In physics "parallel" refers to a geometrical relationship. Parallel universes are universes which are geometrically parallel, in the same sense of parallel lines on a plane are parallel (except that universes are are at least 4 dimensional)
The sum of the angle between 1 point in this universe and a line drawn between that point and the nearest point on the parallel universes is 180 degrees.
Actually.. what is said is that 99.9% of the contexts in which 4 specific words (chosen no doubt because their frequency of appearance matches the same illegal/legal ratio of the english language as a whole) were "illegal contexts"
It is statistically invalid to take the top 6 channels of 10 irc networks and extrapolate to the thousands of others.
This is like taking the 6 largest cities in 10 largest countries, finding the crime rate and assuming the whole world is on par.
The findings may simply show that channels with hundreds of logged in users are used for trading, where channels with a handful of users are where legitimate conversation actually takes place.
He also has no way of examining the thousands upon thousands of private conversations.
Licences are strane things boyo. I once heared of a licence that extended to all derived works. So if I licenced product A under this licence, and created derived product B from it, and put code I had written for product B into product C, the C would have to be licenced the same as product A.
I bet you've heared of this licence yourself. It's called the GPL.
In the general case your example is wrong.
The only issue is if the "code" you put into product B, is also itself derived from GPL code. It does not follow that simply because B is derived from GPL code, that every single contribution to B was also derived.
It only follows that the new version of B (containing B + "your code") *is* derived. It is derived from whatever the original B contained + "your code".
If the code you put into B ("your code") is also derived from A, then you are not licensed to use that derivation in C without permission from the author of A. This is because "your code" is not really your code, but a rip off of A, and without permission from the author of A, you aren't allowed to rip off his creative work.
On the other hand if the code ("your code") that you contributed to product B, is owned completely by you, then you have the right to contribute it to whatever you like, and you can put it into C freely. (assuming you have the rights to use C)
The author of A upon which B is derived, simply required, that if you create a product which is based on A + "your code", then you agree to license the "your code" under the GPL to all third parties and provide source code.
It does not follow that just because you licensed "your code" to third parties under the GPL, that you lose ownership of it. You still have the right to use "your code" in your own proprietary products however you like. You also have the right to license "your code" to other people under different license terms.
Thus product C doesn't need to rely on the GPL provided that "your code" is truly original work.
Another thing you forget.
The GPL is only a license. It is not an agreement. It does not FORCE you to do anything. You can put anything you like into product C provided you comply with copyright law.
Basically, if you would have had the right to use "your code" in product C, had product A been completely proprietary, all rights reserved closed source, then you don't lose that right simply because product A is available under the GPL.
In many or most places counselling a criminal act is in itself a criminal act (even if the crime is not committed). It is not a stretch to believe that counselling someone to do anything could make you liable if they follow through.
I hope you realise that the reason IPC on Amiga was so fast (and no, it was not "faster than any other kernel to date") was that it was nothing more than an interrupt protected insert in a doubly linked list. You can achieve the same on Unix compatible OS's today by having apps mmap() a memory area and maintaining a linked list of messages for each app. But of course this comes at the cost of less separation of the address spaces unless each pair of apps that wants to communicate set up a separate shared memory map.
I knew this. Thats why I felt safe to predict it could not be beaten in speed by another OS. The unix mmap() must still be slower because the memory mapped file still appears in the filing system (at the very least you need to aquire a file descriptor etc to set up. ) . Unix context switching tends to requires more overhead (due to VM and scheduling), and you still can't directly dereference a passed pointer into memory, but must deference a pointer plus an offset into the memory mapped file because it would not sit at the same absolute memory address in both applications. On Amiga, address 45500 (for example) is 45500 for every single application in the entire system. Whereas you would need to say 45500 + base of shared memory space under Unix. This at a minimum requires an additional pointer arithmetic operation.
Moreoever on the Amiga virtually every single system call passed data via pointers without making copies into the called process (very fragile and delicate but very fast). Unix system calls which need to pass data to another process copy the data rather than simply pass a pointer.
Finally... mmap() is not the typical method of IPC on Unix. It is more common to use slower pipes.
If there is another OS which does this with less operations than AmigaOS (while still maintaining basic functionality.. I did not mean to include embedded Oses for single purpose machines) then forgive me. But I am not aware of it.
As for window refresh, lots of X11 window managers do the same, as can most other OS's, but it was rarely used on the Amiga - most app's did redraw, because letting the OS redraw meant having the OS keep a backing store, which meant wasting memory, which most Amiga programmers detested.
There was some utility available which forced all windows to be simple refresh windows. Thereafter the application is not notified of the refresh event and it didn't matter what the programmer chose to implement (because the app wasn't notified).
I didn't find this option in MS-Windows. I often find myself looking at non-refreshed windows in XP.
I agree that amiga programmers detested wasting memory (ahh.. I remember dynamic memory allocation well), but they also detested wasting CPU cycles to redraw. And with built in hardware blitting and video DMA... well..
once the user used that utility (I can't remember the name), all windows becamse simple refresh windows. (and for those slashdotters not familiar with Amiga that means.. "simple" from the programmers perspective. i.e. let the OS refresh)
I have run linix systems with no virtual memory at all. Windows bitches and complains if you try to have no virtual memory regardless of how much physical memory you have.
