"Yeah... We're just passing by the mall. Mmmm hmmm. I'm wearing my pink jogging pants.... Yeah... *laughter*... Yeah, that was fun. Now I'm by the McDonald's...."
Seems to me like a perfectly good conversation, from an evolutionary perspective (see my sig). I think you supported the GP rather than discredit him.
Though on the good side technology is getting to the point where it can effectively block cell phone signals so since it is obvious people won't police themselves it is only a matter of time before more and more public places like movie theaters block it for them.
I think it would be wonderful if instead/as well as of cell phone jammers, they had a signal that would cause phones to automatically go into vibrate/silent mode. This would require software updates, but I think it would bo worthwhile.
No, no, no. You can have cron do `apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade -d` but do the update yourself. Else you might break things, and you really don't want a dialogue in cron. (You could however use --assume-yes or --force-yes instead, if you feel particularly trusting/suicidal) In any case, upgrade is less likely to break things than dist-upgrade, I think.
Maybe there is something badly configured on your box? I've never had Firefox crash randomly. I have seen it crash on a website designed to crash it (no arbitrary code execution, though. I think that was fixed a while ago). I have also had it become unuseable if I opened 3-6 tabs simultaneously in newscientist.com, when the flash advertizements eat my computer's soul. It doesn't crash, but given my lack of patience never recovers.
I put all my stuff on one bar. So I have file... help, back, forward, reload, stop, a folder named "" containing my bookmarks, and the url bar all in the same place. Maybe this is not for everyone, but I like it soooo much better. Sure, there is a place for imitation for those scared of change, but for me, better is better.
Can anyone post those digits in case the site gets/.'ed?
In binary, it's just a fucking lot of 1's (25,964,951 of them, almost 26 megabytes). If you could even count them all to be sure it's right, I'd be incredibly impressed. In decimal it's still really huge and looks incredibly complicated.
>Unused genes disappear. That's only true for the more simple organisms, mind you. An intestinal parisite is by no means very simple.
It is true to some degree in all organisms. For simple organisms, though, it is extremely rapid because reproducing DNA strands is a serious bottleneck to its reproduction.
Like, say, the gene for male nipples? It's the same as the gene for female nipples. And males are able to lactate, especially if they have hormone disorders.
That there appendix, how's she going? I have heard that the appendix does play a very small role in the digestive process "The appendix contains lymphoid tissue and intercepts pathogenic microorganisms that enter the digestive tract." This is quite disputed, but in any case the gene is still used to some extent. Which could make it a likelier candidate for elimination since it can cause appendicitis.
Actually, that one was intentional (and in any case I wouldn't care. It has happened a few times in code, though, and it makes for a most unique failure).
Be glad your quirk is not life threatening. It could be, if I were working on medical software or shuttle program.
Like everyone else has said, i, j, k, x, y are all very common as counters. Since everyone uses them, they do have meaning, and since they're short they do not clutter.
However, I find that I sometimes unconsciously write a 1 instead of an i. Am 1 the only one who does this?
Once I read the fucking manual, but it contained technical terms like "vagina" and "G-spot" and mythological creatures called "women". It was a total waste of time.
Not in one sense, but if they are a monopoly they could be thought of as gouging even if you voluntarily agreed to their terms. This applies only to a small extent to eBay, since their product/service is not necessary and they are not a total monopoly, but I think it could be justified.
No, what he's saying is that once a signal is recieved, it is no longer the FCC's job to tell people what ta do with it. It is now data, not broadcast. And what you do with the data is not their business; that is the job for policemen/lawyers/whoever deals with copyright infringement.
Will you also argue that just because the FCC is not allowed to catch drunk drivers that DUI is legal?
In fact, every university lab that I have visited is a 100% Microsoft shop.
Here at Swarthmore college, all the CS students work in a linux lab, and there is also a Mac lab. With the other computers, Macs and Windows PC's are about equal. Any university with a decent CS program will most likely have a linux lab. I can only guess that you haven't visited many places.
It's an injustice to teach kids Linux, especially the non-geeks. Non-geeks just want to get work done,
Why, you can't get any work done on a linux machine? Have you even seen a linux machine? Once linux is (properly) installed, any idiot can use it. While MSWord might be better than OpenOffice, for my general use I find Linux much more useful. Also the 3-button mouse gives the GUI a little edge.
and when they hit college they are going to have to relearn Windows/Office to get their assignments done.
Why, because they still won't be able to get anything done in Linux?
If the schools can't use the software they want to, it'll leave quite a bad taste in their mouths about Linux.
Perhaps they would also have a bad taste in their mouths for software companies that only provide software for $BIG_MONOPOLY. Linux is cool for its own reasons, part of which is the open source model, that users are not treated as idiots, and in general you own your computer (if you have root access) and no one else can touch it. It also has much value to educate future programmers, network admins, and sysadmuns. Expecting (current) Linux to run all Windows software is shortsighted and just plain stupid.
