Reading and writing are important communication skills; they have little to do with critical thinking.
If this were entirely true you'd be able to prove it without resorting to language.
"Reading and writing" and "language" are not the same thing. One is a skill, the other refers to the encoding and processing of information. In Dumbass America, we teach reading and writing. We do not teach language.
Even if I were blind, deaf, dumb, and handless I could still have a logically rigorous internal monologue. Look at Steven Hawking, he can barely move and he knows everything.
Do you not see your own brand of blindness here? I readily admit I'm a math and science geek, and love both. But I will also say that math and science are completely useless to a LOT of people who could not care less about it, and in fact, it's OKAY that they don't care. Very few things in this world require science or high-level math past arithmetic.
Reading and writing are infinitely more important, because they underpin everything, including critical thinking.
Reading and writing are important communication skills; they have little to do with critical thinking. Critical thinking requires the ability to accurately assimilate information from the outside world (science) and process that information to produce an accurate and complete conclusion (mathematics).
IMO, the main failure in education, with respect to language, is that many of our students have a very poor handle on grammar and linguistics. Those subjects are more mathematical than artsy. Many of us simply can't understand complex ideas. This is not a communication problem, it's an understanding problem.
Some unfortunate patterns: We recognize the discernment of fine detail as senseless "nit picking," but important critical thinking actually means contemplating a large number of related, fine details. We believe that open mindedness is an excuse for sloppy reasoning. We teach our kids (and yes, many parents tell their children this) that math is useless, while in fact we must invoke logic and mathematics to solve any practical problem, whether we are consciously aware of the mathematical significance of the problem or not. With regard to chemistry and biology, we go through our lives knowing almost nothing about our bodies until something goes wrong. You would think one's own biology would be important to a person.
More importantly, the government, military, large corporations, and other organizational entities endanger all of us because most people do not understand and are not capable of understanding the consequences of these entities' actions. The future and survival of our species will depend on our ability and our willingness to make complicated decisions about our planet's resources. Reading and writing ideas about these subjects without the ability to accurately assess the validity of these ideas will not be productive.
I've known a lot of people who liked math and science, but were utterly useless as thinkers. Hell, just look at Slashdot.:)
Maybe you mean that you have known a lot of people who liked pseudo-scientific rumor mongering. Real math and science require thought. If you are not thinking correctly, you are not engaging correctly in math and science.
For a Windows worm to make it onto/., it has to autonomously infect hundreds of thousands of machines within hours of being released. Anything less, and it just isn't newsworthy.
On the mac, you only need one idiot manually downloading and running what he suspects is an untrusted native executable that turns out to actually be an untrusted native executable. And it's on the front page. Of slashdot.
When I just googled, I saw nothing of the like... only 3 results, the usnews article was the top then some french article I didn't bother to read. Anyone know of this character or even the game? I'm not really a Sega person... speaking of which... Sega? When was the last time you saw a Sega? And htis happened last April.... hmm... something fishy.
Try googling "Don Fulci" instead of the full name. "Emilio Fulci" also got a little bit, but "Don Fulci" brings up a lot. I didn't see the article but didn't look very hard either.
Also I think the "French" article was actually Italian, despite google's attempt to translate from the French, but I don't know either language.
It's bad enough if you believe lies; it's far worse to repeat them.
The official policy of the ICRC is that reports are not made public, and no comment on the conditions of prisoners under ICRC observation is ever made to the media or anybody else.
The Red Cross never released any reports.
Some reports were released to the public, despite the official policy.
The ICRCpress release contains details. It does not assert that the released information was false.
For example, the patch for the SQL Slammer worm was released six months before the exploit was launched. This long delay enabled blame to be placed on lax systems administrators for not properly patching system
What are you talking about, "enabled?" It is their fault for not properly patching the system.
Ultimately, more systems will be developed using managed code (for example, Java and C#). This will narrow the problem to the bootstrap code those systems rely on without every application developer needing to be hypervigilant about buffer overflows.
That only makes sense if you think buffer overflows are the only security risk. Using Java doesn't magically make programs secure. In fact, a lot of damage can be done even when you don't have the ability to run arbitrary code on a remote machine.
Lastly, and most importantly, once the patch was released, the exploit was released the very next day. This wasn't a coincidence where the exploiters just missed having a zero-day exploit. If the patch had been released a week earlier, the worm also would have come out a week earlier.
