"If a program really needs the privileges, it can get them granted by the user [...] one has to question how effective this really is"
As with *nix the user can only excalate to their own level of access, if they don't have admin rights they can't hand them out. If this is effective in *nix to stop random users running as root (and it is) then it should also be just as effective in windows.
It's fine to blame "windows programmers" for the pop-ups that plague vista but in my experience (20yrs) most proffesional developers are also "*nix programmers". Conditional compilation and a lot more testing is the price one pays for supporting a diverse range of O/S's.
As a qualified old fart, I think the emphasis on his belief (or lack of belief if you prefer) is a recent thing (since 'the god delusion' hit the bookstores), in my mind he will always be famous for 'the selfish gene', my 1989 copy says it was first published in 76.
"I think it's quite useless to postulate about which behaviours or ideas should be spread more, because of presumed evolutionary benefits."
Exactly, and if you bring the psudeo-science of eugenics into it then it's worse than useless.
"As a theist I don't think survival is the greatest good anyway."
I'm not a theist but that doesn't mean the existance of the Universe is anything less than a miricale. Deep down I don't belive in good and evil, although I instinctively recognise the behaviour and firmly belive there are things worth fighting and dying for. What I have come to accept is that the Universe 'just is', as such I have no argument with a theist who likewise accepts that god 'just is'.
IMHO Dawkins (along with S.J.Gould) will be remebered as giants of 20th century biology, but philosphy and religion are about wisdom not intellect.
IIRC engineers are still disputing the cause so I don't think the de-bunking is coming to a conclusion anytime soon. Yes, the mythbusters failed induce resonance when they tried, but they also failed to mention the Wobbly Bridge.
The wave argument is that the "rinse and repeat" frequency just happened to be the same as the resonant frequency of the main bridge cables, this took the areodynamicly induced twisting motion and turned it into opposing waves of maximum amplitute along the two main cables. If you watch the video it's quite easy to see that the cables are indeed carrying waves.
I accept that the deck of a suspension bridge is designed to move in the wind like tall buildings do, and also that bad areodynamics could easily induce a twisting of the deck in the right conditions. However it's a long bow to draw to say that the deck flapped itself to destruction in a 40mph wind while at the same time totally dismissing the compounding effects of resonance.
"How many general programming tasks fall in between, where they don't run fast enough on one core and don't naturally break into units that can be split across cores? I'm not a professional software developer, but I don't think there are very many of those tasks that need to be stuffed into the 'general programming' category.
"
IAAPSD and I've put your query into my database, when it's done the bell will ring.;)
"Luckily I convinced them to get a computer but it wasn't until I moved out that they had the internet..."
No offence but it's only a matter of time until you do the same thing, if you don't you will go broke.
We got our first record player in 1967 I was 8yo, my parents thought I had broken it because I had left it switched to 45rpm. My dad refused to get a phone until the mid seventies (when his work payed for it). To emphasize the point, I watched an episode of "kid nation" here in Australia a while back...
12-13yo kid reading the label on a picture: "Phon-o-graph!!! What the f-eep is that?", he takes a closer look and notices the record in the picture and then says something like, "....it can't be that old it has a DVD on top of it".
PS: If you still think it was rough without the internet, try skateboarding with ceramic wheels! Now get of my lawn!
Knowing how Sigfreid does a card trick does not mean you won't be dumbfounded when Roy pulls a monkey out of his arse. I'm not saying education is worthless but even the process of educating staff on various common 'tricks', is in itself, a target for social engineering.
"Authorization? How about the United States FUCKING government? Lose the grid, or you lose your job." - Special Agent Johnson - Die Hard movie.
While the smoke is still coming from the error burn I might just add that the point of my reply was that atheisim did not make Dawkins famous, if anything it was the other way around.
I don't know the answer to the question about the assumed evolutionary advantages bestowed on theists. Is it more advantageous to follow the preist or the prophet, or is more advantageous to do a bit of both and let god/evolution sort it out?
I was born in the '50's and wholeheartedly agree with you. Back then a 200hp industrial electric motor was about the size of a mini, today they can fit in a suitcase. However I think some governments (in particular the US & Australia) have been deliberately sticking their fingers in their ears and singing tingle-ingle-loo since the late 90's. Some lobbyists (particulaly coal & oil) have sponsered mass media anti-science campagins that remind me of the tabacco 'scientists' of the 80's (look up a guy called Fred Singer, for a counter example look up Lord Oxburgh).
The Fred Singer's have lost (again), they did manage to delay common sense for ~10yrs but that has also served to strengthen the science. I don't mind paying my kids generation to fix broken infrastucture, I know their super athletic kids living in the attic will point out the mistakes.
