are we so afraid that science will lose the fight?
Yes, because the fight is fixed.
The language of science is roughly "We think that this and this, so we test..., we find a high correlation, our theory appears to fit the facts very well, there are some cases that we can't yet explain" and so on. Very careful, very methodical, always especially focussed on the weak spots.
The language of religion is very different: "This is so! The word is the absolute truth. Nothing else can exist. We know with absolute certainty from the highest being itself. Though shalt do. Never, always, truth, good, evil, damnation, eternal! Did I say forever and ever and evereverever?" - absolutist, totally polarised, never questioning itself, never allowing even the smallest doubt to its base premises. In fact, even asking the question means you're already in for eternal damnation or whatever the maximum penalty is.
In the minds of young people, who for their life so far relied on adult people guiding them, and who have not yet developed critical thinking, this isn't even a fight.
More importantly: Aside from what medieval christianity thought, a fight very rarely decides who is right and who is wrong, except for a very narrow margin of questions (such as "I am the better fighter - no, I am - ok, let's find out").
Most importantly: If there is anything that science tells us - and I mean the entire body of science over its entire history - it is that common sense is like Newton's Laws - it works fairly well in the "middle world", the world we inhabit, but a few steps outside of that, it doesn't fit the facts anymore. Most of the religious "wisdom" is of that kind - it more or less fits the world that we can experience with our own senses. Outside of it - on the very small or very large, either in size or time - we find out that it ain't true. The world isn't eternal, species haven't always existed unchanged, history isn't a short and evident route to some goal, the world isn't flat and can't have been made in 7 days because "day" without "world" makes no sense at all.
All this law does is provide legal protection for teachers to tech "alternate views" to the Theory of Evolution. It is NOT exclusively restricted to ID teaching. This could, logically, also include FSM theory. So don't worry, be Happy! Teachers in LA can now ALSO tell children about the Noodly beginnings of humanity in addition to other creationist teachings.
That's the words. Every law consists of two parts: The words and the interpretations. Judges do and will ask what the intention of the law was, and I think GP as well as almost everyone else here correctly assumed the same thing that judge will end up with.
But if you're a teacher in that area, why don't you test it out? Teach the FSM creation theory. No, wait, that wouldn't be taken seriously, and religiots are bad at humour - teach the islamic creation theory, and omit the christian one. Wanna bet on the number of lawsuits that'll hit you before you're even through?
Seriously, this really is much ado about nothing. It's just an anti-stupid lawsuit law, to protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes ToE is correct. That's it, nothing more, no matter what the militant Atheist sites and D-Kos may say.
Name one acknowledged evolutionary scientist who today considers the theory of evolution to be incorrect. Not minor detail nitpicking, an actual scientist in this discipline who thinks the whole theory is bonkers and should be replaced with something else entirely. Just one and I'll shut up.
The fact of the matter is that Darwin is right up there with Newton and Einstein. There is as much doubt in evolution as there is in relativity. Both have been tested extensively and passed - again, and again, and again.
There's no need to be a "Bible-belt" politician - a simple politician will do.
Converted people are often more zealous than those who grew up with some faith. They really mean it, instead of just having it because they've always had it.
A politician and a religious nutcase and a converted one at that - makes you think what could possibly be worse?
science that there are - or should be - no "sacred cows" - including evolution or ID or whatever.
Except that ID is not science. It's biblical bullshit thinly veiled as science.
Science is the process of creating, challenging and testing assumptions about the world and then discarding those that didn't check out. ID was taken seriously by scientists when it was new, submitted to the process, and found to be lacking. Any serious scientist today has long discarded it into the same bin that holds the ether.
My biggest complaint is that people keep fiddling with them in meetings.
Yes! I was waiting for someone to say that. It's not Blackberries only, though. I was shocked, really honestly shocked when one group I lead set its meeting rules and the point "reading and writing SMS messages during the meeting" was actually up for discussion. I thought "how can anyone think that's ok?" - and I still do.
