Wolves and dogs breed very well, and in fact would be considered one species if the traditional definition of species was used. It is my understanding is that there was no such thing as a "dog" before mankind started breeding wolves a few thousand years ago.
(The traditional definition has been breaking down, though. For example, there is currently an argument about whether the "Red Wolf" is an actual endangered species, or merely the result of wolf/coyote interbreeding.)
Re:Itanium (Merced) will be relevant right away...
on
News on Pentium IV
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· Score: 1
OS/2 2.0 (The 32-bit version that required a 386 or better) was released in early 1992
It was as 32-bit then as Windows NT is now (or Linux, for that matter). The only 16-bit code in there was to support native 16-bit DOS apps and old 16-bit OS/2 apps. If you wanted a pure 32-bit system, you could install the OS without those features supported.
Anyway, the point is that there was a 32-bit alternative for years before Microsoft got their version released.
Re:Itanium (Merced) will be relevant right away...
on
News on Pentium IV
·
· Score: 1
So, they really think that Microsoft will be able to hold back computer progress once again? Last time, there were no alternatives. You would run 16-bit dos, like it or not, but now we have choice and freedom.
Uh...there was a 32-bit alternative back then. It was called OS/2, and it could concurrently run 16-it Dos apps and native 32-bit apps at the same time.
Hopefully history will treat 64-bit alternatives better.
What would be even better would be if ISPs charged $0.01 for each e-mail voluntarily. (With perhaps 100 free per month or something so that most real customers wouldn't even notice)
Then in all contracts, specify that the $0.01 is not for the use of the e-mail service but for the use of the name in the from: field
Then they could sue any spammers that use their domain in forged headers $0.01 per spam.
(To allow mailing lists, they could have "special deals" that all more messages for some low fee, like $10/month.)
Currently they can only get viruses to effect a limited area in the body. In other words, if they inject them into a muscle, they will change DNA in muscle cells near the injection point. The immune system tends to keep the viruses from spreading much. I believe these viruses are always inactive, and thus can't spread on their own. (i.e. they don't incorporate anything into the DNA that produces more viruses.)
This is a far cry from having a virus that could be passed like influenza. You'd have to not only add the gene you wanted to propogate, but also machinery to get the thing to get the DNA to make copies of it. And you'd have to do all of this in a way that wouldn't cause any disease symptoms. Not easy.
And besides, drug companies would never stand for such research, because such a DNA fixing vector would be impossible to charge for.
Ok, so what you are saying is that since the government wants to change people to be passive without "easily detectible means" that they'll stoop to genetic engineering...
uh...exactly how are they going to do this? Somehow I suspect people would notice if the government started implanting genetically engineered eggs in every woman in America...
The trouble is that people act like genetic engineering is some sort of magic wand that can be waved that will cause anything to happen. It is not. For a government to have enough control to genetically engineer a significant part of the population, it would have to have far more control than any government in history has ever had.
Given the state of robotics and the state of genetic engineering today, it is nearly certain that we'll have menial robots before we could create passive and obedient humans.
In order to do create passive and obedient humans, you'd not only have to know how to incorporate arbitrary traits into a human being, you'd also have to have a deep understanding of the operation of the human brain. We are a long way from either of those things. On the other hand, we are already seeing the beginnings of a true robotics.
The trouble with Katz's article is that it makes the assumption that knowing the human genome == being able to manipulate the human genome in any way we see fit. That's like saying that because we understand the theory of relativity, we can launch spacecraft to travel at 0.99% of c.
So much of this reminds me of all the handwringing that went on when Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born. It is an irrational fear of change, and quite frankly, an irrational fear of change is not the hallmark of the geekdom that Katz so often aspires to.
(This is not to say that there aren't real things to fear in genetic engineering. But simply knowing what those genes are (which is all the human genome project is) is not one of them.)
Oh God, I used to love my old AppleCat! My first PC modem was such a let-down compared to that.
I remember having programs that did all sorts of nifty sound tricks. I had a speech synthesizer for it. I had the 1200 baud add-on back when 1200 baud was just too ultra fast for words. (You could actually read newsgroups without having to wait for the screen to fill!)
