Random selection seems highly dubious, given our experience with fruit flies -- almost all the mutations are "bad" and should get selected out.
"Random selection" wouldn't get organisms very far. Fortunately for us, there's no such thing in evolution.
Correct, but let me elaborate on your answer.
Most people think that the Theory of Evolution implies that organisms have been in a constant state of flux - slowly but steadily changing over the eons. (This is what Darwin himself believed.) However, the fossil record indicates that this belief is flawed.
Through forces not well understood (at least, I don't understand), the climate of the earth periodically changes. Mean temperatures rise and fall, the composition of the atmosphere changes, etc. What's more, these canges occur very suddenly, in geological terms.
The fossil record seems to indicate that species trudge along happily for thousands/millions of years, and then *BAM* suddenly evolve. These evolutionary spurts typically coincide with a climactic change or other similarly catastrophic event. So essentially, evolution works like this:
Organisms remain mostly static.
Their environment changes somehow.
Rapid evolution occurs as the organisms adapt to the new environment.
A point is reached where the organisms are sufficiently well-adapted to the new environment that further change tends to be detrimental.
Organisms remain mostly static.
Anyone who's done any work in evolutionary programming (sometimes referred to as genetic programming) can testify to this. (Evolutionary programming for the layperson is: (1) choosing a bunch of "random" solutions to a problem, (2) grading these solutions as to how well the solve the problem, (3) discarding the poor solutions, and (4) creating new solutions by combining and mutating the last batch.) The initial bunch of random solutions improves in quality very quickly. However, a point is eventually reached where any change is likely to result in a lower-quality solution. (Much to my own consternation, this is typically just before the optimal solution is actually reached.)
So the fossil record and my own programming experience seem to agree.
Oh, and just for full disclosure: I am in fact a Christian.
-Legion
Boy, that's not a name I like to see come up in theological discussions, but what the hey.
I don't think anybody here can name me a technology that has fulfilled this oft-repeated promise of turning our lives from Pb into Au.
I don't ever remember hearing that claim, but I'll take a stab* at it.
Immunization.
(Granted, it sort of depends on how you define "technology".)
A couple of days ago, I had to go to the emergency room after attempting to prepare dinner myself. As the nurse was sticking a needle in my arm, all I could think of was, "Boy, I sure am glad I'm not going to die of tetanus." I'm also glad I'm not going to die of influenza, measles, etc. like so many of my ancestors.
* This is a pun. You have to read the whole post to get it, though.
My friend has told me a story of how he once woke up in the middle of the night, but his body did not.
This is a condition known as "sleep paralysis", of which I have been a chronic sufferer since childhood. (I was sort of slow as a child, and I just assumed it happened to everyone. By the time I figured out otherwise, I had learned to live with it.) It's not well understood, although it seems to have a link to narcolepsy, for some reason.
There's not much information (that I know of) out there on sleep paralysis, although you can look it up in the DSM-IV. From my own experiences, I can tell you that it happens only during the transition state from sleep into wakefulness (or vice versa), and that high levels of stress seem to correlate to it. At my last job, it happened nearly every morning. I quit 9 months ago, and it's only happened a half-dozen times.
(I've also developed a Bene Gesserit-like ability to force myself awake at times through muscle exercises, but that's neither here nor there.)
At a job I held for several years, my official title was "The Computer Guy". I don't know about pompousness, but it was really pretty accurate.
Re:you won't be seeing any popular authors there!
on
Free Books Online
·
· Score: 2
The paper book still has a huge advantage in convenience and ease of use.
Very true. However, electronic texts have one very distinct advantage, which has only been tangentially touched on:
Ease of transport.
I have a number of books on CD. (Most are reference books, although I have Project Gutenberg's archives on a pair of CDs, courtesy of Walnut Creek.) True, they're not as convenient as paper books, but they're terrific when I need to travel; much lighter and more compact than stacks of books.