Ah, grasshopper, you assume that our universe is the only one
No, I assume that any number above 10^80 monkeys is abusing the meaning of "enough". And yes, that includes infinity. With inifinite universes we also get other fun stuff, such as assuming all the laws of physics have been broken in some universe (since they have only been tested to a certain degree of certainty but there are infinite universes). Also, infinite universes allows me to say that a (where by "a" I mean infinite) planet exactly like ours, including life, was created by a quantum event in an instant. Though it is incredibly unlikely, that would be the simplest theory for the orgin of life.
some theories require there be more than one universe
And some don't. I don't see any reason to suppose that for each possibility there is a different universe in which that happened. In the case of the quantum mechanics version of the many universes idea: Quantum mechanics is explained quite nicely by wave collapse. Chance explains this quite nicely without requireing both chance and extra universes. For any wavefunction, we know the probability that it will collapse to any of several possible states, and to preserve this, the many universes theory would require that several universes appear for each time a wavefunction collapses, so that it preserves the obserned probability (otherwise everything would be just as likely).
Confirmed: I can use a random number generator to predict the future. For example, suppose that I am pathetically incompetent at math, but want to predict the results of gambling at roulette. I can use the random number generator to provide simulated results, than use the results to show that I would win a few and lose a few + a little bit. Thus, I can predict the future using random numbers.
True randomness will give you apparently non-random data, the same as enough monkeys typing at random on enough keyboards for enough years will give you Shakespeare.
True, but it is very much less likely that the apparantly non-random data appear than the ones that look random (and yes, that's a tautology). As for monkeys typing Shakespeare at random, "enough monkeys" is not the word for it. You would want approximately 26 to the power of the number of characters in Shakespeare of monkeys, where approximately means within a hundred orders of magnitude of that number. That number so tremenously huge that you can't imagine it. As a comparison, the number of atoms in the visible universe is 10^80. So you would want many many many order of magnitude more monkeys than there are atoms in the universe, or an amount of time that would make the time since the Big Bang inconsequential even to mathematicians. Even though you are technically right, I think you are abusing the meaning of "enough".
Slashdot Mirror
My cell phone is set to play at maximum volume, "60 Seconds of Silence" by John Cage.
"Yeah... We're just passing by the mall. Mmmm hmmm. I'm wearing my pink jogging pants.... Yeah... *laughter*... Yeah, that was fun. Now I'm by the McDonald's...."
Seems to me like a perfectly good conversation, from an evolutionary perspective (see my sig). I think you supported the GP rather than discredit him.
But wouldn't it be awsome to change someone's ringtone to "You're fired" than call them while they are at a meeting?
Though on the good side technology is getting to the point where it can effectively block cell phone signals so since it is obvious people won't police themselves it is only a matter of time before more and more public places like movie theaters block it for them.
I think it would be wonderful if instead/as well as of cell phone jammers, they had a signal that would cause phones to automatically go into vibrate/silent mode. This would require software updates, but I think it would bo worthwhile.
PUT YOUR FUCKING PHONE ON VIBRATE!
... Please use a vibrator for that.
Ewww
Please, do not pirate closed source viruses. Instead, use open source viruses, which you can get for free.
I'm an anti-(virus vendor).
No, no, no. You can have cron do `apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade -d` but do the update yourself. Else you might break things, and you really don't want a dialogue in cron. (You could however use --assume-yes or --force-yes instead, if you feel particularly trusting/suicidal) In any case, upgrade is less likely to break things than dist-upgrade, I think.
Maybe there is something badly configured on your box? I've never had Firefox crash randomly. I have seen it crash on a website designed to crash it (no arbitrary code execution, though. I think that was fixed a while ago). I have also had it become unuseable if I opened 3-6 tabs simultaneously in newscientist.com, when the flash advertizements eat my computer's soul. It doesn't crash, but given my lack of patience never recovers.
I put all my stuff on one bar. So I have file ... help, back, forward, reload, stop, a folder named "" containing my bookmarks, and the url bar all in the same place. Maybe this is not for everyone, but I like it soooo much better. Sure, there is a place for imitation for those scared of change, but for me, better is better.
...we need to encourage these girls to get into Linux, rather than Microsoft,,,"
No, we need to show them Linux then let them choose for themselves.
In what base? If it is in binary you wouldn't be able to get it past the lameness filter.
Can anyone post those digits in case the site gets /.'ed?
In binary, it's just a fucking lot of 1's (25,964,951 of them, almost 26 megabytes). If you could even count them all to be sure it's right, I'd be incredibly impressed. In decimal it's still really huge and looks incredibly complicated.
I'm going to answer several posts in this one.
>Unused genes disappear.
That's only true for the more simple organisms, mind you. An intestinal parisite is by no means very simple.
It is true to some degree in all organisms. For simple organisms, though, it is extremely rapid because reproducing DNA strands is a serious bottleneck to its reproduction.
Like, say, the gene for male nipples?
It's the same as the gene for female nipples. And males are able to lactate, especially if they have hormone disorders.
