Give it a rest. Wolves are about as smart as a dog. If they were intelligent, they wouldn't get caught in traps. Give it a rest with the tree-hugger nature worship.
But, of course, this is a straw man like most of the there is no mathematics universal language arguments here.
A race that only counts one, two, many isn't going to build a technological civilizaton and communicate with us over interstellar differences. So, when we land on their planet, we'll just teach learn their language by having them point at things and naming them.
Re:Why wouldn't math be known across the universe?
on
The Golden Ratio
·
· Score: 1
Absolutely they'll be able to count, so they can determine the number of chemicals they need to absorb to make a little crumbcruncher chemical space alien.
Or so they can figure out how big a star is before they can no longer safely approach it.
Or so they can figure out how long it will take to get to that next nutrient rich dust cloud and how much they need to store for the trip.
The need to count and quantize can be distilled down into the need to maximize resources for survival.
In fact, I'm sure that a case could be made that natural selection would favor the intelligent life that COULD count and do mathematics. Because this is the intelligent life that can comprehend how MUCH (ooh a number) food is required to survive for given lengths of time (oooh, a mathematical calculation).
Re:Why wouldn't math be known across the universe?
on
The Golden Ratio
·
· Score: 1
But even then, they would need a minimum QUANTITY to survive. Bam. Now you've got a need for numbers. Now, how many of use are there and how much of the food is there? Bam. Now you have the need for math.
There's just no getting around it. ANY intelligence will have to start measuring quanities at some point if they ever engage in any kind of communication.
That objects exist, and that they exist in discrete amounts is a foundational tenet of reality.
If an intelligent organism needs a minimum amount of a given object to survive (which will be true of ANY organism in it's fight against entropy), then that intelligent organism will need to find a way to quantize those objects. The moment the organism has done that, you have a common language of communication.
Mathematics is the language of reality, and like any language, it can be used to make meaningless phrases.
your sqrt(2)^sqrt(2))^sqrt(2) = 2 in math is no different than me saying:
twas brillig and mimsy were the borograves
in English.
They're both nonsensical phrases that sound and look cool.
Re:Usability Questions
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 0, Troll
~/.kde/share/applink/* is the directory for my Kmenu entires?!? What the heck kind of naming scheme is that?! Yeah, that directory path really tells me what goes there.
How about something like: ~/kde/Kmenu Entries/*
I suppose I'll just have to install the desktop and see for myself since all I'm getting here is apologetics. Maybe some day Linux users will get out of denial that their software is hard to use.
Mod me a troll. It doesn't matter.
Usability Questions
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
OK. The story is slashdotted, but from my past experience with KDE fans and Linux fans in general, I've learned that their ideas for usability are generally way outside the mainstream.
As a total non-geek GUI user here are my questions on KDE's usability.
1. Have applications been consolidated into an Applications or Programs folder, or do I have to hunt for them scattered all over the place?
2. Can I make aliases, shortcuts or their equivalents by right clicking or modifier key dragging the original?
3. Do applications have a unique icon identifying the executable, so I know what to double-click to launch the program, or what to make the alias from?
4. Can I install an application by dragging an icon of the application to the Applications or Programs folder, or by double-clicking an installer icon that I can download as a single file from a website?
5. Can I add and remove items from the start menu (or whatever KDE calls it) by dragging and dropping to and from the menus? (A dialog box would be an acceptable alternative.)
6. Can I add a directory to the start menu and have its contents displayed heirarchically when I click on it from the start menu?
7. Can I use a file browser aka Windows Explorer or the Mac OS X Finder instead of a stupid web browser window to find files on my computer?
8. Are home directories put in a Users or Accounts folder off the root so that I can find them easily?
9. Can I find Windows networked computers by double-clicking a Network neighborhood icon or its equivalent?
10. Can I set up sharing on my computer, define workgroups, etc. using a configuration tool like Mac OS X's Network and Sharing preferences pane and the Directory Access utility?
The original chicken little argument was that we will become extinct. Being able to support millions of people on a world locked in ice, or a total desert or on shallow seabeds in a totally water covered world (ridiculously extreme scenarios) hardly constitutes extinction. Nice attempt at shifting the original premise.
You are right. External resources CAN be used to overcome local dependencies. And with a technological society of intelligent, creative humans, these external resources can be hundred of miles away or thousands of feet beneath.
