I've already seen the usual "This is news?" posts, so here's my experience. This matters because there are some nerds that meet a member of the opposite sex, score, and have a kid.
Something like this could have been handy when I was a new dad, seven plus years ago. As it was, I hit gold when I did a Yahoo search on "colic", which my kid had. Some enterprising geek dad came up with a series of rotating images that calmed kids down. So when 3am rolled around and it was my turn to console the unconsolable I would fire up that web page and ALT+TAB between that page and Baldur's Gate. I actually think Baldur's Gate had a more calming influence than the colic web page - what could be more soothing and calming than leading a party through kobold infested mines?
As for the advice about Baby Showers? If you're a man don't attend. Not all things are equal and I'd rather be knee deep in an imploded Diaper Genie than at another baby shower... It's pure humiliation to listen to what women talk about those things. It was probably a significant reason the standing army was invented.
My advice is buy yourself a BabyBjorn so you can do normal stuff without worrying about the baby crawling into an open pit or getting mauled by a household pet. These things let you hang the infant off the front or back. If it hangs in front with the little geek-to-be facing outwards they'll watch your computer screen for hours. It helps to have something other than/. up, like Baldur's Gate - a little bit more to watch. My kid particularly enjoyed it when the mage hit third level and started leveling the playing field with fireballs.
Perhaps, but logically it only makes sense to begin with the assumption that God doesn't exist. Going from there, the challenge is to find evidence which supports God's existence.
Doesn't the assumption depend upon how one defines 'god'? For example, traditional Catholic philosophy, and dating back before that (I'm thinking Summa Theologica here but there are older documents) define god as "First cause." The first causal agent in a string of events that resulted in human history. In that case, if one begins with the assumption that god does exist you're looking for evidence that nothing was caused and always has been - with, perhaps and by way of example - adaptation explaining variation.
Even more interesting than the discussions around God's existence is the definition people have of god. And while I enjoyed the article you cited by Penn Jillette (I heard it on my morning commute) his explanation is about as hollow as a empty soup can - he's talking about his definition of god and peoples' reaction to their definition of god. That's sociology and not theology or philosophy.
Already heard that one.... can't prove god doesn't exist or does exist therefore seeing the bibile tells us so he must exist... the book, written by men.. for men to believe in. Nice try...
I'm not trying to convince you of anything except that such absolute statements are, well, absolute. Absolutists tend to be the core constituents of any True Believers.
The claim that god doesn't exist is as suspicious as the claim god does exist - neither point can be proved. Anyone who goes around making either claim is stating something that's not only absurd but can't be substantiated with any evidence.
Put Simply... there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell, no Devil, no reincarnation, no magic...
You know, statements like this are no different than the statement you finish your post with:
I was told by an enlightened Christian friend in the past that I would be going to hell after I died due to me not accepting God and Jesus
Absolutism. You cannot prove or disprove God's existence. Of course, if one pays attention in Philosophy 101 nothing can be proved or disproved. But even with a strict posivitist understanding of reality/perception that statement is no more bogus than the stream of junk coming from televangelists: it's pure absolutism.
How can you be that sure of something you can't prove or disprove?
"According the Forbes, EMI has an understanding with Apple that flat fee pricing will end within the next 12 months, and more popular songs will be priced higher than 99c, while lesser known acts will be priced lower than 99c."
As much as I think this is a tremendous mistake and pure greed I have to shrug of the economic impact it will have on me. The music I listen to is unpopular, at least according to iTunes "What other's bought" links.
My musical tastes typically roam from classical to new age - written by composers who are either dead and/or performed by folks most people wouldn't care to see nude; so the popularity tax influenced by hype for 'famous' people won't hit me!
Some notable finds: the first appearance of Palpatine in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones is on the same frame. Also, the Jedi Rocks music in Episode VI provides amusing accompaniment to the Anakain/Obi-Wan vs. Dooku fight in Episode III.
