That's the problem with systems as mind-bogglingly complex as the ocean: you can't count on current trends continuing. I've recently been studying weather forecasting, and it sounds like they can't have any accuracy at all past like 14 days. They have learned that they can not count on the current trends continuing.
Except that this simply isn't true. For example, at this very moment, the northern hemisphere has a trend towards colder climate, which I can be reasonably certain will continue about three more months; us sciency guys like to call it "autumn":).
Yeah, small things - like where the best fishing grounds will be 10 years from now - are hard - perhaps impossible - to predict. But the general trend of declining fish population can be predicted to continue, since the reasons - overfishing and dumping poisons to the oceans - are not going anywhere; if anything, the same amount of fishing will be worse for the smaller fish population.
It's a bit like when an internal combustion engine catches fire: you don't need to be a car mechanic to figure out that something's wrong.
Everyone who contributed to the Linux kernel own the copyrights to whatever code he wrote. GPL is simply a license that lets others distribute that code as well. Please don't confuse GPL with Public Domain.
the AMD 760MP with two AthlonMP 1.2GHz was the hottest system I ever used. One day one of the cores melt down due to a failure of the ventilation fan, it was like a volcano, spurting hot liquid metal until a short circuit took the system down with a big explosion.
So it didn't occur to you to, say, turn off power when the machine began spurting hot liquid metal around ?-)
But I feel for you: my server machine that was running my experimental program for automagically downloading, categorizing and inserting into database pics from Usenet and some websites died with a bang recently too. My life feels kinda empty now:(.
I will be giving it away once the Wii comes out though...no point in keeping the GC since the Wii is backward compatible.
Word of advice. "Backward compatible" means "most old games will run on it". It does not mean "all old games will work on it exactly as they should", unless the Wii actually contains all of GC's electronics. Otherwise there is going to be some differences, and the odd game that chokes on them - and that will certainly be the game you want to play most.
For example, Crimson Skies does not work under Windows XP and newer GeForce, despite being a Microsoft game. "Backwards compatibility" is always a best effort, never a guarantee.
Well, when game developers will actually use the medium to make political or social comments, critiques, and social change, that's when gaming will be an art form.
Using racially offensive terms makes you a racist (unless you're ignorantly repeating some new word you just heard, in which case you're simply a moron).
No. A racist is someone who hates someone else based on their race. If you hate a black man because he lets his dog shit on your lawn and yell at him "Keep your fucking dog outta my lawn, you stupid nigger!" that doesn't make you a racist.
Racial slurs are, after all, insults, and can be used in that capacity without feeling any particular animosity towards that race.
And putting a deer head in anyone's mailbox simply makes you a dickhead.
Actually, I'm pretty sure it would make you a criminal - after all, you messed up private property (the mailbox), obstructed the delivery of mail, and created a public health hazard (deer head is rotting meat, after all; it risks spreading disease).
Why would they need to, when they can just keep the case going until you'll go banckrupt ? Alternatively, they could - as a gesture of goodwill - settle with you out of court. It should give them nice additional revenue too.
Yes, it is only a matter of time until Microsoft takes up the fine traditions of RIAA, MPAA and Mafia. They have to try and maximize their shareholder value, after all.
Poor people with genetic defects may not have the resources to stay alive long enough to reproduce, which could paradoxically lead to the appearance of a stronger subspecies due to natural selection among poor people (assuming that poor people's descendants tend to be poor).
What's paradoxical about it ? A wolf is a lot tougher than a poodle.
That said, rich and poor are not separate breeding populations, so they aren't going to speciate even partially.
If the government of China announces that 2+2=5, would that be reported too? I guess in a way it is news, that a major world power is governed by a bunch of lying bastards, and that they get away with it because they will torture, kill or incarcerate anyone who points out that 2+2=4.
Heheh, no, of course they won't. They just won't do business with you.