So it doesn't matter in the slightest how often you release patches, exploiters will exploit them. Nothing in the article explains how delaying a patch release will make the system more secure.
[To make the system more secure] . . . software owners would subscribe to an automated patch service. . . . Subscribers would receive a predeployed, encrypted version of the patch.
That entire statement sums the entirety of the useful information in this article. Erase the whole thing and leave that statement. (I'm mean. Sorry.)
First of all, make no mistake -- you can be held legally responsible even for things you say [on slashdot]!
Folks, I can't help myself. Please don't try this at home.
CmdrTaco has aids.
For years, Hemos has been planting subliminal messages in the/. QOTDs. These messages compel us to wire small sums of money to his bank account every day.
You should sell your OSDN stock, as that company will announce its bankruptcy tomorrow.
CowboyNeal selected the slashdot-green color precisely because that frequency of light was known to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
This has been around for a long time. Square wheel, round road. I remember an exhibit at a nearby museum (no not the san francisco one), when I was a little kid. That guy had gotten the idea from someone many years before. It probably goes back more than a century, but I'm too lazy too look it up.
Now a wheel the same shape as the road, that would be cool.
What happens is that sometimes, while the station is being constructed, a religious cult will build a secret level into the station and sneak in a Zarg. These are large, rather deadly predators, who might hang around for years before a suspicious person notices that there's one level less on the station than the schematics say there should be. They eat maintenance workers, but for some reason leave the cultists alone.
The shot where a Thunderbolt gets clipped by B5's AA fire and goes tumbling right into the station, the camera following it all the way, is amazing.
<b5-geek>If you're thinking of the same shot I am, that's actually a Starfury fighter, and strictly speaking those are interceptors, not AA guns. The Thunderbolt line of starfighters were an atmosphere-capable version of the Starfury that didn't figure in until later in the series. By Crusade, they seem to have pretty much replaced the Starfuries.</b5-geek>
In any field, you have a set of "best practices" that describe how best to go about solving problems in that field. Intelligent people don't argue so much about these best practices, or at least don't fight over them zealously, because each principle is either obviously flawed, obviously correct to the best of our knowledge, or obviously has some measure of merit. An intelligent, honest, and experienced person can consistently separate each practice into one of those categories.
The fact that XP needs to make up a new word, "eXtreme Programming", complete with a capitalization error as though written by some half-d00d half-suit hybrid, and the fact that XP has to package a bunch of practices into one should tell you, before you have examined the practices, that the people behind it aren't interested in an intelligent, full and honest understanding of the best practices for computer programming.
My humble proposal is that we ignore these people.
During such a period Mars would not have ice caps at the poles, but rather an ice belt around its equator.
Assuming that situation ever actually happened, it's not quite that simple. With a 90 degree axle tilt, the seasons would simply be very dramatic. During "summer" and "winter", alternately one pole would be frozen while the other roasted, and yes the equator would also be cold and possibly icy, but it also would be a transition zone between the warmer and colder regions. During "spring" and "fall", however, the equator would be warm while the poles would be cold. Based on the rate at which weather changes on Earth with only a little axle tilt, and the fact that Mars has a longer year, I would think that the freezing and roasting of the surface would have been more or less complete.
By "roasted," of course, we're talking about luke-warm
Meteorology on such a planet would be such a bitch.
A similar technology also appeared in the juvenile science fiction book, "My Teacher Fried My Brains," by Bruce Coville. One of the things you didn't want to do was talk out loud -- you'd deafen everybody hooked in to the system. They used it to talk to each other while they were wandering around the Earth invisibly.
Europa's oceans are an order of magnitude larger than the Earth's oceans.
Doesn't really count. Most of the life in an ocean lives near the energy sources of that ocean. In our case, that's the surface, where there is sunlight. The size of the playground is defined by the amount of energy reaching and produced within the planet, not the physical size of the environment.
Assuming there is life there, we have absolutely no idea what sort of immune systems they have had to contend with.
You'll have to convince me that there is any chance that multicellular life exists on Europa. If it does, or if someone finds a monolith, then a large part of my argument falls away.
If they haven't had to contend with any immune systems then they never had to WASTE EFFORT on silly kludges to deal with them. Any energy and mechanisms expended on something that doesn't exist there will be a drain on efficency and success.
