> So no complaining about dupes and typos: it's genetic!
If the gene makes you more likely to make typos then we need to be complaining about you *more*, not *less*, in the hope that nurture can overcome nature. And you should be thanking us for the privilege.
> the Kindle really is pointless. It's never going to replace printed books
And McDonalds cheeseburgers will never replace airliners. Does that make cheeseburgers pointless? All that they need to succeed in this venture is to have enough people who are interested in electronic books.
> it's just more hassle than buying a printed book and reading it.
Oh really. I think the brick and mortar things they call shops are a lot of hassle myself, but they caught on.
> No power requirements
Let's see: a few seconds to plug it in to charge overnight every so often vs. ordering a book online (and waiting a few days) or finding a bookshop. Are you serious that you can't see why some people would choose the former?
> no DRM
Some people are more interested in just getting on and reading than making a political statement through their choice of reading device.
> no internet connectivity
Ebooks aren't going to replace books because like books they have no internet connectivity. Is there some logic here?
> If they could find a way to make using this thing easier than just opening a book and reading it then maybe
> then you really do need a shrink (like coping with mmmm...
I don't think there was anything deep going on here. Extended playing of violent games pumps up the adrenaline levels. Of course it does, your adrenal system is working exactly like it might in a real threat situation. That's what makes these (types of) games fun. You just have to remember to come up for air from time to time. (I play DS games for a few minutes at a time these days, life's way too busy.)
You may joke. I remember one time my wife asked me a question while I was playing Warcraft II years ago. It was a perfectly innocent question but I turned round and shouted at her horribly. It took me a few seconds to realise what had happened. I was on an adrenaline high. The game was fantasy, but the adrenaline was real.
(And probably someone had just ogre rushed me...)
> My guess is that Apple has a secret project to integrate just enough of WINE/Crossover into OS X to support Microsoft Office
Why would they do that? Microsoft Office works just fine on my Mac. Over the years I've run it under Virtual PC, Parallels and VMWare. There's no shortage of ways to run it. So I doubt it's a high priority for Apple to provide yet another method.
3lb is 3lb. You measure amounts of air in units of mass. The pound is a unit of mass. What are you after? One of those comparisons like "every year the ISS loses as much air as the line of peanuts you could make if you drove round the state of Vermont in a VW bug and dropped one peanut every 35 minutes"?
Zombies are reanimated corpses. These aren't reanimated corpses. They aren't even "infected" flesh-eating humans as portrayed in so-called "zombie" movies. They're not one bit like any kind of zombie I've ever met. So please, get your story titles straight.
There are a few wars going on, a few droughts and floods and a bit of ethnic cleansing and all that stuff. But that's just business as usual. Why ever should that get in the way of exploring space? I just don't see the connection between "problems at home" and "other planets".
How does that work? Is there some kind of Heisenberg principle at work that makes tasers hurt less when they're monitored?
> a Taser can be used as a torture device
Oh, now I understand. When you use a taser as a starter motor for your car or to light a cigarette it doesn't cause suffering. It's only when you use them to electrocute people that it constitutes a form of torture.
> He notes that the application of the first law of thermodynamics (the slogan is "A Calorie is A Calorie") to a homeostatic dissipative system like the human body is beyond simplistic. It is simply wrong.
Can you expand on this? Energy is conserved by any system. Doesn't matter whether it's open, closed, dissipative, or lying at the edge of self-organised criticality (whatever that is). Draw a boundary around a system. The total energy stored in that system at time t0, plus the energy going in through the boundary between t0 and t1, minus the energy going out between t0 and t1, is the total energy in that system at time t1. It's simple. But it's not simplistic. And it's certainly not wrong (unless you're doing General Relativity at which point there are some subtleties with localizing energy). So either Taubes is a crackpot, or you're misrepresenting him. I'm hoping its the latter, which is why I'd love you to expand a bit. I could read the book, but as you've painted the author as a crackpot you haven't really advertised it too well.