The cost of RAM is low enough these days that VM is not really required anymore.
I said: "If a difference in math ability based on behavior (independant of anatomical sex) has not been controlled for, then it is impossible to conclude any behavioral difference is based on anatomical sex."
you said: Yes, but it's not impossible or unreasonable to suggest it.
this goes back to my prior point. Such arguments historically have been used to justify oppression, slaverly, and murder. And such arguments have in the majority of cases proven to be false. Without locating the anatomical difference, and without doing a proper study which is actually capable of controlling for social upbringing, it *is* reckless to suggest it that there is some anatomical difference in math skills which correlates to anatomical sex.
If the statistics support it, it could be concluded that "people who are raised to be self concious of social relationships and sensitive to feelings and emotions generally have depressed math skills".
It is a LEAP to point to the lack of a penis. It is completely arbitrary.
Socialization is a form of mental exercise and so is math. It is reasonable to suspect therein lies the connection. The genitals are less likely to be the culprit.
The leap to basic anatomical sex is not supported by the scientific evidence (because of lack of controls over other factors which influence the upbringing of people of a given anatomical sex).
And due to the history of misuse regarding such theories, it behooves a researcher to carefully define exactly what their findings mean and what they have controlled for.
Because so far the only evidence I've ever seen would suggest that women are generally taught to believe that math and objective reality are not as important as social relationships and emotions. And men are generally taught that emotions and social relationships are almost irrelevant, and rationality is supreme.
It comes as no suprise that after that kind of an upbringing certain people have more difficulty socializing and others more problems with objective numbers.
A study which only compared anatomical sex is about as worthless as a study which finds that smokers are taller, smarter and stronger then non-smokers (but does not control for external factors such as the known fact that babies and toddlers in this society dont smoke and they are usually really short, ignorant and weak compared to adults which form the majority of the smoking population).
It is necesary to control for such factors or else the result is scientifically worthless.
In 1994 there was no operating system which touched Amiga OS for responsiveness.
Not only was AmigaOS a pre-emptive multitasking OS, but it was a real time pre-emptive multitasking OS.
This means that applications and processes did not simply time share, but that high priority processes which were ready to run are guaranteed to get the CPU within a fixed period of time (measured in ms) provided they were the highest priority task which was ready to run.
On Amiga OS, you assigned the mouse and keyboard IO a high priority and it would not matter how busy your system was. If you interacted with the machine, all other processes are put aside and the computer reacts to you. RIGHT NOW.
Combined with the fact that the OS would redraw window contents (with the simple refresh window flag on) rather than wait for the application to redraw itself, meant that a busy application could still be brought to the front and the window contents would not be blank. Modern OSes still give me blank windows when an application is busy.
I remember, playing full screen video, and sound, while simultaneously formatting a diskdrive, downloading a file and dragging the entire screen up and down on a 25Mhz 68030 Amiga 4000 back in '94.
Interprocess communication on the Amiga is faster than any other kernel to date. (and probably faster than any other kernel ever will be)
For all its shortcomings, (mainly lack of memory protection and a clear market direction from Commodore), AmigaOS was as responsive as hell.
With that said. The BeOS kernel seems to have improved on AmigaOS in most areas except the UI, with minimum trade offs in performance. But BeOS is a complete kernal with full SMP supports and memory protection/virtual memory.
The BeOS UI (IMHO) is not as good as AmigaOS.
I vote for an Amiga UI implemented under a BeOS kernel + AREXX. And BeWindow/BeMessage support added to AREXX.
Ah yes...why should I be denied the opportunity to gestate, simply because, being a man, I haven't got a womb!?
If the government or anyone passed a law making it illegal for men to gestate then you would have a complaint.
If there was a medical procedure which facilitated the possibility of gestation, men should have access to it just as much as women who through some medical condition do not have the ability to gestate.
But this guy wasn't saying that a class of people is wholesale inferior to another. He was saying that it is possible that they are, in one specific area, in general (i.e. not every member of the class "women" will be worse at math and/or science than every member of the class "men").
ok. if you think the term "in general" is somehow weaker than "wholesale" and you would agree with "in general", then he was saying "in general".
Just as above, I think it's not unfair to say that women are in general much better at gestating a fetus than men.
The differences between men and women in the field of gestation are anatomical. Differences in math ability (as studied for sex) are purely behavioural.
Consequently for all we know women could be anatomically superior to men in math capability, but socialized to dislike math. It is necessary to insure that what you are comparing is properly defined.
Have we done a comparison of women against other women and compared the differences between women who exhibit masculine behavior and women who exhibit femine behavior? (personally I dont think so, but I am interested to know if I'm wrong)
And done the same comparison with men?
If a difference in math ability based on behavior (independant of anatomical sex) has not been controlled for, then it is impossible to conclude any behavioral difference is based on anatomical sex.
Mathematical ability is purely a behavioural difference.
gestation is not purely behavioral, it requires a womb.
Why is it that according to P.C. all people are equally best at everything?
All people have a right to be judged on their own merit, and not on the preconceived notions and bigotry of others. This also means the right not to be denied oportunities and rights based on any real or imagined differences in whatever race or sex of people they come from.
