When you look at the pictures with a critical eye, you see it quite quickly: on half of the servers, the LEDs are on the wrong side, they are simply mirrored. Zhou declared she is "crazy about symmetry". As one commentor on Reddit put it: "I knew it! For a long time, Google has been trying to make us believe that they have a lot of servers. Well, this proves that they only have very many servers"
Google quite quickly admitted to the news, but did not see a reason to take the Zhou series of pictures offline.
I've been laughing my ass off at reading TFA. Some of the "formulas" are just hilarious. So is the reference list. Long time I had been laughing out so loud behind the computer that my girlfriend came in to see what was wrong. As she is a social-science student, I showed her the references. Then *both* of us were crying with laughter. Nice way to start the weekend.
I beg to differ. "Good" can be defined independently from any religiously constructed ethics frame, as follows ( definition from yours truly ): "Good is what empowers a human being to greater freedom to act, or choose possible actions". Better: "All things empowering one or more human beings to greater freedom to act, or choose possible actions, are good." Certainly, "good" and "bad" can be redefined: ours is a time of not absolute, but relative and interchangeable ethics. Which is what makes our time so greatly interesting. From the former, I suppose one can relatively easily see that religion is yesterday's thing - "yesterday" being the past tens of thousands of years.
Personally, I instantly turned away from the last scraps of religion left within me on reading your "The God Delusion" on a boat crossing Lake Zürich. The phrase that stuck, and still sticks, with me was: "You can not survive your own death". Neatly said.
You may, however, be aware of the one and only possible philosphical glitch in that phrase. "Surviving" and "death" are intricately linked with eachother on a conceptual level. So much so, even, that the one negatively defines the other. Now, since Aristotle, we know that we can not define a concept by using that very concept. For example, "to be" can not be defined with words such as "is", "being", etc. etc.
Could it therefore be that "you can not survive your own death" is a tautology ?
This is a "working document", still a far cry from becoming official regulation. Moreover, once it becomes an official EU directive, it must still be implemented by each EU country separately; this is a process that can take years and years. In the mean time, there is space for lobbying, parliamentary action and all kinds of measures on national ( EU country ) levels to circumvent or soften the regulation. TFA is stirring up sensation where, truly, there is nothing to be seen.
Religion in and by itself, in whatever form it may rear its head, is contemptible and to be overcome as a relic from the Bronze Age.. I say with Richard Dawkins: "No, I am not going to respect other people's religion. I may and will respect other people - but religion, no way".
The same thought occurred to me. There is something tongue-in-cheekish about the whole paper ( which I am reading through right now, piecemeal ). A nice intellectual joke, summa summarum.
If it is indeed
the case that the fundamental equations of nature allow on the order of 10^500 solutions,
then perhaps the most profound quest that can be undertaken by a sentient being is the exploration
of the landscape through universe simulation.
This "most profound quest" seems, to me at least, the activity we frequently indulge in and which is called "thought".
Yes, the original one, by Homer, about 2700 years old. The basis of western literature ( together with the Iliad, which is way more complex ). Why ? Because of the theme: man alone ( "rugged hero" ) fights, for 10 years, against himself, his past and the consequences of his actions to get back home, where nothing is as it was when he left that place. The Odyssey is THE basis for any general culture, self-reflection and further reading for any cultivated Westerner.
do I have a very hard time believing this ? European police are notoriously incompetent at decryption. This smells of some new, illusionary monster created by some government to scare us into coughing up more liberties and money. ( I can know. I live in Austria. )
Amen. Imagine a similar exposition, in which one would identify with heroes and characters from the Iliad or the Odyssey. Now that would be luminous, in contrast so such blunt figments of our own dark times.
BTW you must have been coming here for more than 10 years. I signed up in 1999 or so, and my ID is higher than yours. You must have been here for at least 14 years. Dinosaur;-)
So do: I come here for the comments, at least as much as for the news. On unexpected occasions one can have great fun here, and sometimes I leave more thoughtful than I came. Yes, the quality has gone down - but it is still higher than elsewhere on comparable sites. El Reg may be way funnier, what with its "boffinry", BOFH and Verity Stob - the comments there are blander. Here, *real* discussions are still flaming up. Sometimes.
In and by itself, video: why not. But the "essence" of Slashdot, if I may use so vague a term, seems to reside in two strongly defined and profiled points: tech news in text format, and user-user-moderation. Video does not enhance either of these. Nor is it "stuff that matters".Therefore: irrelevant. Does not add any value to the core business. It MAY increase the site's worth in the eyes of a potential buyer. To me as a loooooooooooooong-time slashdotter, however, video on/. is... well... howshalliputit.... of no use.
In a sovereign nation-state, starting from the assumption that it is democratically governed, each and all have opportunities to change their leadership - as well as changing the course the collective body is following. I wonder if you call that a "most superficial level".
You can't have pristine landscapes, a non-petrol economy AND several kilowatts of electric power at your fingertips, to be switched on whenever you come home. We here in Europe are making choices. We know we have to. So will you, so will you.
Slashdot Mirror
A Dutch newspaper, which this week published several of Zhous photos, found out - after a thread on Reddit began mentioning possible photoshopping - that, indeed, Zhou manipulated her pictures: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2012/10/20/google-publiceert-prachtige-fotos-van-datacentra-maar-zijn-ze-echt-nee/ is the link ( story, of course, in Dutch )
When you look at the pictures with a critical eye, you see it quite quickly: on half of the servers, the LEDs are on the wrong side, they are simply mirrored. Zhou declared she is "crazy about symmetry". As one commentor on Reddit put it: "I knew it! For a long time, Google has been trying to make us believe that they have a lot of servers. Well, this proves that they only have very many servers" Google quite quickly admitted to the news, but did not see a reason to take the Zhou series of pictures offline.