Hmmm. I wonder happens in the other five movies during the frames when Princess Leah is in a bikini there on Jabba's throne? Guess they didn't notice the other five screens?
I used to buy used copies of software so I could send in the manual cover or an install disc and get the upgrade price. Though that's probably not a much offered route anymore, consider how this can mean potential upgrade business down the road.
If a company buys six licenses of an older version of SQL or even Windows, especially a small organization, they could potentially upgrade to the 'full' version for 1/2 the price of the new software. I'm not sure what the pricing works out to, but this could be a very smart move on MS's part to generate upgrade customers who would otherwise not own the product in the first place.
Quite appropriate, as what was needed was a watch.
The watch mechanism had nothing to do with the discovery of measuring longitude - it was the materials engineering the watchmaker used that would not shrink and expand in varying heat and moisture conditions as ships moved north and south.
My original point, obviously not stated clearly is simple: don't judge the messenger but the message. Slashdot is full of people who point fingers and laugh without verifying the merit of what is being spoken. Perhaps they are relieving the pressure of pent-up adolescent angst? Person and personality attacks should be irrelevant in most discussions of science and ideas.
Wow. It's a good thing the scientific method isn't contingent upon prejudices such as yours.
"He is a medic and an electrical engineer, what the fuck is he doing publishing papers on "The Fallacy of Feynman's Argument on the Stability of the Hydrogen Atom According to Quantum Mechanics".
And there were absolutely no scientists that were patent clerks, pushing paper around a desk?
The man who invented the tool to determine longitude was... a watch maker!
Seriously you build upon the failures that DHTML, HTML, Javascript, XML, XMLHTTRequest and you form a system which requires at least a 1 ghz processor just run a very simple GUI.
AJAX-enabled applications like Google Maps and GMail run fine on my G3 iBook with Safari and OS X 10.4. I don't think they necessarily have to have additional processor requirements on the client side.
Saying DHTML, HTML, Javascript, XML, and XMLHTTRequest are all failures is a little extreme. Saying each fails at being everything is 100% correct and 200% redundant - nothing is everything. I applaud the use of XML and Javascript to place more processing on the client side. It's not without its problems, but then nothing is everything.
This is also a good example of how bad Java and Sun has failed. If Sun would've opened up Java, let people distribute it, as well as from day 1 enabled easy RMI over HTTP we wouldn't be up to our necks in a horrible mixture of presentation logic and business logic.
I agree with this - this was Sun's sweetspot about 10 years ago, wasn't it? Client's connecting to applications so our experience was built upon thin clients instead of desktop applications.
So here we are, requiring gargantuan browser which are brought to a halt with this AJAX technology when we had many other technologies which did so much better but failed for various other reasons.
Again - this is just not true, at least in my experience. If my 800 mhz iBook with OS 10.4 and Safari can run Gmail as fast as Mail.app then I'm sold on the usability of quality engineered AJAX-enabled applications.
Is Microsoft already resigning to playing second-fiddle to ALL of Google's ideas? Can they not innovate anything on their own?
What have they 'innovated'? Flight Simulator was bought from the Bruce Artwick Organization. Viso was purchased. Solomon from Great Plains Software. Excel came from the same spreadsheet software the 'others' came from. Even Hotmail was purchased from someone else. Has Microsoft released anything that wasn't already available or previously available under the original/previous owner (prior to Microsoft buying the company or the product)?
Microsoft is an industry-leading company (whether y'all like it or not) -- for them to begin copying everything Google does establishes Google's domination over them.
In the same way GM and Ford used to be in the U.S. But look how easily that was upset by early Japanese efforts. Hell, even the Yugo posed a challenge. I think that speaks volumes to "industry-leading" being used to describe market dominance; which is probably the same thing for anyone trying to break in the market?
They just keep making the door wider and wider for Google to step right into their own markets with behavior like this. I firmly believe that the Microsoft marketing machine is making some serious mistakes in their fight against Google.