That there appendix, how's she going?
I have heard that the appendix does play a very small role in the digestive process "The appendix contains lymphoid tissue and intercepts pathogenic microorganisms that enter the digestive tract." This is quite disputed, but in any case the gene is still used to some extent. Which could make it a likelier candidate for elimination since it can cause appendicitis.
Actually, that one was intentional (and in any case I wouldn't care. It has happened a few times in code, though, and it makes for a most unique failure).
Be glad your quirk is not life threatening.
It could be, if I were working on medical software or shuttle program.
Like everyone else has said, i, j, k, x, y are all very common as counters. Since everyone uses them, they do have meaning, and since they're short they do not clutter.
However, I find that I sometimes unconsciously write a 1 instead of an i. Am 1 the only one who does this?
Once I read the fucking manual, but it contained technical terms like "vagina" and "G-spot" and mythological creatures called "women". It was a total waste of time.
Not in one sense, but if they are a monopoly they could be thought of as gouging even if you voluntarily agreed to their terms. This applies only to a small extent to eBay, since their product/service is not necessary and they are not a total monopoly, but I think it could be justified.
No, what he's saying is that once a signal is recieved, it is no longer the FCC's job to tell people what ta do with it. It is now data, not broadcast. And what you do with the data is not their business; that is the job for policemen/lawyers/whoever deals with copyright infringement.
Will you also argue that just because the FCC is not allowed to catch drunk drivers that DUI is legal?
In fact, every university lab that I have visited is a 100% Microsoft shop.
Here at Swarthmore college, all the CS students work in a linux lab, and there is also a Mac lab. With the other computers, Macs and Windows PC's are about equal. Any university with a decent CS program will most likely have a linux lab. I can only guess that you haven't visited many places.
It's an injustice to teach kids Linux, especially the non-geeks. Non-geeks just want to get work done,
Why, you can't get any work done on a linux machine? Have you even seen a linux machine? Once linux is (properly) installed, any idiot can use it. While MSWord might be better than OpenOffice, for my general use I find Linux much more useful. Also the 3-button mouse gives the GUI a little edge.
and when they hit college they are going to have to relearn Windows/Office to get their assignments done.
Why, because they still won't be able to get anything done in Linux?
If the schools can't use the software they want to, it'll leave quite a bad taste in their mouths about Linux.
Perhaps they would also have a bad taste in their mouths for software companies that only provide software for $BIG_MONOPOLY. Linux is cool for its own reasons, part of which is the open source model, that users are not treated as idiots, and in general you own your computer (if you have root access) and no one else can touch it. It also has much value to educate future programmers, network admins, and sysadmuns. Expecting (current) Linux to run all Windows software is shortsighted and just plain stupid.
Point of the matter is that if you have the time and you have old hardware, setting up one of these labs is a snap.
Also, if you have the time and some infected computer, cleaning viruses off Windoze is a snap.
Ah, grasshopper, you assume that our universe is the only one
No, I assume that any number above 10^80 monkeys is abusing the meaning of "enough". And yes, that includes infinity. With inifinite universes we also get other fun stuff, such as assuming all the laws of physics have been broken in some universe (since they have only been tested to a certain degree of certainty but there are infinite universes). Also, infinite universes allows me to say that a (where by "a" I mean infinite) planet exactly like ours, including life, was created by a quantum event in an instant. Though it is incredibly unlikely, that would be the simplest theory for the orgin of life.
some theories require there be more than one universe
And some don't. I don't see any reason to suppose that for each possibility there is a different universe in which that happened. In the case of the quantum mechanics version of the many universes idea: Quantum mechanics is explained quite nicely by wave collapse. Chance explains this quite nicely without requireing both chance and extra universes. For any wavefunction, we know the probability that it will collapse to any of several possible states, and to preserve this, the many universes theory would require that several universes appear for each time a wavefunction collapses, so that it preserves the obserned probability (otherwise everything would be just as likely).
Confirmed: I can use a random number generator to predict the future. For example, suppose that I am pathetically incompetent at math, but want to predict the results of gambling at roulette. I can use the random number generator to provide simulated results, than use the results to show that I would win a few and lose a few + a little bit. Thus, I can predict the future using random numbers.
True randomness will give you apparently non-random data, the same as enough monkeys typing at random on enough keyboards for enough years will give you Shakespeare.
True, but it is very much less likely that the apparantly non-random data appear than the ones that look random (and yes, that's a tautology). As for monkeys typing Shakespeare at random, "enough monkeys" is not the word for it. You would want approximately 26 to the power of the number of characters in Shakespeare of monkeys, where approximately means within a hundred orders of magnitude of that number. That number so tremenously huge that you can't imagine it. As a comparison, the number of atoms in the visible universe is 10^80. So you would want many many many order of magnitude more monkeys than there are atoms in the universe, or an amount of time that would make the time since the Big Bang inconsequential even to mathematicians. Even though you are technically right, I think you are abusing the meaning of "enough".