While it's true that certain types of questions get repeated in different forms (e.g. the language of the problem might clue you in to it having a dynamic programming solution) I highly doubt that in the next few years (or the next 5-20 years for that matter) a bot will be able to do any more than identify the reuse of a previous question with different wording and solve this.
This is easy to circumvent, however, as more complicated/obscure natural language constructs can be used to confuse the bot (botfuscation). What you're suggesting is that in a few years we'll have bots that are perfectly capable of parsing natural language, understanding the problem asked, and solving it. This means they'll have to perform image recognition as well for the problems that have pictures. I believe this technology is still in its infancy and is nowhere near 100% accurate. But maybe you're more up on the research than I am?
All they say is that you cannot use TopCoder plugins or modify the applet, but do not consider it cheating to copy the problem statement into another IDE, do your development there, and copy the code back. In fact, a good handwritten (e.g. you wrote it yourself and did not get it from a TC plugin) regular expression or two should suffice to parse the problem statement into class/method stubs and test cases. You tie running that regular expression to a macro and you're all set.
In order to understand any subculture, be it al-Qaida [sic], witches, devil worshippers or gangs, you have to be able to know their own language.
I'm sorry, but comparing witches to Al-Quaeda is a bit of an ad absurdum. We all know witches are more powerful, which is why we dealt with these terrorists in the 1600's, and did not not deal with the latter terrorists in the 1980's when we could have.
yes, i admit that i was bordering on the ad absurdum argument, but i do think it often helps to take ideas to their logical extremes and then discuss why the extreme situation is or is not parallel to the given one. For example, the situation you give of having students generate their own electricity might seem absurd to many of us, but at the same time many physics classes will do just that, and some would argue that this is an important experiment for a computer science student to do as well.
Going by this logic, should we not let them use a shell, but rather force them to launch the compiler through execve calls (how one would write the launcher program itself and run it is beyond the scope of this comment).
Or should they start off coding in assembly or even machine code?
At some point, it makes sense to abstract away details so that students can understand important concepts. Now, if your assignments or understanding of the concepts you were taught required knowledge of javadoc or jar, then I agree that your teacher did not use the right tool(s) to teach these concepts, or should have modified the course so that these tools weren't needed (e.g. generate documentation in eclipse should have been all that they needed to run).
So, given this, do you still believe that an IDE abstracts away too much of the detail needed to understand OO, Algorithms, and Data Structures? If so, which needed details are left out?
No to Visual Studio, but yes to an IDE. Well, emacs and vi can be thought of as IDE's that is.
My first course in programming was at UMass Boston, which is basically a community college, and we started off learning emacs, then went on to our first cup of java.
It was pretty gruelling.
But now I still know emacs and use it every day, while the java technology (1.0) has changed a great deal.
My point is that if you're going to teach them a tool, use one that will still be useful and helpful later on in their academic and professional careers. Visual Studio may not even be around in 5 years, but most likely, it'll still be around and will use a different interface that they'll have to relearn. Instead, focus on the fundamentals of any IDE, such as compiling, linking, testing, debugging, so that they'll have no problem learning whatever IDE their company uses. In this sense, I think it makes more sense to learn that to compile a program into bytecode or machine code, you have to launch another program that does this (gcc program.c or javac Program.java) rather than just click a Run button and have everything magically happen for you.
This goes along with teaching the fundamentals of programming languages and operating systems rather than preparing them to work in a single specific language or OS and have them out of work in 10 years.
Funny you should mention this just as I'm reading http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml. This just doesn't feel like it's the right way to do things - I upgraded portage yesterday, and there was no mention of changing to the new profile. Are there any messages when your profile becomes deprecated?
Part of the reason why Gentoo is so great is that you're not really running Gentoo 2005.1 -- you installed with the 2005.1 livecd, but if you've been upgrading your packages (like portage, baselayout) on a regular basis then your system is already setup like a brand new 2006.0 install would be. So upgrading to 2006.0 doesn't make sense.
-coshx
The thing is, this would make it easier for them to ban pornography / erotica / alternative lifestyles / education / muslims / jews /... sorry, I know, they're godly people who only want to do good *ahem, crusades, ahem*
It's much easier to simply ban all.xxx domains than to ban certain blacklisted sites or keywords or do image recognition.
