The problem arises when you flatly refuse to listen to, and try to belittle anyone who says that the tub was filled beforehand.
Eh ?
You just told us that you filled it up and then tried to pretend it was filled by a dripping faucet. Obviously you're talking bollocks.
That's the problem with ID. You make an argument based on bad facts or no facts at all, in fact a lot of it is out and out lies. You don't know that god created the earth (so your straw man is drowning in your tub), but you are prepared to belittle people who spend their entire lives finding out exactly how it did get formed. I know whose opinion I'd rather trust.
His (Darwin) theory did not address whether or not God created the initial organisms--it only addressed how organisms have changed over time.
But that is guilty by omission. The Bible states that god made man in his own image. We have evidence that we have evolved from "lesser" mammals, and they evolved from fish/reptiles, and they evolved from (initially) single celled lifeforms.
There are 2 halves to the brain, left and right. One handles logic, the other creativity. If a partisan has to respond to criticism of their parties policies then they will be using the creative side of their brain, not the logical side. They don't understand (mostly) what they are arguing about, they just know they must toe the party line, so they get creative.
That's why they always try to change the subject when questioned, so as to get into territory they actually have a developed opinion on (and have probably rehearsed).
I know exactly how much it's costing me. I live in a flat where I have a coin meter for electricity. £1 coins only. It's currently costing me around £1 per day ($1.79) to: Power my Linux server (24/7) Power the refridgerator (24/7) Heat water (2/7) Cook food (1.5/7) Power my windows PC and projector(for TV purposes) (7/7) Charge my mobile phone (1/2) Power the adsl router and speaker system (24/7) Lighting (8/7) (hours per day / days per week)
The current price per unit is around £0.15 per unit (Kwh) so I reckon I'm using less than 7 Kwh per day. I don't actually think £1 per day is too excessive. I would expect that the landlord has "loaded" the meter too, so I may be using less power than that. I had a bsd box running up until a few months ago, and suddenly my power usage doubled almost over night. after investigation, I found that one of the case fans had got so clogged with shite, that it had stopped turning, and was just acting as a very very small heater, but a very expensive one ! £1 per day just for a stuck case fan... makes you check all the rest of the equipment out, I can tell you. It's worth having a new fan for the cpu once a year, and a new PSU every 2 years, just to keep them running efficiently.
I use Azureus, and despite the comments complaining about its package size, memory and cpu usage, I like it !
I'm running it on a machine with a sempron 2.5 and 1GB RAM, and I'm running FC3. My ram is virtually always in full usage and my cpu load averages are always 1 +, basically because I also run Folding@home 24/7/365.
Even with that load FC3 still never uses swap and I can browse the net, stream media to my LAN and use any other programs without too much slowdown.
BTW, here's a list of the currently connected clients for information:
You would expect file sharing to grow naturally as more and more people use the internet. The fact that it has merely stagnated suggests that the litigation is succeeding somewhat.
But, you seem to forget that because people are aware of the lawsuits, they don't download the files themselves. There are plenty of small entrepreneurs around who will sell you a dvd or cd of whatever files you want, for much less than the retail cost. I know of one person who receives a stack of cds and dvds once a month by mail order, all rips, and all for just a standard monthly fee. The provider also includes a bonus dvd with free extras such as software, cd ripping and burning tools and a free movie !
Yeah the quality sucks on most of them, but that doesn't seem to matter to joe public. Plus. a lot of the newcomers to the net don't have the faintest idea how to rip or burn a cd / dvd so they leave it to others.
I thought the articles that got published were written by us !
If that's the case, why do you expect CmdrTaco to wipe each submitters ass for them ? As far as I care, if the article or the comments contain bad spelling / grammar, then that reflects badly on the submitter / poster, not the guys running the website.
If people want their comments to read like they failed grade school that's up to them. I'll just think less of them. (And so will any potential employer, should they repeat those mistakes in the outside world)
What I wonder is why I haven't read any comparisons between wooden cutting boards and toilet seats.
Hey that would be cool.
As you chop the vegetables they drop straight into the water ! (Some of the places I've eaten, it would have been a)[slightly]quicker and b)preferable.)
We know how to build a building that is several thousand meters in height. Aside from construction costs, transporting people to those upper floors has been the large difficulty.
I don't believe getting people up is as much of a problem as getting them out in an emergency. You have plenty of time available to "load" the building as the people aren't all trying to get in at one time, but getting them out when they all want out simultaneously is a hard task.
