Well, the iPod offers more than just that. Their UI is excellent, for instance, and they have a smooth interface with iTunes. I wouldn't call it money for brand recognition only.
That said, my dollars went to iRiver. Better screen, battery, and supports OGGs. Also mounts as a hard drive under Linux, no fuss. And records hours of conversations, which I use sometimes to tape my D&D sessions (hush, I know I'm a nerd).
"There is [sic] a large number of obvious arguments against it."
I've heard arguments against it, sometimes moderately compelling and well thought out ones, but I wouldn't say that they are obvious. If there's a large number of arguments, then you could post say, seven of them. And if they are obvious, then it shouldn't take you much time or space.
"The behavior of a fluid can be modeled without bringing in the notion of a quark."
On average, yes. Exactly? Probably not. This is a bit of a tautology, because in order to care about the subatomic parts of a fluid you would have to care about a subatomic scale. But this is dismissed by pointing out that whether you care about it or not, the subatomic scale is present.
"Mathematically, the axioms on which one can build hydrodynamics are not required to contain the definition of a particle."
Lacking expert knowledge of the details, I'll agree: this seems very likely. However, that said, you've just pointed out a situation where your set of hydrodymanics equations fail to fully describe reality.
Because reductionism is the only thing that works.
But beyond that, pretty much the definition of "fundamental" insures that knowing the actions of individual component particles is more fundamental than knowing the actions of large numbers of component particles, because the latter is a subset of the former: the rules specific to higher numbers of particles can be written in terms of those governing individual particles, but not always the other way around.
Wholism had its shot for the first 95% of human history. The last 5% has worked orders of magnitude better in much less time.
In thirty to forty years, when people can talk easily (or even use video), the netspeak culture will probably be much reduced, if not eliminated. We'll be viewed as antiquated folks, possibly like Beatniks or something, for being so nerdy as to type words all the time. I mean, you have to know how to use a keyboard for that! Ludicrous!
I like "netspeak". I don't use it much, but I like that a subculture exists, as computers have changed things so much that they very much deserve one. I also like that we've already seen a rapid turnaround: our current abbreviations are one variant, the 31337 stuff another, the variant where vowels are always lowercase and consants uppercase (or the other way around) is pretty much gone now, and the old school one from the DOS based BBSes where people used the extended ASCII set to do similar things has been extint for awhile.
Still, I think it's cool that they all exist.
Simplicity doesn't mean lack of functionality
on
Re-Imagining Apple
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think we may reasonably see FM tuners on iPods. My iRiver has one, but of course, like everything else on my iRiver, I have to use this multidirectional tiny button to browse around to get to it (I bought it for the open standards it supports).
I think if Apple could keep a straight, uncluttered interface they would support an FM (or XM, or Sirius) tuner.
I'd like my watch to do a ton of other things- but the "it has to be a watch" comes first. So a calculator would distract from that terribly (bunch of tiny buttons, my watch is digital with analog face, etc.). I agree that Apple hasn't been big into hybridization, and for this we have much more useable items out of them. A watch that plays music would presumably have a cable going to my ears: no thanks, guys. If it broadcast a tiny signal that independant headphones / headband recieved, then maybe. Maybe.
I think before we get truly multifunctional small slabs of plastic and metal, we will need better dynamic controls. Example: my Kyocera 7135 Phone/PDA combo works real nice, but mostly that's because of a touch screen that makes the MP3 player have MP3 player controls, the address book have address book controls, etc. But it's still a pain to use when moving at all, even walking, because of the stylus / difficulty of hitting the screen correctly. Dynamic buttons (LCD screen on each button) would go in this direction, but I think we are still far away from good general purpose items for this reason.
The gp makes a comment that is clearly intended to be funny. The gag, oft repeated, is that the server is slashdotted. That's all it says, if you actually fucking read it. I saw it modded flamebait, and queried. Then THAT got modded flamebait, the innocent query. Why didn't the mod just fucking post why he thought it was flamebait in response to my valid question? You know, given that it isn't, and you might only think that if the reference to Linux is taken as a flame. Which, uh, it isn't.
Here's praying the metamods tear these flamebait mods up.
Re:i dont wanna give anyone any ideas...
on
The Solar Death Ray
·
· Score: 1
Well, no.