With this domain in place, it would also be easier to get legislation passed (in certain countries) forcing all sexually explicit sites to use this domain.
So...maybe it's a good thing they're not supporting this because they're just too damned stupid?
Dude! You read and post to (well, post to at least)/. I can just imagine a hoard of 7th grade boys talking to you.
"What's that you're reading?" "Slashdot" "Oh, is that about hockey?" "No, it's about computers and technology and open source." "dude, that's so gay" (they walk off chuckling)
What did they do? Well, they took a subject that none of them like (or none would admit that they like) and since they were in the majority, they labelled it a pejorative term. Needless to say, using the word "gay" to mean "bad" is offensive to many people. I know when you use it, you just mean "bad" or "uncool" (although I could argue that in this case you mean sissy, but I won't go there) -- it's still offensive, and shows a lack of emotional maturity on your part.
But what really gets me is that you probably know better than to make a statement like this, but figured you'd get modded as "Funny" if enough people agreed with you, even though that still doesn't make your opinion any more valid.
I'm sure there are a lot of things out-of-the-mainstream that you enjoy, and I'm sure you take offense if someone says that it's stupid, so why come down on people who like different drinks than you do?
So what if someone likes listening to Yanni or John Tesh? If they get enjoyment out of it, why not talk about it with them, see why they like it and open yourself up to the possibility of seeing what they see, even though you don't have to like it? This is a basic principle of human understanding and mature human interaction...
I wish all/. posts were as good as this one. You've rationally argued my points without making me feel stupid. It's like an actual..what do they call it? oh yeah, dialogue:)
anyone who writes table-less websites is cool in my book
In terms of using screen corners, Windows uses the lower left corner for an applications menu, the lower right corner for system/application information, and the upper right and upper left corners for application control when the app is in full-screen mode.
As he mentions, expose is invoked by going to a screen corner as well, but apparently has disrespect for spatial navigation, so this does not counter his point...wtf?
2. OS GUI's are Designed for Beginners
Just using the term OS GUI tells me what an amateur the author is, since the OS and its windowing environment are different concepts, and even though one may always be packaged with the other, they are still distinct ideas.
Why are preferences bad? The author makes fun of them without actually making an argument.
What about kde? gnome? OS X? how about some examples? or do we just get to hear a bunch of rants?
3. Visual Attention - Sine Qua Non
The user has to take focus away from an app to scroll? really? there's no such thing as a scroll wheel? Right now I'm using a touchpad and can scroll both horizontally and vertically without looking away from the text I'm reading.
The author has clearly never used *box, kde (others?) where you can alt+left click to move a window and alt+right click to resize, since again here, you don't have to take your focus away from what you're doing to find a teeny-weenie button.
5. Our love of choice
apparently, choice is bad, and users should be forcd to one pre-determined mode of operation? is this a joke? yes, i agree that it can be confusing to beginners to have too many ways of accomplishing the same task, but this has to do with throwing too much information at them, not having many choices.
6. Our Disrespect for Spatialness
so spatial navigation is apparently great, but there was not one mention of nautilus, or how well its spatial navigation was accepted.
7. Terminology The terminology we use is a strong indicator of stone age: User-oriented design. User centered design. Come on! Around whom else would the design be oriented?!
apparently the author does not understand the difference between user-centered and data-centered design. apparently the author does not understand much, and I fail to see how this is even a point.
8. [convoluted example]
there is always a trade-off between flexibility and ease-of-use. I can imagine a computer specifically built for this purpose, where you could tilt it to the right (which would rotate your image) and then hit the "email to deaf musician button"
But in actuality, you can simply click on the image, select either the ROTATE option, or click on the button with a rotating arrow, then SAVE the image, and then email it. A fairly complex operation that can be done by beginners.
Maybe they had good reason to use paper (so they wouldn't be biased), but I'm wondering why they didn't use Gimp or Photoshop to create the prototype? To me, it's easier to cut and paste, and move things around with a graphical editor than with tape and scissors.
I can't tell if this is supposed to be funny, or intentional flamebait.
You draw conclusions, such as This is *not* the reason... without providing any evidence. Statements like, The more you unravel the statements he makes, the more asinine they are. is itself asinine. You're saying, "If you look into his argument, and you're as smart as I am, you'll see that it's false."