In your ridiculous extreme examples:
Ice covered world: We grow food in greeenhouses using the soil dredged up from under the ice (the soil doesn't disappear, you know.) or in hydroponics facilities that don't require soil at all.
In a desert world: We irrigate crops from water pumped through the oceans, or from deep subsurface aquifers (the water doesn't disappear, you know). We fertilize the soil with man-made fertilizers, or again, use hydroponics.
The idea that humanity will become extinct from climate change is nothing more than fear-mongering. The idea that human civilization is at risk from MILD climate change is even more irresponsible fear mongering.
Case in point. Everyone rants about the massive coast line flooding throughout the world from rising ocean levels and how it will spell disaster for civilization and millions of people, without acknowledging that TODAY there are millions of people ALREADY living on land below sea level (the netherlands) using this really radical idea of dikes and pumps to keep out the water.
Fallacy of overprecision. Of course we don't live under the water because we are air breathers, but we COULD if we had to.
We don't live on the poles because we don't have to. But we COULD if we had to.
Deserts barely inhabited? Have you looked at the middle east lately? The American southwest? The Mongolian Steppes? Please.
Let's see. Earth covered in ice. Creative, technological humans build nice, domed hot houses to live.
Earth covered in sand. Creative, technological humans create massive irrigation projects, water pipelines and desalination plants and turn said desertes into gardens (take some before and after looks at the Salt Lake valley).
Since I won't have to live like that, whether or not I want to is irrelevant.
Well, since Kyoto failed to address the largest producer of the most powerful greenhouse gas there is, it was smart not to ratify it.
Until the Kyoto treaty requires the oceans to immediately limit their levels of evaporation, it will never be effective at reducing the most dangerous of greenhouse gases.
They ALREADY have the iPod to listen to music/relax. They can ALSO use it to transfer previews for review by PJ. They don't HAVE to carry a BIG, CLUMSY, BULKY external hard drive. They can use the music player THEY ALREADY HAVE.
Get it, yet? They didn't buy the iPod to transfer the files. They used the iPods they bought for music to do this extra chore as well, SAVING them from having to use ANOTHER external hard drive.
-I'm not in either camp, but I know that macs == wintel boxes on every front. The only thing wintel boxes don't have is raving zealots who think wintel solutions are stuck back in '95, and that any piece of hardware with the apple logo is instantly worth 1.5x its market value-
Sounds like you're in a camp to me.
The fact is, Macs are used by a large majority of film makers. It's something on the order of 70 to 80% That definitely implies a superior platform.
Perhaps if Linux offered an API migration path from Windows to Linux like Apple offered with Classic to OS X (the carbon API), MS would consider it.
Office for OS X is a Carbon App. It's basically the same source as the old Classic Office 2001, with the APIs no longer supported in X removed, and some required for running on OS X added.
Heck, it doesn't even support file names longer than 31 characters and didn't use the quartz rendering engine until months and months after its initial release.
If the purpose of the software is to drive sales (make business in your terms), then it isn't free. It's part of what is called Cost of Sales.
And Apple does use software in that way, just as IBM does. Darwin is released back to the open source community. The Konqueror rendering engine was released back into the open source community, Rendezvous was released back into the open source community, etc. But, like IBM, the ultimate purpose of Apple's software offerings are to drive sales of Apple's hardware. Where opening up the software would run counter to that prime business mission, it is smart business and right business to keep the software closed.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing like a little begging the question fallacy to get your day started. (Hint: there is no demonstrated evidence that being anywhere near a high power line is harmful at all. Witness the astounding lack of corpses of all varieties along the millions of miles of high power lines crossing the United States.)
I hope, as part of your tracking the history, you learn something about statistical sampling. Hint: polling slashdot is NOT a valid sample from which you can draw any meaningful conclusion.
True enough, but the basic axioms will be enough to establish a common framework to learn/teach a more proper language like English, which is specifically designed for communication as opposed to describing quantities and their relationships.
The common mathematical language is simply used as a starting point, not as the whole language of communication, a purpose to which is it not well suited.
Excellent example. Because we all know that since bugs in a STORY built spaceships without math, that means it's POSSIBLE!
Then it would be very easy to communicate with them mathematically, because they would have a language to EXPRESS their instinctive mathematical cognitive functions. All we'd have to do is send them some images with quantities along with OUR language for the SAME mental processes. So, they'd look at our beeps and pulses and say: Ah, they are blagzapping. They must call a blagzapp pi*r^2.