Blackberries just make it worse, but the symptom isn't the devices, it's people's attitude.
Yepp, that's something I've been watching with a mix of horror and fascination ever since the dot-com boom. The lines between work and the rest of your life are blurry at best these days. Companies love it, as long as it means you put in additional work that they don't have to pay for.
The ugly fact is that most of the laws and other rules regulating work and employment were written in a time when "work" meant going to the factory at 7 am, working until 6 pm and going home. There was a very strong seperation between "being at work" and your private life. In both directions.
The blur is a difficult animal. While I do enjoy it at times - browsing/. is a good example, a sort of break where other people would go smoking or get a coffee and a chat in the kitchen or whatever - it's also dangerous in ways. Both ways - if your private life haunts you at work, you get double stress, and if you can't leave work at work, quite the same.
His disbarment would discredit him in a very real way. For a major television network to present him as a credible expert after this, they'd have to think their viewers complete idiots.
Two words: Uri Geller
The way was completely destroyed, and everyone who cares to do even a little research knows he's a charlatan, and probably a criminal.
And yet, he just keeps going. And the media keeps inviting him back, presenting him again, falling for him all the time. They are either unbelievably dumb, or think that their viewers, readers and listeners are.
I don't think so. They guy has found out you can make a living out of being an asshole, he's not likely to drop that recipe for success. My bet is that he'll be doing the pundit round next. He'll found some institute so his CV can read "former lawyer, now chairman and founder of the No More Violence Institute" or something like it, and then he'll go from TV station to TV station and spread his crap. Very few of them will tell their viewers about his disbarment.
Exactly! When GP thinks games of old were so much better - get yourself an emulator and play a couple of them. I did that a few years ago with some of my old C64 favourites, and I was surprised, and not pleasantly.
As if speed where the one thing that matters. "glacial"? Have you any idea what you're talking about?
When it comes to basics, standards or important things, then taking the time to get it done right is what differentiates the professional from the amateur. Sure, I can understand, I'm an impatient guy myself. But I'd rather wait 10 more minutes for my flight and be sure they actually checked the engines, or a couple weeks more for the next version of some software so they can do bugfixing - and speaking of which, software is a great example. How often have you been pissed that the just-released greatest new game X is buggy as hell? Guess what, that's because someone in the marketing department decided that they have to ship it now, no matter what state it's in.
I positively hate the stupid "hide unused menu options" crap, and I would absolutely hate if keys disappear just because I don't use them often.
I would hate for my keyboard to change size, location or even colour. Maybe one initial setup step ok, but after that, stay the fuck the same because I want to hit my keys without searching for them first.
Once we can do that, we will be freed from having to use the exact same keyboard for word processing, programming, multimedia editing, math, and gaming, and the Optimus Maximus will seem less like a really awesome novelty, and more like a good first step:-)
Again, I think that's design gone off the wrong edge.
I like my keyboard staying the same. It allows me to hit a key without having to think or look. I know where it is, and it doesn't move around, and I don't have to check in what "mode" the keyboard is in.
But punch strength doesn't determine most fights. A lot of fights are over before the first punch is thrown. And boxers learn one vitally important thing: To take a hit and go on.
I (remotely) know a guy who used to do professional boxing. He's in his 40s now. Some time recently a gang of early 20s made some rude comments about his wife on the street. He was in the middle of them and had the "lead" guy by the shirt before they were quite done. He had no fear and made it clear that if they wanted a fight, single or all at once, they could have it, right there and then. They backed off.
And that's something you learn in all fighting, whether it's sports, martial arts or self defense: To control your fear. And fear decides more fights than punches do.
You're thinking "self defense", and that is not equal to "martial art". Nevertheless, one can be useful for the other. I know a lot of martial artists who - I'm sure - would take a beating in a street fight. I also know quite a few who'd sent any punk to the floor before he knows what hit him.