While this is a fine lead-in to your argument, it is not an argument itself, since you have neither shown the fallacy of his argument, nor proven the merits of your own.
It is a very common trolling/baiting tactic to use ad hominems like "moron" and "asinine", and I feel like I was just baited....
Having been hit on my bike by a 90 year old woman when I was 13, I whole-heartedly agree. The problem is how do we prevent this sort of thing?
manadatory drivers tests - we could make everyone over a certain age re-take the driving test every so many years, but this would cost far too much, and would vary from State to State.
zero tolerance - wait until they get pulled over or get into a crash, and take away their licenses. The problem with this is that it is not proactive enough, and it leaves too much gray area for lawyers to win back licenses. In other words: rich old drivers can drive recklessly.
technology - this can be anything from loud alert wake-up sirens, to systems that shut down the car safely if the driver has lost control. There are many possibilities here, and while each one could have flaws, I believe that many of the flaws can be worked out.
I think the hardest part about computer-controlled cars (well, more control than they currently already have) is what will happen the first time someone dies. Statistics shows us that there will be unavoidable situations that even computers won't be able to get out of, but when this happens, there will be a backlash, even if it's a fraction of the current number of deaths by humans.
The vast majority of accidents are caused because human beings are either incapable or unwilling to drive a vehicle safely
This is plain truth. Most accidents are caused either because the drivers chose to drive wrecklessly and/or under the influence, or were caused simply because human reaction time is not as good as computers' reaction time.
Because of this, we have lost many civil liberties.
This is also true, and quite an insight. Think about random road blocks where you're tested for being under the influence even if you're NOT driving wrecklessly or even swerving. The equation is simple: am I willing to give up a little bit of my privacy to prevent myself from being killed? Generally, yes! Of course! But, if drunk driving didn't cause accidents because people weren't driving, there would be no need to pull this person over.
Mods, please please please stop modding based on your own beliefs, and rather based on the intelligence of people's responses -- I'm going to get modded down for that, eh?
And, if it was not frozen, doesn't that imply that it was warmer in the distant past than it was in the recent past?
You're correct that the earth goes through warmer and colder phases. The problem is that these phases normally last millions of years, and the transitions between them are often extremely slow (unless some catastrophic event, like a meteor crash or global warming, occurs). What worries scientists is not that the earth is heading into a warmer phase due to natural occurrances, but rather the fact that the change is happening so rapidly, and is due to human factors.
I'm not even sure if this deserves a response, but...
1) source? you really shouldn't quote numbers without a link.
2) data manipulation? what about the rest of the US.? you know, the part closer to the north pole?
3) do your fucking research! It is NOT very possible that we are coming out of a mini ice age. In fact, almost all scientists (especially those not employed by polluting industries) agree that this is not the case. You may have been misinformed by media that often quote radical scientists when trying to present a "balanced" report:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978
Oh that's right, you're going to say that we shouldn't trust the UN, even if these reports are published by the top scientists in the world? Well, didn't you take high school chemistry? Anyone with knowledge of simple chemistry will tell you of the potential dangers of green house gases. (yes, i say potential here to be diplomatic -- see #7)
5) you like to separate yourself from "environmentalists", because you obviously don't care about the long-term environment, and would rather have cheap prices today than do your part in keeping the world safe for future generations? that's selfish and narrow minded.
6) ahh..environmentally-friendly liberal media. do you just like throwing around these sayings, because you've heard them so many times they must be true? are you really that stupid to fall into partisan name-calling tactics? anyway, in terms of environmentalism, the media is actually biased against environmentalism (see above link).
7) even IF we are at the end of a mini ice age (which is highly unlikely), you still must recognize the possible devastating effects of our continued release of so many green house gases into the atmosphere, and should especially be in favor of economically-friendly initiatives.
8) I'm not sure why you chose this forum to voice your support of Bush, and ignorance towards the Kyoto agreement. This story was about taxi drivers who drive environmentally-friendly cars because it is ultimately cheaper for them, hence invalidating your claim that environmentally-friendly products cost the consumer more.
9) There ARE environmentally-friendly solutions that are also economically beneficial. In fact, this is really the best way to get industries to act in the environment's (and hence, in OUR) best interest. Simple examples include environmentally-aware heating and air-conditioning, like placement of the windows, or having heat ducts near the floor instead of near the ceiling. More complex examples generally involve symbiotic relationships with our environment to utilize a renewable or recyclable resource.