Heh, the six states of Australia cooperate in a similar fashion to the USA, they all have their own constitution, elections, parliment, budget, police, prisons, ect. Our capital city (Canberra) has it's own bit of territory called the ACT (Australian Capital Territory), it's function is similar to Washington DC but it's located in the middle of nowhere. The premiers of all six states had to agree to the national gun laws before they could be enacted.
We have only been federated about 100yrs, have never had a civil war, and had a 'white Australia' policy up until the 60's. Despite our apparent homogenous appearnce there are cutlural, legal and language differences between the states, admittedly they are hard to spot unless your an Aussie.
"According to my calculator, that's a 0.00000733333 chance of getting shot every year."
Actually it's the chance of being murdered by gunshot in the US, it doesn't count accidents or non-fatal shootings. Work the same odds for Australia and you will find they are about 1/10 the US number. An order of magnitude is a big difference regardless of how small the numbers are.
This difference has little to do with gun laws and everything to do with culture. As the NRA found out when it came to lobby against our laws in '97. The 'self-defense' meme just doesn't work here in Oz, we have never needed guns to defend ourselves in the past, so why would we need them now?
"Yup, we really need to ban those guns"
Personally I don't give a flying fuck what you do in the US, but please keep the small-arms marketing droids from the NRA out of Oz. They may very well have reason to defend themselves from the Aussie public after their memorable display of bad taste in '97 and I have no idea how they would do that without guns.
"Let me explain it then. I recently had a conversation with an anti-gun woman."
Yes I see what you mean, ALL "anti-gun types" own a pack of rabid dogs and are incapable of forming a cohesive argument. However you forgot to mention that ALL "pro-gun types" dress like John Wayne and post bullshit anecdotes on slashdot.
BTW: On a global scale, dogs kill ~3000 people a year, making them one of the most dangerous animals on the planet. OTOH in the US alone ~22,000 people die from gunshot wounds each year.
"Look into how well this has worked out in Australia. They banned guns a year ago,..."
What a crock of shit. The murder rate from guns stands at around 200/yr out of 20 million, it did before the bans and it still does after the bans (10yrs ago btw). There has been a small drop in suicides by gun.
What people fail to realise is that Aussies were never really gun nuts to start with, owning a handgun has always been uncommon, carrying one has always been socially unacceptable.
Yeah, there are a few of them, the biblical "fruit of the knowledge tree" is another. Combined with their frequent product placements on TV and movies linking the logo with well-balanced, creative people, (who just happen to have no money worries), and it all smells like viral marketing to me.
Interestingly the WP entry on apple has three different logo's. The first dipicts Newton under a tree, the second is the 'rainbow' one from the 80's (again with the gay connection), last is the current monochrome version.
"The treatment of Turing is a shame - he arguably saved more lives than anyone else in WW2."
I agree, the Betchley park guys kept the Atlantic open, and their US franchise shortend the Pacific war using the same techniques. The Manhattan project 'got all the attention' because it signaled the end of WW2 and the start of the cold war. Turing's woefull treament by the authorities means he will eventually take his place as the 20th century's version of Gallelieo.
It's been said that the bite is a tribute to Alan Turing (who died from eating a poisioned apple), so I assume that Apple would claim the "in memory off" thing too./ip_hyperbole
Considering the trademark fights Apple computer has had with Apple records you would think Apple computer would just STFU about it's logo. OTOH: Any publicity is good...blah, blah, therefore I suspect it's a marketing ploy or a conspirasy (same thing really)...
1. Hear about NYC cheating by copying Apple's logo - raisng recognition of both.
2. See some resemblance in the logos and think "maybe, who cares?".
3. Sub-consious msg="creative people love Apple's stuff" takes root.
4. Traditionally the last step would be "Profit!" but the accountants told me hijacking each other's logo is an intangible.
The "killer app" for Win7 is virtualization. I didn't RTFA but "Win7 doesn't care about backward compatiblity" does not translate to "MS will not bundle a virtualized XP box with Win7".
Slashdot Mirror
"If a program really needs the privileges, it can get them granted by the user [...] one has to question how effective this really is"
As with *nix the user can only excalate to their own level of access, if they don't have admin rights they can't hand them out. If this is effective in *nix to stop random users running as root (and it is) then it should also be just as effective in windows.
It's fine to blame "windows programmers" for the pop-ups that plague vista but in my experience (20yrs) most proffesional developers are also "*nix programmers". Conditional compilation and a lot more testing is the price one pays for supporting a diverse range of O/S's.
"Dawkins is perhaps most famous for his atheism"
As a qualified old fart, I think the emphasis on his belief (or lack of belief if you prefer) is a recent thing (since 'the god delusion' hit the bookstores), in my mind he will always be famous for 'the selfish gene', my 1989 copy says it was first published in 76.