Even without his "toothpick", for example, I wouldn't want to fight a fencer if it isn't necessary. Why? Because he is trained in speed and accuracy. He probably hasn't learnt how to take a good hit, or strike hard, but I'd still rather fight a regular guy.
50 years ago, the question would've seemed odd. 100 years ago, you would've been looked at is if you were insane if in educated circles you somehow, even indirectly, hinted that it might be ok to know only one language.
Definitely do learn a 2nd language. At least! Go read some old books, classics. No matter if you're reading Newton or Nietzsche, all those authors simply assumed that their readers were fluent in Latin and French, and probably in Greek, German and English as well.
Languages not only enable you to read stuff in the language it was written in - and I've read quite a few books where the translation didn't really do that well in expressing the author's thoughts - it also broadens your mind patterns considerably. Because, as linguists know, languages aren't just different in their vocabulary, there are many differences in the thoughts that model language. Let me give two examples, one trivial, the other tricky:
The german "Sie" vs. "Du" is missing in english. The translation is "you" in both cases, but they are not the same. "Sie" is a formal form, used to address strangers or other people in a formal setting. "Du" is informal, used among friends and (interestingly) children - kids are always "Du", never "Sie", both among each other and from adult to kid. If you think about it, this reveals quite a bit about german culture, and intentionally choosing the wrong form for a given setting transports meaning that you simply couldn't express in english. In addition, there is a whole set of rules around the transition from "Sie" to "Du" among people, while the opposite is a very unfriendly way of treating someone.
The more tricky example is some native indian language (sorry, forgot which one) in which there is a grammatical construct that allows you to express the difference between things that you've seen or experienced for yourself, and things that you have heard about. That makes a world of difference in thought and expression, because you are never confused about what is 1st and what 2nd hand knowledge. More importantly: You must make it clear in your own speech, because there's no ambiguity. The impersonal form ("someone killed Smith") doesn't exist, you have to say either the equivalent of "I saw how someone killed Smith" or of "I've heard that someone allegedly killed Smith".
Even knowing these things makes you think about a lot of stuff in your own language that you took for granted so far. Even if you never learn the language in question (I don't speak any native indian tongues, for example). To really grasp it, though, I think you need to learn at least one foreign language so well that you can think in it. Gives your thoughts more mobility.
#1: Yes, Gates has been an opponent of Free Software ever since his famous first letter. However, he's not been as vocal regarding Open Source Software, and that's where it's our loss that we forgot about the difference between them. MS has made some early attempts with "shared source", and like other stuff, they'll refine it.
#2: Nonsense. That's got absolutely nothing to do with Gates, and everything with the fact that MS simply can't write another windos. After the entire NT team packed up and left, it's been going downhill, and one of the reasons Vista sucks so much is that they shipped something that nobody in the company understood how it worked. If you thought Vista was a trainwreck, wait for Win7.
#3: What this shows even more is how MS works. Despite their total lack of experience and ability, they enter the game like they own it, and get a bloody nose. But they come back - and get another beating. Just that they keep coming back. You can see that modus operandi in almost every area. Hardware, consoles, much of their non-core software. Usually, it doesn't matter much because they don't learn and keep on sucking, but sometimes along the way they get some wits, or acquire another company, and suddenly they matter (e.g. hardware) or the market is just so small that by sheer power they force their way in (e.g. consoles).
#4: Pfft. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 20 years or so, you know that MS announcement regarding ODF is simply the opening stage of EEE. MS has replaced the "then you win" step of the "first they laugh at you..." thing with "then they embrace you, extend you, extinguish you", and fairly successfully at that. With MS as you enemy you don't win when they give up the fight. That's just their way of saying "ok, the cheap and easy way didn't work, we'll have to take you down the old way".
#5: Yes, maybe. The only point that holds some merit, and even includes both sides of the story. Personally, I think MS will break apart. It'll be a long time, but a disorganized, never-grown-up company like MS simply needs a strong man to hold it together, and for all I know, the ape simply won't do.