All people have equal rights and the right to equal opportunities.
Since racial and gender inferiority has been used as a justification for the murder, rape and oppression of millions of people through out the ages, I think there is a pretty good reason to be very sceptical and cynical of any study which suggests 1 class of people is wholesale inferior to another.
This has little to do with being politically correct, and has everything to do with knowing what lies down that road and not wanting to go there again.
He threw in the, "it's not necessarily my personal view", because he didn't want to be labeled by people such as yourself.
Why not? He doesn't mind labeling women as "inferior to men at math".
If he doesn't believe what he is saying, then why is he saying it? He is an academic hypocrit who wont defend his opinions. He just throws them out there to see who will bite.
Disclaimer (so that you can't hold me responsible for my personal views): nothing I say here is necessarily my personal view (but it is).
Typical liberal nonsense. The dollar being low is actually GOOD, it has alwys been so strong that US goods were not competetive overseas.
The dollar dropping in value so rapidly is a sign of investor scepticism in the US economy.
Looking on the bright side doesn't change the fact that it is a bad sign.
I for one would rather see a lttle more spent on protecting what we have, versus handouts to those who are too lazy to work and claim thier share.
Are you advocating that the government doesn't already spend enough protecting private property?
No person's sucess can be said to be totally thier own, they had parents, teachers, mentors, etc. who helped along the way.
Are you undermining the moral justification for private property?
You have obviously never been bass fishing, I don't care if the lake is wall-to-wall bass if they ain't biting they ain't biting. Those are the most finicky fish I have ever caught, if they were easy to catch you wouldn't see a several Billion dollar market in lures, rods, boats, etc.
And this justifies bankrupting the government how?
So the best we can hope for, even if we are tremendously optimistic about technology, is to slow down global warming by a few decades. We just can't stop it without shutting down everything separates us from the middle ages.
If you agree that we are capable of slowing down global warming by a few decades then LETS DO IT.
At that time we may have a better notion of exactly what threshold will or will trigger the next ice age, or figure out a way to actually artificially manipulate the environment to induce the icecaps to reform. or for all we know... discover cold fusion...
But the real problem is that while you and I agree that the next ice age may be triggered by human activity there are many conservative and neoliberal politicians and "business leaders" who flat out refute this theory and insist that "climate change" is poorly understood and that it is just as likely to be beneficial as harmful and that there is no evidence that it may cause an ice age. They only agree that more needs to be learned about "climate change" (implicitly refuting that average tempuratures are increasing and that ice caps are melting).
They only insist that the benefit of environmental protection is unknown, but the costs are known. Reduced waste, and therefore reduced demand and reduced profit margins (and reduced growth).
The reverse argument they reject: the dangers of protecting the environment are known (nothing bad happens expect perhaps decreased consumption and decreased profits, and a narrowing gap between the rich and the poor), but the dangers of ignoring the issue are not fully known (we don't know if merely millions of people will be displaced from their coastal homes, or if an ice age will result and kill billions of people.).
I propose an additional moral argument. The environment is not ours to destroy. We didn't create it. It was passed down to us from our ancestors. It owe it to our descendants to pass it along to them even if that means living on the cheap.
Take a math course, and a public finance course, it might do you good. It's a pyramid scheme. With a declining birthrate, and increasing number of beneficiaries, it's simple math -- it will collapse, unless you up taxes well over fifty percent, and eliminate the yearly caps for individuals. The only way to "save" it is to raise the retirement age to eighty or higher.
If it is so simple please explain these numbers. Because from my computer science background it seems fairly straightforward that the population of retirees to workers is not a limit which approaches infinity.
I don't understand why we are so threatened by the idea that the only way to maintain social security is to raise taxes. There is an upper limit and it is directly proportional to the ratio between workers and senior citizens. Whatever that ratio is, it is. Seniors MUST be supported. They can not be required to support themselves. If some of them are wealthy... so be it. But in general seniors are largely not capable of working, and they are not to blaim for this. It is a natural stage in human life.
It isn't like senior citizens HOARD the money. They spend it all and it goes straight back into the economy.
We OWE it to our parents and grandparents to support them and thank them once they's sacrificed so much to raise us, teach us and give us life during our childhood.
Privatizing any part of social security is nothing more than a bid to inflate stock market prices.
Funny no one has mentioned that every tax CUT has actually INCREASED the amount of revenue taken in by the Government.
Don't worry... republicans have been mentioning it.
But no who is honest has been mentioning it because every tax cut causes an even greater DECREASE in revenue which exceeds the INCREASE and as a result overall net revenue decreases.
This is why Bush's tactic of cutting taxes and increasing spending results in the biggest deficit in history.
Have you noticed the value of the US dollar recently?
Oh, and that silly notion about GWB never have financial sucess, just the other day the liberals were moaning that he make TOO MUCH money when he (and his partners) sold out the Texas Rangers baseball club to Tom Hicks.
The "silly notion" is actually that GWB never had a financial success due to his own merit. A quality he continues to express as President.
That surplus was PROJECTED based on the current dot-com trends and growing employment. Even if Clinton was still in office today, we would still be in debt.
Well.. according to George W. Bush the projected surplus was real, and justified a massive reduction of taxes and only a "trifecta" of national emergency, recession and war would cause a deficit.