10) Please leave your politics at the door, and before responding to an article with your bias, research the topic. Forget everything you think you know, and take a fresh look at the information available. It will only make you a smarter person.
I'm sorry that you've been so jaded as to believe that debating technologies is pointless and never fruitful.
You're correct that statements like "MUCH BETTER" are often signs of FUD, but they can also be thought of as thesis statements. The "Endless discussions" are where the facts tend to lie [pun intended].
It's always hard to listen to "the other side" (vi/emacs, qwerty/dvorak, democrat/republican) but doing so, trying out new ideas, and constantly reevaluating your own beliefs is really a sign of intelligence.
p.s. taking my own advice - this is the first thing I've written using the dvorak layout, and I already have the home row (and more) down.
From TFA: This kind of trickery in the benchmark game does little for the vendor.
I have to disagree with this one. Fudging benchmarks almost always helps the vendor, except with very specialized (/.) audiences.
Remember, most people just see a bunch of random numbers when they shop for laptops, and compare processors based on GHz. They're more likely to read a blurb (or hear from the salesperson) that Turion outperforms it's competitors than they are to search blogs about the truth to the claim.
Now, by making enough of a fuss over this, we can create negative publicity, but why rag on AMD when, as the article states, all the other companies have set precedent?
I am a firm believe that we should fix systems that are broken, rather than trying to apply round-about patches [insert Microsoft reference here].
That said, the spammers are not stealing any bandwidth, they are using what they're ISP's allow them. They are also taking up a negligable amount of my bandwidth, but they DO take up a good deal of my ISP's bandwidth, from which the cost does trickle down to me.
Here, the round-about patch is getting the government involved. A real solution would involve blocking the spam as early as possible (my ISP could reject it based on some magic header strings), drastically reducing the bandwidth, or coming up with email standards (there are many proposals, i just can't find a link right now) and denying any email from a non-standards-compliant ISP.
These industry-centric solutions can practically eliminate spam, and are far superior to government involvement.
I have to pay a trash fee. Shouldn't I be able to fine companies that send out junk mail?
Slashdot Mirror
While it's true that certain types of questions get repeated in different forms (e.g. the language of the problem might clue you in to it having a dynamic programming solution) I highly doubt that in the next few years (or the next 5-20 years for that matter) a bot will be able to do any more than identify the reuse of a previous question with different wording and solve this.
This is easy to circumvent, however, as more complicated/obscure natural language constructs can be used to confuse the bot (botfuscation). What you're suggesting is that in a few years we'll have bots that are perfectly capable of parsing natural language, understanding the problem asked, and solving it. This means they'll have to perform image recognition as well for the problems that have pictures. I believe this technology is still in its infancy and is nowhere near 100% accurate. But maybe you're more up on the research than I am?
All they say is that you cannot use TopCoder plugins or modify the applet, but do not consider it cheating to copy the problem statement into another IDE, do your development there, and copy the code back. In fact, a good handwritten (e.g. you wrote it yourself and did not get it from a TC plugin) regular expression or two should suffice to parse the problem statement into class/method stubs and test cases. You tie running that regular expression to a macro and you're all set.
In order to understand any subculture, be it al-Qaida [sic], witches, devil worshippers or gangs, you have to be able to know their own language.
I'm sorry, but comparing witches to Al-Quaeda is a bit of an ad absurdum. We all know witches are more powerful, which is why we dealt with these terrorists in the 1600's, and did not not deal with the latter terrorists in the 1980's when we could have.
yes, i admit that i was bordering on the ad absurdum argument, but i do think it often helps to take ideas to their logical extremes and then discuss why the extreme situation is or is not parallel to the given one. For example, the situation you give of having students generate their own electricity might seem absurd to many of us, but at the same time many physics classes will do just that, and some would argue that this is an important experiment for a computer science student to do as well.
Going by this logic, should we not let them use a shell, but rather force them to launch the compiler through execve calls (how one would write the launcher program itself and run it is beyond the scope of this comment).
Or should they start off coding in assembly or even machine code?
At some point, it makes sense to abstract away details so that students can understand important concepts. Now, if your assignments or understanding of the concepts you were taught required knowledge of javadoc or jar, then I agree that your teacher did not use the right tool(s) to teach these concepts, or should have modified the course so that these tools weren't needed (e.g. generate documentation in eclipse should have been all that they needed to run).