I'm a big fan of multitouch, and in fact am an early adopter, and one of the probably 2000 or so people who bought a TouchStream (the first multitouch keyboard on the market, many years ago, long before TouchStream went bancrupt and was then acquired by Apple...)
But exactly that experience has taught me one thing: You can't beat tactile feedback for keyboard input. As long as your display doesn't have tactile feedback, multitouch sucks and won't replace a regular keyboard.
What multitouch is great at is analog input, i.e. the stuff we use the mouse for right now. Dragging stuff, resizing stuff, drawing shapes (for gestures or graphics, or to select, whatever) all that kind of things. But when it comes to typing text, you don't want to do that on surface that doesn't give you tactile feedback. FWIW, I can type more error-free with my eyes closed on a regular keyboard, than with my eyes open on a touch-keyboard.
So if those designers could shed their fanboyship of multitouch surfaces for a while, and do what designers ought to do for a change, namely look for the meeting point between form and function, they'd find a lot more and better applications for multitouch displays than keyboard replacements.
Actually, the difference is that MS flashes shit in your face in the most obnoxious way. It'll happily interrupt your full-screen application just to tell you that there are new updates available, then again to tell you that it has finished downloading them, and then it'll bugger you every few minutes if you want to restart the computer now or later. It does not provide a "stop buggering me" button, or as it should be named after the 5th or so interruption: "Go fuck yourself in a corner, you stupid $%#$&%".
Firefox, and in fact almost every other software, is a lot less intrusive. Unsurprisingly, being more considerate regarding the user leads to, guess what, the user being more considerate about the update process.
I don't think it's ridiculous at all. Anyone trained in any martial art (not just eastern, count boxing, fencing, etc. as well) will probably agree.
Keeping your senses and your ability to think during a fight is anything but trivial, and requires a lot of training.
Most regular people would probably have trouble just remembering how the pieces move after a few minutes of fighting, with all the adrenaline pumping and your whole body in "I have no time for thinking" mode.
Unless you are extremely lucky (which you aren't, since you tried), you will not get police who cares or knows - one of either, but both is highly unlikely. Not to put them down - most officers with the know-how simply have more important things to deal with than some theft.
If your machines are brand-machines, and registered to your name or company, my suggestion would be to remotely disable them to the point where they need to be brought in for repairs, clue in the manufacturer, and they just might return them to the owner they have on record, i.e. you.
And even if not, you probably made sure the thieves can't use them any longer, which according to your words you'd also judge as a victory.
Make sure it's something a non-geek can't solve, like with a re-install. Setting a BIOS or EFI password and then pointing the boot device to a non-existant one could work great.
Anyone else read the article and thought it smells a lot like it was written by the PR department of the company that manufactures those things? Lots and lots of talks about the great and unique features of the device, very little details on the alleged crime.
If this were ZiiTrend, I'd vote 70:30 that the story is fake and PR.
Ok, I don't like this new "feature", either - but this is the first time in a long time that I've seen AVG being described as "slimy". Are you serious? Lots of folks consider them one of the best anti-virus vendors out there, not the least because they offer a basic AV solution for free.
I put three small LED strips on the back of my flatscreen, so that they illuminate the wall behind the monitor, surrounding it in a bit of light. My subjective feeling is that this has considerably reduced eye-strain.
From what I know about the scientific side, lighting differences is what makes your eyes hurt. If your display is considerably brighter or darker than the room around it, your eyes will be forced to adapt all the time as you look around (and you do, even if you don't notice it consciously), and that causes them to hurt. The purpose of brightening up the wall behind your display is to bring that to roughly equal brightness as the display itself.
Obviously, it's not perfect. In some games, during particularily dark sequences, my bias lighting is brighter than the screen. If you're really deep into electronics, you can probably make it adapt...
Slashdot Mirror
are we so afraid that science will lose the fight?
Yes, because the fight is fixed.