There are a lot of silly kludges, but there are also a lot of fundamental adaptations. The rise of aerobic bacteria and the rise of multicellular life are both fundamental discoveries made in the evolutionary process. I suspect there are quite a few more of these discoveries regarding, for example, the cell vs cell battles that determine who gets to occupy what part of the petri dish.
Human/Earth superiority, pure bigotry (chuckle)
Only if I think it's a good thing. The Europeans whiped out the Americans. Suppose I had warned you back then? Doesn't mean I'm pulling for their team. Additionally, my model leaves open threats from even larger "playgrounds" than Earth. I don't think Earth has "better" life forms than Europa any more than I think a 10th grader is a "better" math student than than a 5th grader. Who knows? We could nuke ourselves and all die, and 20 billion years from now (notwithstanding the sun going nova) the Europans could crack faster-than-light travel and explore every corner of the universe. Well, maybe that's far fetched.
It is known that impactors can blast material from one body in the solar system into space and that that material can and does land on other bodies in the solar system.
This is a more solid argument, although there are probably far fewer debris traveling between Europa and Earth than Mars and Earth, I'm sure there have been some in the last 5 billion years. I don't know if there is any way for Europan material to make it to Earth unevaporated, though, and it would take a lot more energy to blast something all the way to Europa, and that something would spend a lot more time in transit.
I welcome anyone who can discredit my argument, but for the moment I think you're still wrong.;-)
Would that be Europe the tenuously collected group of countries who can't agree on anything without a good ol' punchup, or Europe who were responsible for the "classic" "hit" "song" The Final Countdown?
Additional evidence that you can't type "Europa" more than five times without an oh-so-easily missed continent-referencing typo.::sigh::
As always, the real risk is that we'll contaminate Europe with microbes.
One of the points I make, when people bring up the topic of alien organisms contaminating Earth, is that Earth really has pretty advanced microbes. Microbes on Earth have had 4.5 billion years to practice infesting each other and the various high-level organisms. Likewise, our immune systems have had slightly less time to practice fighting off such microbes. All this evolution makes them pretty advanced.
Granted, Europa has had the same time to work as we have, but it hasn't had as large a playground, and most likely none of the organisms there have gone up against a mammalian immune system anytime during their evolutionary development. Nor have they gotten the chance to try to survive in as many different environments.
How is this on topic? Any organisms we send over there will wipe the floor with any Europan microbes they find. This may be a giant leap for Earthling microbes, but it's probably bad for science.
After reading the article, I just want to ask this guy: WHY CAN'T YOU JUST USE EBAY LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE? They have cheap pinball machines and all of that.
Did anyone else prefer it when all the technology like the Gates themselves were much more mystical and incomprehensible?
Maybe, but there's a very good reason why the stargate must eventually come down to the level of mere machine. One of the basic themes of the show -- you see this with the Goa'uld, but also a few times with the Asgard -- is the very mission of the team: shutting down the false gods. For the writers to leave the Ancients and their technology in the category of mystical and incomprehensible would break that theme.
Allowing Anubis access to the ascension process also works to shorten the distance between us mortals and the powerful, enlightened ancients. See also the ancient "time-loop-machine" episode.
I just wish they'd hurry up and bring out these Furling dudes.
Don't You People Realize
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Ok -- I just have to point this out. It seems obvious, and I don't see why it hasn't been commented on already.
Doctors have access to all of these medical databases, too.
Now, I'm not saying that there are no idiot doctors. I'm sure that there are plenty of idiot doctors. I'm sure that there are plenty a greedy doctors. And greedy insurance plans. But really, if you go onto a health site, and I'm all in favor of everyone fully informing themselves, you're not getting exclusive information that isn't already at the fingertips of everyone in the health community. It's not like doctors memorize all of the common health conditions and screw you if you get something that's not in the top-100 list of human diseases.
A good doctor will examine you completely, run any indicated tests, and if your symptoms aren't entirely consistent with a common disease, (s)he'll refer you to someone called a specialist. This person, if also unable to diagnose your condition, really ought to refer to a researcher. If this isn't happening, that's a clue that you have a sucky doctor.