If you bring light that was destined to spread endlessly into interstellar space toward the earth, you are delivering more energy to the earth. The earth would get hotter.
It would take a massive area to be signifigant, however, and focussing would be disturbed by clouds and irregularities.
When a dog is suffering or brain dead, we actually have humane laws that let you kill them mercifully and painlessly. I think letting Terri starve is cruel to, but the right answer no one is talking about.
How in the universe are the ancestors here on topic?
Sure, I talk more than I chatter online by at least two orders of magnitude, but I'll agree with the grandparent here. Computers buy us abilities that would have been superpowers (or straight up godlike abilities) two generations ago.
Hey, what, we can do *even more* than we have been doing? Cool? Oh, it's not in the best interest of some companies? Well, let's lose that ability.
I see a lot of technology right now is people scrambling to find a ubiquitous use for different aspects of progress, knowing full well than unless everyone is doing it soon, the general populace won't be smart enough to say "No, you may not take that freedom away" when it clashes with what a government considers appropriate or when it clashes with an existing business model.
My understanding was that you needed an essential nutrient (like B12) that isn't found in the normal, "purified" plant foods (wild vegetarian animals that need it can get it from the occasional bug or bug dropping that's on whatever vine they are munching). Not a big deal for the modern vegan/vegetarian: they just pop a multivitamin.
I've also seen things that are dubious in accuracy. I was at an IMAX the other day and they had a movie on about coral reefs. It quickly included a subelement about environmental activism, and presented some things that aren't totally certain as facts.
Now, in fairness, it's almost certain that warmer waters are causing the deaths of some reefs, and it's almost certain that the greenhouse effect is causing global warming. But to present these as ironclad facts makes the people standing in opposition either ignorant or evil- and to have this presented in a movie is a bit unfair to them.
That being said, if the movie takes a secular, nonreligious view and talks about an origin of the universe that doesn't involve seven days, fire and ice, or the sky being castrated after impregnating the earth, that's not "sacreligious", that's just plain old going by the facts. If you use nothing but logic, you come up with evolution or something really similar, not ID or anything like it. My impression was that someone was getting offended by that fact, not junk science.
The big question is, does it break the law and open RedHat up to a massive lawsuit out of the box (off the CD?). This was one of the major things that turned me away. I know it's easy to fix, but that isn't the point. It's 2005. They'd better break the law and open RedHat up to a massive lawsuit.
"It's totally reasonable to call you on the fact that we're not 100% sure."...which therefore conclusively proves my theory involving tempting snakes, global floods, and a very specific theology!
If you start from a rational point ("We don't know what happened") and move forward from there, you get evolution. You get some parts more certain than others, and you get some holes that will be filled in in the future, and some that will probably not. But that's where you get to.
Lack of knowledge doesn't mean "You make it up this way!", it means a lack of knowledge.
It's also worth pointing out that your stict accuracy may catch scientists in a bit of a bind, but it's only a technicality. After all, if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a noise? Well, yes. But the point about that little riddle is that *without observers* we don't know. Did gravity work the same way 100 years ago? Well, everything looks like yes, but "Did you observe it yourself?"
"There are also lots of movies that upset fundalmentalist Islams.... but these dont get a sensationalist headline..."
Well: (1)- Is a brand of theatres refusing to play them? (2)- Are they based on total fact and scientific evidence, things that no rational person should be arguing with?
If you made a movie that talked about the plight of women and linked it to Islam, you might not be *lying*, but by omission you might be offensive (you would be leaving out the oppression of women in other religions, the believers who are not opposed to equality, etc.). You wouldn't be giving "total fact". Somehow, I doubt a story about the origin of the universe would fall into this trap.
This isn't devoid of content, it's wholly appropriate. When free market forces are damaging science because widespread ignorance has not just removed the *market* for science but has successfully convinced enough people that science is *morally wrong*, then hell yes it's a story I want to hear about!
There really *are* more and more studies that show this statistical correlation. Studies where the control group plays a nonviolent game and the experimental group plays a violent one... and then, afterwards, are the various experiments. One involves the subjects leaving the way they came, and seeing a person in pain. The response times to help the person vary dramatically between these otherwise peer groups.