So, given this, do you still believe that an IDE abstracts away too much of the detail needed to understand OO, Algorithms, and Data Structures? If so, which needed details are left out?
No to Visual Studio, but yes to an IDE. Well, emacs and vi can be thought of as IDE's that is.
My first course in programming was at UMass Boston, which is basically a community college, and we started off learning emacs, then went on to our first cup of java.
It was pretty gruelling.
But now I still know emacs and use it every day, while the java technology (1.0) has changed a great deal.
My point is that if you're going to teach them a tool, use one that will still be useful and helpful later on in their academic and professional careers. Visual Studio may not even be around in 5 years, but most likely, it'll still be around and will use a different interface that they'll have to relearn. Instead, focus on the fundamentals of any IDE, such as compiling, linking, testing, debugging, so that they'll have no problem learning whatever IDE their company uses. In this sense, I think it makes more sense to learn that to compile a program into bytecode or machine code, you have to launch another program that does this (gcc program.c or javac Program.java) rather than just click a Run button and have everything magically happen for you.
This goes along with teaching the fundamentals of programming languages and operating systems rather than preparing them to work in a single specific language or OS and have them out of work in 10 years.
crap..that didn't work...posting anonymously still removed my mods (i guess i should have logged out first)
sorry.
% Some people say this'll never be quite as fast as hand-tuned C.
% Some people say this'll never be quite as fast as hand-tuned C.
*snip*
Well, I think it really depends on whether you downloaded the hand-tuned C as a pre-build binary or compiled it yourself...
Funny you should mention this just as I'm reading http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml. This just doesn't feel like it's the right way to do things - I upgraded portage yesterday, and there was no mention of changing to the new profile. Are there any messages when your profile becomes deprecated?
-coshx
Part of the reason why Gentoo is so great is that you're not really running Gentoo 2005.1 -- you installed with the 2005.1 livecd, but if you've been upgrading your packages (like portage, baselayout) on a regular basis then your system is already setup like a brand new 2006.0 install would be. So upgrading to 2006.0 doesn't make sense. -coshx
Actually, not like lemmings at all.
The thing is, this would make it easier for them to ban pornography / erotica / alternative lifestyles / education / muslims / jews / ... sorry, I know, they're godly people who only want to do good *ahem, crusades, ahem*
.xxx domains than to ban certain blacklisted sites or keywords or do image recognition.
It's much easier to simply ban all
With this domain in place, it would also be easier to get legislation passed (in certain countries) forcing all sexually explicit sites to use this domain.
So...maybe it's a good thing they're not supporting this because they're just too damned stupid?
Dude! You read and post to (well, post to at least) /. I can just imagine a hoard of 7th grade boys talking to you.
"What's that you're reading?"
"Slashdot"
"Oh, is that about hockey?"
"No, it's about computers and technology and open source."
"dude, that's so gay"
(they walk off chuckling)
What did they do? Well, they took a subject that none of them like (or none would admit that they like) and since they were in the majority, they labelled it a pejorative term. Needless to say, using the word "gay" to mean "bad" is offensive to many people. I know when you use it, you just mean "bad" or "uncool" (although I could argue that in this case you mean sissy, but I won't go there) -- it's still offensive, and shows a lack of emotional maturity on your part.
But what really gets me is that you probably know better than to make a statement like this, but figured you'd get modded as "Funny" if enough people agreed with you, even though that still doesn't make your opinion any more valid.
I'm sure there are a lot of things out-of-the-mainstream that you enjoy, and I'm sure you take offense if someone says that it's stupid, so why come down on people who like different drinks than you do?
So what if someone likes listening to Yanni or John Tesh? If they get enjoyment out of it, why not talk about it with them, see why they like it and open yourself up to the possibility of seeing what they see, even though you don't have to like it? This is a basic principle of human understanding and mature human interaction...
I wish all /. posts were as good as this one. You've rationally argued my points without making me feel stupid. It's like an actual..what do they call it? oh yeah, dialogue :)
anyone who writes table-less websites is cool in my book
1. Screen Corners
In terms of using screen corners, Windows uses the lower left corner for an applications menu, the lower right corner for system/application information, and the upper right and upper left corners for application control when the app is in full-screen mode.