The language of science is roughly "We think that this and this, so we test..., we find a high correlation, our theory appears to fit the facts very well, there are some cases that we can't yet explain" and so on. Very careful, very methodical, always especially focussed on the weak spots.
The language of religion is very different: "This is so! The word is the absolute truth. Nothing else can exist. We know with absolute certainty from the highest being itself. Though shalt do. Never, always, truth, good, evil, damnation, eternal! Did I say forever and ever and evereverever?" - absolutist, totally polarised, never questioning itself, never allowing even the smallest doubt to its base premises. In fact, even asking the question means you're already in for eternal damnation or whatever the maximum penalty is.
In the minds of young people, who for their life so far relied on adult people guiding them, and who have not yet developed critical thinking, this isn't even a fight.
More importantly: Aside from what medieval christianity thought, a fight very rarely decides who is right and who is wrong, except for a very narrow margin of questions (such as "I am the better fighter - no, I am - ok, let's find out").
Most importantly: If there is anything that science tells us - and I mean the entire body of science over its entire history - it is that common sense is like Newton's Laws - it works fairly well in the "middle world", the world we inhabit, but a few steps outside of that, it doesn't fit the facts anymore. Most of the religious "wisdom" is of that kind - it more or less fits the world that we can experience with our own senses. Outside of it - on the very small or very large, either in size or time - we find out that it ain't true. The world isn't eternal, species haven't always existed unchanged, history isn't a short and evident route to some goal, the world isn't flat and can't have been made in 7 days because "day" without "world" makes no sense at all.
All this law does is provide legal protection for teachers to tech "alternate views" to the Theory of Evolution. It is NOT exclusively restricted to ID teaching. This could, logically, also include FSM theory. So don't worry, be Happy! Teachers in LA can now ALSO tell children about the Noodly beginnings of humanity in addition to other creationist teachings.
That's the words. Every law consists of two parts: The words and the interpretations. Judges do and will ask what the intention of the law was, and I think GP as well as almost everyone else here correctly assumed the same thing that judge will end up with.
But if you're a teacher in that area, why don't you test it out? Teach the FSM creation theory. No, wait, that wouldn't be taken seriously, and religiots are bad at humour - teach the islamic creation theory, and omit the christian one. Wanna bet on the number of lawsuits that'll hit you before you're even through?
Seriously, this really is much ado about nothing. It's just an anti-stupid lawsuit law, to protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes ToE is correct. That's it, nothing more, no matter what the militant Atheist sites and D-Kos may say.
Name one acknowledged evolutionary scientist who today considers the theory of evolution to be incorrect. Not minor detail nitpicking, an actual scientist in this discipline who thinks the whole theory is bonkers and should be replaced with something else entirely. Just one and I'll shut up.
The fact of the matter is that Darwin is right up there with Newton and Einstein. There is as much doubt in evolution as there is in relativity. Both have been tested extensively and passed - again, and again, and again.
There's no need to be a "Bible-belt" politician - a simple politician will do.
Converted people are often more zealous than those who grew up with some faith. They really mean it, instead of just having it because they've always had it.
A politician and a religious nutcase and a converted one at that - makes you think what could possibly be worse?
science that there are - or should be - no "sacred cows" - including evolution or ID or whatever.
Except that ID is not science. It's biblical bullshit thinly veiled as science.
Science is the process of creating, challenging and testing assumptions about the world and then discarding those that didn't check out. ID was taken seriously by scientists when it was new, submitted to the process, and found to be lacking. Any serious scientist today has long discarded it into the same bin that holds the ether.
My biggest complaint is that people keep fiddling with them in meetings.
Yes! I was waiting for someone to say that. It's not Blackberries only, though. I was shocked, really honestly shocked when one group I lead set its meeting rules and the point "reading and writing SMS messages during the meeting" was actually up for discussion. I thought "how can anyone think that's ok?" - and I still do.
Blackberries just make it worse, but the symptom isn't the devices, it's people's attitude.