When they tried to evacuate the Petronas tower just after 9/11, it took around 40 minutes.
Maybe they should invent a system where each potential evacuee is given a strong magnetic belt to wear, and then told to jump down a pipe to the ground, the braking being done by induction.
If we take a 1967 Volkswagen to be a measuremeant of length then it is 1606.01 times larger than a single letter so it would take 9823500.48 Volkswagi to tailgate around the earth.
I really think that trying to get your average person to "understand" a computer is putting the cart before the horse. First you have to get them to become familiar with its interface.
For example, explain the concept of a window and then describe the functions that are available from the menu attached to that window. Many years ago, my father was introducing me to a word processing suite (on an Amstrad 1512 IIRC) which was new to me as we had previously only had DOS to play with (Nascom, Compaq 8086 etc). One question he asked me while we were sitting in front of the screen was "if you wanted to visually change the way you were working with this program where would you start ?" Of course the answer was/is you go to the "View" menu item. Simple stuff, but people generally think thats too simple or don't even think to try it.
Which brings me to my second point. Explain to people that they actually have to read what's on the screen ! The answer to all their questions is going to be there, if they would just look and read what it says. Which brings in another aspect - the GUI. Maybe it's a good plan to itemise each part of the GUI, desktop, taskbar, system tray etc. A friend of mine phoned to ask how to change the size of all the text on his computer because it was too small. I guessed he was after changing the resolution rather than specifying a larger font size for all the apps, so I asked him to right click on the desktop and click properties from the menu that popped up. I spent 10 minutes waiting for him to accomplish this ( I could hear random clicking over the phone, but it went on for far too long) and in the end I asked him what he was doing. He replied that he was looking for the folder called "desktop" so that he could right click on it ! I had to tell him to close all the open windows and then what was he was left looking at was called "The desktop". Oh yeah, he said. He's not dim by any means but this is the problem. One way I used to try and help people was to tell them "right click gives you options - left click makes things happen".
I could go on for days about this subject, but I think that once you have the GUI and the concept of reading what the screen says embedded in their minds, then the only cautionary thing you ought to impart is " Crap in - Crap out ". If the computer comes out with something unexpected, then 10:1 it's because you put the wrong data in.
The internet is a whole new kettle of fish, but once you can get the user to be familiar with their surroundings, and be a little confident in their actions, then common sense usually kicks in. Hopefully then, they will notice when their pc slows down due to spyware, and they will learn which sites to avoid because of popups and not to download anything just because its "free".
I know one thing, it's got to be easier to write a book about it than deal with the people face to face. Sometimes it's very hard not to lose patience when something is so obvious, but that's just me;-)
(Sad but true - once when I was about 19, a friend of mine was given a smallish astronomical telescope. Nothing too special but you could get a good look at the moon with it. Anyway, after a few weeks I was visiting and he was in a foul mood for some reason. I asked him what the problem was, and he said he'd been cleaning his telescope when he decided to clean the mirror. He had been using AutoSol, an automotive chrome polish, and he said "the bastards put the silvering on the wrong side of the glass !" Of course, he polished the mirror right off the glass. I couldn't believe anybody would be so dumb. It never occurred to me that maybe not everybody knew about optical mirrors and the refraction problems caused by glass. I've always remembered that day, and I'm still a little ashamed about how I reacted. But it is hard to relate (gracefully) to a lesser understanding sometimes.)
The hours I spend each day riding up to the 9th floor of my building could be exchanged for time spent waiting on the ground floor with dozens of other (now happy) travelers.
You know what would really spoil those deaf kids is, instead of a robot doing sign language, a robot that shows images or words based on what a speaker says.
Which do you think is better ?
a)A robot that translates words into pictures
b)A robot that translates one language into another
Deaf people aren't stupid, at least no worse than the rest of us. You do realise that they probably already know sign language (which is the reason for the robot) so to be shown stupid pictures would be a little demeaning, don't you think ?
Not forgetting that they will have to communicate between themselves as well, should they use pictures there too ? They would need a pretty big file to carry all those picture cards around in.
Have you ever travelled abroad ? How do you think people would react if you tried to communicate with them by showing them pictures, instead of at least trying to make yourself understood in their own language.
I fear that all Lovelock's doomsaying will accomplish is the opposite.