There's not much question that seeing violent images desensitises you to violent images anymore (whether these are lasting is up for debate).
One reason why this isn't taken seriously is because they've been decrying video games since Pac-Man- and earlier studies, IIRC, didn't show much correlation.
The important thing to get out of this is not a bunch of freedom-trashing legislation though: a movie about WWII would cause the same kind of desensitisation. Many things would. Scientists haven't tested for it (and lacking video, the effect wouldn't be as strong probably), but don't you think they could link antisocial / violent behavior to the "wrong" kind of books? Using this logic, why stop at video games?
What we are seeing isn't scientists making interesting notes about how sights, sounds, and thoughts condition us to accept more things *like* those- we're seeing a pack of lawyers circling like sharks to try to attack a group of newly "liable" "perpetrators"- and if they beath the hell out of the first amendment doing so, oh well.
Like all good things done to destroy your rights, this one will be "for the good of the children".
If you back this, just remember it in a few years when they prove the same thing about adults (easy, since conditioning works just as well for both), living with a "more violent than average family" (which will be half of families), or... well... political disagreement.
You either have free speech or you don't. Protecting free speech doesn't mean being able to say that purple is my favorite color: it means allowing speech that everyone disagrees with and may, in fact, be harmful.
It's not ok to shoot a person who threatens ten lives?
It's not ok to shoot a person who threatens *your* life?
If that's the case, would you intercede with the police officer's bullet, giving your life for the life of the person who would do you harm?
Any moral code that throws out self defense is wretched and wicked. It would have us sit idly by while our neighbors and families are thrown into a furnace, it would have us reject life itself in favor of an abstract, unverifiable principle.
You can keep your suicidal, otherworldly code. I believe that this life now has meaning, and I don't intend to let anyone take it from me.
Slashdot Mirror
I had heard that it did not!
I could easily be misinformed, however. This was at the word of a friend, who could be wrong for whatever reason.
Well, the iPod offers more than just that. Their UI is excellent, for instance, and they have a smooth interface with iTunes. I wouldn't call it money for brand recognition only.
That said, my dollars went to iRiver. Better screen, battery, and supports OGGs. Also mounts as a hard drive under Linux, no fuss. And records hours of conversations, which I use sometimes to tape my D&D sessions (hush, I know I'm a nerd).
"There is [sic] a large number of obvious arguments against it."
I've heard arguments against it, sometimes moderately compelling and well thought out ones, but I wouldn't say that they are obvious. If there's a large number of arguments, then you could post say, seven of them. And if they are obvious, then it shouldn't take you much time or space.
"The behavior of a fluid can be modeled without bringing in the notion of a quark."
On average, yes. Exactly? Probably not. This is a bit of a tautology, because in order to care about the subatomic parts of a fluid you would have to care about a subatomic scale. But this is dismissed by pointing out that whether you care about it or not, the subatomic scale is present.
"Mathematically, the axioms on which one can build hydrodynamics are not required to contain the definition of a particle."
Lacking expert knowledge of the details, I'll agree: this seems very likely. However, that said, you've just pointed out a situation where your set of hydrodymanics equations fail to fully describe reality.
Because reductionism is the only thing that works.
But beyond that, pretty much the definition of "fundamental" insures that knowing the actions of individual component particles is more fundamental than knowing the actions of large numbers of component particles, because the latter is a subset of the former: the rules specific to higher numbers of particles can be written in terms of those governing individual particles, but not always the other way around.
Wholism had its shot for the first 95% of human history. The last 5% has worked orders of magnitude better in much less time.
In thirty to forty years, when people can talk easily (or even use video), the netspeak culture will probably be much reduced, if not eliminated. We'll be viewed as antiquated folks, possibly like Beatniks or something, for being so nerdy as to type words all the time. I mean, you have to know how to use a keyboard for that! Ludicrous!
I like "netspeak". I don't use it much, but I like that a subculture exists, as computers have changed things so much that they very much deserve one. I also like that we've already seen a rapid turnaround: our current abbreviations are one variant, the 31337 stuff another, the variant where vowels are always lowercase and consants uppercase (or the other way around) is pretty much gone now, and the old school one from the DOS based BBSes where people used the extended ASCII set to do similar things has been extint for awhile.