"I think it's quite useless to postulate about which behaviours or ideas should be spread more, because of presumed evolutionary benefits."
Exactly, and if you bring the psudeo-science of eugenics into it then it's worse than useless.
"As a theist I don't think survival is the greatest good anyway."
I'm not a theist but that doesn't mean the existance of the Universe is anything less than a miricale. Deep down I don't belive in good and evil, although I instinctively recognise the behaviour and firmly belive there are things worth fighting and dying for. What I have come to accept is that the Universe 'just is', as such I have no argument with a theist who likewise accepts that god 'just is'.
IMHO Dawkins (along with S.J.Gould) will be remebered as giants of 20th century biology, but philosphy and religion are about wisdom not intellect.
"the twisting of the deck gives the wind a larger angle of attack, which leads to more twisting"
I accept that. What I don't understand is how does that mechanisim rule out amplification by resonance, what makes you so sure?
wobbly bridge
IIRC engineers are still disputing the cause so I don't think the de-bunking is coming to a conclusion anytime soon. Yes, the mythbusters failed induce resonance when they tried, but they also failed to mention the Wobbly Bridge.
The wave argument is that the "rinse and repeat" frequency just happened to be the same as the resonant frequency of the main bridge cables, this took the areodynamicly induced twisting motion and turned it into opposing waves of maximum amplitute along the two main cables. If you watch the video it's quite easy to see that the cables are indeed carrying waves.
I accept that the deck of a suspension bridge is designed to move in the wind like tall buildings do, and also that bad areodynamics could easily induce a twisting of the deck in the right conditions. However it's a long bow to draw to say that the deck flapped itself to destruction in a 40mph wind while at the same time totally dismissing the compounding effects of resonance.
"There was no contract."
Bugger, I've just mailed them photo with a EULA that takes effect when they open the envelope, and a bill for...(cue: pinky)...ONE MILLION DOLLARS.
"How many general programming tasks fall in between, where they don't run fast enough on one core and don't naturally break into units that can be split across cores? I'm not a professional software developer, but I don't think there are very many of those tasks that need to be stuffed into the 'general programming' category. "
;)
IAAPSD and I've put your query into my database, when it's done the bell will ring.
"Luckily I convinced them to get a computer but it wasn't until I moved out that they had the internet ..."
No offence but it's only a matter of time until you do the same thing, if you don't you will go broke.
We got our first record player in 1967 I was 8yo, my parents thought I had broken it because I had left it switched to 45rpm. My dad refused to get a phone until the mid seventies (when his work payed for it). To emphasize the point, I watched an episode of "kid nation" here in Australia a while back...
12-13yo kid reading the label on a picture: "Phon-o-graph!!! What the f-eep is that?", he takes a closer look and notices the record in the picture and then says something like, "....it can't be that old it has a DVD on top of it".
PS: If you still think it was rough without the internet, try skateboarding with ceramic wheels! Now get of my lawn!
"...and social engineering are explained"
Knowing how Sigfreid does a card trick does not mean you won't be dumbfounded when Roy pulls a monkey out of his arse. I'm not saying education is worthless but even the process of educating staff on various common 'tricks', is in itself, a target for social engineering.
"Authorization? How about the United States FUCKING government? Lose the grid, or you lose your job." - Special Agent Johnson - Die Hard movie.
While the smoke is still coming from the error burn I might just add that the point of my reply was that atheisim did not make Dawkins famous, if anything it was the other way around.
I don't know the answer to the question about the assumed evolutionary advantages bestowed on theists. Is it more advantageous to follow the preist or the prophet, or is more advantageous to do a bit of both and let god/evolution sort it out?
"Most of our oil comes now from Canada and Mexico"
Fish oil maybe?
"I think Oil should be nationalized"
Hugo will be so proud.
I was born in the '50's and wholeheartedly agree with you. Back then a 200hp industrial electric motor was about the size of a mini, today they can fit in a suitcase. However I think some governments (in particular the US & Australia) have been deliberately sticking their fingers in their ears and singing tingle-ingle-loo since the late 90's. Some lobbyists (particulaly coal & oil) have sponsered mass media anti-science campagins that remind me of the tabacco 'scientists' of the 80's (look up a guy called Fred Singer, for a counter example look up Lord Oxburgh).
The Fred Singer's have lost (again), they did manage to delay common sense for ~10yrs but that has also served to strengthen the science. I don't mind paying my kids generation to fix broken infrastucture, I know their super athletic kids living in the attic will point out the mistakes.
"Polytheism is a form of theism. So your point is what, exactly?"