I think you're right on with this. They are being led by someone else's innovation, which means they are copying successful initiatives produced by others. Google Reader is built upon the success of Google's Gmail - not a successful product from another company. Microsoft seems incapable of coming up with new stuff. And that is how companies start to lose their dominance: look at Kodak (the only film producer/processor prior to digital camera) and Xerox (the only document replicator 25 years ago).
Some Wikipedians have created the No Ads Wikiproject in response.
Yeah... because that's cheaper than taking the annual bill for Wikipedia hosting and bandwidth, dividing it equally amongst themselves, and forking over the cash.
I hope the proposed solution works for them. It's a lot more reasonable and likely to succeed than the No Ad version.
I see that you subscribe to the popular fantasy that there's some practical difference between the wings of the Ruling Party.
There's a huge difference. First: Clinton smoked cigars. Bush did cocaine and drank heavily. Second: Clinton used his cigar in unique ways. In the end you might say Clinton got Bush!
I am also from the "American West" as you call it. I have driven to many out of the way places and find it hard to imagine that you couldn't easily find headphones. I do believe that you could find many stores that don't carry them.
Wow, I think this is the second person to have questioned that. Trust me... I drove the 600 miles that day. There were headphones available in our town of departure and in the town we arrived in, but nothing in between.
The southwestern corner of Wyoming, where one can drive in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado in one day, had few stops. None had headphones. And this was four years ago, there may now be stores that do sell headphones. But the route chosen was off the beaten path, on highways were some stretches hadn't been resurfaced in years. Granted, I did not stop at every whistle stop along the route.
Slashdot Mirror
I've already seen the usual "This is news?" posts, so here's my experience. This matters because there are some nerds that meet a member of the opposite sex, score, and have a kid.
Something like this could have been handy when I was a new dad, seven plus years ago. As it was, I hit gold when I did a Yahoo search on "colic", which my kid had. Some enterprising geek dad came up with a series of rotating images that calmed kids down. So when 3am rolled around and it was my turn to console the unconsolable I would fire up that web page and ALT+TAB between that page and Baldur's Gate. I actually think Baldur's Gate had a more calming influence than the colic web page - what could be more soothing and calming than leading a party through kobold infested mines?
As for the advice about Baby Showers? If you're a man don't attend. Not all things are equal and I'd rather be knee deep in an imploded Diaper Genie than at another baby shower... It's pure humiliation to listen to what women talk about those things. It was probably a significant reason the standing army was invented.
My advice is buy yourself a BabyBjorn so you can do normal stuff without worrying about the baby crawling into an open pit or getting mauled by a household pet. These things let you hang the infant off the front or back. If it hangs in front with the little geek-to-be facing outwards they'll watch your computer screen for hours. It helps to have something other than /. up, like Baldur's Gate - a little bit more to watch. My kid particularly enjoyed it when the mage hit third level and started leveling the playing field with fireballs.
He'll grow up to be a geek yet ;-)
Perhaps, but logically it only makes sense to begin with the assumption that God doesn't exist. Going from there, the challenge is to find evidence which supports God's existence.
Doesn't the assumption depend upon how one defines 'god'? For example, traditional Catholic philosophy, and dating back before that (I'm thinking Summa Theologica here but there are older documents) define god as "First cause." The first causal agent in a string of events that resulted in human history. In that case, if one begins with the assumption that god does exist you're looking for evidence that nothing was caused and always has been - with, perhaps and by way of example - adaptation explaining variation.
Even more interesting than the discussions around God's existence is the definition people have of god. And while I enjoyed the article you cited by Penn Jillette (I heard it on my morning commute) his explanation is about as hollow as a empty soup can - he's talking about his definition of god and peoples' reaction to their definition of god. That's sociology and not theology or philosophy.
Already heard that one.... can't prove god doesn't exist or does exist therefore seeing the bibile tells us so he must exist... the book, written by men.. for men to believe in. Nice try...