Still, I think it's cool that they all exist.
I think we may reasonably see FM tuners on iPods. My iRiver has one, but of course, like everything else on my iRiver, I have to use this multidirectional tiny button to browse around to get to it (I bought it for the open standards it supports).
I think if Apple could keep a straight, uncluttered interface they would support an FM (or XM, or Sirius) tuner.
I'd like my watch to do a ton of other things- but the "it has to be a watch" comes first. So a calculator would distract from that terribly (bunch of tiny buttons, my watch is digital with analog face, etc.). I agree that Apple hasn't been big into hybridization, and for this we have much more useable items out of them. A watch that plays music would presumably have a cable going to my ears: no thanks, guys. If it broadcast a tiny signal that independant headphones / headband recieved, then maybe. Maybe.
I think before we get truly multifunctional small slabs of plastic and metal, we will need better dynamic controls. Example: my Kyocera 7135 Phone/PDA combo works real nice, but mostly that's because of a touch screen that makes the MP3 player have MP3 player controls, the address book have address book controls, etc. But it's still a pain to use when moving at all, even walking, because of the stylus / difficulty of hitting the screen correctly. Dynamic buttons (LCD screen on each button) would go in this direction, but I think we are still far away from good general purpose items for this reason.
The gp makes a comment that is clearly intended to be funny. The gag, oft repeated, is that the server is slashdotted. That's all it says, if you actually fucking read it. I saw it modded flamebait, and queried. Then THAT got modded flamebait, the innocent query. Why didn't the mod just fucking post why he thought it was flamebait in response to my valid question? You know, given that it isn't, and you might only think that if the reference to Linux is taken as a flame. Which, uh, it isn't.
Here's praying the metamods tear these flamebait mods up.
Well, no.
If you bring light that was destined to spread endlessly into interstellar space toward the earth, you are delivering more energy to the earth. The earth would get hotter.
It would take a massive area to be signifigant, however, and focussing would be disturbed by clouds and irregularities.
When a dog is suffering or brain dead, we actually have humane laws that let you kill them mercifully and painlessly. I think letting Terri starve is cruel to, but the right answer no one is talking about.
How in the universe are the ancestors here on topic?
... and this is flamebait how?
Sure, I talk more than I chatter online by at least two orders of magnitude, but I'll agree with the grandparent here. Computers buy us abilities that would have been superpowers (or straight up godlike abilities) two generations ago.
Hey, what, we can do *even more* than we have been doing? Cool? Oh, it's not in the best interest of some companies? Well, let's lose that ability.
I see a lot of technology right now is people scrambling to find a ubiquitous use for different aspects of progress, knowing full well than unless everyone is doing it soon, the general populace won't be smart enough to say "No, you may not take that freedom away" when it clashes with what a government considers appropriate or when it clashes with an existing business model.
My understanding was that you needed an essential nutrient (like B12) that isn't found in the normal, "purified" plant foods (wild vegetarian animals that need it can get it from the occasional bug or bug dropping that's on whatever vine they are munching). Not a big deal for the modern vegan/vegetarian: they just pop a multivitamin.
Is this inaccurate?
I've also seen things that are dubious in accuracy. I was at an IMAX the other day and they had a movie on about coral reefs. It quickly included a subelement about environmental activism, and presented some things that aren't totally certain as facts.
Now, in fairness, it's almost certain that warmer waters are causing the deaths of some reefs, and it's almost certain that the greenhouse effect is causing global warming. But to present these as ironclad facts makes the people standing in opposition either ignorant or evil- and to have this presented in a movie is a bit unfair to them.
That being said, if the movie takes a secular, nonreligious view and talks about an origin of the universe that doesn't involve seven days, fire and ice, or the sky being castrated after impregnating the earth, that's not "sacreligious", that's just plain old going by the facts. If you use nothing but logic, you come up with evolution or something really similar, not ID or anything like it. My impression was that someone was getting offended by that fact, not junk science.
I guess I'd have to see the movie.
The big question is, does it break the law and open RedHat up to a massive lawsuit out of the box (off the CD?). This was one of the major things that turned me away. I know it's easy to fix, but that isn't the point. It's 2005. They'd better break the law and open RedHat up to a massive lawsuit.