Causality would tend to preclude this type of sensory perception.
Please, let's confine our hypotheticals to reality and not fantasy.
I swear, you people watch way too much Star Trek.
If you mean irrational in the sense of cannot be proven through rational deduction, then you are correct. But that does not necessarily make it a non-reality.
Wolves are intelligent?
Give it a rest. Wolves are about as smart as a dog. If they were intelligent, they wouldn't get caught in traps. Give it a rest with the tree-hugger nature worship.
But the point being, they DO have the numbers.
But, of course, this is a straw man like most of the there is no mathematics universal language arguments here.
A race that only counts one, two, many isn't going to build a technological civilizaton and communicate with us over interstellar differences. So, when we land on their planet, we'll just teach learn their language by having them point at things and naming them.
Absolutely they'll be able to count, so they can determine the number of chemicals they need to absorb to make a little crumbcruncher chemical space alien.
Or so they can figure out how big a star is before they can no longer safely approach it.
Or so they can figure out how long it will take to get to that next nutrient rich dust cloud and how much they need to store for the trip.
The need to count and quantize can be distilled down into the need to maximize resources for survival.
In fact, I'm sure that a case could be made that natural selection would favor the intelligent life that COULD count and do mathematics. Because this is the intelligent life that can comprehend how MUCH (ooh a number) food is required to survive for given lengths of time (oooh, a mathematical calculation).
But even then, they would need a minimum QUANTITY to survive. Bam. Now you've got a need for numbers. Now, how many of use are there and how much of the food is there? Bam. Now you have the need for math.
There's just no getting around it. ANY intelligence will have to start measuring quanities at some point if they ever engage in any kind of communication.
That objects exist, and that they exist in discrete amounts is a foundational tenet of reality.
If an intelligent organism needs a minimum amount of a given object to survive (which will be true of ANY organism in it's fight against entropy), then that intelligent organism will need to find a way to quantize those objects. The moment the organism has done that, you have a common language of communication.
Mathematics is the language of reality, and like any language, it can be used to make meaningless phrases.
your sqrt(2)^sqrt(2))^sqrt(2) = 2 in math is no different than me saying:
twas brillig and mimsy were the borograves
in English.
They're both nonsensical phrases that sound and look cool.
~/.kde/share/applink/* is the directory for my Kmenu entires?!? What the heck kind of naming scheme is that?! Yeah, that directory path really tells me what goes there.
How about something like: ~/kde/Kmenu Entries/*
I suppose I'll just have to install the desktop and see for myself since all I'm getting here is apologetics. Maybe some day Linux users will get out of denial that their software is hard to use.
Mod me a troll. It doesn't matter.
OK. The story is slashdotted, but from my past experience with KDE fans and Linux fans in general, I've learned that their ideas for usability are generally way outside the mainstream.
As a total non-geek GUI user here are my questions on KDE's usability.
1. Have applications been consolidated into an Applications or Programs folder, or do I have to hunt for them scattered all over the place?
2. Can I make aliases, shortcuts or their equivalents by right clicking or modifier key dragging the original?
3. Do applications have a unique icon identifying the executable, so I know what to double-click to launch the program, or what to make the alias from?
4. Can I install an application by dragging an icon of the application to the Applications or Programs folder, or by double-clicking an installer icon that I can download as a single file from a website?
5. Can I add and remove items from the start menu (or whatever KDE calls it) by dragging and dropping to and from the menus? (A dialog box would be an acceptable alternative.)
6. Can I add a directory to the start menu and have its contents displayed heirarchically when I click on it from the start menu?
7. Can I use a file browser aka Windows Explorer or the Mac OS X Finder instead of a stupid web browser window to find files on my computer?
8. Are home directories put in a Users or Accounts folder off the root so that I can find them easily?
9. Can I find Windows networked computers by double-clicking a Network neighborhood icon or its equivalent?
10. Can I set up sharing on my computer, define workgroups, etc. using a configuration tool like Mac OS X's Network and Sharing preferences pane and the Directory Access utility?
Which of these can the 3.2 version of KDE do?
The original chicken little argument was that we will become extinct. Being able to support millions of people on a world locked in ice, or a total desert or on shallow seabeds in a totally water covered world (ridiculously extreme scenarios) hardly constitutes extinction. Nice attempt at shifting the original premise.
