Did you know that it is impossible for
a woman to get to a real gynocologist
in Canada unless she has being identified
as a cancer carrier? Fuck me!
My wife and I just had a baby. We saw a
gynecologist several times during the
pregnancy. What you say here is myth. Go
to your family doctor and ask for a referal.
If your family doctor doesn't want to refer,
and you have a genuine problem, get a real
doctor.
An American ex-girlfriend of mine from years
back was rather upset with the American
health system/laws.
Her father had congenital diabetes. He was
working for a company with excellent health
coverage. As the disease progressed, he was
eventually fired due to `ineffectiveness' in
his position, mainly due to the days off he
had to take, and the leg he lost to the disease.
He lost his health coverage immediately, and
the coverage he could buy after would not cover
an existing problem. He had to foot the costs
himself.
The $300,000 USD nest egg he had managed to save
for retirement is now gone, now having to live
off of government assistance.
Not pretty.....
Oh, yeah, did I mention that I hate that
gov't takes 50% of my salary away? I'll
move to the USA one of this days, I swear!
Please go. Your unhappiness isn't going
to improve by being here in Canada. Perhaps
a taste of what you THINK you want will make
you understand what you gave up. Good luck.
I'll pay the taxes, and live happier because
of it.
Please understand: I find fault with the
Canadian government (any big organisation,
really). I'd accept its flaws over most
of the alternatives, and will work to fix
those flaws instead of whining about it.
And to think, the reason America has public schools is to ensure that we have an education so we participate in a democracy
This was never the purpose of schools, certainly
not here in Canada.
The public school system in Canada was created
in order to teach the `Irish riffraff' (read
Irish immigrants) manners, to teach them to
respect authority, to teach them to behave.
Given the similarities between schools in
Canada and United States, I don't think that
the U.S. is any different.
Our schools do NOT teach independent thought
(or any other thought for that matter). They
don't teach people to be more creative. They
don't help people to excel.
The idea that you can install your microcode at
boottime or runtime is a very old idea. IBM mainframes have been doing it for decades.
When I worked with IBM 4081 mainframes, we would
boot the systems by doing an IML, an IPL and
THEN booting the operating system.
The IML stood for `Initial Microcode Load', which
installed the instruction set for the mainframes
CPU's. With this technique, it is possible to
upgrade your CPU's instructions to a different CPU's instructions - exactly what Transmeta
can do.
IBM had Motorola re-wire the MC68000 to run
IBM 370 machine language, to allow the
creation of the IBM RT-370, a desktop
machine that could run mainframe code.
This was IBM's attempt at creating a
microprocessor that could do most of what
Transmeta claims to do (although what the
mainframes do is what Transmeta appears
to be doing).
Perhaps someone out there can precisely determine
when IBM started using this technique.
If the patent claim is so broad as to not
represent an invention, then your IP agreement
probably doesn't cover it.
If you can prove it is too broad, and could
invalidate the patent claim with prior art,
refuse to sign, and show them the evidence
why.
If they go ahead anyway, you can always send in
the contravening evidence to the Patent office.
If it IS a real patent, but is too broad, you
are forced to sign, but, you can send into
the patent office contravening evidence, and
get the patent claim invalidated (given you
no longer work for them, seems fair). A patent
that is too broad is an issue only the patent
office can deal with (usually poorly ).
Is there any particular reason for you to respond
to a message by effectively calling the poster a
moron?
Further, when rebutting a post, don't you think
more than a glancing reference to the posters
text is appropriate?
I consider humans to be misfits because, from a
biological perspective, we are poorly adapted to
any particular environment when compared with
other animals in their native environments. We
don't have a native environment. I put
forward the hypothesis that our `misfitness'
triggered a reaction that led humans to evolve
to use and develop technology, which enhances
our continued evolution by skipping need for
the slow accumulation of DNA changes biological
evolution requires.
Repeating Evolution 101 speaks not to the issue,
but, like a mantra, soothes the soul into ignoring
a valid scientific hypothesis. You state that
`Humans are not misfits of any sort' and then
point to hypothesis after hypothesis, stating
them as fact. Given the nature of evolution and
archeology, we CAN'T know these as fact, and should
keep in mind when we start treating them as
incontravertable.
If someone needs evidence to show flaws in
evolution, you need only ask two questions:
Why does evolutionary theory suggest broad
outlines of the process, without giving provable
or disprovable specifics?
Why does evolution not have a way of
bootstrapping itself?