Also consider that the best current estimates of Christ's birth place it several years after the B.C. to A.D. changeover.
Before, actually. Best estimates are somewhere between 4-6 BC. I don't recall all the proof, but the biggie is that Herod died around 4 BC, according to Roman records.
The full results never can be known because the real results involve what happens the next time this guy considers putting up something potentially controversial. I suspect that, given the immaturity he got exposed to, he'll likely decide to screw it all and play it safe. Better to avoid the crap in the first place then to risk a barrage of hate mail. Censorship will happen, but quietly, under the covers, and caused by the very people who were trying to fight it. And they won't even have a clue that it happened.
I disagree. One of the reasons people feel so free to act like assholes in e-mails is the expectation that they are not private. But why are they not private? If someone writes a letter and mails it to someone, they'd certainly assume that the letter is only as private as the receiver wants it to be. The same should go to e-mail.
If you write an e-mail in which you act like a complete prick, you fully deserve to have it shown to the world what a prick you are. Once you hit send, that e-mail is no longer your property. It is the receiver's property. Don't like that? Either get a fake account, or don't hit send. But even with the fake account, you have no right to expect that the receiver won't display to the world what some anonymous idiot sent him.
The most amusing one is that in 1950, he predicted the fall of communism, but in his 1980 update, only ten years before the fall of the Soviet Union, backed off on that claim.
He also predicted that we'd be rationing food by now because of overpopulation, but that cancer would be cured and aircars and commutes of two hundred miles would be common.
But to give him credit, he states up front that he is likely wrong about many things. And he makes one great prediction. He predicted, in 1950, that some new invention, existing in 1950, would transform American society the way the car did in the first half of the century, but he had no idea which invention that was. I bet most here can figure it out.
In Heinlein's Expanded Universe, there is an essay written in 1950 called "Pandora's Box" in which he predicts what the year 2000 will be like. (He also updated it in 1965 and 1980 and kept track of how he did.) Anyone wanting to predict the future of technology should read this. If nothing else, it shows how hard it is to write something that doesn't seem silly in fifty years.
Uh....do we really want people like Bruce Perens afraid to say what is on their minds for fear of it being plastered all over/.? I don't know that this is a particularly good thing. I'd much prefer people, even "important" people, felt free to speak their minds.
The real problem is that/. seems to be getting infected with some sort of media jouralism meme, where everything must be a REAL BIG DEAL!!!! and headlines must be blown out of proportion to catch eyeballs.
For things such as this, I think that people ought to adopt more of a wait and see attitude before getting all in a lather, both when reading, and when deciding whether or not to submit. It doesn't hurt to wait a day or two to see if something really is the huge threat to dogs, apple pie and "Open Source" that you think it is.
Well, me too, in general, but the difference is that with RedHat you learn what you need to do and do it. With Windows, you try it repeatedly until it works. You don't ever learn anything. You just try random crap until it runs.
I'd think they'd get fewer tech support calls. After all, to install UT under Linux, you pretty much have to have installed Linux yourself. (Likely the case for 99% of Linux users today.) While you can install Windows without know what the hell you are doing, it is pretty hard to get a working Linux system up without learning something. One thing they won't get from the Linux version is calls from the sort of luser who asks about the broken cupholder. Those account for an ungodly percentage of most help-desk calls.
Re:Posting order of Nerds and Geeks:
on
Geeks vs. Nerds
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· Score: 1
Geeks write programs that check slashdot for new stories and post automated "first post" messages.
Ubergeeks write programs that check slashdot for "first post" messages and moderator controls and then moderate down the the posts posted by the bots written by the geeks.
I always figured that a Nerd was someone who spent Saturday night working on a neat Perl script because he couldn't get a date while a Geek was someone who spent Saturday night working on a neat Perl script because he got so into it that he forgot he had a date.
Slashdot Mirror
Why, you could shit out a new computer every month!
Ouch.
Wolves and dogs breed very well, and in fact would be considered one species if the traditional definition of species was used. It is my understanding is that there was no such thing as a "dog" before mankind started breeding wolves a few thousand years ago.