Yepp, that's something I've been watching with a mix of horror and fascination ever since the dot-com boom. The lines between work and the rest of your life are blurry at best these days. Companies love it, as long as it means you put in additional work that they don't have to pay for.
The ugly fact is that most of the laws and other rules regulating work and employment were written in a time when "work" meant going to the factory at 7 am, working until 6 pm and going home. There was a very strong seperation between "being at work" and your private life. In both directions.
The blur is a difficult animal. While I do enjoy it at times - browsing /. is a good example, a sort of break where other people would go smoking or get a coffee and a chat in the kitchen or whatever - it's also dangerous in ways. Both ways - if your private life haunts you at work, you get double stress, and if you can't leave work at work, quite the same.
His disbarment would discredit him in a very real way. For a major television network to present him as a credible expert after this, they'd have to think their viewers complete idiots.
Two words: Uri Geller
The way was completely destroyed, and everyone who cares to do even a little research knows he's a charlatan, and probably a criminal.
And yet, he just keeps going. And the media keeps inviting him back, presenting him again, falling for him all the time. They are either unbelievably dumb, or think that their viewers, readers and listeners are.
You think we've seen the last of Jack?
I don't think so. They guy has found out you can make a living out of being an asshole, he's not likely to drop that recipe for success. My bet is that he'll be doing the pundit round next. He'll found some institute so his CV can read "former lawyer, now chairman and founder of the No More Violence Institute" or something like it, and then he'll go from TV station to TV station and spread his crap. Very few of them will tell their viewers about his disbarment.
Exactly! When GP thinks games of old were so much better - get yourself an emulator and play a couple of them. I did that a few years ago with some of my old C64 favourites, and I was surprised, and not pleasantly.
Requires Windows Vista/XP
That's very unusual of Google.
It hurts whenever I read crap like that.
As if speed where the one thing that matters. "glacial"? Have you any idea what you're talking about?
When it comes to basics, standards or important things, then taking the time to get it done right is what differentiates the professional from the amateur. Sure, I can understand, I'm an impatient guy myself. But I'd rather wait 10 more minutes for my flight and be sure they actually checked the engines, or a couple weeks more for the next version of some software so they can do bugfixing - and speaking of which, software is a great example. How often have you been pissed that the just-released greatest new game X is buggy as hell? Guess what, that's because someone in the marketing department decided that they have to ship it now, no matter what state it's in.
Who wouldn't want one of these?
Me.
I positively hate the stupid "hide unused menu options" crap, and I would absolutely hate if keys disappear just because I don't use them often.
I would hate for my keyboard to change size, location or even colour. Maybe one initial setup step ok, but after that, stay the fuck the same because I want to hit my keys without searching for them first.
Once we can do that, we will be freed from having to use the exact same keyboard for word processing, programming, multimedia editing, math, and gaming, and the Optimus Maximus will seem less like a really awesome novelty, and more like a good first step :-)
Again, I think that's design gone off the wrong edge.
I like my keyboard staying the same. It allows me to hit a key without having to think or look. I know where it is, and it doesn't move around, and I don't have to check in what "mode" the keyboard is in.
But punch strength doesn't determine most fights. A lot of fights are over before the first punch is thrown. And boxers learn one vitally important thing: To take a hit and go on.
I (remotely) know a guy who used to do professional boxing. He's in his 40s now. Some time recently a gang of early 20s made some rude comments about his wife on the street. He was in the middle of them and had the "lead" guy by the shirt before they were quite done. He had no fear and made it clear that if they wanted a fight, single or all at once, they could have it, right there and then. They backed off.
And that's something you learn in all fighting, whether it's sports, martial arts or self defense: To control your fear. And fear decides more fights than punches do.
You're thinking "self defense", and that is not equal to "martial art". Nevertheless, one can be useful for the other. I know a lot of martial artists who - I'm sure - would take a beating in a street fight. I also know quite a few who'd sent any punk to the floor before he knows what hit him.