Firstly, evolution is always looked at in
hindsight. We see the traces of these changes
in our archeological investigations. We take
these changes and see a pattern, new features
slowly flowing from previous features - we label
this evolution. It is a given we cannot know
with certainty what processes are at work. And
for this reason, Evolutionary Theory is always
on shaky ground about giving specifics as to
what processes are at work. Evolution cannot
be done in a lab.
Or can it?
I think it was Valera who helped evolve a
new kind of amoeba, one who had developed
a symbiotic relationship with an invading
bacteria, a relationship that the new
amoeba variety depended upon. Removal of
these bacteria killed the new variety of
amoeba. Lab experiments such as these
CAN be done, and can prove or disprove whether
someone's hypothesis about the changes we see
in humans were actually from the influences
those hypotheses suggest. Fundamentally,
lab work will make Evolutionary Theory less
like sociobiology, and more like biology.
Secondly, the lack of a bootstrap for evolution
was the SPECIFIC reason I went to look for other
explanations of evolution. Existing theories
were poor at best at explaining how the whole
process got started, most centering around
purely random events. Possible? Yes. A
satisfying answer? In my mind, hardly at all.
Evolution has proven to be a robust and undeniable
force of change. Something that forceful suggests
that a significant process started and continues.
The organising principles that brought about
evolution in the first place should still be
operating, and so, we should be able to derive
a science based upon that knowledge.
From these beginnings, I posit my hypothesis.
You don't have to like it. If it makes at least
one person think (instead of repeating the
course material learned in University) I will
be satisfied. If it makes someone actually
challenge the hypothesis itself, forcing me
to modify my hypothesis, I will be ecstatic.
Finally, why is this important?
If there are ET civilisations out there
(and I believe there are), knowing how we
developed may give us insights into how
they might have developed. That understanding
may be crucial to our continued survival.
My thesis research is in the areas of Chaos,
Self-organising Systems and Evolution. I have
spent years thinking about Evolution and the
ideas behind SETI, and find myself at odds with
some of the thinking behind the search.
Evolution is usually defined in terms of
`Survival of the fittest'. My research suggests
that this basic idea is misdirected. Evolution
occurs to those populations that survive. Those
populations that are particularly unfit go extinct. In essence, Evolution should be coached in terms
of `Survival of the good-enough'. Those who are
not `good-enough' die, the rest evolve. With this
re-definition in mind, we can re-examine what an
advanced civilisation would look like, indirectly,
by re-examining ourselves.
It is satisfying to our own human egocentrism to
believe we are the most evolutionarily advanced
animals on this planet. An examination of our
strengths and weaknesses argues this is wrong.
We, as animals, are not the best at anything.
Our flaws are the fundamental reason that we
became tool makers, our tools making up for our
relatively poor biological adaptations. We are
who we are because we substituted technological innovation for biological evolution, and yes,
even to this day, that substitution interferes
with biological evolution (but will never replace
it, for certain). What the substitution did do
was to allow the human animals to `fit' into more
niche's much more rapidly than normal
biological evolution allows, mainly by
allowing us to conform an environment to
our needs.
In essence, we are evolutionary misfits, and are
doing so well because this is true - we
were forced to learn a new way of coping.
It is by a great accident that we, misfits every
one, managed to survive. That there is life on
this planet (and, I believe, on most planets)
is of little surprise. My research suggests
that WILL be the case pretty much everywhere.
That a technological civilisation of any
sort came from that process
is far more a wonder.
There is a presumption behind the SETI work that
if life appears, a technological civilisation will
likely appear, at least some of the time. It is
this assumption that is likely the most flawed,
following from the above arguments.
We may eventually find that relatively few
techologically enhanced organisms are produced
because evolution is poor at generating them,
generating more `fit' organisms most of the time,
that only a few civilizations ever do come into
existence, precisely because the species that
are likely to develop technology are biological evolutionary misfits (as only the misfits need
technology to survive), and so are so very
likely to become extinct before they master
technology. What is worse, because we sidestep
biological evolution, we are poorly adapted to
handle the problems technology forces upon us,
something we still must face as a species.
In conclusion, I think it unlikely that we will
find ET intelligence anytime soon, probably not
until we actually get OUT THERE.... Is the
search worthwhile? I think so, mainly for the
scientific derivatives. Will it be successful?
I don't think any time soon.
There IS a silver lining to the dark cloud I
have painted. The ET's we do encounter are
likely to be more like us then we might expect,
precisely because they too will be misfits.
Shannon Mann - in need of time to finish his thesis....