I'm not trying to convince you of anything except that such absolute statements are, well, absolute. Absolutists tend to be the core constituents of any True Believers.
The claim that god doesn't exist is as suspicious as the claim god does exist - neither point can be proved. Anyone who goes around making either claim is stating something that's not only absurd but can't be substantiated with any evidence.
Put Simply... there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell, no Devil, no reincarnation, no magic...
You know, statements like this are no different than the statement you finish your post with:
I was told by an enlightened Christian friend in the past that I would be going to hell after I died due to me not accepting God and Jesus
Absolutism. You cannot prove or disprove God's existence. Of course, if one pays attention in Philosophy 101 nothing can be proved or disproved. But even with a strict posivitist understanding of reality/perception that statement is no more bogus than the stream of junk coming from televangelists: it's pure absolutism.
How can you be that sure of something you can't prove or disprove?
It's what led me to research browsers other than IE - I landed happily in the lap of Opera and stayed there for years, while on Windows.
There wasn't a damn thing I could float past her my entire childhood.
As much as I think this is a tremendous mistake and pure greed I have to shrug of the economic impact it will have on me. The music I listen to is unpopular, at least according to iTunes "What other's bought" links.
My musical tastes typically roam from classical to new age - written by composers who are either dead and/or performed by folks most people wouldn't care to see nude; so the popularity tax influenced by hype for 'famous' people won't hit me!
... MILS ... Mothers I'd Like to Sue ...
Unless the 'girl' is Lauren Bacall.
Hmmm. I wonder happens in the other five movies during the frames when Princess Leah is in a bikini there on Jabba's throne? Guess they didn't notice the other five screens?
I used to buy used copies of software so I could send in the manual cover or an install disc and get the upgrade price. Though that's probably not a much offered route anymore, consider how this can mean potential upgrade business down the road. If a company buys six licenses of an older version of SQL or even Windows, especially a small organization, they could potentially upgrade to the 'full' version for 1/2 the price of the new software. I'm not sure what the pricing works out to, but this could be a very smart move on MS's part to generate upgrade customers who would otherwise not own the product in the first place.
What better way to learn where Uzbekistan is, than to invade Iran from it?
What? There's a country other than the United States?
Quite appropriate, as what was needed was a watch.
The watch mechanism had nothing to do with the discovery of measuring longitude - it was the materials engineering the watchmaker used that would not shrink and expand in varying heat and moisture conditions as ships moved north and south.
My original point, obviously not stated clearly is simple: don't judge the messenger but the message. Slashdot is full of people who point fingers and laugh without verifying the merit of what is being spoken. Perhaps they are relieving the pressure of pent-up adolescent angst? Person and personality attacks should be irrelevant in most discussions of science and ideas.
Wow. It's a good thing the scientific method isn't contingent upon prejudices such as yours.
"He is a medic and an electrical engineer, what the fuck is he doing publishing papers on "The Fallacy of Feynman's Argument on the Stability of the Hydrogen Atom According to Quantum Mechanics".
And there were absolutely no scientists that were patent clerks, pushing paper around a desk?
The man who invented the tool to determine longitude was ... a watch maker!
Seriously you build upon the failures that DHTML, HTML, Javascript, XML, XMLHTTRequest and you form a system which requires at least a 1 ghz processor just run a very simple GUI.
AJAX-enabled applications like Google Maps and GMail run fine on my G3 iBook with Safari and OS X 10.4. I don't think they necessarily have to have additional processor requirements on the client side.
Saying DHTML, HTML, Javascript, XML, and XMLHTTRequest are all failures is a little extreme. Saying each fails at being everything is 100% correct and 200% redundant - nothing is everything. I applaud the use of XML and Javascript to place more processing on the client side. It's not without its problems, but then nothing is everything.
This is also a good example of how bad Java and Sun has failed. If Sun would've opened up Java, let people distribute it, as well as from day 1 enabled easy RMI over HTTP we wouldn't be up to our necks in a horrible mixture of presentation logic and business logic.
