You seem to believe that Iraq is a rogue state, the gov't does slaughter its own population, and that it would be generally a better world should Saddam et. al. be usurped. But then you say that GDub's pretexts are dodgy?
Absolutely. North Korea is worse, and others are just as bad and there's no murmur on them. The US let Rwanda descend into Genocide and didn't feel the need to intervene. I'm not saying they were honor bound to do so, but please be just slightly consistent. Iraq must be different somehow. Therefor, Iraq's bad govt is a pretext to attack.
Depeding on the poll you look at, 60% - 70% of Americans are in favor of war in Iraq.
So you're saying that a large number of people wanting to invade another country makes it right?
There are already several treatments for HIV and the symptoms of AIDS that are quite cheap
nevirapine et all, as I understand it, can supress the effects of HIV, perhaps even indefinitely. However they do not cure the disease, which will resume when treatment is stopped.
I'm not a medical expert, but my "cure" I was envisaging a therapy that would end in the patient being HIV free with no ongoing treatment. Similarly, a "vacine" would prevent a person from infection. A person on Nevirapine can still transmit HIV to others. Treatment is not cure. Eliminating HIV would take
1) A cure for HIV that is cheap enough to be rolled out in Africa. Failing a cure, a vaccine to stop new infection would also halt the pandemic.
2) A method of world governance that rids us of rogue states that persecute their own populations (Saddam, North Korea et al) and also curbs rogue states with semi-democratically elected leaders who want to attack other states on dodgy pretexts (GWB I'm looking at you)
3) An end to the tech slump, sustained growth in IT sectors, more coding jobs for me!
4) Moore's observation to continue to hold true, more better toys getting cheaper.
5) Following on from that, widespread internet rollouts in the third world. The street finds it's own uses for technology, and the villages will find their own uses for information and commication.
6) Open source software to keep getting better, no more constrictive tech monopolies, and end to DVD region coding and hard crypto staying legal.
There are more sensitive radio receivers out there and they are known as radio telescopes! Radio Astronomers have a hard enough time keeping the important wavebands free of interference
The surface of the planet is becoming entirely the wrong place for radio telescopes.
Science is suppressed by ideological forces, governments and churches not least among them. What marks that crank is when he claims that this suppression is being done in secret. Real suppression -- from the Catholic church and Galileo to fundamentalist Protestantism and Darwin to Stalin and anyone whose science case doubt on Communist ideology -- tends to be very blatant.
Just wondering about the bluetooth handsfree headset. The theory goes that the radiation of holding what is essentially radio receiver/transmitter next to your head is bad for the brain.
With the bluetooth headset, is the situation better (phone in briefcase, away from head) or worse (headset next to brain doing a second receive/transmit to the phone)?
If we take Earth out of the equation, like we should as good,unbiased scientists, all we have evidence of a cold, harsh, sterile universe with no life in it
Why should we ignore earth? If nothing else, it is evidence that there is (at least on instance of)life in the universe.
Integrated mobile phone
on
Palm PDA Roundup
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Why would anyone ever need anything more than what the current top-of-the-line Sony Clié has to offer?? Camera? Got it. Mp3 player? Got it. Plenty of memory? Got it. Help me here.
Integrated mobile phone a la handspring treo.
It's what I want. Otherwise I have to carry 2 gadgets.
I do still get the "Must have new CD toys" feeling, and I sate it on music that I like. I generally don't find it on major labels, and it's not on MTV, that's for sure.
The music industry alienates me. Their task is to present to me an array of diverse, intelligent new talent that I might be interested in cultivating a taste for. They have singularly failed in this. They are mainly interested in making the most homogenous possible product (not talent) that can be shifted in biggest numbers. Well, music is an art and a fashion. And in these fields, being just like everyone else is the kiss of death.
I get recomendations for friends (the internet helps), and use Kazaa as a filter to preview the music.
Let me degenerate into what I like: This year: Sigur Ros, A Silver Mt. Zion, The Flaming Lips. Oh, and I just bought another Pink Floyd Disk:) If you like rock, there is some good stuff out there, mostly not on big labels.
Ok, so the Lips might be on UK top of the pops right now. They got there by a decade of work and staying power. They have grey hairs, and aren't a manufactured pop product.
If the big labels were to dry up and blow away, all three of these bands would still be giging, because they would want to. That's what they did before anyone heared of them. And Britney et all would be sitting on her paedo-bait ass wondering how to score the next fix of fame and cash. I'm sure that's what she wants.
No strife. Material wealth is meaningless when resources are unlimited
The culture is a bit like the Star Trek environment taken to it's logical conclusions. benign AIs are in charge. No need to work or compete for food when there are replicators everywhere.