As he mentions, expose is invoked by going to a screen corner as well, but apparently has disrespect for spatial navigation, so this does not counter his point...wtf?
2. OS GUI's are Designed for Beginners
Just using the term OS GUI tells me what an amateur the author is, since the OS and its windowing environment are different concepts, and even though one may always be packaged with the other, they are still distinct ideas.
Why are preferences bad? The author makes fun of them without actually making an argument.
What about kde? gnome? OS X? how about some examples? or do we just get to hear a bunch of rants?
3. Visual Attention - Sine Qua Non
The user has to take focus away from an app to scroll? really? there's no such thing as a scroll wheel? Right now I'm using a touchpad and can scroll both horizontally and vertically without looking away from the text I'm reading.
The author has clearly never used *box, kde (others?) where you can alt+left click to move a window and alt+right click to resize, since again here, you don't have to take your focus away from what you're doing to find a teeny-weenie button.
5. Our love of choice
apparently, choice is bad, and users should be forcd to one pre-determined mode of operation? is this a joke? yes, i agree that it can be confusing to beginners to have too many ways of accomplishing the same task, but this has to do with throwing too much information at them, not having many choices.
6. Our Disrespect for Spatialness
so spatial navigation is apparently great, but there was not one mention of nautilus, or how well its spatial navigation was accepted.
7. Terminology
The terminology we use is a strong indicator of stone age: User-oriented design. User centered design. Come on! Around whom else would the design be oriented?!
apparently the author does not understand the difference between user-centered and data-centered design. apparently the author does not understand much, and I fail to see how this is even a point.
8. [convoluted example]
there is always a trade-off between flexibility and ease-of-use. I can imagine a computer specifically built for this purpose, where you could tilt it to the right (which would rotate your image) and then hit the "email to deaf musician button"
But in actuality, you can simply click on the image, select either the ROTATE option, or click on the button with a rotating arrow, then SAVE the image, and then email it. A fairly complex operation that can be done by beginners.
but shouldn't it be affected?
the possibly effected devices means the devices that possibly came into existence because of the worm.
Maybe they had good reason to use paper (so they wouldn't be biased), but I'm wondering why they didn't use Gimp or Photoshop to create the prototype? To me, it's easier to cut and paste, and move things around with a graphical editor than with tape and scissors.
I can't tell if this is supposed to be funny, or intentional flamebait.
You draw conclusions, such as This is *not* the reason... without providing any evidence. Statements like, The more you unravel the statements he makes, the more asinine they are. is itself asinine. You're saying, "If you look into his argument, and you're as smart as I am, you'll see that it's false."
While this is a fine lead-in to your argument, it is not an argument itself, since you have neither shown the fallacy of his argument, nor proven the merits of your own.
It is a very common trolling/baiting tactic to use ad hominems like "moron" and "asinine", and I feel like I was just baited....
I think the hardest part about computer-controlled cars (well, more control than they currently already have) is what will happen the first time someone dies. Statistics shows us that there will be unavoidable situations that even computers won't be able to get out of, but when this happens, there will be a backlash, even if it's a fraction of the current number of deaths by humans.
The vast majority of accidents are caused because human beings are either incapable or unwilling to drive a vehicle safely
This is plain truth. Most accidents are caused either because the drivers chose to drive wrecklessly and/or under the influence, or were caused simply because human reaction time is not as good as computers' reaction time.
Because of this, we have lost many civil liberties.
This is also true, and quite an insight. Think about random road blocks where you're tested for being under the influence even if you're NOT driving wrecklessly or even swerving. The equation is simple: am I willing to give up a little bit of my privacy to prevent myself from being killed? Generally, yes! Of course! But, if drunk driving didn't cause accidents because people weren't driving, there would be no need to pull this person over.
Mods, please please please stop modding based on your own beliefs, and rather based on the intelligence of people's responses -- I'm going to get modded down for that, eh?
And, if it was not frozen, doesn't that imply that it was warmer in the distant past than it was in the recent past?
You're correct that the earth goes through warmer and colder phases. The problem is that these phases normally last millions of years, and the transitions between them are often extremely slow (unless some catastrophic event, like a meteor crash or global warming, occurs). What worries scientists is not that the earth is heading into a warmer phase due to natural occurrances, but rather the fact that the change is happening so rapidly, and is due to human factors.
