If the pediatricians had recommended TV be avoided by children of all ages because of its mind-numbing nature, the or brainwashing ads, I could approve somewhat.
This sounds too much like the basis for a new law for my comfort. If it remains the pediatricians disapproving TV for the very young (or in general), ok.
Oh, I see, its signal to noise. You'd want to define the difference for us? I'll decide whats signal and whats noise for me, I don't need or want your help (or the government's).
Just where do you get off telling CmdrTaco what to post? Some of us think attacks on civil liberty are worth knowing about -- whether they actually justify concern or not.
Gee, I'm sorry more people are using slashdot. Its a shame it couldn't have remained just the twenty people who knew about it the first day! Then it could be a nice insular community that agreed with itself all day, what fun!
Typical. You're too lazy to exercise simple judgement over which articles you read. The answer isn't for you to choose what you read, no, everyone you don't like should shut up.
In case you haven't noticed this is exactly the reason we are fighting censorship in this society. People are too lazy to control their own viewing and instead want to silence those whose viewpoints anger or shock them.
Get a life, and next time - if its by Jon Katz, do us all a favor and don't click!
Aren't the ACLU considered leftist? They've been involved in nearly all the important free speech battles in the courts. They have gone to court to support the right of the nazi party to protest peacefully -- do you really think they would support legislation to ban the thought?
There is a rather vocal politically-correct-liberal movement at this time, but it is relatively new, and is hardly representative of all leftists/liberals.
I rather wish we could vote for platform items rather than candidates, as I'm always faced with the situation of agreeing with one candidate on some issues, the other candidate on others, and neither on many. Who needs parties anyway?
One of the problems with the "randomness" argument is that we are seeing the universe from an extremely biased viewpoint - somewhere life DID arise. In fact if you think about it, the question can only come up in such a place. Considering that there are billions of galaxies with billions of solar systems each and its all been going on billions of years, I don't find it unlikely that some extremely improbable things would occur somewhere.
I'm also not convinced its all that unlikely - order arises from chaos all the time. And this is far from true randomness. There seem to be definite rules governing the interaction of matter and energy across the observable universe. The existence and origin of these laws is the more interesting metaphysical question, not how life arose.
Jim
Re:Everything computer is a Microsoft spinoff
on
SCO does Linux
·
· Score: 1
"What Apple had was a game machine"
Well, they had 16 colors while IBM supported your choice of monochrome text or two entire palettes of four colors each. Plus a really braindead video memory interleaving scheme. Which system would YOU write games for?
This doesn't prove serious software wasn't written for the Apple. For example -- VisiCalc, which is one of the most novel and important pieces of application software to come out of that time. You have heard of spreadsheets, right?
BTW. I've never owned an Apple, though I had a lot of fun with a IIe a friend of mine had back then.
To understand why the Bay Area is painted as liberal, compare the voting returns on a clear liberal/conservative issue between the Bay Area and L.A. regions next election. It really does vote that way, generally.
You're right that Silicon Valley is a conservative stronghold (not surprising, is it, suits with money are usually conservative, no?). Most of the Peninsula to the south is also conservative as well.
Places like San Francisco, Oakland, Marin, and Berkeley on the other hand, are rather liberal, and do have the kind of community you suggest.
Unfortunately a lot of over-the-top PC has crept in with the liberalism since the '60s, so I'm not sure they're all that much better from a geek standpoint.
Cyberspace is the only real home geeks will ever have. Don't let them take it away.
Wish I could deny it, but alas I can't. Crazy as charged.
I'm rather shocked at the quantity of responses that imply removing evolution from the state required curriculum is a good move, I had thought slashdotters more rational.
If we extend this logically to removing all scientific theories, whats left? There are NO scientificly proven facts, just things we've measured to a given tolerance. Oh, we only throw out the ones that happen to disagree with some religous belief? Ah, now I get it!
Close but not quite. An axiom doesn't really have a truth value, its just something to base a theory on. A theory is just a set of consequences that follow from a given set of assumptions (axioms) by logic. Since the theories' consequences are useless unless all the axioms are true, using the theory implies belief in its axioms, for the particular case under consideration. Every mathematical theory has a shrink-wrap agreement that tells you not to apply it unless YOU believe the axioms in your particular case. The theory itself is truth-neutral.