I've been waiting all afternoon for news of the final decision. You beat out www.cnn.com by minutes. Kudos, Slashdot. Now, is anyone at all surprised???? Shannon
I've had this problem when working with C code in a vi editor. I was editing the code on a friends account. He had tabstops set to 4 spaces, and autoindent turned on. I added code, using spaces. Vi happily converted those lines into tabs for each line after the first. When I looked at the code in more, the indentation was completely screwy. While I was in university, I encountered this problem several times. At that time, I couldn't tell vi NEVER USE TABS . Perhaps this is something Vim handles better. Annoyingly, I had similar problems in Emacs. When I heard of Python's penchant for using indentation as semantically important, I decided this was a bad idea, from YEARS of past experience where indentation gets mangled one way or another. Further, I recently had problems with an editor under Win32 mangling things. The problem there? The editor was using proportional fonts. In a case like that, it became impossible to know for certain whether things were properly indented, because the fonts didn't show spaces consistently, and don't line up properly. The point Python pundits miss is that making your code fragile is not a good idea. And white space CAN be fragile. Please understand, I wish more languages forced coding standards on developers - more code would be readable. I rejoiced when I found that perl forces braces around ALL blocks. But I don't think that making a language potentially fragile is a GOOD solution. An editor doing something stupid with your indenting can totally destroy the semantic content of your code. And, unfortunately, it can be impossible to figure out what went wrong if you are maintaining code YOU didn't write. Anyone up to making a version of Python that avoids the indentation problems? Python sounds fun AND powerful. Shannon Mann
Recently, there was a show on T.V. that explained the problems one gentleman had because of a typo in a computer form entered on his social security number a murder conviction. This public database with the erroneous information had gotten sold to a data warehousing company and then sold to MANY sources. The gentleman in question lost his job, couldn't get another job and eventually, it destroyed his marriage. He hired a private investigator who finally tracked the problem. The Sherrif's department apologised for the problem and corrected the data in their computer databases, but that didn't correct the data in everyone elses databases. The free selling of this kind of information is happening all the time in the states, and the scary part (if that wasn't scary enough) that if there is a problem found, there is no way to correct the information. The man above is permanently hosed, guilty of something he never did by way of permanent tainting of the multiple copies of the erroneous information. Welcome to the age of high tech/no responsibility.
Jane Stewart took over after the money went missing. She is guilty of having to clean up someone elses mess. Which makes the calls for her resignation rather strange...
There have been commercial versions of NFS for Win32 platforms for many years. The problem is, there are significant differences between how UNIX works and Win32 platforms work. These differences have caused no end of problems getting NFS to work well with Win32 - Microsoft has been very good at making their platforms non-conformant to pretty much every standard you might mention - so much the better to protect their monopoly. Do it our way or go away....
From what I've seen, it is easier to get a UNIX platform to accept the idiosyncracies of SMB than to get the Win32 platform to accept the idiosyncracies of UNIX file systems. And so, the commercial versions of NFS for Win32 have slowly drifted to the side, replaced by SMB on UNIX/Linux.
This might be different if Microsoft had open source (as might happen with the DOJ case). Perhaps then, when all is known about Win32, will NFS and other network service support be simpler.
And while we are at it, can someone replace the dog that is NFS??? Please!?!?!
I have some university education. If I ever finish my thesis, I'll even have a degree....
I have taught myself a great deal of computer science knowledge, and am a very competent programmer. I am well-paid for my knowledge and abilities. I've been working with computers for over 23 years.
I have NEVER taken a single day of CS theory. I've taken many CS theory texts and read them, implemented their algorythms, etc, all without formal education.
I think that CS theory is, without doubt, very important to a software developer. I don't think our educational system gives one heave about whether they are actually teaching anything to anyone, and so, a formal introduction to a subject doesn't really mean anything. A person MAY learn something about CS theory, or they MAY NOT. The piece of paper indicates ability to write tests, not know CS theory.
Given all the above, and my own experience, I can state clearly that the piece of paper gives no guarantees. At least with engineers, if you don't know what you are doing, you are legally liable. I know of no software developer (who isn't an engineer) who would admit the same responsibilities. And so, no guarantees.
Only what you can actually accomplish indicates what you've learned. The degree doesn't indicate actual knowledge, just that you've at least had exposure. Its sort of like a disease - exposure may mean you've been infected - it doesn't guarantee it.
I've worked for many years and have gotten ahead by my own hard work. I am now very successful.
My parents had 6 children and raised them on less than 24K CDN/year. My dad worked on construction all his life, and now has only a wrecked body to show for it. He cannot read, and will never benefit from any kind of education - a 60+ year old man has little need for that.
I am where I am today because of education, and the hard work I put into my educational experiences. I still strive to continue to learn new things - I've acquired a life-long habit. But that doesn't stop the niggling voice in the back of my head that tells me I am not worthy, that I am a sham. I know that the voice is a traitor - I've plenty to show it the error of its convictions. Yet, it still is there.