> If you're going to lump all religions into the same bin because of a couple of bad apples
So you're asking me to ignore religions whose religious texts glorify violence. That's like asking me to judge a barrel full of apples based on a small piece of crab apple wedged down at the bottom somewhere. The Koran and the Old Testament account for most of the religion on this planet.
> We also have billions of people who follow that particular deity that dismiss intolerance based on religion
I don't think so. Every watched the news?
> you'll find more than enough evidence of people being killed, tortured and oppressed for having a religious belief
Of course. The communist countries were largely intolerant of religion. But there's nothing anywhere in the definition of 'atheist' that says 'thou shalt punish people who believe differently'. Mao acted the way he did because he was a mean dictator. Meanwhile the Old Testament celebrates the Hebrews who went around kicking the living daylights out of any neighboring tribe and this book still has billions of people who think that the deity in the central role is the nice guy.
> Some sections? Are you able to cite references from the New Testament of the Bible that incites vitriol against non-Christians?
There's no shortage of anti-Semitic passages which have been used repeatedly over the centuries to justify barbarous acts. In particular the collective blame of "the Jews" for the death of Jesus.
> I believe the New Testament teaches contrary to what you have stated here
Sure, you're probably a decent person who knows how to cherry pick the passages that best fit your ideals, and the philosophy in the passage you quote is highly commendable. And as I say, the New Testament scores quite well. Unfortunately, if you're a Christian you carry the baggage of the Old Testament and worship a deity whose track record is reprehensible, though maybe not as bad as Hitler or Mao or Stalin (if only because there simply weren't enough people in the world when the Old Testament was written).
> somehow they managed to do it according to their own ideologies, which tells me that religion is not the basis, rather mankinds sinful nature
Yes and no. I agree with you that people don't need much help to be mean to their neighbors. But people like to have excuses before they go round hating. Religions provide a convenient them-us divide (along with nationalism and other ideologies) for such people and passages like "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." help them to justify their actions to themselves.
I don't remember even Mao or Stalin saying "kill these people because they aren't atheists". Both Mao and Stalin may have been atheists, but it wasn't atheism that drove their ideologies. (Some) Christians burnt 'witches' because witchcraft was against their religion. (Some) Christians promote ignorance in schools because science is against their religion. (some) Muslims blow people up because they see non-muslims as inferior. There's a causal link here. These people saw their crimes as being entailed by their religious beliefs. Find me an atheist dictator who said "non-atheists are inferior people and we should take away their rights, their lives and their property". There is, of course, no such thing, because there is no philosophy of hatred of other people that comes bundled with atheism. But pick up a Bible or the Koran and you'll find it full of vitriol aimed at non-believers. (Though admittedly there are some sections of the New Testament aren't so bad on this score.)
> Just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean you SHOULD do something.
The fact is, if it CAN be done, it WILL be done. You can talk all day about what SHOULD be done but it's really rather pointless. Do you think that a few philosophers and religious leaders sitting in armchairs now can have any significant impact on the future of the technological development of humankind? Once human cloning has been carried out successfully it will become cheaper and cheaper and easier and easier and everyone who can afford it will want it. The most constructive thing we can do now is figure out how best to adapt to a world with human cloning.
(Just in case you're missing the point, I'm not advocating a position of amorality here, just facing up to reality.)
There's a distinct phase transition that forms a discontinuity. Here are some Phase diagrams showing how state depends on pressure and temperature. The point is that you don't get a continuous transition between liquid and gas, say, with a half-liquid/half-gas state. Phase diagrams exhibit distinct lines separating quite distinct regions. The idea here is that maybe swarms also have these kinds of discontinuous phase transitions.
> Whether or not any specific device will have the resources...
I'm certainly not giving people $1,000,000 for an imaginary machine. Real men make claims about real computers with real resources, not imaginary ones.