The sad thing is that, even if all the worlds governments knew the end of the world was nigh, they wouldn't say squat to the rest of us.
There would be mass panic, rioting, looting etc etc. So the governments would probably just consolidate their own positions, strengthen their police forces and hope that word didn't leak out. Of course they would have a plan for their own survival, but like the man said - if your names not on the list, you ain't getting in !
Personally, I believe in hoping for the best but preparing for the worst (as far as possible).
BTW, has anybody else heard the expression "civilisation is only as good as 3 days food supply" ? If all your supermarkets were empty after 3 days how would you survive ? New Orleans after the hurricane was a party compared to a food crisis on a national scale. And yes, the police would be shooting civilians, until the civilians realised that they had nothing to lose by shooting back.
Tangentially, one thing that irritates me is when people diss the idea of getting the fuck off this ball of rock and finding somewhere new to live. It's always "too expensive" or "why waste money on that when it could be spent on $own_pet_project". Aesop had a few fables about that attitude.
IMHO it will be a little too late to start building the ships when the damn comet || catastrophe is a couple of years away. I think we should be developing extra-terrestrial communities and getting some of these eggs out of the damn basket.
You can call me insane if you like, but I don't suppose the geeks out there see a reliable backup as a waste of time, even if you never have to use it. Add to that the fact that the worlds political climate would have to change considerably for the better if all nations had to cooperate in building a new civilisation with artificially restricted resources in order for any of us to survive.
Some things have to be done, for the good of the human race.
The security flaw, which could have permitted contractor fraud...
surely that should read
The security flaw, which would have permitted contractor fraud
There is no uncertainty, and it is wrong to suggest that there might be. It just makes the mistake seem less vital.
Whether or not someone used that flaw to commit wrongdoing is irrelevant. The capability did exist.
For those that think this is unnecessary grammar nazism, there is a difference between fact and probability.
For example, if you were to leave a gate open on a field of cattle, then you would have allowed the cattle to escape. to say that you could have allowed them to escape twists the facts. An open gate does, in fact allow cattle to escape.
If however, you shut the gate but didn't fasten the bolt correctly, then you could claim that the cattle could have escaped, because there was an element of uncertainty.
A small point but important, especially in these days of endless corporate spin and EULAs.
Slashdot Mirror
&
b)Divide and rule.
You were right, it is only one question. You should send your comment in to the Sun, you'll probably get a tenner for it.
You just told us that you filled it up and then tried to pretend it was filled by a dripping faucet. Obviously you're talking bollocks.
That's the problem with ID. You make an argument based on bad facts or no facts at all, in fact a lot of it is out and out lies. You don't know that god created the earth (so your straw man is drowning in your tub), but you are prepared to belittle people who spend their entire lives finding out exactly how it did get formed. I know whose opinion I'd rather trust.
Feeling belittled yet ?
We have evidence that we have evolved from "lesser" mammals, and they evolved from fish/reptiles, and they evolved from (initially) single celled lifeforms.
Ergo, god is an amoeba.
I didn't think ludicris was signed with a member of the RIAA but I seem to be wrong (Disturbing Tha Peace)!
That's why they always try to change the subject when questioned, so as to get into territory they actually have a developed opinion on (and have probably rehearsed).
Power my Linux server (24/7)
Power the refridgerator (24/7)
Heat water (2/7)
Cook food (1.5/7)
Power my windows PC and projector(for TV purposes) (7/7)
Charge my mobile phone (1/2)
Power the adsl router and speaker system (24/7)
Lighting (8/7)
(hours per day / days per week)
The current price per unit is around £0.15 per unit (Kwh) so I reckon I'm using less than 7 Kwh per day. I don't actually think £1 per day is too excessive. I would expect that the landlord has "loaded" the meter too, so I may be using less power than that. I had a bsd box running up until a few months ago, and suddenly my power usage doubled almost over night. after investigation, I found that one of the case fans had got so clogged with shite, that it had stopped turning, and was just acting as a very very small heater, but a very expensive one ! £1 per day just for a stuck case fan... makes you check all the rest of the equipment out, I can tell you. It's worth having a new fan for the cpu once a year, and a new PSU every 2 years, just to keep them running efficiently.
I'm running it on a machine with a sempron 2.5 and 1GB RAM, and I'm running FC3. My ram is virtually always in full usage and my cpu load averages are always 1 +, basically because I also run Folding@home 24/7/365.