Knowing I've my own success to prod me on, and knowing that those same words echo through the heads of my parents and siblings, I understand that it isn't effort or desire that holds them back, but a self-sabotaging mental habit that society reinforces every day.
Education can help. It helped me. It isn't the final answer, but, it never, ever hurts.
If you think that there is no heavy hand of society upon the shoulders of these people, ask yourself this. Those of you who work in an office, you might have seen the cleaning staff who come by every afternoon/evening to empty your waste baskets. Do you know their names? Have you ever talked to them as people? Or are they just faceless automatons who, like machines, work silently, quietly, and never get in your way?
My cleaner's name is Mike. He's a nice guy. He remembers that I recently married and have a child on the way. He doesn't have any kids, but would like to have some someday, when he can afford it.
I have gathered most feel that the important bit about patents is that they protect an inventor's work while they exploit it commercially. Much discussion has suggested that this is broken.
I think they are right.
However, I think the patent system worked, not because it encouraged progress by protecting a person's ability to commercially exploit an idea, but, by promoting the sharing of ideas. IMHO, the important bit that patents do is to force the exposure of secrets, to avoid the loss of knowledge that history tells us sometimes happens (anyone know how to build a pyramid, with stone-age tools?)
The commercial exploitation of ideas certainly was responsible for booming business. However, the air of inventiveness that was characteristic of 19th century America I think was due to getting the secrets published.
If we want to change the patent system, I think we should keep in mind that publication gives us intangible benefits, and so, any patent process, however flawed, has usefulness.
How to fix? In discussions with friends over the years I came up with the idea that patents have two purposes. 1) To promote the spread of ideas, and 2) to give the inventors a chance to recoup the costs of creating the invention. I know this isn't quite in line with the current ideas of what patents are for, but, that may be an improvement over where we are currently.
I think that a person or company should keep track of their costs in creating a particular idea. They patent the idea, publishing both their idea and the costs. For anyone to exploit this idea commercially, they would have to share the `cost' of developing that idea. The first `share-ee' would pay half to the original person/company, the second would pay 1/3 to be appropriately distributed between the first two, so that all three groups would pay the same fraction, etc.
In essence, the usage fees would be paid to the entire group of current `share-ee's making each of their costs less. As ideas become well used, the development costs would be spread over so many groups as to be unimportant. This fact alone should help stop the useless exploitation of `harrassment patents' You can only recover your costs in developing ideas. If your costs in developing the idea were very low, the sharing fee will be tiny, and so, people will be happy to pay it.
New good ideas would supplant existing ones with true innovation - otherwise, you would continue to use the existing, `cheap to license' technique.
With the above method, we loose the litigating sharks, we cover development costs (although very good accounting practices need to be adopted) and we publish lots of interesting ideas.
An semi-automatic pistol or worse an automatic rifle or submachine pistol can fire many shots quickly. And while you are retrieving the knife from one person's chest, a pistol user could shoot 10-15 people, or leave 10-15 wounds in one person. Automatic weapons increase these numbers appropriately.
Students of history will verify that wars became much more deadly (total numbers killed) with guns.
As a Canadian, I've a somewhat different view of gun control. You make guns hard to get not because violence won't happen, but, because, guns make massive violence easy. Its the same reason we don't make nuclear weapons or biological weapons easy to get.
Here in Canada, our large cities still have considerable violence, but relatively few deaths. Toronto, Canada's largest city of 4.5 million people, we were appalled a few years ago because we had 58 murders that year. Detroit had 58 murders in the first few weeks of the same year, the far largest share of those deaths due to gunplay.
I am not suggesting that Toronto isn't as violent as Detroit (it may or may not be), but that much of the violence is done with less lethal weapons, and so, fewer deaths. Past experiences with war makes the lethality of these weapons quite clear. Guns kill so much more efficiently than swords, knives, or clubs.
Ask yourself, which would you prefer: If someone came at you with the intent to kill you, would you prefer they wield a gun or a knife?
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Guns just allow them to do it so much more efficiently. Anyone up for the legalizing of personal nuclear weapons???
The QWERTY keyboard was not designed for inefficiency, and the Dvorak keyboard is not clearly superior.
The myth of the Dvorak keyboard will probably outlive us all, but ya gotta keep trying.
If you carefully read the article the first
comment you make above is obviously false.
The QWERTY keyboard WAS made to be inefficient,
as the article suggests.