I'm sure a lot of people have grounds to object, but I suggest, depending on the nature of the project, it's a good idea to be intelligently selective about what does and does not need to be unit tested. Consider:
Do write a test case if:
+ a failure could introduce data propagation issues + it performs some intricate mathematical or logical function whose result must be precise + you're writing test cases to hunt down bugs that you know are in you're code; keep those test cases + you're uncomfortable about the quality of your code + an error might kill someone, or otherwise be Really Bad
Don't bother writing a test case if:
- you can use a guard clause or assertion instead - a failure in the code will otherwise be immediately obvious - the code generates massive amounts of data which need not be mathematically precise (i.e. graphical output) - you don't feel it
I should probably write more test cases, according to my own guidelines.::sigh::
We have to add, it's a fallacy to think that Linux is "free." Hundreds of very intelligent people are spending years of their lives developing this operating system and its suite of tools -- the economic opportunity cost of this effort is incalculable and huge. Linux is only economically free if you're counting dollars. By a full accounting, it's probably one of the most expensive software projects ever undertaken.
Earn 20,000,000,000 FREE hours of AOL! Before you can sign on, please just fill out this short survey. The information you provide will help us better serve you!
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Perhaps some kind of heuristic filter could be written that would try to detect sharp lighting effects and shut off the display (or cause it to fade gently from screen to screen, effectively disabling the computer but still allowing you to see the ctrl-alt-dlt window).
It would just be one layer of security -- I'm sure whoever writes it will be sued by the first person to have a seizure while using it. But, it could cut down on situations where people unexpectedly get flashed.
It seems to me that anyone who was watching your packets go by could pick out the knocking sequence. Granted, if no one suspects knocking, no one will notice. But, now that it's on the front page of slashdot, I don't think it's very obscure security anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Reading and writing are important communication skills; they have little to do with critical thinking.
If this were entirely true you'd be able to prove it without resorting to language.
"Reading and writing" and "language" are not the same thing. One is a skill, the other refers to the encoding and processing of information. In Dumbass America, we teach reading and writing. We do not teach language.
Even if I were blind, deaf, dumb, and handless I could still have a logically rigorous internal monologue. Look at Steven Hawking, he can barely move and he knows everything.
Do you not see your own brand of blindness here? I readily admit I'm a math and science geek, and love both. But I will also say that math and science are completely useless to a LOT of people who could not care less about it, and in fact, it's OKAY that they don't care. Very few things in this world require science or high-level math past arithmetic.
:)
Reading and writing are infinitely more important, because they underpin everything, including critical thinking.
Reading and writing are important communication skills; they have little to do with critical thinking. Critical thinking requires the ability to accurately assimilate information from the outside world (science) and process that information to produce an accurate and complete conclusion (mathematics).
IMO, the main failure in education, with respect to language, is that many of our students have a very poor handle on grammar and linguistics. Those subjects are more mathematical than artsy. Many of us simply can't understand complex ideas. This is not a communication problem, it's an understanding problem.
Some unfortunate patterns: We recognize the discernment of fine detail as senseless "nit picking," but important critical thinking actually means contemplating a large number of related, fine details. We believe that open mindedness is an excuse for sloppy reasoning. We teach our kids (and yes, many parents tell their children this) that math is useless, while in fact we must invoke logic and mathematics to solve any practical problem, whether we are consciously aware of the mathematical significance of the problem or not. With regard to chemistry and biology, we go through our lives knowing almost nothing about our bodies until something goes wrong. You would think one's own biology would be important to a person.
More importantly, the government, military, large corporations, and other organizational entities endanger all of us because most people do not understand and are not capable of understanding the consequences of these entities' actions. The future and survival of our species will depend on our ability and our willingness to make complicated decisions about our planet's resources. Reading and writing ideas about these subjects without the ability to accurately assess the validity of these ideas will not be productive.
I've known a lot of people who liked math and science, but were utterly useless as thinkers. Hell, just look at Slashdot.
Maybe you mean that you have known a lot of people who liked pseudo-scientific rumor mongering. Real math and science require thought. If you are not thinking correctly, you are not engaging correctly in math and science.
For a Windows worm to make it onto /., it has to autonomously infect hundreds of thousands of machines within hours of being released. Anything less, and it just isn't newsworthy.
On the mac, you only need one idiot manually downloading and running what he suspects is an untrusted native executable that turns out to actually be an untrusted native executable. And it's on the front page. Of slashdot.
Hrumph. My sig is so appropriate today.
When I just googled, I saw nothing of the like... only 3 results, the usnews article was the top then some french article I didn't bother to read. Anyone know of this character or even the game? I'm not really a Sega person... speaking of which... Sega? When was the last time you saw a Sega? And htis happened last April.... hmm... something fishy.