Slashdot Mirror
If the gene makes you more likely to make typos then we need to be complaining about you *more*, not *less*, in the hope that nurture can overcome nature. And you should be thanking us for the privilege.
Just think how many milliseconds of war you could fight.
And McDonalds cheeseburgers will never replace airliners. Does that make cheeseburgers pointless? All that they need to succeed in this venture is to have enough people who are interested in electronic books.
> it's just more hassle than buying a printed book and reading it.
Oh really. I think the brick and mortar things they call shops are a lot of hassle myself, but they caught on.
> No power requirements
Let's see: a few seconds to plug it in to charge overnight every so often vs. ordering a book online (and waiting a few days) or finding a bookshop. Are you serious that you can't see why some people would choose the former?
> no DRM
Some people are more interested in just getting on and reading than making a political statement through their choice of reading device.
> no internet connectivity
Ebooks aren't going to replace books because like books they have no internet connectivity. Is there some logic here?
> If they could find a way to make using this thing easier than just opening a book and reading it then maybe
Pressing the on switch is hard?
I don't think there was anything deep going on here. Extended playing of violent games pumps up the adrenaline levels. Of course it does, your adrenal system is working exactly like it might in a real threat situation. That's what makes these (types of) games fun. You just have to remember to come up for air from time to time. (I play DS games for a few minutes at a time these days, life's way too busy.)
You may joke. I remember one time my wife asked me a question while I was playing Warcraft II years ago. It was a perfectly innocent question but I turned round and shouted at her horribly. It took me a few seconds to realise what had happened. I was on an adrenaline high. The game was fantasy, but the adrenaline was real. (And probably someone had just ogre rushed me...)
Why would they do that? Microsoft Office works just fine on my Mac. Over the years I've run it under Virtual PC, Parallels and VMWare. There's no shortage of ways to run it. So I doubt it's a high priority for Apple to provide yet another method.
If you disabled auto-updates, it's because you don't want to know about them.
3lb is 3lb. You measure amounts of air in units of mass. The pound is a unit of mass. What are you after? One of those comparisons like "every year the ISS loses as much air as the line of peanuts you could make if you drove round the state of Vermont in a VW bug and dropped one peanut every 35 minutes"?
Zombies are reanimated corpses. These aren't reanimated corpses. They aren't even "infected" flesh-eating humans as portrayed in so-called "zombie" movies. They're not one bit like any kind of zombie I've ever met. So please, get your story titles straight.
There are a few wars going on, a few droughts and floods and a bit of ethnic cleansing and all that stuff. But that's just business as usual. Why ever should that get in the way of exploring space? I just don't see the connection between "problems at home" and "other planets".
...within my lifetime. Nah, that would be too good to be true, Wishful thinking.
If only physicists would look for the Higgs particle on google video. It would save a lot of money.
You should check out who's actually behind the products coming out of the US.
How does that work? Is there some kind of Heisenberg principle at work that makes tasers hurt less when they're monitored?
> a Taser can be used as a torture device
Oh, now I understand. When you use a taser as a starter motor for your car or to light a cigarette it doesn't cause suffering. It's only when you use them to electrocute people that it constitutes a form of torture.
All I know about it is some jokes about it I've seen on websites like slashdot.
Can you expand on this? Energy is conserved by any system. Doesn't matter whether it's open, closed, dissipative, or lying at the edge of self-organised criticality (whatever that is). Draw a boundary around a system. The total energy stored in that system at time t0, plus the energy going in through the boundary between t0 and t1, minus the energy going out between t0 and t1, is the total energy in that system at time t1. It's simple. But it's not simplistic. And it's certainly not wrong (unless you're doing General Relativity at which point there are some subtleties with localizing energy). So either Taubes is a crackpot, or you're misrepresenting him. I'm hoping its the latter, which is why I'd love you to expand a bit. I could read the book, but as you've painted the author as a crackpot you haven't really advertised it too well.
Kids? There's an even better reason. Men. In fact, we can combine reasons to home in even better on the culprits - boys.