Euclid's fifth postulate (parallel lines don't intersect) is true relative to planar geometry, but not spherical geometry. That's why you don't use Euclidean geometry to navigate unless you're a flat-earther, and most of them fell off the edge ages ago...
"I have heard people arguing for (NOT against) "Big Bang" and expanding Universe on the Bible basis. It is actually amazing how many physicists are religious.. "
Yeah, I remember a Papal circular(?) that approved the Big Bang theory (gee -- thanks?). I don't think it strange at all that many physicists are religious. Anybody who has really looked around realizes the universe is an awesome place. If you think you know how it works, please think again, the one thing that science teaches over and over again is that there are no final answers. Physicists, more than most, are aware of this.
I get along very well with religious and spirtual people and even have mild leanings in that direction myself. Only those who want to mess with what other people's kids are taught draw my ire. I have no problems with discussing the problems with speciation and its unproved nature, but its the best theory we have to date. It deserves study, if only so one of those kids can successfully refute it later.
Well, if you were taught that science is about provable facts, not amassing the best guesses based on the evidence so far, you were greatly misinformed. Anyone teaching science in this fashion needs re-education just as much as the rabid creationists.
All science is theory. There is a convention to call stuff that hasn't been doubted in centuries "Law", but it just means a theory that is very hard to doubt, and requires lots of decimal points to disprove.
Please read something about science, in particular the scientific method. Proof is a technique of mathematics, NOT science. Even there you find true statements that cannot be proven, so reliance on proof not the best thing to hold your breath for.
"the last contributing author to the Bible died almost 2000 years ago."
Yes, an excellent point. Exactly the reason I don't look to a bible for how to run my life today. However, a creationist will usually tell you that the Bible is the "word of God" handed down from on high, correct in all details. Except for dinosaurs anyway...
Yes. Along this vein, since all medical science is just theory, not proven, we will henceforth return to the time proven practice of letting barbers treat patients by bleeding them. After all - its MUCH cheaper and it can't be proven to be any less effective.
Actually, RedHat still holds 66.8M shares outside those offered for sale. The $3G figure comes from $50/share times that. They can capitalize themselves in future by selling those shares at whatever the market is then, for the cost of losing some control. They only get the 14$ price on the 6M shares they offered so far, or about $84M.
Sounds ridiculous, but the readability of the desktop is one of its more important attributes. Maybe you enjoy getting headaches from eyestrain after hours of programming, not I.
Another issue is that it was recently regulated that all "telecom devices" must abide by the handicapped access laws, where it isn't difficult or expensive to implement. I'd hate to see Linux computers being rejected by PHB's on the basis of being a poor choice for readability for those with sight problems.
"Pi (and all transendentals, and probably all irrationals as well) will, if you look long enough, contain every possible sequence that exists."
Consider all reals whose decimal expansion does not contain the digit 0 anywhere. There are uncountably many such reals, Cantor's diagonal argument still applies. Hence infinitely many such numbers must be irrational because the rationals are countable. Any real number without 0 in its expansion cannot contain all sequences, so the hypothesis is false for irrationals at least. I don't have a proof for transcendental numbers, but I'm pretty sure there are transcendentals without 0 in their decimal expansion.
I believe MSCDEX is just an interface layer to allow a read only CD device to appear as an MS filesystem. If you need to run your CD in real mode you'll also need a real driver for your specific CD device in CONFIG.SYS. Win9x often comments out the CD driver line in CONFIG.SYS when it is installed, thinking you won't be needing real mode drivers anymore, which is true unles you use MS-DOS mode or reboot to real DOS.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, happened to me earlier too, but if you're reading this, it's ok now.
Really! I shot my TV years and years ago.
If the pediatricians had recommended TV be avoided by children of all ages because of its mind-numbing nature, the or brainwashing ads, I could approve somewhat.
This sounds too much like the basis for a new law for my comfort. If it remains the pediatricians disapproving TV for the very young (or in general), ok.
Jim
Oh, I see, its signal to noise. You'd want to define the difference for us? I'll decide whats signal and whats noise for me, I don't need or want your help (or the government's).