Further, given I've actually learned both,
and got to 20 WPM on the DVORAK keyboard within
two weeks, I can say that, yes, the DVORAK
keyboard is somewhat more efficient. I had
to stop using DVORAK on my machine at home
because the dataprocessing center I worked in
at the time had 8 different QWERTY keyboards
available, which my DVORAK typing practice
was making difficult to use.
The most damning problem with DVORAK is that
it was optimized for english. All those non-
english speakers will find the organisation
to be less efficient, some very inefficient,
no more so (or less so) than QWERTY. This is
an unfixable problem, given over 100 human
languages in common use in the world.
Can someone please do real science to decide the
efficiencies of both keyboard and write a paper
telling the world? Please!?!?!
Slashdot Mirror
My wife and I just had a baby. We saw a gynecologist several times during the pregnancy. What you say here is myth. Go to your family doctor and ask for a referal. If your family doctor doesn't want to refer, and you have a genuine problem, get a real doctor.
An American ex-girlfriend of mine from years back was rather upset with the American health system/laws.
Her father had congenital diabetes. He was working for a company with excellent health coverage. As the disease progressed, he was eventually fired due to `ineffectiveness' in his position, mainly due to the days off he had to take, and the leg he lost to the disease. He lost his health coverage immediately, and the coverage he could buy after would not cover an existing problem. He had to foot the costs himself.
The $300,000 USD nest egg he had managed to save for retirement is now gone, now having to live off of government assistance.
Not pretty.....
Please go. Your unhappiness isn't going to improve by being here in Canada. Perhaps a taste of what you THINK you want will make you understand what you gave up. Good luck.
I'll pay the taxes, and live happier because of it.
Please understand: I find fault with the Canadian government (any big organisation, really). I'd accept its flaws over most of the alternatives, and will work to fix those flaws instead of whining about it.
Shannon
This was never the purpose of schools, certainly not here in Canada.
The public school system in Canada was created in order to teach the `Irish riffraff' (read Irish immigrants) manners, to teach them to respect authority, to teach them to behave.
Given the similarities between schools in Canada and United States, I don't think that the U.S. is any different.
Our schools do NOT teach independent thought (or any other thought for that matter). They don't teach people to be more creative. They don't help people to excel.
They teach conformity. Shannon Mann
When I worked with IBM 4081 mainframes, we would boot the systems by doing an IML, an IPL and THEN booting the operating system.
The IML stood for `Initial Microcode Load', which installed the instruction set for the mainframes CPU's. With this technique, it is possible to upgrade your CPU's instructions to a different CPU's instructions - exactly what Transmeta can do.
IBM had Motorola re-wire the MC68000 to run IBM 370 machine language, to allow the creation of the IBM RT-370, a desktop machine that could run mainframe code. This was IBM's attempt at creating a microprocessor that could do most of what Transmeta claims to do (although what the mainframes do is what Transmeta appears to be doing).
Perhaps someone out there can precisely determine when IBM started using this technique.
Shannon Mann
If you can prove it is too broad, and could invalidate the patent claim with prior art, refuse to sign, and show them the evidence why.
If they go ahead anyway, you can always send in the contravening evidence to the Patent office.
If it IS a real patent, but is too broad, you are forced to sign, but, you can send into the patent office contravening evidence, and get the patent claim invalidated (given you no longer work for them, seems fair). A patent that is too broad is an issue only the patent office can deal with (usually poorly ).
BTW, IANAL....
Shannon Mann.
Further, when rebutting a post, don't you think more than a glancing reference to the posters text is appropriate?
I consider humans to be misfits because, from a biological perspective, we are poorly adapted to any particular environment when compared with other animals in their native environments. We don't have a native environment. I put forward the hypothesis that our `misfitness' triggered a reaction that led humans to evolve to use and develop technology, which enhances our continued evolution by skipping need for the slow accumulation of DNA changes biological evolution requires.
Repeating Evolution 101 speaks not to the issue, but, like a mantra, soothes the soul into ignoring a valid scientific hypothesis. You state that `Humans are not misfits of any sort' and then point to hypothesis after hypothesis, stating them as fact. Given the nature of evolution and archeology, we CAN'T know these as fact, and should keep in mind when we start treating them as incontravertable.
If someone needs evidence to show flaws in evolution, you need only ask two questions:
Firstly, evolution is always looked at in hindsight. We see the traces of these changes in our archeological investigations. We take these changes and see a pattern, new features slowly flowing from previous features - we label this evolution. It is a given we cannot know with certainty what processes are at work. And for this reason, Evolutionary Theory is always on shaky ground about giving specifics as to what processes are at work. Evolution cannot be done in a lab.
Or can it?