There's a Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook called "Demonology - The Dark Road". It gives rules for summoning and binding demons (and devils) to the player characters service. The problem is that to bind one, you need to win a contest of wills with it, and with more powerfull ones you need all the bonuses you can get - and I'm sure you can guess from the books name and context what kind of things give bonuses.
So what does that have to do with this ? Well, designers notes included in the book noted that it's amazing how even the most noble of paladins are quick to start making moral compromises to bind more powerfull demons, first small ones but eventually ones that make the summoner all but indistinguishable from the summoned. It's the same with China. They offer profits, but in order to get them, you need to co-operate with them - a little for small profit, a bit more for larger one, and so on. Before you know it you've become an agent of the Chinese government in all but name.
The Chinese government is a bunch of murderous thugs, sure; but Google is a company that helps a bunch of murderous thugs keep power. And news sources will report that 2+2=5 if it brings them money; there is no need to threaten anyone.
Since DNS is the "brain" of the Internet, and the US controls the brain, the US controls the Internet.
DNS is not the "brain" of the Internet in any sense of the word. It is a distributed lookup system for matching a list of strings with an IP address. Furthermore, US doesn't control the DNS, it simply controls the server that most other DNS servers in the world consider (completely voluntarily) authoritative.
Not to say that other countries don't control thier own sections of the internet to a certain extent, but they don't hold the root DNS.
Bullshit. All other countries need to do is set up a DNS server and tell the local populace: "This is now the root DNS server." If the local populace ignores you and continues to use the US server, well, that's hardly the US's fault now is it ?
This recurring theme of "US must give up control of the Internet !" strongly suggests that the politicians behind it have no idea what they are actually talking about. How could the US give up control that's based on their DNS server being regarded as the Root by all - block all incoming queries from outside the US ?
There's a gap in your reasoning! How is calling someone a bigot an act of intolerance? I don't recall the OP stating any intolerance or animosity toward bigots.
The OP did, however, show intolerance towards people who find homosexuality offensive. Therefore, the OP fits the definition of a bigot - he's being intolerant of an idea - the idea that homosexuality is offensive or wrong.
Unless, of course, one defines "bigotry" as opposing things I don't find wrong, in which case it quickly reduces down to "Anyone who disagrees with me is a bigot".
Your assumption shows that you think that bigotry is bad. Therefore, you are yourself a bigot!
I guess I am, then. But it still doesn't make the OP any less ironic:).
According to dictionary.com, a "bigot" is "a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion". Finding homosexuality offensive is an opinion (or possibly belief, if the opinion is based on religion). Being intolerant of other people's opinions is bigotry. Therefore, the OP's statement is in itself bigotry.
That's the problem with being very tolerant of other people's values: how do you deal with people who are not tolerant ? Will you tolerate them, in which case they will oppress others, or do you stop them, in which case you oppress them ? Should considering homosexuality an abomination make you eligible to be burned on a stake, figuratively or literally ? And if yes, then what - besides switching victims - has truly changed ?
But, don't let that stop you fucking asshats replying to the OP.
Now that's a logical and persuasive argument. Have you been sparing it just for me ?
I don't pretend to know exactly why Freenet failed to take off,
I do. Freenet has failed to take off because
None of the previous versions worked, that is, they were unlikely to retrieve the data you were trying to retrieve. The current one seems to work, altought it's speed is still best described as "glacial".
The current version seems to work, but is an übër-c00l D4rkn3t, which means that it doesn't acquire connections automatically so you have to add other nodes manually (and convince their operators to add you). Furthermore, since nodes sometimes (okay, often) go down for good, you have to keep on adding more connections and deleting old ones.
Neither is good news or bad news. Science exists to quantify and explain, not to hope for something. If hope that life existed on Mars is the major reason for your research, you aren't being a scientist. You are being a cheerleader.
Wrong. Anyone who uses scientific method in his research is a scientist. It doesn't matter if he's motivated by dreams of going Kirk with alien females, or gets his kicks from abstract knowledge; purity of motive is irrelevant. The only requirement is the application of scientific method.
In any case, none of this matters. The news is bad for anyone who hoped to find life in Mars. Whether a scientist is allowed to belong to this group is irrelevant.