...will now buy the lake, for its water to serve as the main and sole ingredient in its "Cool Water" perfume.
I've been laughing my ass off at reading TFA. Some of the "formulas" are just hilarious. So is the reference list. Long time I had been laughing out so loud behind the computer that my girlfriend came in to see what was wrong. As she is a social-science student, I showed her the references. Then *both* of us were crying with laughter. Nice way to start the weekend.
I beg to differ. "Good" can be defined independently from any religiously constructed ethics frame, as follows ( definition from yours truly ): "Good is what empowers a human being to greater freedom to act, or choose possible actions". Better: "All things empowering one or more human beings to greater freedom to act, or choose possible actions, are good." Certainly, "good" and "bad" can be redefined: ours is a time of not absolute, but relative and interchangeable ethics. Which is what makes our time so greatly interesting. From the former, I suppose one can relatively easily see that religion is yesterday's thing - "yesterday" being the past tens of thousands of years.
Personally, I instantly turned away from the last scraps of religion left within me on reading your "The God Delusion" on a boat crossing Lake Zürich. The phrase that stuck, and still sticks, with me was: "You can not survive your own death". Neatly said. You may, however, be aware of the one and only possible philosphical glitch in that phrase. "Surviving" and "death" are intricately linked with eachother on a conceptual level. So much so, even, that the one negatively defines the other. Now, since Aristotle, we know that we can not define a concept by using that very concept. For example, "to be" can not be defined with words such as "is", "being", etc. etc. Could it therefore be that "you can not survive your own death" is a tautology ?
This is a "working document", still a far cry from becoming official regulation. Moreover, once it becomes an official EU directive, it must still be implemented by each EU country separately; this is a process that can take years and years. In the mean time, there is space for lobbying, parliamentary action and all kinds of measures on national ( EU country ) levels to circumvent or soften the regulation. TFA is stirring up sensation where, truly, there is nothing to be seen.
Religion in and by itself, in whatever form it may rear its head, is contemptible and to be overcome as a relic from the Bronze Age.. I say with Richard Dawkins: "No, I am not going to respect other people's religion. I may and will respect other people - but religion, no way".
The same thought occurred to me. There is something tongue-in-cheekish about the whole paper ( which I am reading through right now, piecemeal ). A nice intellectual joke, summa summarum.
If it is indeed the case that the fundamental equations of nature allow on the order of 10^500 solutions, then perhaps the most profound quest that can be undertaken by a sentient being is the exploration of the landscape through universe simulation.
This "most profound quest" seems, to me at least, the activity we frequently indulge in and which is called "thought".
Yes, the original one, by Homer, about 2700 years old. The basis of western literature ( together with the Iliad, which is way more complex ). Why ? Because of the theme: man alone ( "rugged hero" ) fights, for 10 years, against himself, his past and the consequences of his actions to get back home, where nothing is as it was when he left that place. The Odyssey is THE basis for any general culture, self-reflection and further reading for any cultivated Westerner.
Damn. Then who is that woman on my couch ?
...that drinking out of my gf's pumps was my problem. Now I know for sure.
do I have a very hard time believing this ? European police are notoriously incompetent at decryption. This smells of some new, illusionary monster created by some government to scare us into coughing up more liberties and money. ( I can know. I live in Austria. )
Amen. Imagine a similar exposition, in which one would identify with heroes and characters from the Iliad or the Odyssey. Now that would be luminous, in contrast so such blunt figments of our own dark times.
BTW you must have been coming here for more than 10 years. I signed up in 1999 or so, and my ID is higher than yours. You must have been here for at least 14 years. Dinosaur ;-)
So do: I come here for the comments, at least as much as for the news. On unexpected occasions one can have great fun here, and sometimes I leave more thoughtful than I came. Yes, the quality has gone down - but it is still higher than elsewhere on comparable sites. El Reg may be way funnier, what with its "boffinry", BOFH and Verity Stob - the comments there are blander. Here, *real* discussions are still flaming up. Sometimes.
In and by itself, video: why not. But the "essence" of Slashdot, if I may use so vague a term, seems to reside in two strongly defined and profiled points: tech news in text format, and user-user-moderation. Video does not enhance either of these. Nor is it "stuff that matters".Therefore: irrelevant. Does not add any value to the core business. It MAY increase the site's worth in the eyes of a potential buyer. To me as a loooooooooooooong-time slashdotter, however, video on /. is... well... howshalliputit.... of no use.
In a sovereign nation-state, starting from the assumption that it is democratically governed, each and all have opportunities to change their leadership - as well as changing the course the collective body is following. I wonder if you call that a "most superficial level".
"Whiny BS" ? Do you mean the business of, in a democratically-governed country, making laws ?
Where corporations are, often, more powerful than old-school, sovereign nation-states.
Just political campaigning. Sarkozy makes a habit of saying big things, and then not delivering on them. Nothing to see here, folks, move on.
Chuck Norris. Mercury is discarded bubble gum from Chuck Norris' mouth.
Wow.
Are YOU sure my remark did not cause you to be a smartass ? ;-)
Correlation is not causation.
You can't have pristine landscapes, a non-petrol economy AND several kilowatts of electric power at your fingertips, to be switched on whenever you come home. We here in Europe are making choices. We know we have to. So will you, so will you.