;-)
Try googling "Don Fulci" instead of the full name. "Emilio Fulci" also got a little bit, but "Don Fulci" brings up a lot. I didn't see the article but didn't look very hard either.
Also I think the "French" article was actually Italian, despite google's attempt to translate from the French, but I don't know either language.
As for Sega, I've never heard of that.
It's bad enough if you believe lies; it's far worse to repeat them.
The official policy of the ICRC is that reports are not made public, and no comment on the conditions of prisoners under ICRC observation is ever made to the media or anybody else.
The Red Cross never released any reports.
Some reports were released to the public, despite the official policy.
The ICRC press release contains details. It does not assert that the released information was false.
For example, the patch for the SQL Slammer worm was released six months before the exploit was launched. This long delay enabled blame to be placed on lax systems administrators for not properly patching system
What are you talking about, "enabled?" It is their fault for not properly patching the system.
Ultimately, more systems will be developed using managed code (for example, Java and C#). This will narrow the problem to the bootstrap code those systems rely on without every application developer needing to be hypervigilant about buffer overflows.
That only makes sense if you think buffer overflows are the only security risk. Using Java doesn't magically make programs secure. In fact, a lot of damage can be done even when you don't have the ability to run arbitrary code on a remote machine.
Lastly, and most importantly, once the patch was released, the exploit was released the very next day. This wasn't a coincidence where the exploiters just missed having a zero-day exploit. If the patch had been released a week earlier, the worm also would have come out a week earlier.
So it doesn't matter in the slightest how often you release patches, exploiters will exploit them. Nothing in the article explains how delaying a patch release will make the system more secure.
[To make the system more secure] . . . software owners would subscribe to an automated patch service. . . . Subscribers would receive a predeployed, encrypted version of the patch.
That entire statement sums the entirety of the useful information in this article. Erase the whole thing and leave that statement. (I'm mean. Sorry.)
First of all, make no mistake -- you can be held legally responsible even for things you say [on slashdot]!
Folks, I can't help myself. Please don't try this at home.
Thank you.
This has been around for a long time. Square wheel, round road. I remember an exhibit at a nearby museum (no not the san francisco one), when I was a little kid. That guy had gotten the idea from someone many years before. It probably goes back more than a century, but I'm too lazy too look it up.
::sigh::
Now a wheel the same shape as the road, that would be cool.
Square wheel. Round road.
We've dealt with this kind of thing before.
What happens is that sometimes, while the station is being constructed, a religious cult will build a secret level into the station and sneak in a Zarg. These are large, rather deadly predators, who might hang around for years before a suspicious person notices that there's one level less on the station than the schematics say there should be. They eat maintenance workers, but for some reason leave the cultists alone.
Happens all the time.
The shot where a Thunderbolt gets clipped by B5's AA fire and goes tumbling right into the station, the camera following it all the way, is amazing.
<b5-geek>If you're thinking of the same shot I am, that's actually a Starfury fighter, and strictly speaking those are interceptors, not AA guns. The Thunderbolt line of starfighters were an atmosphere-capable version of the Starfury that didn't figure in until later in the series. By Crusade, they seem to have pretty much replaced the Starfuries.</b5-geek>
In any field, you have a set of "best practices" that describe how best to go about solving problems in that field. Intelligent people don't argue so much about these best practices, or at least don't fight over them zealously, because each principle is either obviously flawed, obviously correct to the best of our knowledge, or obviously has some measure of merit. An intelligent, honest, and experienced person can consistently separate each practice into one of those categories.
The fact that XP needs to make up a new word, "eXtreme Programming", complete with a capitalization error as though written by some half-d00d half-suit hybrid, and the fact that XP has to package a bunch of practices into one should tell you, before you have examined the practices, that the people behind it aren't interested in an intelligent, full and honest understanding of the best practices for computer programming.
My humble proposal is that we ignore these people.
During such a period Mars would not have ice caps at the poles, but rather an ice belt around its equator.
Assuming that situation ever actually happened, it's not quite that simple. With a 90 degree axle tilt, the seasons would simply be very dramatic. During "summer" and "winter", alternately one pole would be frozen while the other roasted, and yes the equator would also be cold and possibly icy, but it also would be a transition zone between the warmer and colder regions. During "spring" and "fall", however, the equator would be warm while the poles would be cold. Based on the rate at which weather changes on Earth with only a little axle tilt, and the fact that Mars has a longer year, I would think that the freezing and roasting of the surface would have been more or less complete.