I've a friend who is listed on Wikipedia since he has done work the public is aware of. He found his page and made some updates. Nothing self propping or anything, just some background information. It was reverted by someone who claimed it was inaccurate and lacked a source. Well ok, he didn't cite a source, but then he doesn't need to he's the primary. He decided the hell with it and left it alone.
Your friend made claims of himself which weren't backed up by any source, and Wikipedia (correctly) rejected them. This seems like exactly it should go, in any database aiming anywhere towards accuracy.
Besides, how is Wikipedia supposed to know that he is who he claims he is ? For all they know, it could be his worst enemy seeding seemingly innocent malicious lies to the article in preparation of some dastardly scheme of utterly destroying the poor bastard. Consequently, if no one can back the claims up, away they go.
Regardless of how right you think you are, you may not be.
That's why sources are needed, even if everyone were 100% honest and never willfully lied, even by omission:).
when they hear about the "Hot-Coffee Mod" they think that Rockstar is selling a sex simulator to their children; when they hear about "Oblivion Nudity Mods" they think that Bioware is selling a game with rampant Boobies to their children;
I'd rather have my children playing sex sim than violent crime sim, and watching boobies rather than people getting killed with swords. I guess that makes me a pervert.
Naturally, the assassin has a $2 million bond set for bail - but that's a post-incident defence rather than an active defence.
So basically, in America you can commit a murder (or try to) and then buy your way free. It does seem yet another aspect of US legal system makes mockery of equality before law...
Two things: first of all, while they do not break, glass/metal platters do stop working after a head strike. In the case of rigid disks, some specialist company might be more able to recover (some of) your data for hundreds or thousands of units of your favourite currency, but the drive is still dead. So that makes the drives not folding or having heads rip through the completely irrelevant. Floppy or hard, the disk would die.
Would it ? Or would it simply develop bad sectors where the head struck, with the rest of the platter still working just fine ?
Well, I think it's better to stay clear of the established arguments and get students to work out their own positions.
Are you sure that that's safe ? After all, if his student comes up with the position that copyright is bad, he might be accused of contrabutory infringement or some nonsense like that.
Intellectual honesty can be very dangerous in times of war, and copyright battles look more like war to me every day.
Why should an operating system require effort? Computers are supposed to do work for us, not the other way round.
Computers need to be told what you want them to do before they can do it. That requires effort. The human-computer interface is the hardest part of computer programing, 3D modelling programs being an especially infamous example of this.
A computer can be used for an infinite variety of tasks, but no interface can have sufficient automation to make any possible task simple. Telling even another human being what you want done can be a difficult task; to demand that the computer that has neither anything resembling intelligence or experience from the real world to read your thoughts and make some sense from them is nonsense.
I agree. Why are Slashdot folks, and why is IT in general, so negative and pessimistic?
It's because we take the long run view of the world. In the long run, we will all die, our species will go extinct, the world will end, the Sun will darken and the universe will either collapse or freeze. Take that, optimism !
What happened to the great American "can do" attitude and the entrepreneurial spirit that made Silicon Valley so great?
It got patented.
Do you think the attitude and values you display today improve upon the innovation of the past or anchor down progress and keep the status quo?
Progressing and keeping the status quo is a contradiction in terms. But I'd say that progress is certainly being anchored down by all the crap that keeps on getting piled to it by DMCA, DRM, USPO and other such idiocy.
Pat answer lists are entertaining because they take insight to create, but they're useful too.
Insight ? Hardly. They are "Slashbot groupthink, of which I'm above of" -posts in new form. They add nothing useful to the discussion, they simply make their posters feel superior to the unwashed masses. They also make an easy-to-do first post that gets modded up as "Funny".
But I am above such badly washed elitism, for I don't post such lists.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that this simply isn't true. For example, at this very moment, the northern hemisphere has a trend towards colder climate, which I can be reasonably certain will continue about three more months; us sciency guys like to call it "autumn" :).