I think it was Valera who helped evolve a new kind of amoeba, one who had developed a symbiotic relationship with an invading bacteria, a relationship that the new amoeba variety depended upon. Removal of these bacteria killed the new variety of amoeba. Lab experiments such as these CAN be done, and can prove or disprove whether someone's hypothesis about the changes we see in humans were actually from the influences those hypotheses suggest. Fundamentally, lab work will make Evolutionary Theory less like sociobiology, and more like biology.
Secondly, the lack of a bootstrap for evolution was the SPECIFIC reason I went to look for other explanations of evolution. Existing theories were poor at best at explaining how the whole process got started, most centering around purely random events. Possible? Yes. A satisfying answer? In my mind, hardly at all. Evolution has proven to be a robust and undeniable force of change. Something that forceful suggests that a significant process started and continues. The organising principles that brought about evolution in the first place should still be operating, and so, we should be able to derive a science based upon that knowledge.
From these beginnings, I posit my hypothesis. You don't have to like it. If it makes at least one person think (instead of repeating the course material learned in University) I will be satisfied. If it makes someone actually challenge the hypothesis itself, forcing me to modify my hypothesis, I will be ecstatic.
Finally, why is this important?
If there are ET civilisations out there (and I believe there are), knowing how we developed may give us insights into how they might have developed. That understanding may be crucial to our continued survival.
Evolution is usually defined in terms of `Survival of the fittest'. My research suggests that this basic idea is misdirected. Evolution occurs to those populations that survive. Those populations that are particularly unfit go extinct. In essence, Evolution should be coached in terms of `Survival of the good-enough'. Those who are not `good-enough' die, the rest evolve. With this re-definition in mind, we can re-examine what an advanced civilisation would look like, indirectly, by re-examining ourselves.
It is satisfying to our own human egocentrism to believe we are the most evolutionarily advanced animals on this planet. An examination of our strengths and weaknesses argues this is wrong. We, as animals, are not the best at anything. Our flaws are the fundamental reason that we became tool makers, our tools making up for our relatively poor biological adaptations. We are who we are because we substituted technological innovation for biological evolution, and yes, even to this day, that substitution interferes with biological evolution (but will never replace it, for certain). What the substitution did do was to allow the human animals to `fit' into more niche's much more rapidly than normal biological evolution allows, mainly by allowing us to conform an environment to our needs.
In essence, we are evolutionary misfits, and are doing so well because this is true - we were forced to learn a new way of coping.
It is by a great accident that we, misfits every one, managed to survive. That there is life on this planet (and, I believe, on most planets) is of little surprise. My research suggests that WILL be the case pretty much everywhere. That a technological civilisation of any sort came from that process is far more a wonder.
There is a presumption behind the SETI work that if life appears, a technological civilisation will likely appear, at least some of the time. It is this assumption that is likely the most flawed, following from the above arguments.
We may eventually find that relatively few techologically enhanced organisms are produced because evolution is poor at generating them, generating more `fit' organisms most of the time, that only a few civilizations ever do come into existence, precisely because the species that are likely to develop technology are biological evolutionary misfits (as only the misfits need technology to survive), and so are so very likely to become extinct before they master technology. What is worse, because we sidestep biological evolution, we are poorly adapted to handle the problems technology forces upon us, something we still must face as a species.
In conclusion, I think it unlikely that we will find ET intelligence anytime soon, probably not until we actually get OUT THERE.... Is the search worthwhile? I think so, mainly for the scientific derivatives. Will it be successful? I don't think any time soon.
There IS a silver lining to the dark cloud I have painted. The ET's we do encounter are likely to be more like us then we might expect, precisely because they too will be misfits.
Shannon Mann - in need of time to finish his thesis....