By "roasted," of course, we're talking about luke-warm
Meteorology on such a planet would be such a bitch.
A similar technology also appeared in the juvenile science fiction book, "My Teacher Fried My Brains," by Bruce Coville. One of the things you didn't want to do was talk out loud -- you'd deafen everybody hooked in to the system. They used it to talk to each other while they were wandering around the Earth invisibly.
Europa's oceans are an order of magnitude larger than the Earth's oceans.
;-)
Doesn't really count. Most of the life in an ocean lives near the energy sources of that ocean. In our case, that's the surface, where there is sunlight. The size of the playground is defined by the amount of energy reaching and produced within the planet, not the physical size of the environment.
Assuming there is life there, we have absolutely no idea what sort of immune systems they have had to contend with.
You'll have to convince me that there is any chance that multicellular life exists on Europa. If it does, or if someone finds a monolith, then a large part of my argument falls away.
If they haven't had to contend with any immune systems then they never had to WASTE EFFORT on silly kludges to deal with them. Any energy and mechanisms expended on something that doesn't exist there will be a drain on efficency and success.
There are a lot of silly kludges, but there are also a lot of fundamental adaptations. The rise of aerobic bacteria and the rise of multicellular life are both fundamental discoveries made in the evolutionary process. I suspect there are quite a few more of these discoveries regarding, for example, the cell vs cell battles that determine who gets to occupy what part of the petri dish.
Human/Earth superiority, pure bigotry (chuckle)
Only if I think it's a good thing. The Europeans whiped out the Americans. Suppose I had warned you back then? Doesn't mean I'm pulling for their team. Additionally, my model leaves open threats from even larger "playgrounds" than Earth. I don't think Earth has "better" life forms than Europa any more than I think a 10th grader is a "better" math student than than a 5th grader. Who knows? We could nuke ourselves and all die, and 20 billion years from now (notwithstanding the sun going nova) the Europans could crack faster-than-light travel and explore every corner of the universe. Well, maybe that's far fetched.
It is known that impactors can blast material from one body in the solar system into space and that that material can and does land on other bodies in the solar system.
This is a more solid argument, although there are probably far fewer debris traveling between Europa and Earth than Mars and Earth, I'm sure there have been some in the last 5 billion years. I don't know if there is any way for Europan material to make it to Earth unevaporated, though, and it would take a lot more energy to blast something all the way to Europa, and that something would spend a lot more time in transit.
I welcome anyone who can discredit my argument, but for the moment I think you're still wrong.
Would that be Europe the tenuously collected group of countries who can't agree on anything without a good ol' punchup, or Europe who were responsible for the "classic" "hit" "song" The Final Countdown?
::sigh::
Additional evidence that you can't type "Europa" more than five times without an oh-so-easily missed continent-referencing typo.
As always, the real risk is that we'll contaminate Europe with microbes.
One of the points I make, when people bring up the topic of alien organisms contaminating Earth, is that Earth really has pretty advanced microbes. Microbes on Earth have had 4.5 billion years to practice infesting each other and the various high-level organisms. Likewise, our immune systems have had slightly less time to practice fighting off such microbes. All this evolution makes them pretty advanced.
Granted, Europa has had the same time to work as we have, but it hasn't had as large a playground, and most likely none of the organisms there have gone up against a mammalian immune system anytime during their evolutionary development. Nor have they gotten the chance to try to survive in as many different environments.
How is this on topic? Any organisms we send over there will wipe the floor with any Europan microbes they find. This may be a giant leap for Earthling microbes, but it's probably bad for science.
Same thing goes for Mars and elsewhere.
After reading the article, I just want to ask this guy: WHY CAN'T YOU JUST USE EBAY LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE? They have cheap pinball machines and all of that.
Did anyone else prefer it when all the technology like the Gates themselves were much more mystical and incomprehensible?
Maybe, but there's a very good reason why the stargate must eventually come down to the level of mere machine. One of the basic themes of the show -- you see this with the Goa'uld, but also a few times with the Asgard -- is the very mission of the team: shutting down the false gods. For the writers to leave the Ancients and their technology in the category of mystical and incomprehensible would break that theme.
Allowing Anubis access to the ascension process also works to shorten the distance between us mortals and the powerful, enlightened ancients. See also the ancient "time-loop-machine" episode.