As for the war, it HAD to be done. That..or just wait till the middle east turns into a chaotic pack of rats armed with nukes in the future.
wait wait... I heard that one before... was that what the White House said in fall of 2002?? was it?
hrmm..
ohh... damn.. it wasn't.
At that time the explanation was that Saddam Hussein posed am imminent threat to the United States, was collaberating with Al Qaeda, attempting to buy yellow cake uranium, and aluminum tubes for nukes, developing remote controlled aircraft to deliver chemical and biological weapons and if we waited until we had enough evidence to prove it, the proof could come in the form of a mushroom cloud and millions of dead.
All of that turned out to be untrue.
yea... it must have been "enforcing order on the rats".
However, let's say saddam was elected in a fair and democratic way. Then at that point, it's fair game in order for Israel to preserve its nation and take out its aggressor.
Had we just turned a blind eye, I fear that not only would the middle east be in a state anarchy, but we could have nukes being smuggled into our borders.
There were no WMD. Osama Bin Laden is still at large.
If the "eye" that we turned on Afganistan and Iraq was not blind, then what was it?
A "blind eye" is exactly what we are turning.
And just to correct you a little bit:
The Taliban and the Hussein government were FAR from anarchy. Perhaps "totalitarian" is the word you were looking for. Kindof the opposite.
Does human activity contributes to greenhouse effect?
yes.
Is there any serious scientific question as to what kinds of activities contribute to greenhouse effect?
no.
When environmentalists show concern about "Global warming" and claim that specifically "global warming" is a preventable problem which is significantly caused by the greenhouse effect, and the greenhouse effect is dependant on CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, and we are pumping out ever greater and greater quantities of these gasses with no end in sight and thus most likely increasing the greenhouse effect and most likely causing a GENERAL WARMING, and most likely contributing the the ICECAPS MELTING environmentalists are being accurate.
When you reply and say.. no the problem is not WARMING, because not all parts of the earth are actually experiencing WARMING, but in fact some parts of the earth experience increased percipitation, and some parts experience cooling, and some parts experience drought, and ocean currents may change and trigger another ice age, and the ice age is cold, and it is not correct to call an ice age 'warming', and therefore the question we should be asking is "what is "climate change" and how may we better understand climate change?"; you are NOT questioning problem at hand. The immediate and problem, which mankind is contributing directly and measurable towards is NOT "climate change". The problem is:
THE POLES ARE GETTING WARMER AND THE FUCKING ICECAPS ARE MELTING!
This is not "fuzzy math" as the American President likes to call any math he disagrees with.
It doesn't matter that we can not predict with 100% certainty that melting polar ice caps will or will not trigger another ice age, or how fast or how slow that would take or how long it would last.
THE ICECAPS ARE MELTING
And industrialists are protesting about the fact that we can't predict exactly how much polar melting we are capable of tolerating safely.
There are laws against saying things, even if they're the truth, sometimes? Now why could that be?
There are laws against a whole lot of things. Now what could your point be?
We are discussing a particular specific incident involving the dissemination of information about Apple computers. Which Apple itself leaked and is trying to suppress via the courts.
In that context Apple has no laws on its side.
And that NDA is absolutely worthless if, should an individual choose to violate it and accept the legal consequences (which are, in monetary terms, obviously limited to bankrupting them) the other party has no further means of keeping information that legally should have remained confidential as secret as possible.
"Monetarily" I agree.
However you are not in fact FREE to violate your contracts and agreements willy nilly just because you dont mind bankruptcy. There is such a thing as fraud, criminal breach of contract, breach of trust... etc.
Given that the financial damage to a major corp like Apple from a leak could be many times what the individual who first broke the law has the ability to repay, who's going to compensate all Apple's shareholders if the information can be freely circulated once the law has been broken?
In the hypothetical situation you describe: IF not the board of directors of Apple, then probably no one. They are shit out of luck. What is your point?
When an employee or trusted holder of an APPLE secret goes public with it, Apple has no power to hold the PUBLIC liable for whatever damage that individual caused. And APPLE has no power to take away from the PUBLIC that information which has become public. And no right to expect that the government intercede and assist in identifying and tracking down every person in the public who was exposed to that information or passed it along.
Since when does society OWE apple a duty of care towards information Apple has allowed to become public?
If an apple employee leaked a trade secret of another party doing business with Apple, that other party could sue Apple directly.
Just as Apple is liable for its employees conduct when their employees hurt third parties, apple can be liable for their employees conduct when their employees hurt Apple itself.
Contrast this with NASA's subsequent accomplishments once the blank cheque expired: decades of waste.
You simply don't appreciate how the worlds most advanced network of spy satellites helped to win the cold war and artificially supress the cost of oil.
Slashdot Mirror
In physics "parallel" refers to a geometrical relationship. Parallel universes are universes which are geometrically parallel, in the same sense of parallel lines on a plane are parallel (except that universes are are at least 4 dimensional)
The sum of the angle between 1 point in this universe and a line drawn between that point and the nearest point on the parallel universes is 180 degrees.
no measurable similarity is implied by the term.
There is only one universe, and it is eternal.
What do you mean by "universe"?