Even without his "toothpick", for example, I wouldn't want to fight a fencer if it isn't necessary. Why? Because he is trained in speed and accuracy. He probably hasn't learnt how to take a good hit, or strike hard, but I'd still rather fight a regular guy.
50 years ago, the question would've seemed odd. 100 years ago, you would've been looked at is if you were insane if in educated circles you somehow, even indirectly, hinted that it might be ok to know only one language.
Definitely do learn a 2nd language. At least! Go read some old books, classics. No matter if you're reading Newton or Nietzsche, all those authors simply assumed that their readers were fluent in Latin and French, and probably in Greek, German and English as well.
Languages not only enable you to read stuff in the language it was written in - and I've read quite a few books where the translation didn't really do that well in expressing the author's thoughts - it also broadens your mind patterns considerably. Because, as linguists know, languages aren't just different in their vocabulary, there are many differences in the thoughts that model language. Let me give two examples, one trivial, the other tricky:
The german "Sie" vs. "Du" is missing in english. The translation is "you" in both cases, but they are not the same. "Sie" is a formal form, used to address strangers or other people in a formal setting. "Du" is informal, used among friends and (interestingly) children - kids are always "Du", never "Sie", both among each other and from adult to kid. If you think about it, this reveals quite a bit about german culture, and intentionally choosing the wrong form for a given setting transports meaning that you simply couldn't express in english. In addition, there is a whole set of rules around the transition from "Sie" to "Du" among people, while the opposite is a very unfriendly way of treating someone.
The more tricky example is some native indian language (sorry, forgot which one) in which there is a grammatical construct that allows you to express the difference between things that you've seen or experienced for yourself, and things that you have heard about. That makes a world of difference in thought and expression, because you are never confused about what is 1st and what 2nd hand knowledge. More importantly: You must make it clear in your own speech, because there's no ambiguity. The impersonal form ("someone killed Smith") doesn't exist, you have to say either the equivalent of "I saw how someone killed Smith" or of "I've heard that someone allegedly killed Smith".
Even knowing these things makes you think about a lot of stuff in your own language that you took for granted so far. Even if you never learn the language in question (I don't speak any native indian tongues, for example). To really grasp it, though, I think you need to learn at least one foreign language so well that you can think in it. Gives your thoughts more mobility.
#1:
Yes, Gates has been an opponent of Free Software ever since his famous first letter. However, he's not been as vocal regarding Open Source Software, and that's where it's our loss that we forgot about the difference between them. MS has made some early attempts with "shared source", and like other stuff, they'll refine it.
#2:
Nonsense. That's got absolutely nothing to do with Gates, and everything with the fact that MS simply can't write another windos. After the entire NT team packed up and left, it's been going downhill, and one of the reasons Vista sucks so much is that they shipped something that nobody in the company understood how it worked. If you thought Vista was a trainwreck, wait for Win7.
#3:
What this shows even more is how MS works. Despite their total lack of experience and ability, they enter the game like they own it, and get a bloody nose. But they come back - and get another beating. Just that they keep coming back. You can see that modus operandi in almost every area. Hardware, consoles, much of their non-core software. Usually, it doesn't matter much because they don't learn and keep on sucking, but sometimes along the way they get some wits, or acquire another company, and suddenly they matter (e.g. hardware) or the market is just so small that by sheer power they force their way in (e.g. consoles).
#4:
Pfft. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 20 years or so, you know that MS announcement regarding ODF is simply the opening stage of EEE. MS has replaced the "then you win" step of the "first they laugh at you..." thing with "then they embrace you, extend you, extinguish you", and fairly successfully at that. With MS as you enemy you don't win when they give up the fight. That's just their way of saying "ok, the cheap and easy way didn't work, we'll have to take you down the old way".
#5:
Yes, maybe. The only point that holds some merit, and even includes both sides of the story. Personally, I think MS will break apart. It'll be a long time, but a disorganized, never-grown-up company like MS simply needs a strong man to hold it together, and for all I know, the ape simply won't do.