I just wish they'd hurry up and bring out these Furling dudes.
Ok -- I just have to point this out. It seems obvious, and I don't see why it hasn't been commented on already.
Doctors have access to all of these medical databases, too.
Now, I'm not saying that there are no idiot doctors. I'm sure that there are plenty of idiot doctors. I'm sure that there are plenty a greedy doctors. And greedy insurance plans. But really, if you go onto a health site, and I'm all in favor of everyone fully informing themselves, you're not getting exclusive information that isn't already at the fingertips of everyone in the health community. It's not like doctors memorize all of the common health conditions and screw you if you get something that's not in the top-100 list of human diseases.
A good doctor will examine you completely, run any indicated tests, and if your symptoms aren't entirely consistent with a common disease, (s)he'll refer you to someone called a specialist. This person, if also unable to diagnose your condition, really ought to refer to a researcher. If this isn't happening, that's a clue that you have a sucky doctor.
I'm sure a lot of people have grounds to object, but I suggest, depending on the nature of the project, it's a good idea to be intelligently selective about what does and does not need to be unit tested. Consider:
::sigh::
Do write a test case if:
+ a failure could introduce data propagation issues
+ it performs some intricate mathematical or logical function whose result must be precise
+ you're writing test cases to hunt down bugs that you know are in you're code; keep those test cases
+ you're uncomfortable about the quality of your code
+ an error might kill someone, or otherwise be Really Bad
Don't bother writing a test case if:
- you can use a guard clause or assertion instead
- a failure in the code will otherwise be immediately obvious
- the code generates massive amounts of data which need not be mathematically precise (i.e. graphical output)
- you don't feel it
I should probably write more test cases, according to my own guidelines.
We have to add, it's a fallacy to think that Linux is "free." Hundreds of very intelligent people are spending years of their lives developing this operating system and its suite of tools -- the economic opportunity cost of this effort is incalculable and huge. Linux is only economically free if you're counting dollars. By a full accounting, it's probably one of the most expensive software projects ever undertaken.
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1. Compared to men or teens, how much time do 40 year old women spend playing online games?
o 0-10% More
o 11-20% More
o 21-30% More
o 31-40% More
o 41-50% More
o 51-60% More
2. Are 40 year old women, on average, more likely to play online games than men or teens?
o Yes
o No
o Note Sure
3. Do 40 year old women convert their online relationships into real-life relationships, if they in fact have any online relationships?
o Yes
o No
o Note Sure
4. Are you a 40 year old woman?
o Yes
o No
o Not Sure
5. Have you or do you plan to respond to this survey?
o Yes
o No
o Not Sure
6. If you answered yes to the above two questions, do you spend less time watching TV or movies, reading or being physically active because of your online game play?
o Yes
o No
o Not Sure
o I did not answer yes to the above two questions
o I'm not sure if I answered yes to the above two questions
7. Who is conducting this survey?
o Services for Digital Marketing
o Digital Marketing Services
o Marketing Services, Digital
o Marketing Digital Services
8. When do you prefer to play online games?
o Midnight - 1:00 AM
o 1:00 AM - 2:00 AM
o 2:00 AM - 3:00 AM
o 3:00 AM - 4:00 AM
o 4:00 AM - 5:00 AM
9. Which of the following cities strikes you as most "game happy:"
o Chicago and New York
o San Francisco and Orlando
o Atlanta and Boston
o Paris and Berlin
10. (Last question) How many people are responding to this survey?
o 12,214
o 15
o 1,243
o 7,654
o 3,613
11 (We lied) This survey was conducted between:
o Mid-December and mid-January
o Early December and early January
o Late December and late January
When I first read this, I thought it was a little device that went on the roof of your car and disrupted hail. That would have been soooo cool.
Perhaps some kind of heuristic filter could be written that would try to detect sharp lighting effects and shut off the display (or cause it to fade gently from screen to screen, effectively disabling the computer but still allowing you to see the ctrl-alt-dlt window).
It would just be one layer of security -- I'm sure whoever writes it will be sued by the first person to have a seizure while using it. But, it could cut down on situations where people unexpectedly get flashed.
I think about these banner ads that flash at you.
It seems to me that anyone who was watching your packets go by could pick out the knocking sequence. Granted, if no one suspects knocking, no one will notice. But, now that it's on the front page of slashdot, I don't think it's very obscure security anymore.