Actually.. what is said is that 99.9% of the contexts in which 4 specific words (chosen no doubt because their frequency of appearance matches the same illegal/legal ratio of the english language as a whole) were "illegal contexts"
Norton
Microsoft
Symantec
Jasc
The article is very misleading.
There are thousands of IRC channels.
It is statistically invalid to take the top 6 channels of 10 irc networks and extrapolate to the thousands of others.
This is like taking the 6 largest cities in 10 largest countries, finding the crime rate and assuming the whole world is on par.
The findings may simply show that channels with hundreds of logged in users are used for trading, where channels with a handful of users are where legitimate conversation actually takes place.
He also has no way of examining the thousands upon thousands of private conversations.
Moreover... what exactly is an "illegal context"?
Licences are strane things boyo. I once heared of a licence that extended to all derived works. So if I licenced product A under this licence, and created derived product B from it, and put code I had written for product B into product C, the C would have to be licenced the same as product A.
I bet you've heared of this licence yourself. It's called the GPL.
In the general case your example is wrong.
The only issue is if the "code" you put into product B, is also itself derived from GPL code. It does not follow that simply because B is derived from GPL code, that every single contribution to B was also derived.
It only follows that the new version of B (containing B + "your code") *is* derived. It is derived from whatever the original B contained + "your code".
If the code you put into B ("your code") is also derived from A, then you are not licensed to use that derivation in C without permission from the author of A. This is because "your code" is not really your code, but a rip off of A, and without permission from the author of A, you aren't allowed to rip off his creative work.
On the other hand if the code ("your code") that you contributed to product B, is owned completely by you, then you have the right to contribute it to whatever you like, and you can put it into C freely. (assuming you have the rights to use C)
The author of A upon which B is derived, simply required, that if you create a product which is based on A + "your code", then you agree to license the "your code" under the GPL to all third parties and provide source code.
It does not follow that just because you licensed "your code" to third parties under the GPL, that you lose ownership of it. You still have the right to use "your code" in your own proprietary products however you like. You also have the right to license "your code" to other people under different license terms.
Thus product C doesn't need to rely on the GPL provided that "your code" is truly original work.
Another thing you forget.
The GPL is only a license. It is not an agreement.
It does not FORCE you to do anything. You can put anything you like into product C provided you comply with copyright law.
Basically, if you would have had the right to use "your code" in product C, had product A been completely proprietary, all rights reserved closed source, then you don't lose that right simply because product A is available under the GPL.
In many or most places counselling a criminal act is in itself a criminal act (even if the crime is not committed). It is not a stretch to believe that counselling someone to do anything could make you liable if they follow through.
I should not have said VM. I really meant to say swapfile/partitian. I didn't mean all types of VM.
MMU's are necessary for memory protection as well, so using a cpu with no MMU is not an option.
I hope you realise that the reason IPC on Amiga was so fast (and no, it was not "faster than any other kernel to date") was that it was nothing more than an interrupt protected insert in a doubly linked list. You can achieve the same on Unix compatible OS's today by having apps mmap() a memory area and maintaining a linked list of messages for each app. But of course this comes at the cost of less separation of the address spaces unless each pair of apps that wants to communicate set up a separate shared memory map.
I knew this. Thats why I felt safe to predict it could not be beaten in speed by another OS. The unix mmap() must still be slower because the memory mapped file still appears in the filing system (at the very least you need to aquire a file descriptor etc to set up. ) . Unix context switching tends to requires more overhead (due to VM and scheduling), and you still can't directly dereference a passed pointer into memory, but must deference a pointer plus an offset into the memory mapped file because it would not sit at the same absolute memory address in both applications. On Amiga, address 45500 (for example) is 45500 for every single application in the entire system. Whereas you would need to say 45500 + base of shared memory space under Unix. This at a minimum requires an additional pointer arithmetic operation.
Moreoever on the Amiga virtually every single system call passed data via pointers without making copies into the called process (very fragile and delicate but very fast). Unix system calls which need to pass data to another process copy the data rather than simply pass a pointer.
Finally... mmap() is not the typical method of IPC on Unix. It is more common to use slower pipes.
If there is another OS which does this with less operations than AmigaOS (while still maintaining basic functionality.. I did not mean to include embedded Oses for single purpose machines) then forgive me. But I am not aware of it.
As for window refresh, lots of X11 window managers do the same, as can most other OS's, but it was rarely used on the Amiga - most app's did redraw, because letting the OS redraw meant having the OS keep a backing store, which meant wasting memory, which most Amiga programmers detested.
There was some utility available which forced all windows to be simple refresh windows. Thereafter the application is not notified of the refresh event and it didn't matter what the programmer chose to implement (because the app wasn't notified).
I didn't find this option in MS-Windows. I often find myself looking at non-refreshed windows in XP.
I agree that amiga programmers detested wasting memory (ahh.. I remember dynamic memory allocation well), but they also detested wasting CPU cycles to redraw. And with built in hardware blitting and video DMA... well..
once the user used that utility (I can't remember the name), all windows becamse simple refresh windows. (and for those slashdotters not familiar with Amiga that means.. "simple" from the programmers perspective. i.e. let the OS refresh)
I have run linix systems with no virtual memory at all. Windows bitches and complains if you try to have no virtual memory regardless of how much physical memory you have.