> If you're going to lump all religions into the same bin because of a couple of bad apples So you're asking me to ignore religions whose religious texts glorify violence. That's like asking me to judge a barrel full of apples based on a small piece of crab apple wedged down at the bottom somewhere. The Koran and the Old Testament account for most of the religion on this planet. > We also have billions of people who follow that particular deity that dismiss intolerance based on religion I don't think so. Every watched the news?
#include <sus_domestica.h>
#include <homo_sapiens.h>
Organism *orcus_turpis(Parent *human,Parent *pig)
{
Organism *orc = new Organism(human,pig);
for (Organism::iterator orc_part->parts_begin(); parts!=orc_part->parts_end(); ++orc_part)
{
orc_part.set(choose(0.5f,0.5f,human,pig));
}
return orc;
}
Of course. The communist countries were largely intolerant of religion. But there's nothing anywhere in the definition of 'atheist' that says 'thou shalt punish people who believe differently'. Mao acted the way he did because he was a mean dictator. Meanwhile the Old Testament celebrates the Hebrews who went around kicking the living daylights out of any neighboring tribe and this book still has billions of people who think that the deity in the central role is the nice guy.
There's no shortage of anti-Semitic passages which have been used repeatedly over the centuries to justify barbarous acts. In particular the collective blame of "the Jews" for the death of Jesus.
> I believe the New Testament teaches contrary to what you have stated here
Sure, you're probably a decent person who knows how to cherry pick the passages that best fit your ideals, and the philosophy in the passage you quote is highly commendable. And as I say, the New Testament scores quite well. Unfortunately, if you're a Christian you carry the baggage of the Old Testament and worship a deity whose track record is reprehensible, though maybe not as bad as Hitler or Mao or Stalin (if only because there simply weren't enough people in the world when the Old Testament was written).
> somehow they managed to do it according to their own ideologies, which tells me that religion is not the basis, rather mankinds sinful nature
Yes and no. I agree with you that people don't need much help to be mean to their neighbors. But people like to have excuses before they go round hating. Religions provide a convenient them-us divide (along with nationalism and other ideologies) for such people and passages like "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." help them to justify their actions to themselves.
I don't remember even Mao or Stalin saying "kill these people because they aren't atheists". Both Mao and Stalin may have been atheists, but it wasn't atheism that drove their ideologies. (Some) Christians burnt 'witches' because witchcraft was against their religion. (Some) Christians promote ignorance in schools because science is against their religion. (some) Muslims blow people up because they see non-muslims as inferior. There's a causal link here. These people saw their crimes as being entailed by their religious beliefs. Find me an atheist dictator who said "non-atheists are inferior people and we should take away their rights, their lives and their property". There is, of course, no such thing, because there is no philosophy of hatred of other people that comes bundled with atheism. But pick up a Bible or the Koran and you'll find it full of vitriol aimed at non-believers. (Though admittedly there are some sections of the New Testament aren't so bad on this score.)
The fact is, if it CAN be done, it WILL be done. You can talk all day about what SHOULD be done but it's really rather pointless. Do you think that a few philosophers and religious leaders sitting in armchairs now can have any significant impact on the future of the technological development of humankind? Once human cloning has been carried out successfully it will become cheaper and cheaper and easier and easier and everyone who can afford it will want it. The most constructive thing we can do now is figure out how best to adapt to a world with human cloning.
(Just in case you're missing the point, I'm not advocating a position of amorality here, just facing up to reality.)
There's a distinct phase transition that forms a discontinuity. Here are some Phase diagrams showing how state depends on pressure and temperature. The point is that you don't get a continuous transition between liquid and gas, say, with a half-liquid/half-gas state. Phase diagrams exhibit distinct lines separating quite distinct regions. The idea here is that maybe swarms also have these kinds of discontinuous phase transitions.
I'm certainly not giving people $1,000,000 for an imaginary machine. Real men make claims about real computers with real resources, not imaginary ones.