I'm not even sure if this deserves a response, but...
. php
1) source? you really shouldn't quote numbers without a link.
2) data manipulation? what about the rest of the US.? you know, the part closer to the north pole?
3) do your fucking research! It is NOT very possible that we are coming out of a mini ice age. In fact, almost all scientists (especially those not employed by polluting industries) agree that this is not the case. You may have been misinformed by media that often quote radical scientists when trying to present a "balanced" report:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978
4) You believe that science should provide proof that greenhouse gases cause global warming?
How about all the information here: http://unfccc.int/essential_background/items/2877
Oh that's right, you're going to say that we shouldn't trust the UN, even if these reports are published by the top scientists in the world? Well, didn't you take high school chemistry? Anyone with knowledge of simple chemistry will tell you of the potential dangers of green house gases. (yes, i say potential here to be diplomatic -- see #7)
5) you like to separate yourself from "environmentalists", because you obviously don't care about the long-term environment, and would rather have cheap prices today than do your part in keeping the world safe for future generations? that's selfish and narrow minded.
6) ahh..environmentally-friendly liberal media. do you just like throwing around these sayings, because you've heard them so many times they must be true? are you really that stupid to fall into partisan name-calling tactics? anyway, in terms of environmentalism, the media is actually biased against environmentalism (see above link).
7) even IF we are at the end of a mini ice age (which is highly unlikely), you still must recognize the possible devastating effects of our continued release of so many green house gases into the atmosphere, and should especially be in favor of economically-friendly initiatives.
8) I'm not sure why you chose this forum to voice your support of Bush, and ignorance towards the Kyoto agreement. This story was about taxi drivers who drive environmentally-friendly cars because it is ultimately cheaper for them, hence invalidating your claim that environmentally-friendly products cost the consumer more.
9) There ARE environmentally-friendly solutions that are also economically beneficial. In fact, this is really the best way to get industries to act in the environment's (and hence, in OUR) best interest. Simple examples include environmentally-aware heating and air-conditioning, like placement of the windows, or having heat ducts near the floor instead of near the ceiling. More complex examples generally involve symbiotic relationships with our environment to utilize a renewable or recyclable resource.
10) Please leave your politics at the door, and before responding to an article with your bias, research the topic. Forget everything you think you know, and take a fresh look at the information available. It will only make you a smarter person.
I'm sorry that you've been so jaded as to believe that debating technologies is pointless and never fruitful.
You're correct that statements like "MUCH BETTER" are often signs of FUD, but they can also be thought of as thesis statements. The "Endless discussions" are where the facts tend to lie [pun intended].
It's always hard to listen to "the other side" (vi/emacs, qwerty/dvorak, democrat/republican) but doing so, trying out new ideas, and constantly reevaluating your own beliefs is really a sign of intelligence.
p.s. taking my own advice - this is the first thing I've written using the dvorak layout, and I already have the home row (and more) down.
From TFA:
This kind of trickery in the benchmark game does little for the vendor.
I have to disagree with this one. Fudging benchmarks almost always helps the vendor, except with very specialized (/.) audiences.
Remember, most people just see a bunch of random numbers when they shop for laptops, and compare processors based on GHz. They're more likely to read a blurb (or hear from the salesperson) that Turion outperforms it's competitors than they are to search blogs about the truth to the claim.
Now, by making enough of a fuss over this, we can create negative publicity, but why rag on AMD when, as the article states, all the other companies have set precedent?
I am a firm believe that we should fix systems that are broken, rather than trying to apply round-about patches [insert Microsoft reference here].
That said, the spammers are not stealing any bandwidth, they are using what they're ISP's allow them. They are also taking up a negligable amount of my bandwidth, but they DO take up a good deal of my ISP's bandwidth, from which the cost does trickle down to me.
Here, the round-about patch is getting the government involved. A real solution would involve blocking the spam as early as possible (my ISP could reject it based on some magic header strings), drastically reducing the bandwidth, or coming up with email standards (there are many proposals, i just can't find a link right now) and denying any email from a non-standards-compliant ISP.
These industry-centric solutions can practically eliminate spam, and are far superior to government involvement.
I have to pay a trash fee. Shouldn't I be able to fine companies that send out junk mail?