However, "no strife" is not quite right. Mr Bank's culture books are all about strife, struggle, war and conflict, usually between the culture and other civilisations, or between "primitives" outside the culture who aren't in the post-scarcity era.
Anyway, even for civilisations like the culture "resources are unlimited" is not true. There is always the perenial cause of conflict: land, living space, turf, lebensraum.
Listening to your MP3 collection is good for a while, but after a while I miss a good radio station. As the article puts it, my own Mp3s, even on random, lack serendipity. I don't hear anything new. I don't hear anything I don't own. I'm not exposed to new sounds, or even a DJ with a different idea of what tune goes when.
Then after a while of hit-and-miss radio I miss my MP3s again, and the cycle repeats.
If you're stupid enough to use your real address then you deserve to get spam.
That's utter crap. It's right up there with "if you don't install an alarm, you deserve to be burgled and the burgler will be innocent" and "if you wear such a short skirt, you deserve to be raped"
People can't tell that it is not a gas driven car. Either by looks, power, or speed. The only exception will be if it end up having more power/speed.
Why is that such an exceptional case? go read the article - I dunno about the speed or battery life, but the design, customisablity and drivability of this vehicle are radical and exciting.
Which version of pascal would that be? Some people insist that when you say "pascal has" you should refer only to the published standard pascal, which doesn't have classses of any kind whatsoever.
I've been programming for years in the most popular commercial extension of Pascal, Delphi. It has no value classes.
and so does C#.
I have Jesse Libery's book "programming C#" (2nd ed) right here. On page 126 he notes "although a class is a reference type, a struct is a value type" . Thus C# does not have reference classes.
That's a bit like asking: "if light travels at the speed of light, then how can a sunlamp be brighter than a flashlight?". i.e. it is is a non-sequitur.
Gravtiy is stronger than light. It would also suggest to me that gravity is is faster than light Well, it doesn't suggest that to me.
Whatever happened to the aphorism "A picture is worth a thousand words"?
It doesn't true hold very often.
For instance, a friend said to me a few years ago, as we bought movie tickets "whatever did we do before cellphones?". Well, we were a lot more rigid in our planning, that's what we did. And we missed each other more often.
Now we have to option of sending a text message to co-ordinate our social lives, e.g. "I have 4 tickets for the 8:30 show lotR T2T @ Odeon Covent Garden cinema, meet us corner of Shaftsbury Ave" or "am running late, cu l8r". Now try expressing that in 400*600 full-colour pixels.
I'll admit that picture messaging will be a godsend to tree-surgeons, and in the event of car crashes. But these are niches - text will continue to predominate. Or perhaps you'd like to reply in JPG format.
1) These are not good cameras. Compared to what's available these days as a stand-alone digital camera, the picture size and quality is pathetic.
2) Unlike text messaging, it is driven from the top down, not the bottom up. I can't speak for the USA, but for the rest of us, SMS (text messaging) has become a valuable social tool. The mobile phone networks did not predict this, it caught them by surprise when this added-on extra became one of the main events. Most mobile phones, with the 0-9 keypad, are appallingly badly designed for text entry. SMS is a killer app in spite of this.
Now they have come up with picture messaging - 1/10th the expressive power, 1000 times the bandwidth (and they can therefore charge more for it) backed by big ad campaigns here in the UK. Well, SMS never needed ad campaigns to make it popular, people made it popular because it worked for them, not because some company told them that they needed it. After you've had your picture-phone for a year, when the novelty has worn off, I wonder how often you'll use the photo-message function compared to the text message function?
1) The fact that CLIs are good for some things does not mean that GUIs Are Bad (tm). GUIs are brilliant for some things (try playing chess or working Photoshop/Gimp via a CLI) and CLIs shine for other things (notably here, batches and scripting).
2) I wouldn't call this a "change of direction for microsoft" as I really don't think that this will mean a significant slowdown on MS's GUI-related activities. If you will, it is the great amoeba expanding in yet another direction at the same time.
Often, MS doesn't have a masterplan - they throw a bunch of stuff against the wall, and see what sticks. If it sells, sell it.
The great Ektanoor, who may not be a troll but does tend to rant when he should listen, claims that "For YEARS they have been slowly but surely killing the shell world". I don't think you need ascribe that any motive other than neglect and lack of enough vocal customers asking for it (they were no doubt too distracted by the shiny gui toys)
Microsoft has a history of picking the low-hanging fruit that are bright and shiny and tempt in the casual buyer, then slowly climbing up to more difficult tasks that thier users ask for.
The way in which this will leverage.NET (like *spits*VBScript could leverage COM objects) is interesting, and could be worthwhile.