"It's totally reasonable to call you on the fact that we're not 100% sure." ...which therefore conclusively proves my theory involving tempting snakes, global floods, and a very specific theology!
If you start from a rational point ("We don't know what happened") and move forward from there, you get evolution. You get some parts more certain than others, and you get some holes that will be filled in in the future, and some that will probably not. But that's where you get to.
Lack of knowledge doesn't mean "You make it up this way!", it means a lack of knowledge.
It's also worth pointing out that your stict accuracy may catch scientists in a bit of a bind, but it's only a technicality. After all, if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a noise? Well, yes. But the point about that little riddle is that *without observers* we don't know. Did gravity work the same way 100 years ago? Well, everything looks like yes, but "Did you observe it yourself?"
"There are also lots of movies that upset fundalmentalist Islams.... but these dont get a sensationalist headline..."
Well:
(1)- Is a brand of theatres refusing to play them?
(2)- Are they based on total fact and scientific evidence, things that no rational person should be arguing with?
If you made a movie that talked about the plight of women and linked it to Islam, you might not be *lying*, but by omission you might be offensive (you would be leaving out the oppression of women in other religions, the believers who are not opposed to equality, etc.). You wouldn't be giving "total fact". Somehow, I doubt a story about the origin of the universe would fall into this trap.
This isn't devoid of content, it's wholly appropriate. When free market forces are damaging science because widespread ignorance has not just removed the *market* for science but has successfully convinced enough people that science is *morally wrong*, then hell yes it's a story I want to hear about!
This is my favorite response, because it says everything about this "exploit" in one sentence.
True Resurrection
Clr 9
Yea, there can't be too many of them...
Uh, isn't your sig:
"Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net"
A straight link to a "domain discover" advert?
Is that what you meant, or is it time for a new sig?
This is a truly profound post.
I am humbled before it.
Err.. do you accept the *possibility* that this is primarily a free speech issue?
There really *are* more and more studies that show this statistical correlation. Studies where the control group plays a nonviolent game and the experimental group plays a violent one... and then, afterwards, are the various experiments. One involves the subjects leaving the way they came, and seeing a person in pain. The response times to help the person vary dramatically between these otherwise peer groups.
There's not much question that seeing violent images desensitises you to violent images anymore (whether these are lasting is up for debate).
One reason why this isn't taken seriously is because they've been decrying video games since Pac-Man- and earlier studies, IIRC, didn't show much correlation.
The important thing to get out of this is not a bunch of freedom-trashing legislation though: a movie about WWII would cause the same kind of desensitisation. Many things would. Scientists haven't tested for it (and lacking video, the effect wouldn't be as strong probably), but don't you think they could link antisocial / violent behavior to the "wrong" kind of books? Using this logic, why stop at video games?
What we are seeing isn't scientists making interesting notes about how sights, sounds, and thoughts condition us to accept more things *like* those- we're seeing a pack of lawyers circling like sharks to try to attack a group of newly "liable" "perpetrators"- and if they beath the hell out of the first amendment doing so, oh well.
Like all good things done to destroy your rights, this one will be "for the good of the children".
If you back this, just remember it in a few years when they prove the same thing about adults (easy, since conditioning works just as well for both), living with a "more violent than average family" (which will be half of families), or... well... political disagreement.
You either have free speech or you don't. Protecting free speech doesn't mean being able to say that purple is my favorite color: it means allowing speech that everyone disagrees with and may, in fact, be harmful.
No, I patented "Neural Interface For General Purpose Problem Solving And Sustaining Eternally Hungry Undead" already.
You can't have any.
This kind of post is why I read slashdot- big article about a thing, and in FOSS land there is a one command line solution.
Assuming this works, of course.
It's not ok to shoot a person who threatens ten lives?
It's not ok to shoot a person who threatens *your* life?
If that's the case, would you intercede with the police officer's bullet, giving your life for the life of the person who would do you harm?
Any moral code that throws out self defense is wretched and wicked. It would have us sit idly by while our neighbors and families are thrown into a furnace, it would have us reject life itself in favor of an abstract, unverifiable principle.
You can keep your suicidal, otherworldly code. I believe that this life now has meaning, and I don't intend to let anyone take it from me.