Yeah, small things - like where the best fishing grounds will be 10 years from now - are hard - perhaps impossible - to predict. But the general trend of declining fish population can be predicted to continue, since the reasons - overfishing and dumping poisons to the oceans - are not going anywhere; if anything, the same amount of fishing will be worse for the smaller fish population.
It's a bit like when an internal combustion engine catches fire: you don't need to be a car mechanic to figure out that something's wrong.
Everyone who contributed to the Linux kernel own the copyrights to whatever code he wrote. GPL is simply a license that lets others distribute that code as well. Please don't confuse GPL with Public Domain.
So it didn't occur to you to, say, turn off power when the machine began spurting hot liquid metal around ?-)
But I feel for you: my server machine that was running my experimental program for automagically downloading, categorizing and inserting into database pics from Usenet and some websites died with a bang recently too. My life feels kinda empty now :(.
Word of advice. "Backward compatible" means "most old games will run on it". It does not mean "all old games will work on it exactly as they should", unless the Wii actually contains all of GC's electronics. Otherwise there is going to be some differences, and the odd game that chokes on them - and that will certainly be the game you want to play most.
For example, Crimson Skies does not work under Windows XP and newer GeForce, despite being a Microsoft game. "Backwards compatibility" is always a best effort, never a guarantee.
Done.
Altought I still can't quite say if it is a parody or particularly inept propaganda...
No. A racist is someone who hates someone else based on their race. If you hate a black man because he lets his dog shit on your lawn and yell at him "Keep your fucking dog outta my lawn, you stupid nigger!" that doesn't make you a racist.
Racial slurs are, after all, insults, and can be used in that capacity without feeling any particular animosity towards that race.
Actually, I'm pretty sure it would make you a criminal - after all, you messed up private property (the mailbox), obstructed the delivery of mail, and created a public health hazard (deer head is rotting meat, after all; it risks spreading disease).
Why would they need to, when they can just keep the case going until you'll go banckrupt ? Alternatively, they could - as a gesture of goodwill - settle with you out of court. It should give them nice additional revenue too.
Yes, it is only a matter of time until Microsoft takes up the fine traditions of RIAA, MPAA and Mafia. They have to try and maximize their shareholder value, after all.
What's paradoxical about it ? A wolf is a lot tougher than a poodle.
That said, rich and poor are not separate breeding populations, so they aren't going to speciate even partially.
Heheh, no, of course they won't. They just won't do business with you.
There's a Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook called "Demonology - The Dark Road". It gives rules for summoning and binding demons (and devils) to the player characters service. The problem is that to bind one, you need to win a contest of wills with it, and with more powerfull ones you need all the bonuses you can get - and I'm sure you can guess from the books name and context what kind of things give bonuses.
So what does that have to do with this ? Well, designers notes included in the book noted that it's amazing how even the most noble of paladins are quick to start making moral compromises to bind more powerfull demons, first small ones but eventually ones that make the summoner all but indistinguishable from the summoned. It's the same with China. They offer profits, but in order to get them, you need to co-operate with them - a little for small profit, a bit more for larger one, and so on. Before you know it you've become an agent of the Chinese government in all but name.
The Chinese government is a bunch of murderous thugs, sure; but Google is a company that helps a bunch of murderous thugs keep power. And news sources will report that 2+2=5 if it brings them money; there is no need to threaten anyone.
DNS is not the "brain" of the Internet in any sense of the word. It is a distributed lookup system for matching a list of strings with an IP address. Furthermore, US doesn't control the DNS, it simply controls the server that most other DNS servers in the world consider (completely voluntarily) authoritative.
Bullshit. All other countries need to do is set up a DNS server and tell the local populace: "This is now the root DNS server." If the local populace ignores you and continues to use the US server, well, that's hardly the US's fault now is it ?
This recurring theme of "US must give up control of the Internet !" strongly suggests that the politicians behind it have no idea what they are actually talking about. How could the US give up control that's based on their DNS server being regarded as the Root by all - block all incoming queries from outside the US ?