Actually, one of the screenshots had a clearly visible logo of XP. That's interesting, if it's meant for 2015...
I'm a big fan of multitouch, and in fact am an early adopter, and one of the probably 2000 or so people who bought a TouchStream (the first multitouch keyboard on the market, many years ago, long before TouchStream went bancrupt and was then acquired by Apple...)
But exactly that experience has taught me one thing: You can't beat tactile feedback for keyboard input. As long as your display doesn't have tactile feedback, multitouch sucks and won't replace a regular keyboard.
What multitouch is great at is analog input, i.e. the stuff we use the mouse for right now. Dragging stuff, resizing stuff, drawing shapes (for gestures or graphics, or to select, whatever) all that kind of things. But when it comes to typing text, you don't want to do that on surface that doesn't give you tactile feedback. FWIW, I can type more error-free with my eyes closed on a regular keyboard, than with my eyes open on a touch-keyboard.
So if those designers could shed their fanboyship of multitouch surfaces for a while, and do what designers ought to do for a change, namely look for the meeting point between form and function, they'd find a lot more and better applications for multitouch displays than keyboard replacements.
Actually, the difference is that MS flashes shit in your face in the most obnoxious way. It'll happily interrupt your full-screen application just to tell you that there are new updates available, then again to tell you that it has finished downloading them, and then it'll bugger you every few minutes if you want to restart the computer now or later. It does not provide a "stop buggering me" button, or as it should be named after the 5th or so interruption: "Go fuck yourself in a corner, you stupid $%#$&%".
Firefox, and in fact almost every other software, is a lot less intrusive. Unsurprisingly, being more considerate regarding the user leads to, guess what, the user being more considerate about the update process.
I don't think it's ridiculous at all. Anyone trained in any martial art (not just eastern, count boxing, fencing, etc. as well) will probably agree.
Keeping your senses and your ability to think during a fight is anything but trivial, and requires a lot of training.
Most regular people would probably have trouble just remembering how the pieces move after a few minutes of fighting, with all the adrenaline pumping and your whole body in "I have no time for thinking" mode.
Unless you are extremely lucky (which you aren't, since you tried), you will not get police who cares or knows - one of either, but both is highly unlikely. Not to put them down - most officers with the know-how simply have more important things to deal with than some theft.
If your machines are brand-machines, and registered to your name or company, my suggestion would be to remotely disable them to the point where they need to be brought in for repairs, clue in the manufacturer, and they just might return them to the owner they have on record, i.e. you.
And even if not, you probably made sure the thieves can't use them any longer, which according to your words you'd also judge as a victory.
Make sure it's something a non-geek can't solve, like with a re-install. Setting a BIOS or EFI password and then pointing the boot device to a non-existant one could work great.
Anyone else read the article and thought it smells a lot like it was written by the PR department of the company that manufactures those things? Lots and lots of talks about the great and unique features of the device, very little details on the alleged crime.
If this were ZiiTrend, I'd vote 70:30 that the story is fake and PR.
Ok, I don't like this new "feature", either - but this is the first time in a long time that I've seen AVG being described as "slimy". Are you serious? Lots of folks consider them one of the best anti-virus vendors out there, not the least because they offer a basic AV solution for free.
I second parent.
I put three small LED strips on the back of my flatscreen, so that they illuminate the wall behind the monitor, surrounding it in a bit of light. My subjective feeling is that this has considerably reduced eye-strain.
From what I know about the scientific side, lighting differences is what makes your eyes hurt. If your display is considerably brighter or darker than the room around it, your eyes will be forced to adapt all the time as you look around (and you do, even if you don't notice it consciously), and that causes them to hurt. The purpose of brightening up the wall behind your display is to bring that to roughly equal brightness as the display itself.
Obviously, it's not perfect. In some games, during particularily dark sequences, my bias lighting is brighter than the screen. If you're really deep into electronics, you can probably make it adapt...