(The traditional definition has been breaking down, though. For example, there is currently an argument about whether the "Red Wolf" is an actual endangered species, or merely the result of wolf/coyote interbreeding.)
OS/2 2.0 (The 32-bit version that required a 386 or better) was released in early 1992
It was as 32-bit then as Windows NT is now (or Linux, for that matter). The only 16-bit code in there was to support native 16-bit DOS apps and old 16-bit OS/2 apps. If you wanted a pure 32-bit system, you could install the OS without those features supported.
Anyway, the point is that there was a 32-bit alternative for years before Microsoft got their version released.
So, they really think that Microsoft will be able to hold back computer progress once again? Last time, there were no alternatives. You would run 16-bit dos, like it or not, but now we have choice and freedom.
Uh...there was a 32-bit alternative back then. It was called OS/2, and it could concurrently run 16-it Dos apps and native 32-bit apps at the same time.
Hopefully history will treat 64-bit alternatives better.
The Palm is the only 3Com product that I can think of that is sold directly to consumers.
They sell networking kits, hubs and NICs through CompUSA, Office Max, and probably others.
What would be even better would be if ISPs charged $0.01 for each e-mail voluntarily. (With perhaps 100 free per month or something so that most real customers wouldn't even notice)
Then in all contracts, specify that the $0.01 is not for the use of the e-mail service but for the use of the name in the from: field
Then they could sue any spammers that use their domain in forged headers $0.01 per spam.
(To allow mailing lists, they could have "special deals" that all more messages for some low fee, like $10/month.)
Source code is like manure, if you spread it around things grow. If you hoard it it just smells bad.
And only your own doesn't stink.
There is only so much money you can make assembling off the shelf components.
There was enough to make Micheal Dell one of the five richest men in America...
Currently they can only get viruses to effect a limited area in the body. In other words, if they inject them into a muscle, they will change DNA in muscle cells near the injection point. The immune system tends to keep the viruses from spreading much. I believe these viruses are always inactive, and thus can't spread on their own. (i.e. they don't incorporate anything into the DNA that produces more viruses.)
This is a far cry from having a virus that could be passed like influenza. You'd have to not only add the gene you wanted to propogate, but also machinery to get the thing to get the DNA to make copies of it. And you'd have to do all of this in a way that wouldn't cause any disease symptoms. Not easy.
And besides, drug companies would never stand for such research, because such a DNA fixing vector would be impossible to charge for.
Ok, so what you are saying is that since the government wants to change people to be passive without "easily detectible means" that they'll stoop to genetic engineering...
uh...exactly how are they going to do this? Somehow I suspect people would notice if the government started implanting genetically engineered eggs in every woman in America...
The trouble is that people act like genetic engineering is some sort of magic wand that can be waved that will cause anything to happen. It is not. For a government to have enough control to genetically engineer a significant part of the population, it would have to have far more control than any government in history has ever had.
Given the state of robotics and the state of genetic engineering today, it is nearly certain that we'll have menial robots before we could create passive and obedient humans.
In order to do create passive and obedient humans, you'd not only have to know how to incorporate arbitrary traits into a human being, you'd also have to have a deep understanding of the operation of the human brain. We are a long way from either of those things. On the other hand, we are already seeing the beginnings of a true robotics.
The trouble with Katz's article is that it makes the assumption that knowing the human genome == being able to manipulate the human genome in any way we see fit. That's like saying that because we understand the theory of relativity, we can launch spacecraft to travel at 0.99% of c.
So much of this reminds me of all the handwringing that went on when Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born. It is an irrational fear of change, and quite frankly, an irrational fear of change is not the hallmark of the geekdom that Katz so often aspires to.
(This is not to say that there aren't real things to fear in genetic engineering. But simply knowing what those genes are (which is all the human genome project is) is not one of them.)
Oh God, I used to love my old AppleCat! My first PC modem was such a let-down compared to that.
I remember having programs that did all sorts of nifty sound tricks. I had a speech synthesizer for it. I had the 1200 baud add-on back when 1200 baud was just too ultra fast for words. (You could actually read newsgroups without having to wait for the screen to fill!)