Just where do you get off telling CmdrTaco what to post? Some of us think attacks on civil liberty are worth knowing about -- whether they actually justify concern or not.
Gee, I'm sorry more people are using slashdot. Its a shame it couldn't have remained just the twenty people who knew about it the first day! Then it could be a nice insular community that agreed with itself all day, what fun!
Jim
Typical. You're too lazy to exercise simple judgement over which articles you read. The answer isn't for you to choose what you read, no, everyone you don't like should shut up.
In case you haven't noticed this is exactly the reason we are fighting censorship in this society. People are too lazy to control their own viewing and instead want to silence those whose viewpoints anger or shock them.
Get a life, and next time - if its by Jon Katz, do us all a favor and don't click!
Jim
Yeah, I wouldn't fare too well either, admittedly :) But it sounds more fair than the drivel above.
Aren't the ACLU considered leftist? They've been involved in nearly all the important free speech battles in the courts. They have gone to court to support the right of the nazi party to protest peacefully -- do you really think they would support legislation to ban the thought?
There is a rather vocal politically-correct-liberal movement at this time, but it is relatively new, and is hardly representative of all leftists/liberals.
I rather wish we could vote for platform items rather than candidates, as I'm always faced with the situation of agreeing with one candidate on some issues, the other candidate on others, and neither on many. Who needs parties anyway?
Jim
One of the problems with the "randomness" argument is that we are seeing the universe from an extremely biased viewpoint - somewhere life DID arise. In fact if you think about it, the question can only come up in such a place. Considering that there are billions of galaxies with billions of solar systems each and its all been going on billions of years, I don't find it unlikely that some extremely improbable things would occur somewhere.
I'm also not convinced its all that unlikely - order arises from chaos all the time. And this is far from true randomness. There seem to be definite rules governing the interaction of matter and energy across the observable universe. The existence and origin of these laws is the more interesting metaphysical question, not how life arose.
Jim
"What Apple had was a game machine"
Well, they had 16 colors while IBM supported your choice of monochrome text or two entire palettes of four colors each. Plus a really braindead video memory interleaving scheme. Which system would YOU write games for?
This doesn't prove serious software wasn't written for the Apple. For example -- VisiCalc, which is one of the most novel and important pieces of application software to come out of that time. You have heard of spreadsheets, right?
BTW. I've never owned an Apple, though I had a lot of fun with a IIe a friend of mine had back then.
Jim
"under the protection of God's Law -- and that is the only law any white man is bound to obey"
Interesting. What laws do women, children, and people of color have to obey? Let me guess -- whatever the "white men" say?
If there is a god, and they were just, then each person would be sent to the worst afterlife they have ever wished on another.
Jim
I've been living in the Bay Area all my life.
To understand why the Bay Area is painted as liberal, compare the voting returns on a clear liberal/conservative issue between the Bay Area and L.A. regions next election. It really does vote that way, generally.
You're right that Silicon Valley is a conservative stronghold (not surprising, is it, suits with money are usually conservative, no?). Most of the Peninsula to the south is also conservative as well.
Places like San Francisco, Oakland, Marin, and Berkeley on the other hand, are rather liberal, and do have the kind of community you suggest.
Unfortunately a lot of over-the-top PC has crept in with the liberalism since the '60s, so I'm not sure they're all that much better from a geek standpoint.
Cyberspace is the only real home geeks will ever have. Don't let them take it away.
Jim
Wish I could deny it, but alas I can't. Crazy as charged.
I'm rather shocked at the quantity of responses that imply removing evolution from the state required curriculum is a good move, I had thought slashdotters more rational.
If we extend this logically to removing all scientific theories, whats left? There are NO scientificly proven facts, just things we've measured to a given tolerance. Oh, we only throw out the ones that happen to disagree with some religous belief? Ah, now I get it!
Jim
Close but not quite. An axiom doesn't really have a truth value, its just something to base a theory on. A theory is just a set of consequences that follow from a given set of assumptions (axioms) by logic. Since the theories' consequences are useless unless all the axioms are true, using the theory implies belief in its axioms, for the particular case under consideration. Every mathematical theory has a shrink-wrap agreement that tells you not to apply it unless YOU believe the axioms in your particular case. The theory itself is truth-neutral.