Nice try, but both are forms of religion, not forms of each other. My point is you don't have a clue.
"But he's only famous/infamous for his atheism"
Yeah right, and Hawkings is only famous for his wheelchair.
"Theists do better in society"
Which society? - India for instance has at least twice as many polytheists as the entire population of the US.
Heh, the six states of Australia cooperate in a similar fashion to the USA, they all have their own constitution, elections, parliment, budget, police, prisons, ect. Our capital city (Canberra) has it's own bit of territory called the ACT (Australian Capital Territory), it's function is similar to Washington DC but it's located in the middle of nowhere. The premiers of all six states had to agree to the national gun laws before they could be enacted.
We have only been federated about 100yrs, have never had a civil war, and had a 'white Australia' policy up until the 60's. Despite our apparent homogenous appearnce there are cutlural, legal and language differences between the states, admittedly they are hard to spot unless your an Aussie.
"According to my calculator, that's a 0.00000733333 chance of getting shot every year."
Actually it's the chance of being murdered by gunshot in the US, it doesn't count accidents or non-fatal shootings. Work the same odds for Australia and you will find they are about 1/10 the US number. An order of magnitude is a big difference regardless of how small the numbers are.
This difference has little to do with gun laws and everything to do with culture. As the NRA found out when it came to lobby against our laws in '97. The 'self-defense' meme just doesn't work here in Oz, we have never needed guns to defend ourselves in the past, so why would we need them now?
"Yup, we really need to ban those guns"
Personally I don't give a flying fuck what you do in the US, but please keep the small-arms marketing droids from the NRA out of Oz. They may very well have reason to defend themselves from the Aussie public after their memorable display of bad taste in '97 and I have no idea how they would do that without guns.
"Let me explain it then. I recently had a conversation with an anti-gun woman."
Yes I see what you mean, ALL "anti-gun types" own a pack of rabid dogs and are incapable of forming a cohesive argument. However you forgot to mention that ALL "pro-gun types" dress like John Wayne and post bullshit anecdotes on slashdot.
BTW: On a global scale, dogs kill ~3000 people a year, making them one of the most dangerous animals on the planet. OTOH in the US alone ~22,000 people die from gunshot wounds each year.
"Look into how well this has worked out in Australia. They banned guns a year ago,..."
What a crock of shit. The murder rate from guns stands at around 200/yr out of 20 million, it did before the bans and it still does after the bans (10yrs ago btw). There has been a small drop in suicides by gun.
What people fail to realise is that Aussies were never really gun nuts to start with, owning a handgun has always been uncommon, carrying one has always been socially unacceptable.
Morgan Freeman, but yeah they are few and far between.
Yeah, there are a few of them, the biblical "fruit of the knowledge tree" is another. Combined with their frequent product placements on TV and movies linking the logo with well-balanced, creative people, (who just happen to have no money worries), and it all smells like viral marketing to me.
Interestingly the WP entry on apple has three different logo's. The first dipicts Newton under a tree, the second is the 'rainbow' one from the 80's (again with the gay connection), last is the current monochrome version.
"The treatment of Turing is a shame - he arguably saved more lives than anyone else in WW2."
I agree, the Betchley park guys kept the Atlantic open, and their US franchise shortend the Pacific war using the same techniques. The Manhattan project 'got all the attention' because it signaled the end of WW2 and the start of the cold war. Turing's woefull treament by the authorities means he will eventually take his place as the 20th century's version of Gallelieo.
It's been said that the bite is a tribute to Alan Turing (who died from eating a poisioned apple), so I assume that Apple would claim the "in memory off" thing too. /ip_hyperbole
Considering the trademark fights Apple computer has had with Apple records you would think Apple computer would just STFU about it's logo. OTOH: Any publicity is good...blah, blah, therefore I suspect it's a marketing ploy or a conspirasy (same thing really)...
1. Hear about NYC cheating by copying Apple's logo - raisng recognition of both.
2. See some resemblance in the logos and think "maybe, who cares?".
3. Sub-consious msg="creative people love Apple's stuff" takes root.
4. Traditionally the last step would be "Profit!" but the accountants told me hijacking each other's logo is an intangible.
The "killer app" for Win7 is virtualization. I didn't RTFA but "Win7 doesn't care about backward compatiblity" does not translate to "MS will not bundle a virtualized XP box with Win7".
"Is there a (theoretical) problem with using some kind of high tech space calipers to measure the radius without going anywhere near the 'middle'?"
Think of Dr. Who's phone box.
Now make it round, black and very, very absorbant.
"And what kind of privacy do we expect when we use the postal system?"
Post some white powder and they will kick your back door down and drag you out of the bath tub.