I've been waiting all afternoon for news of the final decision. You beat out www.cnn.com by minutes. Kudos, Slashdot. Now, is anyone at all surprised???? Shannon
I've had this problem when working with C code in a vi editor. I was editing the code on a friends account. He had tabstops set to 4 spaces, and autoindent turned on. I added code, using spaces. Vi happily converted those lines into tabs for each line after the first. When I looked at the code in more, the indentation was completely screwy. While I was in university, I encountered this problem several times. At that time, I couldn't tell vi NEVER USE TABS . Perhaps this is something Vim handles better. Annoyingly, I had similar problems in Emacs. When I heard of Python's penchant for using indentation as semantically important, I decided this was a bad idea, from YEARS of past experience where indentation gets mangled one way or another. Further, I recently had problems with an editor under Win32 mangling things. The problem there? The editor was using proportional fonts. In a case like that, it became impossible to know for certain whether things were properly indented, because the fonts didn't show spaces consistently, and don't line up properly. The point Python pundits miss is that making your code fragile is not a good idea. And white space CAN be fragile. Please understand, I wish more languages forced coding standards on developers - more code would be readable. I rejoiced when I found that perl forces braces around ALL blocks. But I don't think that making a language potentially fragile is a GOOD solution. An editor doing something stupid with your indenting can totally destroy the semantic content of your code. And, unfortunately, it can be impossible to figure out what went wrong if you are maintaining code YOU didn't write. Anyone up to making a version of Python that avoids the indentation problems? Python sounds fun AND powerful. Shannon Mann
Recently, there was a show on T.V. that explained the problems one gentleman had because of a typo in a computer form entered on his social security number a murder conviction. This public database with the erroneous information had gotten sold to a data warehousing company and then sold to MANY sources. The gentleman in question lost his job, couldn't get another job and eventually, it destroyed his marriage. He hired a private investigator who finally tracked the problem. The Sherrif's department apologised for the problem and corrected the data in their computer databases, but that didn't correct the data in everyone elses databases. The free selling of this kind of information is happening all the time in the states, and the scary part (if that wasn't scary enough) that if there is a problem found, there is no way to correct the information. The man above is permanently hosed, guilty of something he never did by way of permanent tainting of the multiple copies of the erroneous information. Welcome to the age of high tech/no responsibility.
Jane Stewart took over after the money went missing. She is guilty of having to clean up someone elses mess. Which makes the calls for her resignation rather strange...
Win32 platforms for many years. The problem is,
there are significant differences between how UNIX works and Win32 platforms work. These differences have caused no end of problems getting NFS to work well with Win32 - Microsoft has been very good at making their platforms non-conformant to pretty much every standard you might mention - so much the better to protect their monopoly. Do it our way or go away....
From what I've seen, it is easier to get a UNIX platform to accept the idiosyncracies of SMB than to get the Win32 platform to accept the idiosyncracies of UNIX file systems. And so, the commercial versions of NFS for Win32 have slowly drifted to the side, replaced by SMB on UNIX/Linux.
This might be different if Microsoft had open source (as might happen with the DOJ case). Perhaps then, when all is known about Win32,
will NFS and other network service support be simpler.
And while we are at it, can someone replace the dog that is NFS??? Please!?!?!
I have some university education. If I ever finish my thesis, I'll even have a degree....
I have taught myself a great deal of computer science knowledge, and am a very competent programmer. I am well-paid for my knowledge and abilities. I've been working with computers for over 23 years.
I have NEVER taken a single day of CS theory. I've taken many CS theory texts and read them, implemented their algorythms, etc, all without formal education.
I think that CS theory is, without doubt, very important to a software developer. I don't think our educational system gives one heave about whether they are actually teaching anything to anyone, and so, a formal introduction to a subject doesn't really mean anything. A person MAY learn something about CS theory, or they MAY NOT. The piece of paper indicates ability to write tests, not know CS theory.
Given all the above, and my own experience, I can state clearly that the piece of paper gives no guarantees. At least with engineers, if you don't know what you are doing, you are legally liable. I know of no software developer (who isn't an engineer) who would admit the same responsibilities. And so, no guarantees.
Only what you can actually accomplish indicates what you've learned. The degree doesn't indicate actual knowledge, just that you've at least had exposure. Its sort of like a disease - exposure may mean you've been infected - it doesn't guarantee it.
I am of the poor.
I've worked for many years and have gotten ahead by my own hard work. I am now very successful.
My parents had 6 children and raised them on less than 24K CDN/year. My dad worked on construction all his life, and now has only a wrecked body to
show for it. He cannot read, and will never benefit from any kind of education - a 60+ year old man has little need for that.
I am where I am today because of education, and the hard work I put into my educational experiences. I still strive to continue to learn new things - I've acquired a life-long habit. But that doesn't stop the niggling voice in the back of my head that tells me I am not worthy, that I am a sham. I know that the voice is a traitor - I've plenty to show it the error of its convictions. Yet, it still is there.
Knowing I've my own success to prod me on, and knowing that those same words echo through the heads of my parents and siblings, I understand that it isn't effort or desire that holds them back, but a self-sabotaging mental habit that society reinforces every day.
Education can help. It helped me. It isn't the final answer, but, it never, ever hurts.
If you think that there is no heavy hand of society upon the shoulders of these people, ask yourself this. Those of you who work in an office, you might have seen the cleaning staff who come by every afternoon/evening to empty your waste baskets. Do you know their names? Have you ever talked to them as people? Or are they just faceless automatons who, like machines, work silently, quietly, and never get in your way?