Even with that load FC3 still never uses swap and I can browse the net, stream media to my LAN and use any other programs without too much slowdown.
BTW, here's a list of the currently connected clients for information:
Azureus 2.3.0.6 Azureus 2.0.8.4 BitComet 0.60 Azureus 2.3.0.6 TorrentStorm 1.3.0.0 Mainline 4.2.0 Azureus 2.3.0.6 BitLord 1.1 Azureus 2.3.0.6 BitLord 1.1 BitLord 1.1 BitComet 0.60 Mainline 4.1.2 BitComet 0.61 BitLord 1.1 Azureus 2.3.0.4 BitComet 0.60 Azureus 2.3.0.6 BitComet 0.60 Azureus 2.3.0.6 Azureus 2.3.0.6 Azureus 2.3.0.4 Azureus 2.3.0.6 BitComet 0.60 Azureus 2.3.0.6 BitLord 1.1 BitComet 0.60 BitLord 1.1 BitComet 0.59 BitComet 0.60 Torrent 1.4.1 Mainline 4.3.4 BitComet 0.60 Azureus 2.3.0.7_B30 BitComet 0.61 BitComet 0.61 BitComet 0.57 BitComet 0.60 BitComet 0.60 BitComet 0.60 Azureus 2.3.0.6 BitComet UDP BitLord 1.1 BitComet 0.58 BitComet 0.59 BitComet 0.60 Azureus 2.2.0.2 BitComet 0.60 BitComet 0.56 BitLord 1.1 BitComet 0.60 BitComet 0.61 BitLord 1.1 BitLord 1.1 BitComet 0.60 BitComet 0.60 Torrent 1.3.0 BitComet 0.59 BitComet 0.60 BitComet 0.60 BitLord 1.1 BitComet 0.57 BitComet 0.56 BitLord 1.1 BitComet 0.57 BitComet 0.61 BitComet 0.59 BitComet 0.59 BitLord 1.1 BitComet 0.60 BitLord 1.1 Azureus 2.3.0.6 BitComet 0.59 BitComet 0.58 BitComet 0.61 BitLord 1.1 Azureus 2.3.0.6
Yeah the quality sucks on most of them, but that doesn't seem to matter to joe public. Plus. a lot of the newcomers to the net don't have the faintest idea how to rip or burn a cd / dvd so they leave it to others.
If that's the case, why do you expect CmdrTaco to wipe each submitters ass for them ? As far as I care, if the article or the comments contain bad spelling / grammar, then that reflects badly on the submitter / poster, not the guys running the website.
If people want their comments to read like they failed grade school that's up to them. I'll just think less of them. (And so will any potential employer, should they repeat those mistakes in the outside world)
As you chop the vegetables they drop straight into the water !
(Some of the places I've eaten, it would have been a)[slightly]quicker and b)preferable.)
When they tried to evacuate the Petronas tower just after 9/11, it took around 40 minutes.
Maybe they should invent a system where each potential evacuee is given a strong magnetic belt to wear, and then told to jump down a pipe to the ground, the braking being done by induction.
For example, explain the concept of a window and then describe the functions that are available from the menu attached to that window. Many years ago, my father was introducing me to a word processing suite (on an Amstrad 1512 IIRC) which was new to me as we had previously only had DOS to play with (Nascom, Compaq 8086 etc). One question he asked me while we were sitting in front of the screen was "if you wanted to visually change the way you were working with this program where would you start ?" Of course the answer was/is you go to the "View" menu item. Simple stuff, but people generally think thats too simple or don't even think to try it.
Which brings me to my second point. Explain to people that they actually have to read what's on the screen ! The answer to all their questions is going to be there, if they would just look and read what it says. Which brings in another aspect - the GUI. Maybe it's a good plan to itemise each part of the GUI, desktop, taskbar, system tray etc. A friend of mine phoned to ask how to change the size of all the text on his computer because it was too small. I guessed he was after changing the resolution rather than specifying a larger font size for all the apps, so I asked him to right click on the desktop and click properties from the menu that popped up. I spent 10 minutes waiting for him to accomplish this ( I could hear random clicking over the phone, but it went on for far too long) and in the end I asked him what he was doing. He replied that he was looking for the folder called "desktop" so that he could right click on it ! I had to tell him to close all the open windows and then what was he was left looking at was called "The desktop". Oh yeah, he said. He's not dim by any means but this is the problem. One way I used to try and help people was to tell them "right click gives you options - left click makes things happen".