Impressive stuff for what it cost at the time.
Also consider that the best current estimates of Christ's birth place it several years after the B.C. to A.D. changeover.
Before, actually. Best estimates are somewhere between 4-6 BC. I don't recall all the proof, but the biggie is that Herod died around 4 BC, according to Roman records.
The way I understand it, the ice sheet on Europa is a few kilometers thick.
The full results never can be known because the real results involve what happens the next time this guy considers putting up something potentially controversial. I suspect that, given the immaturity he got exposed to, he'll likely decide to screw it all and play it safe. Better to avoid the crap in the first place then to risk a barrage of hate mail. Censorship will happen, but quietly, under the covers, and caused by the very people who were trying to fight it. And they won't even have a clue that it happened.
Treating people like crap is never good, even if it does have the results you want.
Hit the wrong damn button. That should read ...the expectation that they are private. But why...
I disagree. One of the reasons people feel so free to act like assholes in e-mails is the expectation that they are not private. But why are they not private? If someone writes a letter and mails it to someone, they'd certainly assume that the letter is only as private as the receiver wants it to be. The same should go to e-mail.
If you write an e-mail in which you act like a complete prick, you fully deserve to have it shown to the world what a prick you are. Once you hit send, that e-mail is no longer your property. It is the receiver's property. Don't like that? Either get a fake account, or don't hit send. But even with the fake account, you have no right to expect that the receiver won't display to the world what some anonymous idiot sent him.
The most amusing one is that in 1950, he predicted the fall of communism, but in his 1980 update, only ten years before the fall of the Soviet Union, backed off on that claim.
He also predicted that we'd be rationing food by now because of overpopulation, but that cancer would be cured and aircars and commutes of two hundred miles would be common.
But to give him credit, he states up front that he is likely wrong about many things. And he makes one great prediction. He predicted, in 1950, that some new invention, existing in 1950, would transform American society the way the car did in the first half of the century, but he had no idea which invention that was. I bet most here can figure it out.
In Heinlein's Expanded Universe, there is an essay written in 1950 called "Pandora's Box" in which he predicts what the year 2000 will be like. (He also updated it in 1965 and 1980 and kept track of how he did.) Anyone wanting to predict the future of technology should read this. If nothing else, it shows how hard it is to write something that doesn't seem silly in fifty years.
Uh....do we really want people like Bruce Perens afraid to say what is on their minds for fear of it being plastered all over /.? I don't know that this is a particularly good thing. I'd much prefer people, even "important" people, felt free to speak their minds.
/. seems to be getting infected with some sort of media jouralism meme, where everything must be a REAL BIG DEAL!!!! and headlines must be blown out of proportion to catch eyeballs.
The real problem is that
For things such as this, I think that people ought to adopt more of a wait and see attitude before getting all in a lather, both when reading, and when deciding whether or not to submit. It doesn't hurt to wait a day or two to see if something really is the huge threat to dogs, apple pie and "Open Source" that you think it is.
(Caveat: I own Corel stock.)
Well, me too, in general, but the difference is that with RedHat you learn what you need to do and do it. With Windows, you try it repeatedly until it works. You don't ever learn anything. You just try random crap until it runs.
I'd think they'd get fewer tech support calls. After all, to install UT under Linux, you pretty much have to have installed Linux yourself. (Likely the case for 99% of Linux users today.) While you can install Windows without know what the hell you are doing, it is pretty hard to get a working Linux system up without learning something. One thing they won't get from the Linux version is calls from the sort of luser who asks about the broken cupholder. Those account for an ungodly percentage of most help-desk calls.
Geeks write programs that check slashdot for new stories and post automated "first post" messages.
Ubergeeks write programs that check slashdot for "first post" messages and moderator controls and then moderate down the the posts posted by the bots written by the geeks.
I always figured that a Nerd was someone who spent Saturday night working on a neat Perl script because he couldn't get a date while a Geek was someone who spent Saturday night working on a neat Perl script because he got so into it that he forgot he had a date.