I don't want to even think about the security implications right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Shameless, thou art. You missed out on the score 5 informative, and the score 3 interesting. Welcome to the Redundant and off-topic mods.
:(
Yeah, I didn't type fast enough
over here.
Shameless, I am.
Civilians...smiling, dancing, shaking hands, tearing down posters of Saddam. It would seem they want him gone too.
Or they have developed a good sense of which arse to kiss?
Summary: Game based on cool TV show announced. Must be a slow new day.
Maybe a war or something would liven things up.
Absolutely. North Korea is worse, and others are just as bad and there's no murmur on them. The US let Rwanda descend into Genocide and didn't feel the need to intervene. I'm not saying they were honor bound to do so, but please be just slightly consistent. Iraq must be different somehow. Therefor, Iraq's bad govt is a pretext to attack.
Depeding on the poll you look at, 60% - 70% of Americans are in favor of war in Iraq.
So you're saying that a large number of people wanting to invade another country makes it right?
nevirapine et all, as I understand it, can supress the effects of HIV, perhaps even indefinitely. However they do not cure the disease, which will resume when treatment is stopped.
I'm not a medical expert, but my "cure" I was envisaging a therapy that would end in the patient being HIV free with no ongoing treatment. Similarly, a "vacine" would prevent a person from infection. A person on Nevirapine can still transmit HIV to others. Treatment is not cure. Eliminating HIV would take
1) A cure for HIV that is cheap enough to be rolled out in Africa. Failing a cure, a vaccine to stop new infection would also halt the pandemic.
2) A method of world governance that rids us of rogue states that persecute their own populations (Saddam, North Korea et al) and also curbs rogue states with semi-democratically elected leaders who want to attack other states on dodgy pretexts (GWB I'm looking at you)
3) An end to the tech slump, sustained growth in IT sectors, more coding jobs for me!
4) Moore's observation to continue to hold true, more better toys getting cheaper.
5) Following on from that, widespread internet rollouts in the third world. The street finds it's own uses for technology, and the villages will find their own uses for information and commication.
6) Open source software to keep getting better, no more constrictive tech monopolies, and end to DVD region coding and hard crypto staying legal.
Firstly, is it kind of racist/xenophobic to write "crazy" South Africans?
I hope not. I was thinking more gek (zany) than mal (mad).
(I'm sensitive: I'm South African born).
So am I, and I submitted the story.
You know, the Spanish empire ignored North America because it thought it was just a useless, barren wasteland
That was useless, barren, inhabited wasteland. I'll think you'll find that Mars on the other hand sucks a lot more as far as quality of life goes.
The surface of the planet is becoming entirely the wrong place for radio telescopes.
A brilliant distinction!
Just wondering about the bluetooth handsfree headset. The theory goes that the radiation of holding what is essentially radio receiver/transmitter next to your head is bad for the brain.
With the bluetooth headset, is the situation better (phone in briefcase, away from head) or worse (headset next to brain doing a second receive/transmit to the phone)?
Screw that. Mine the asteroids, there's more and better mineral wealth in asteroids than there is on the moon.
True, but I think you'll find that the moon is closer than the asteroids. And less dispersed. Maybe this is why it's being considered as a first step.
Why should we ignore earth? If nothing else, it is evidence that there is (at least on instance of)life in the universe.
Why would anyone ever need anything more than what the current top-of-the-line Sony Clié has to offer?? Camera? Got it. Mp3 player? Got it. Plenty of memory? Got it. Help me here.
Integrated mobile phone a la handspring treo.
It's what I want. Otherwise I have to carry 2 gadgets.
Hey. I'm 33 and I agree with you.
:) If you like rock, there is some good stuff out there, mostly not on big labels.
I do still get the "Must have new CD toys" feeling, and I sate it on music that I like. I generally don't find it on major labels, and it's not on MTV, that's for sure.
The music industry alienates me. Their task is to present to me an array of diverse, intelligent new talent that I might be interested in cultivating a taste for. They have singularly failed in this. They are mainly interested in making the most homogenous possible product (not talent) that can be shifted in biggest numbers. Well, music is an art and a fashion. And in these fields, being just like everyone else is the kiss of death.
I get recomendations for friends (the internet helps), and use Kazaa as a filter to preview the music.
Let me degenerate into what I like: This year: Sigur Ros, A Silver Mt. Zion, The Flaming Lips. Oh, and I just bought another Pink Floyd Disk
Ok, so the Lips might be on UK top of the pops right now. They got there by a decade of work and staying power. They have grey hairs, and aren't a manufactured pop product.
If the big labels were to dry up and blow away, all three of these bands would still be giging, because they would want to. That's what they did before anyone heared of them. And Britney et all would be sitting on her paedo-bait ass wondering how to score the next fix of fame and cash. I'm sure that's what she wants.