Euclid's fifth postulate (parallel lines don't intersect) is true relative to planar geometry, but not spherical geometry. That's why you don't use Euclidean geometry to navigate unless you're a flat-earther, and most of them fell off the edge ages ago...
Jim
"I have heard people arguing for (NOT against) "Big Bang" and expanding Universe on the Bible basis. It is actually amazing how many physicists are religious.. "
Yeah, I remember a Papal circular(?) that approved the Big Bang theory (gee -- thanks?). I don't think it strange at all that many physicists are religious. Anybody who has really looked around realizes the universe is an awesome place. If you think you know how it works, please think again, the one thing that science teaches over and over again is that there are no final answers. Physicists, more than most, are aware of this.
I get along very well with religious and spirtual people and even have mild leanings in that direction myself. Only those who want to mess with what other people's kids are taught draw my ire. I have no problems with discussing the problems with speciation and its unproved nature, but its the best theory we have to date. It deserves study, if only so one of those kids can successfully refute it later.
Jim
You're assuming that something exists. For all we know the universe is structured nothingness. See virtual vacuum theories.
You're assuming the universe is closed, the first thing could have been injected from outside if not.
You're assuming the universe is finite in time duration - if it was never created the question is meaningless.
And as long as were on the subject, if god exists, who created her? If god always existed, then why can't the universe always have existed?
Other than that - an excellent question, I hope we'll have an answer someday.
Well, if you were taught that science is about provable facts, not amassing the best guesses based on the evidence so far, you were greatly misinformed. Anyone teaching science in this fashion needs re-education just as much as the rabid creationists.
All science is theory. There is a convention to call stuff that hasn't been doubted in centuries "Law", but it just means a theory that is very hard to doubt, and requires lots of decimal points to disprove.
Please read something about science, in particular the scientific method. Proof is a technique of mathematics, NOT science. Even there you find true statements that cannot be proven, so reliance on proof not the best thing to hold your breath for.
"the last contributing author to the Bible died almost 2000 years ago."
Yes, an excellent point. Exactly the reason I don't look to a bible for how to run my life today. However, a creationist will usually tell you that the Bible is the "word of God" handed down from on high, correct in all details. Except for dinosaurs anyway...
Yes. Along this vein, since all medical science is just theory, not proven, we will henceforth return to the time proven practice of letting barbers treat patients by bleeding them. After all - its MUCH cheaper and it can't be proven to be any less effective.
Can't spell 1st, can't count to two -- I don't suppose you've heard of evolution? Personally, I can't wait.
See the hof link at top on the left of the page.
Actually, RedHat still holds 66.8M shares outside those offered for sale. The $3G figure comes from $50/share times that. They can capitalize themselves in future by selling those shares at whatever the market is then, for the cost of losing some control. They only get the 14$ price on the 6M shares they offered so far, or about $84M.
Sounds ridiculous, but the readability of the desktop is one of its more important attributes. Maybe you enjoy getting headaches from eyestrain after hours of programming, not I.
Another issue is that it was recently regulated that all "telecom devices" must abide by the handicapped access laws, where it isn't difficult or expensive to implement. I'd hate to see Linux computers being rejected by PHB's on the basis of being a poor choice for readability for those with sight problems.
Jim
"Pi (and all transendentals, and probably all irrationals as well) will, if you look long enough, contain every possible sequence that exists."
Consider all reals whose decimal expansion does not contain the digit 0 anywhere. There are uncountably many such reals, Cantor's diagonal argument still applies. Hence infinitely many such numbers must be irrational because the rationals are countable. Any real number without 0 in its expansion cannot contain all sequences, so the hypothesis is false for irrationals at least. I don't have a proof for transcendental numbers, but I'm pretty sure there are transcendentals without 0 in their decimal expansion.
Jim
Try +windows +computers, that's Yahoo syntax.
I believe MSCDEX is just an interface layer to allow a read only CD device to appear as an MS filesystem. If you need to run your CD in real mode you'll also need a real driver for your specific CD device in CONFIG.SYS. Win9x often comments out the CD driver line in CONFIG.SYS when it is installed, thinking you won't be needing real mode drivers anymore, which is true unles you use MS-DOS mode or reboot to real DOS.
Jim