I agree with this - this was Sun's sweetspot about 10 years ago, wasn't it? Client's connecting to applications so our experience was built upon thin clients instead of desktop applications.
So here we are, requiring gargantuan browser which are brought to a halt with this AJAX technology when we had many other technologies which did so much better but failed for various other reasons.
Again - this is just not true, at least in my experience. If my 800 mhz iBook with OS 10.4 and Safari can run Gmail as fast as Mail.app then I'm sold on the usability of quality engineered AJAX-enabled applications.
Hah! Wish I had mod points. That's hysterical!
Why do they always perform tests on rats, and claim the results are somehow valid for or relevant to humans?
Well, except for the part where the rats curl up and go to sleep between tasks humans aren't that much different!
Is Microsoft already resigning to playing second-fiddle to ALL of Google's ideas? Can they not innovate anything on their own?
What have they 'innovated'? Flight Simulator was bought from the Bruce Artwick Organization. Viso was purchased. Solomon from Great Plains Software. Excel came from the same spreadsheet software the 'others' came from. Even Hotmail was purchased from someone else. Has Microsoft released anything that wasn't already available or previously available under the original/previous owner (prior to Microsoft buying the company or the product)?
Microsoft is an industry-leading company (whether y'all like it or not) -- for them to begin copying everything Google does establishes Google's domination over them.
In the same way GM and Ford used to be in the U.S. But look how easily that was upset by early Japanese efforts. Hell, even the Yugo posed a challenge. I think that speaks volumes to "industry-leading" being used to describe market dominance; which is probably the same thing for anyone trying to break in the market?
They just keep making the door wider and wider for Google to step right into their own markets with behavior like this. I firmly believe that the Microsoft marketing machine is making some serious mistakes in their fight against Google.
I think you're right on with this. They are being led by someone else's innovation, which means they are copying successful initiatives produced by others. Google Reader is built upon the success of Google's Gmail - not a successful product from another company. Microsoft seems incapable of coming up with new stuff. And that is how companies start to lose their dominance: look at Kodak (the only film producer/processor prior to digital camera) and Xerox (the only document replicator 25 years ago).
Look who we have now - what's the issue?! I daresay the Onion is much more forthright than our current administration!
Some Wikipedians have created the No Ads Wikiproject in response.
Yeah ... because that's cheaper than taking the annual bill for Wikipedia hosting and bandwidth, dividing it equally amongst themselves, and forking over the cash.
I hope the proposed solution works for them. It's a lot more reasonable and likely to succeed than the No Ad version.
I see that you subscribe to the popular fantasy that there's some practical difference between the wings of the Ruling Party.
There's a huge difference. First: Clinton smoked cigars. Bush did cocaine and drank heavily. Second: Clinton used his cigar in unique ways. In the end you might say Clinton got Bush!
They forgot Sweden
No they didn't. They just didn't see the Wi-Fi point behind the tall blond with blue eyes.
You say this:
I feel this is a breach of our rights.
And then say:
But having said that, what personal information have you actually sent to Google (searching habits excluded)?
If you don't know what they are collecting, and are asking instead of reading the Policy, how can you say this is a breach of your rights?
Yeah, on that particular trip we intentionally avoided interstates and drove the 'thin blue lines' on the maps.
I am also from the "American West" as you call it. I have driven to many out of the way places and find it hard to imagine that you couldn't easily find headphones. I do believe that you could find many stores that don't carry them.
Wow, I think this is the second person to have questioned that. Trust me ... I drove the 600 miles that day. There were headphones available in our town of departure and in the town we arrived in, but nothing in between.
The southwestern corner of Wyoming, where one can drive in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado in one day, had few stops. None had headphones. And this was four years ago, there may now be stores that do sell headphones. But the route chosen was off the beaten path, on highways were some stretches hadn't been resurfaced in years. Granted, I did not stop at every whistle stop along the route.