The cost of RAM is low enough these days that VM is not really required anymore.
I said:
"If a difference in math ability based on behavior (independant of anatomical sex) has not been controlled for, then it is impossible to conclude any behavioral difference is based on anatomical sex."
you said:
Yes, but it's not impossible or unreasonable to suggest it.
this goes back to my prior point. Such arguments historically have been used to justify oppression, slaverly, and murder. And such arguments have in the majority of cases proven to be false. Without locating the anatomical difference, and without doing a proper study which is actually capable of controlling for social upbringing, it *is* reckless to suggest it that there is some anatomical difference in math skills which correlates to anatomical sex.
If the statistics support it, it could be concluded that "people who are raised to be self concious of social relationships and sensitive to feelings and emotions generally have depressed math skills".
It is a LEAP to point to the lack of a penis. It is completely arbitrary.
Socialization is a form of mental exercise and so is math. It is reasonable to suspect therein lies the connection. The genitals are less likely to be the culprit.
The leap to basic anatomical sex is not supported by the scientific evidence (because of lack of controls over other factors which influence the upbringing of people of a given anatomical sex).
And due to the history of misuse regarding such theories, it behooves a researcher to carefully define exactly what their findings mean and what they have controlled for.
Because so far the only evidence I've ever seen would suggest that women are generally taught to believe that math and objective reality are not as important as social relationships and emotions. And men are generally taught that emotions and social relationships are almost irrelevant, and rationality is supreme.
It comes as no suprise that after that kind of an upbringing certain people have more difficulty socializing and others more problems with objective numbers.
A study which only compared anatomical sex is about as worthless as a study which finds that smokers are taller, smarter and stronger then non-smokers (but does not control for external factors such as the known fact that babies and toddlers in this society dont smoke and they are usually really short, ignorant and weak compared to adults which form the majority of the smoking population).
It is necesary to control for such factors or else the result is scientifically worthless.
You would have thought that politicians are the ones who sink or float bills, and not private unelected entities such as the NRA.
In 1994 there was no operating system which touched Amiga OS for responsiveness.
Not only was AmigaOS a pre-emptive multitasking OS, but it was a real time pre-emptive multitasking OS.
This means that applications and processes did not simply time share, but that high priority processes which were ready to run are guaranteed to get the CPU within a fixed period of time (measured in ms) provided they were the highest priority task which was ready to run.
On Amiga OS, you assigned the mouse and keyboard IO a high priority and it would not matter how busy your system was. If you interacted with the machine, all other processes are put aside and the computer reacts to you. RIGHT NOW.
Combined with the fact that the OS would redraw window contents (with the simple refresh window flag on) rather than wait for the application to redraw itself, meant that a busy application could still be brought to the front and the window contents would not be blank. Modern OSes still give me blank windows when an application is busy.
I remember, playing full screen video, and sound, while simultaneously formatting a diskdrive, downloading a file and dragging the entire screen up and down on a 25Mhz 68030 Amiga 4000 back in '94.
Interprocess communication on the Amiga is faster than any other kernel to date. (and probably faster than any other kernel ever will be)
For all its shortcomings, (mainly lack of memory protection and a clear market direction from Commodore), AmigaOS was as responsive as hell.
With that said. The BeOS kernel seems to have improved on AmigaOS in most areas except the UI, with minimum trade offs in performance. But BeOS is a complete kernal with full SMP supports and memory protection/virtual memory.
The BeOS UI (IMHO) is not as good as AmigaOS.
I vote for an Amiga UI implemented under a BeOS kernel + AREXX. And BeWindow/BeMessage support added to AREXX.
call it : AmigaBeOne or something.
Ah yes...why should I be denied the opportunity to gestate, simply because, being a man, I haven't got a womb!?
If the government or anyone passed a law making it illegal for men to gestate then you would have a complaint.
If there was a medical procedure which facilitated the possibility of gestation, men should have access to it just as much as women who through some medical condition do not have the ability to gestate.
But this guy wasn't saying that a class of people is wholesale inferior to another. He was saying that it is possible that they are, in one specific area, in general (i.e. not every member of the class "women" will be worse at math and/or science than every member of the class "men").
ok. if you think the term "in general" is somehow weaker than "wholesale" and you would agree with "in general", then he was saying "in general".
Just as above, I think it's not unfair to say that women are in general much better at gestating a fetus than men.
The differences between men and women in the field of gestation are anatomical. Differences in math ability (as studied for sex) are purely behavioural.
Consequently for all we know women could be anatomically superior to men in math capability, but socialized to dislike math. It is necessary to insure that what you are comparing is properly defined.
Have we done a comparison of women against other women and compared the differences between women who exhibit masculine behavior and women who exhibit femine behavior? (personally I dont think so, but I am interested to know if I'm wrong)
And done the same comparison with men?
If a difference in math ability based on behavior (independant of anatomical sex) has not been controlled for, then it is impossible to conclude any behavioral difference is based on anatomical sex.
Mathematical ability is purely a behavioural difference.
gestation is not purely behavioral, it requires a womb.
Why is it that according to P.C. all people are equally best at everything?
All people have a right to be judged on their own merit, and not on the preconceived notions and bigotry of others. This also means the right not to be denied oportunities and rights based on any real or imagined differences in whatever race or sex of people they come from.