The culture is a bit like the Star Trek environment taken to it's logical conclusions. benign AIs are in charge. No need to work or compete for food when there are replicators everywhere.
However, "no strife" is not quite right. Mr Bank's culture books are all about strife, struggle, war and conflict, usually between the culture and other civilisations, or between "primitives" outside the culture who aren't in the post-scarcity era.
Anyway, even for civilisations like the culture "resources are unlimited" is not true. There is always the perenial cause of conflict: land, living space, turf, lebensraum.
Listening to your MP3 collection is good for a while, but after a while I miss a good radio station. As the article puts it, my own Mp3s, even on random, lack serendipity. I don't hear anything new. I don't hear anything I don't own. I'm not exposed to new sounds, or even a DJ with a different idea of what tune goes when.
Then after a while of hit-and-miss radio I miss my MP3s again, and the cycle repeats.
That's utter crap. It's right up there with "if you don't install an alarm, you deserve to be burgled and the burgler will be innocent" and "if you wear such a short skirt, you deserve to be raped"
To hell with you, troll.
Why is that such an exceptional case? go read the article - I dunno about the speed or battery life, but the design, customisablity and drivability of this vehicle are radical and exciting.
Which version of pascal would that be? Some people insist that when you say "pascal has" you should refer only to the published standard pascal, which doesn't have classses of any kind whatsoever.
I've been programming for years in the most popular commercial extension of Pascal, Delphi. It has no value classes.
and so does C#.
I have Jesse Libery's book "programming C#" (2nd ed) right here. On page 126 he notes "although a class is a reference type, a struct is a value type" . Thus C# does not have reference classes.
Gravtiy is stronger than light. It would also suggest to me that gravity is is faster than light
Well, it doesn't suggest that to me.
Whatever happened to the aphorism "A picture is worth a thousand words"?
It doesn't true hold very often.
For instance, a friend said to me a few years ago, as we bought movie tickets "whatever did we do before cellphones?". Well, we were a lot more rigid in our planning, that's what we did. And we missed each other more often.
Now we have to option of sending a text message to co-ordinate our social lives, e.g. "I have 4 tickets for the 8:30 show lotR T2T @ Odeon Covent Garden cinema, meet us corner of Shaftsbury Ave" or "am running late, cu l8r". Now try expressing that in 400*600 full-colour pixels.
I'll admit that picture messaging will be a godsend to tree-surgeons, and in the event of car crashes. But these are niches - text will continue to predominate. Or perhaps you'd like to reply in JPG format.
I'm sceptical because
1) These are not good cameras. Compared to what's available these days as a stand-alone digital camera, the picture size and quality is pathetic.
2) Unlike text messaging, it is driven from the top down, not the bottom up. I can't speak for the USA, but for the rest of us, SMS (text messaging) has become a valuable social tool. The mobile phone networks did not predict this, it caught them by surprise when this added-on extra became one of the main events. Most mobile phones, with the 0-9 keypad, are appallingly badly designed for text entry. SMS is a killer app in spite of this.
Now they have come up with picture messaging - 1/10th the expressive power, 1000 times the bandwidth (and they can therefore charge more for it) backed by big ad campaigns here in the UK. Well, SMS never needed ad campaigns to make it popular, people made it popular because it worked for them, not because some company told them that they needed it. After you've had your picture-phone for a year, when the novelty has worn off, I wonder how often you'll use the photo-message function compared to the text message function?
OK, guys, get a grip.
.NET (like *spits*VBScript could leverage COM objects) is interesting, and could be worthwhile.
1) The fact that CLIs are good for some things does not mean that GUIs Are Bad (tm). GUIs are brilliant for some things (try playing chess or working Photoshop/Gimp via a CLI) and CLIs shine for other things (notably here, batches and scripting).
2) I wouldn't call this a "change of direction for microsoft" as I really don't think that this will mean a significant slowdown on MS's GUI-related activities. If you will, it is the great amoeba expanding in yet another direction at the same time.
Often, MS doesn't have a masterplan - they throw a bunch of stuff against the wall, and see what sticks. If it sells, sell it.
The great Ektanoor, who may not be a troll but does tend to rant when he should listen, claims that "For YEARS they have been slowly but surely killing the shell world". I don't think you need ascribe that any motive other than neglect and lack of enough vocal customers asking for it (they were no doubt too distracted by the shiny gui toys)
Microsoft has a history of picking the low-hanging fruit that are bright and shiny and tempt in the casual buyer, then slowly climbing up to more difficult tasks that thier users ask for.
The way in which this will leverage
I don't want to even think about the security implications right now.