My cleaner's name is Mike. He's a nice guy. He remembers that I recently married and have a child on the way. He doesn't have any kids, but would like to have some someday, when he can afford it.
And he will likely be working poor all his life.
Shannon Mann.
I think they are right.
However, I think the patent system worked, not because it encouraged progress by protecting a person's ability to commercially exploit an idea, but, by promoting the sharing of ideas. IMHO, the important bit that patents do is to force the exposure of secrets, to avoid the loss of knowledge that history tells us sometimes happens (anyone know how to build a pyramid, with stone-age tools?)
The commercial exploitation of ideas certainly was responsible for booming business. However, the air of inventiveness that was characteristic of 19th century America I think was due to getting the secrets published.
If we want to change the patent system, I think we should keep in mind that publication gives us intangible benefits, and so, any patent process, however flawed, has usefulness.
How to fix? In discussions with friends over the years I came up with the idea that patents have two purposes. 1) To promote the spread of ideas, and 2) to give the inventors a chance to recoup the costs of creating the invention. I know this isn't quite in line with the current ideas of what patents are for, but, that may be an improvement over where we are currently.
I think that a person or company should keep track of their costs in creating a particular idea. They patent the idea, publishing both their idea and the costs. For anyone to exploit this idea commercially, they would have to share the `cost' of developing that idea. The first `share-ee' would pay half to the original person/company, the second would pay 1/3 to be appropriately distributed between the first two, so that all three groups would pay the same fraction, etc.
In essence, the usage fees would be paid to the entire group of current `share-ee's making each of their costs less. As ideas become well used, the development costs would be spread over so many groups as to be unimportant. This fact alone should help stop the useless exploitation of `harrassment patents' You can only recover your costs in developing ideas. If your costs in developing the idea were very low, the sharing fee will be tiny, and so, people will be happy to pay it.
New good ideas would supplant existing ones with true innovation - otherwise, you would continue to use the existing, `cheap to license' technique.
With the above method, we loose the litigating sharks, we cover development costs (although very good accounting practices need to be adopted) and we publish lots of interesting ideas.
It ISN'T a PC.
It IS an extension of your PC.
And so, you don't need desktop bloat to get real value for your money. Hence, 2-3 months on a couple of AAA's.
A single knife wound may be more dangerous.
An semi-automatic pistol or worse an
automatic rifle or submachine pistol
can fire many shots quickly. And while
you are retrieving the knife from one
person's chest, a pistol user could shoot
10-15 people, or leave 10-15 wounds in
one person. Automatic weapons increase
these numbers appropriately.
Students of history will verify that wars
became much more deadly (total numbers killed)
with guns.
Just the facts, Man....
As a Canadian, I've a somewhat different view
of gun control. You make guns hard to get
not because violence won't happen, but, because,
guns make massive violence easy. Its the same
reason we don't make nuclear weapons or
biological weapons easy to get.
Here in Canada, our large cities still have
considerable violence, but relatively few
deaths. Toronto, Canada's largest city of
4.5 million people, we were appalled a few
years ago because we had 58 murders that
year. Detroit had 58 murders in the first
few weeks of the same year, the far largest
share of those deaths due to gunplay.
I am not suggesting that Toronto isn't as
violent as Detroit (it may or may not be),
but that much of the violence is done
with less lethal weapons, and so, fewer
deaths. Past experiences with war makes
the lethality of these weapons quite clear.
Guns kill so much more efficiently than swords,
knives, or clubs.
Ask yourself, which would you prefer:
If someone came at you with the intent
to kill you, would you prefer they wield
a gun or a knife?
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Guns just allow them to do it so much more
efficiently. Anyone up for the legalizing
of personal nuclear weapons???
If you carefully read the article the first comment you make above is obviously false. The QWERTY keyboard WAS made to be inefficient, as the article suggests.
Further, given I've actually learned both, and got to 20 WPM on the DVORAK keyboard within two weeks, I can say that, yes, the DVORAK keyboard is somewhat more efficient. I had to stop using DVORAK on my machine at home because the dataprocessing center I worked in at the time had 8 different QWERTY keyboards available, which my DVORAK typing practice was making difficult to use.
The most damning problem with DVORAK is that it was optimized for english. All those non- english speakers will find the organisation to be less efficient, some very inefficient, no more so (or less so) than QWERTY. This is an unfixable problem, given over 100 human languages in common use in the world.
Can someone please do real science to decide the efficiencies of both keyboard and write a paper telling the world? Please!?!?!
Shannon, a disillusioned scientist.