All people have equal rights and the right to equal opportunities.
Since racial and gender inferiority has been used as a justification for the murder, rape and oppression of millions of people through out the ages, I think there is a pretty good reason to be very sceptical and cynical of any study which suggests 1 class of people is wholesale inferior to another.
This has little to do with being politically correct, and has everything to do with knowing what lies down that road and not wanting to go there again.
He threw in the, "it's not necessarily my personal view", because he didn't want to be labeled by people such as yourself.
Why not? He doesn't mind labeling women as "inferior to men at math".
If he doesn't believe what he is saying, then why is he saying it? He is an academic hypocrit who wont defend his opinions. He just throws them out there to see who will bite.
Disclaimer (so that you can't hold me responsible for my personal views): nothing I say here is necessarily my personal view
(but it is).
He was also being very unscientific. Citing the behavior of his own daughter as evidence of a general trend.
Typical liberal nonsense. The dollar being low is actually GOOD, it has alwys been so strong that US goods were not competetive overseas.
The dollar dropping in value so rapidly is a sign of investor scepticism in the US economy.
Looking on the bright side doesn't change the fact that it is a bad sign.
I for one would rather see a lttle more spent on protecting what we have, versus handouts to those who are too lazy to work and claim thier share.
Are you advocating that the government doesn't already spend enough protecting private property?
No person's sucess can be said to be totally thier own, they had parents, teachers, mentors, etc. who helped along the way.
Are you undermining the moral justification for private property?
You have obviously never been bass fishing, I don't care if the lake is wall-to-wall bass if they ain't biting they ain't biting. Those are the most finicky fish I have ever caught, if they were easy to catch you wouldn't see a several Billion dollar market in lures, rods, boats, etc.
And this justifies bankrupting the government how?
So the best we can hope for, even if we are tremendously optimistic about technology, is to slow down global warming by a few decades. We just can't stop it without shutting down everything separates us from the middle ages.
...
If you agree that we are capable of slowing down global warming by a few decades then LETS DO IT.
At that time we may have a better notion of exactly what threshold will or will trigger the next ice age, or figure out a way to actually artificially manipulate the environment to induce the icecaps to reform. or for all we know... discover cold fusion
But the real problem is that while you and I agree that the next ice age may be triggered by human activity there are many conservative and neoliberal politicians and "business leaders" who flat out refute this theory and insist that "climate change" is poorly understood and that it is just as likely to be beneficial as harmful and that there is no evidence that it may cause an ice age. They only agree that more needs to be learned about "climate change" (implicitly refuting that average tempuratures are increasing and that ice caps are melting).
They only insist that the benefit of environmental protection is unknown, but the costs are known. Reduced waste, and therefore reduced demand and reduced profit margins (and reduced growth).
The reverse argument they reject: the dangers of protecting the environment are known (nothing bad happens expect perhaps decreased consumption and decreased profits, and a narrowing gap between the rich and the poor), but the dangers of ignoring the issue are not fully known (we don't know if merely millions of people will be displaced from their coastal homes, or if an ice age will result and kill billions of people.).
I propose an additional moral argument. The environment is not ours to destroy. We didn't create it. It was passed down to us from our ancestors. It owe it to our descendants to pass it along to them even if that means living on the cheap.
Take a math course, and a public finance course, it might do you good. It's a pyramid scheme. With a declining birthrate, and increasing number of beneficiaries, it's simple math -- it will collapse, unless you up taxes well over fifty percent, and eliminate the yearly caps for individuals. The only way to "save" it is to raise the retirement age to eighty or higher.
If it is so simple please explain these numbers. Because from my computer science background it seems fairly straightforward that the population of retirees to workers is not a limit which approaches infinity.
I don't understand why we are so threatened by the idea that the only way to maintain social security is to raise taxes. There is an upper limit and it is directly proportional to the ratio between workers and senior citizens. Whatever that ratio is, it is. Seniors MUST be supported. They can not be required to support themselves. If some of them are wealthy... so be it. But in general seniors are largely not capable of working, and they are not to blaim for this. It is a natural stage in human life.
It isn't like senior citizens HOARD the money. They spend it all and it goes straight back into the economy.
We OWE it to our parents and grandparents to support them and thank them once they's sacrificed so much to raise us, teach us and give us life during our childhood.
Privatizing any part of social security is nothing more than a bid to inflate stock market prices.
Speaking of pyramid shemes...
Funny no one has mentioned that every tax CUT has actually INCREASED the amount of revenue taken in by the Government.
Don't worry... republicans have been mentioning it.
But no who is honest has been mentioning it because every tax cut causes an even greater DECREASE in revenue which exceeds the INCREASE and as a result overall net revenue decreases.
This is why Bush's tactic of cutting taxes and increasing spending results in the biggest deficit in history.
Have you noticed the value of the US dollar recently?
Oh, and that silly notion about GWB never have financial sucess, just the other day the liberals were moaning that he make TOO MUCH money when he (and his partners) sold out the Texas Rangers baseball club to Tom Hicks.
The "silly notion" is actually that GWB never had a financial success due to his own merit. A quality he continues to express as President.