I could go on for days about this subject, but I think that once you have the GUI and the concept of reading what the screen says embedded in their minds, then the only cautionary thing you ought to impart is " Crap in - Crap out ". If the computer comes out with something unexpected, then 10:1 it's because you put the wrong data in.
The internet is a whole new kettle of fish, but once you can get the user to be familiar with their surroundings, and be a little confident in their actions, then common sense usually kicks in. Hopefully then, they will notice when their pc slows down due to spyware, and they will learn which sites to avoid because of popups and not to download anything just because its "free".
I know one thing, it's got to be easier to write a book about it than deal with the people face to face. Sometimes it's very hard not to lose patience when something is so obvious, but that's just me ;-)
(Sad but true - once when I was about 19, a friend of mine was given a smallish astronomical telescope. Nothing too special but you could get a good look at the moon with it. Anyway, after a few weeks I was visiting and he was in a foul mood for some reason. I asked him what the problem was, and he said he'd been cleaning his telescope when he decided to clean the mirror. He had been using AutoSol, an automotive chrome polish, and he said "the bastards put the silvering on the wrong side of the glass !" Of course, he polished the mirror right off the glass. I couldn't believe anybody would be so dumb. It never occurred to me that maybe not everybody knew about optical mirrors and the refraction problems caused by glass. I've always remembered that day, and I'm still a little ashamed about how I reacted. But it is hard to relate (gracefully) to a lesser understanding sometimes.)
a)A robot that translates words into pictures
b)A robot that translates one language into another
Deaf people aren't stupid, at least no worse than the rest of us. You do realise that they probably already know sign language (which is the reason for the robot) so to be shown stupid pictures would be a little demeaning, don't you think ?
Not forgetting that they will have to communicate between themselves as well, should they use pictures there too ? They would need a pretty big file to carry all those picture cards around in.
Have you ever travelled abroad ? How do you think people would react if you tried to communicate with them by showing them pictures, instead of at least trying to make yourself understood in their own language.
I've never seen so many posts that basically consist of - la la la la la la la la la (I can't hear you) la la la..... f*king grasshoppers !
There would be mass panic, rioting, looting etc etc. So the governments would probably just consolidate their own positions, strengthen their police forces and hope that word didn't leak out. Of course they would have a plan for their own survival, but like the man said - if your names not on the list, you ain't getting in !
Personally, I believe in hoping for the best but preparing for the worst (as far as possible).
BTW, has anybody else heard the expression "civilisation is only as good as 3 days food supply" ?
If all your supermarkets were empty after 3 days how would you survive ? New Orleans after the hurricane was a party compared to a food crisis on a national scale. And yes, the police would be shooting civilians, until the civilians realised that they had nothing to lose by shooting back.
Tangentially, one thing that irritates me is when people diss the idea of getting the fuck off this ball of rock and finding somewhere new to live. It's always "too expensive" or "why waste money on that when it could be spent on $own_pet_project". Aesop had a few fables about that attitude.
IMHO it will be a little too late to start building the ships when the damn comet || catastrophe is a couple of years away. I think we should be developing extra-terrestrial communities and getting some of these eggs out of the damn basket.
You can call me insane if you like, but I don't suppose the geeks out there see a reliable backup as a waste of time, even if you never have to use it. Add to that the fact that the worlds political climate would have to change considerably for the better if all nations had to cooperate in building a new civilisation with artificially restricted resources in order for any of us to survive.
Some things have to be done, for the good of the human race.
But that's just my opinion...
(Why can't we use <sup> anymore ?)
The security flaw, which would have permitted contractor fraud
There is no uncertainty, and it is wrong to suggest that there might be. It just makes the mistake seem less vital.
Whether or not someone used that flaw to commit wrongdoing is irrelevant. The capability did exist.
For those that think this is unnecessary grammar nazism, there is a difference between fact and probability.
For example, if you were to leave a gate open on a field of cattle, then you would have allowed the cattle to escape. to say that you could have allowed them to escape twists the facts. An open gate does, in fact allow cattle to escape.
If however, you shut the gate but didn't fasten the bolt correctly, then you could claim that the cattle could have escaped, because there was an element of uncertainty.
A small point but important, especially in these days of endless corporate spin and EULAs.