You are right. External resources CAN be used to overcome local dependencies. And with a technological society of intelligent, creative humans, these external resources can be hundred of miles away or thousands of feet beneath.
In your ridiculous extreme examples:
Ice covered world: We grow food in greeenhouses using the soil dredged up from under the ice (the soil doesn't disappear, you know.) or in hydroponics facilities that don't require soil at all.
In a desert world: We irrigate crops from water pumped through the oceans, or from deep subsurface aquifers (the water doesn't disappear, you know). We fertilize the soil with man-made fertilizers, or again, use hydroponics.
The idea that humanity will become extinct from climate change is nothing more than fear-mongering. The idea that human civilization is at risk from MILD climate change is even more irresponsible fear mongering.
Case in point. Everyone rants about the massive coast line flooding throughout the world from rising ocean levels and how it will spell disaster for civilization and millions of people, without acknowledging that TODAY there are millions of people ALREADY living on land below sea level (the netherlands) using this really radical idea of dikes and pumps to keep out the water.
Fallacy of overprecision. Of course we don't live under the water because we are air breathers, but we COULD if we had to.
We don't live on the poles because we don't have to. But we COULD if we had to.
Deserts barely inhabited? Have you looked at the middle east lately? The American southwest? The Mongolian Steppes? Please.
Let's see. Earth covered in ice. Creative, technological humans build nice, domed hot houses to live.
Earth covered in sand. Creative, technological humans create massive irrigation projects, water pipelines and desalination plants and turn said desertes into gardens (take some before and after looks at the Salt Lake valley).
Since I won't have to live like that, whether or not I want to is irrelevant.
Well, since Kyoto failed to address the largest producer of the most powerful greenhouse gas there is, it was smart not to ratify it.
Until the Kyoto treaty requires the oceans to immediately limit their levels of evaporation, it will never be effective at reducing the most dangerous of greenhouse gases.
Carbon emission problem? I don't think so! Here, fill up your tank and get a free cup of coffee with Janet Jackson's picture on it!
Spoken like a true Chicken Little Alarmist.
Oh, please. None of those species were intelligent, technological and industrialized. Good grief.
Human beings live successfully in EVERY climate on the globe. Our environmental niche is the entire planet, for crying out loud.
Spoken like a true elitist snob. But even in your snobbery, you hit the truth. You just screw up the conclusion.
"Most of our creative types have weak computer skills and little technology confidence."
They seek Apple solutions precisely because Apple doesn't require heavy computer skills or tons of computer confidence.
From the You aren't getting it department.
They ALREADY have the iPod to listen to music/relax. They can ALSO use it to transfer previews for review by PJ. They don't HAVE to carry a BIG, CLUMSY, BULKY external hard drive. They can use the music player THEY ALREADY HAVE.
Get it, yet? They didn't buy the iPod to transfer the files. They used the iPods they bought for music to do this extra chore as well, SAVING them from having to use ANOTHER external hard drive.
Um, it would be called, making the scheduled, advertised, contractually obligated release date.
This is the movie industry, not software development. Product slippage is NOT tolerated.
-I'm not in either camp, but I know that macs == wintel boxes on every front. The only thing wintel boxes don't have is raving zealots who think wintel solutions are stuck back in '95, and that any piece of hardware with the apple logo is instantly worth 1.5x its market value-
Sounds like you're in a camp to me.
The fact is, Macs are used by a large majority of film makers. It's something on the order of 70 to 80% That definitely implies a superior platform.
Find some other reason to love your PC.
Perhaps if Linux offered an API migration path from Windows to Linux like Apple offered with Classic to OS X (the carbon API), MS would consider it.
Office for OS X is a Carbon App. It's basically the same source as the old Classic Office 2001, with the APIs no longer supported in X removed, and some required for running on OS X added.
Heck, it doesn't even support file names longer than 31 characters and didn't use the quartz rendering engine until months and months after its initial release.
If the purpose of the software is to drive sales (make business in your terms), then it isn't free. It's part of what is called Cost of Sales.
And Apple does use software in that way, just as IBM does. Darwin is released back to the open source community. The Konqueror rendering engine was released back into the open source community, Rendezvous was released back into the open source community, etc. But, like IBM, the ultimate purpose of Apple's software offerings are to drive sales of Apple's hardware. Where opening up the software would run counter to that prime business mission, it is smart business and right business to keep the software closed.