That surplus was PROJECTED based on the current dot-com trends and growing employment. Even if Clinton was still in office today, we would still be in debt.
Well.. according to George W. Bush the projected surplus was real, and justified a massive reduction of taxes and only a "trifecta" of national emergency, recession and war would cause a deficit.
As for the war, it HAD to be done. That..or just wait till the middle east turns into a chaotic pack of rats armed with nukes in the future.
wait wait... I heard that one before... was that what the White House said in fall of 2002?? was it?
hrmm..
ohh... damn.. it wasn't.
At that time the explanation was that Saddam Hussein posed am imminent threat to the United States, was collaberating with Al Qaeda, attempting to buy yellow cake uranium, and aluminum tubes for nukes, developing remote controlled aircraft to deliver chemical and biological weapons and if we waited until we had enough evidence to prove it, the proof could come in the form of a mushroom cloud and millions of dead.
All of that turned out to be untrue.
yea... it must have been "enforcing order on the rats".
However, let's say saddam was elected in a fair and democratic way. Then at that point, it's fair game in order for Israel to preserve its nation and take out its aggressor.
So what is George W's excuse?
Had we just turned a blind eye, I fear that not only would the middle east be in a state anarchy, but we could have nukes being smuggled into our borders.
There were no WMD. Osama Bin Laden is still at large.
If the "eye" that we turned on Afganistan and Iraq was not blind, then what was it?
A "blind eye" is exactly what we are turning.
And just to correct you a little bit:
The Taliban and the Hussein government were FAR from anarchy. Perhaps "totalitarian" is the word you were looking for. Kindof the opposite.
What do you propose doing about this? Please give details.
you are changing the subject.
Are we to take it that you are conceding the argument?
Why are the ICECAPS MELTING?
It is getting WARMER.
What contributes to WARMING?
greenhouse effect.
Does human activity contributes to greenhouse effect?
yes.
Is there any serious scientific question as to what kinds of activities contribute to greenhouse effect?
no.
When environmentalists show concern about "Global warming" and claim that specifically "global warming" is a preventable problem which is significantly caused by the greenhouse effect, and the greenhouse effect is dependant on CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, and we are pumping out ever greater and greater quantities of these gasses with no end in sight and thus most likely increasing the greenhouse effect and most likely causing a GENERAL WARMING, and most likely contributing the the ICECAPS MELTING environmentalists are being accurate.
When you reply and say.. no the problem is not WARMING, because not all parts of the earth are actually experiencing WARMING, but in fact some parts of the earth experience increased percipitation, and some parts experience cooling, and some parts experience drought, and ocean currents may change and trigger another ice age, and the ice age is cold, and it is not correct to call an ice age 'warming', and therefore the question we should be asking is "what is "climate change" and how may we better understand climate change?"; you are NOT questioning problem at hand. The immediate and problem, which mankind is contributing directly and measurable towards is NOT "climate change". The problem is:
THE POLES ARE GETTING WARMER AND THE FUCKING ICECAPS ARE MELTING!
This is not "fuzzy math" as the American President likes to call any math he disagrees with.
It doesn't matter that we can not predict with 100% certainty that melting polar ice caps will or will not trigger another ice age, or how fast or how slow that would take or how long it would last.
THE ICECAPS ARE MELTING
And industrialists are protesting about the fact that we can't predict exactly how much polar melting we are capable of tolerating safely.
There are laws against saying things, even if they're the truth, sometimes? Now why could that be?
There are laws against a whole lot of things. Now what could your point be?
We are discussing a particular specific incident involving the dissemination of information about Apple computers. Which Apple itself leaked and is trying to suppress via the courts.
In that context Apple has no laws on its side.
And that NDA is absolutely worthless if, should an individual choose to violate it and accept the legal consequences (which are, in monetary terms, obviously limited to bankrupting them) the other party has no further means of keeping information that legally should have remained confidential as secret as possible.
"Monetarily" I agree.
However you are not in fact FREE to violate your contracts and agreements willy nilly just because you dont mind bankruptcy. There is such a thing as fraud, criminal breach of contract, breach of trust... etc.
Given that the financial damage to a major corp like Apple from a leak could be many times what the individual who first broke the law has the ability to repay, who's going to compensate all Apple's shareholders if the information can be freely circulated once the law has been broken?
In the hypothetical situation you describe: IF not the board of directors of Apple, then probably no one. They are shit out of luck. What is your point?
When an employee or trusted holder of an APPLE secret goes public with it, Apple has no power to hold the PUBLIC liable for whatever damage that individual caused. And APPLE has no power to take away from the PUBLIC that information which has become public. And no right to expect that the government intercede and assist in identifying and tracking down every person in the public who was exposed to that information or passed it along.
Since when does society OWE apple a duty of care towards information Apple has allowed to become public?
If an apple employee leaked a trade secret of another party doing business with Apple, that other party could sue Apple directly.
Just as Apple is liable for its employees conduct when their employees hurt third parties, apple can be liable for their employees conduct when their employees hurt Apple itself.
Contrast this with NASA's subsequent accomplishments once the blank cheque expired: decades of waste.
You simply don't appreciate how the worlds most advanced network of spy satellites helped to win the cold war and artificially supress the cost of oil.
NASA has paid for itself.