The OP did, however, show intolerance towards people who find homosexuality offensive. Therefore, the OP fits the definition of a bigot - he's being intolerant of an idea - the idea that homosexuality is offensive or wrong.
Unless, of course, one defines "bigotry" as opposing things I don't find wrong, in which case it quickly reduces down to "Anyone who disagrees with me is a bigot".
I guess I am, then. But it still doesn't make the OP any less ironic :).
According to dictionary.com, a "bigot" is "a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion". Finding homosexuality offensive is an opinion (or possibly belief, if the opinion is based on religion). Being intolerant of other people's opinions is bigotry. Therefore, the OP's statement is in itself bigotry.
That's the problem with being very tolerant of other people's values: how do you deal with people who are not tolerant ? Will you tolerate them, in which case they will oppress others, or do you stop them, in which case you oppress them ? Should considering homosexuality an abomination make you eligible to be burned on a stake, figuratively or literally ? And if yes, then what - besides switching victims - has truly changed ?
Now that's a logical and persuasive argument. Have you been sparing it just for me ?
Well, I for one think software patents are pretty obscene.
"Anyone who disagrees with me is a bigot".
That's pretty much the definition of irony :).
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin.
But no problem: if Bush does this, just sue him from infringing on Stalin's intellectual property :). You propably could already...
I do. Freenet has failed to take off because
Wrong. Anyone who uses scientific method in his research is a scientist. It doesn't matter if he's motivated by dreams of going Kirk with alien females, or gets his kicks from abstract knowledge; purity of motive is irrelevant. The only requirement is the application of scientific method.
In any case, none of this matters. The news is bad for anyone who hoped to find life in Mars. Whether a scientist is allowed to belong to this group is irrelevant.
Your friend made claims of himself which weren't backed up by any source, and Wikipedia (correctly) rejected them. This seems like exactly it should go, in any database aiming anywhere towards accuracy.
Besides, how is Wikipedia supposed to know that he is who he claims he is ? For all they know, it could be his worst enemy seeding seemingly innocent malicious lies to the article in preparation of some dastardly scheme of utterly destroying the poor bastard. Consequently, if no one can back the claims up, away they go.
That's why sources are needed, even if everyone were 100% honest and never willfully lied, even by omission :).
I'd rather have my children playing sex sim than violent crime sim, and watching boobies rather than people getting killed with swords. I guess that makes me a pervert.
So basically, in America you can commit a murder (or try to) and then buy your way free. It does seem yet another aspect of US legal system makes mockery of equality before law...
Would it ? Or would it simply develop bad sectors where the head struck, with the rest of the platter still working just fine ?
Are you sure that that's safe ? After all, if his student comes up with the position that copyright is bad, he might be accused of contrabutory infringement or some nonsense like that.
Intellectual honesty can be very dangerous in times of war, and copyright battles look more like war to me every day.
Computers need to be told what you want them to do before they can do it. That requires effort. The human-computer interface is the hardest part of computer programing, 3D modelling programs being an especially infamous example of this.
A computer can be used for an infinite variety of tasks, but no interface can have sufficient automation to make any possible task simple. Telling even another human being what you want done can be a difficult task; to demand that the computer that has neither anything resembling intelligence or experience from the real world to read your thoughts and make some sense from them is nonsense.
It's because we take the long run view of the world. In the long run, we will all die, our species will go extinct, the world will end, the Sun will darken and the universe will either collapse or freeze. Take that, optimism !
It got patented.
Progressing and keeping the status quo is a contradiction in terms. But I'd say that progress is certainly being anchored down by all the crap that keeps on getting piled to it by DMCA, DRM, USPO and other such idiocy.
Insight ? Hardly. They are "Slashbot groupthink, of which I'm above of" -posts in new form. They add nothing useful to the discussion, they simply make their posters feel superior to the unwashed masses. They also make an easy-to-do first post that gets modded up as "Funny".
But I am above such badly washed elitism, for I don't post such lists.