Or, for a more common example: I am a Perl programmer, and therefore lazy. Occasionally I need to refresh my memory on some syntax issue.* I could walk across the room, pick my copy of Programming Perl out of the bookcase, flip to the index, flip to the correct section, and read. However, it's much easier for me to grab my Perl CD Bookshelf, click, click, click, done. Same for Design Patterns.
Other posters in this story have mentioned PDAs much more skillfully than I can, so I won't go there.
* Amazingly, despite Perl's clean and elegant syntax, I still need to look up the meaning of simple expressions like "$[=$.".
Let me add one thing. Legislators tend to put a lot more stock in written mail than email. (I think this has been said before on/.) By all means, write your representative. But I would encourage you to use snail mail if possible.
Punch code?!?!? What does this guy think we do, put holes in cards?!!??
Perhaps he means that programmers punch code the same way that cowboys punch cattle. Hmm... I kinda dig that imagery. "Sherrif! Black Bart's causing memory leaks up and down Main Street!" "Hand me my smart pointers, boy."
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go wrangle some ADO objects.
If anybody can make their damn uptime say whatever they want, it'll stop.
The better solution is to ignore the uptime-dick contests and get on with your life, rather than lowering the kernel's quality as a piece of software.
Of course, there is historical precedent for such a solution. As I recall, the users of the old Incompatible Timesharing System had problems with some of the newer hackers trying to crash the system, as sort of a coming-of-age ritual. The authors of ITS added an explicit kill command, so that any user could crash the system at any time, simply by typing "KILL" at a command prompt. Suddenly, there were no more attempts to crash the system.
At least when I go to see a movie, I know that the R rating isn't unfairly applied because the lead actor is a prolific democrat or republic or even a $cientologist.
It has been alleged by certain people (most notably Lloyd Kaufmann, head of Troma Studios) that the MPAA doles out ratings in an incredibly biased manner, from studio to studio. (I don't have any evidence to back this up, since I'm at work right now. When I get home tonight, I'll try to post something a little more relevant.) So I wouldn't accept your statement as canon, yet.
A lot of people don't seem to like them, but I own a Sony Mavica. It stores the pictures in JPEG format on a 3.5" floppy disk, and I can view them on any computer than happens to be handy. Well, except for iMacs.
I've always insisted on high-reliability computer components for my own personal stuff. However, at a former job (names deleted to protect the innocent), reliability was second to cost. A distant second.
As the (entire) IS staff for the company, I butted heads several times with the company president and his insistence on buying cheap (in both price and quality) components. The hardware philosophy of the company was essentially "Buy cheap. If it breaks, have it fixed while using a backup system." As the person who returned the faulty components to the store, set up the backup systems, called customer support, etc., this was a real pain in the neck.
Some anecdotes:
Once I asked for an ethernet adapter. The next day, when I got to work, there was a box on my desk, wrapped in plain brown paper with the words "Ethernet Card" scrawled in magic marker. No logo, no docs, no nothin'.
A co-worker once asked my advice on an ethernet adapter for his home system. I made my recommendation (3Com something-or-other). he exclaimed, "3Com?! That could cost up to $30!"
My monitor broke one day. The tube blew. I sent it back to the company and received a replacement. The replacement worked for 3 hours, and then blew out. I sent it back. The replacement's replacement wouldn't even turn on. I sent it back. I pled with my customer support representative, "Could you please have someone plug in the monitor and turn it on before you ship it to me?" It took two months to get a working monitor. I wrote a graphic, vitriolic memo detailing my experiences for all the managers. As far as I know, they're still buying from that company.
The company never threw anything away. I mean never. After all, they could be used for backup systems someday. I was always embarassed having to say, "Well, I'll get your Pentium 2-450 with Win95 replaced. In the meantime, you can use this 386 with DOS. Heck, you don't really need a GUI. Or a CD-ROM. Or a 3.5" floppy drive."
Anyway, my point is: computer companies might just be responding to market pressure. Component quality won't improve unless businesses (not individuals) demand it.
In the book, Princess Irulan does not meet Paul until the end of the book. Bringing her in with the Saurdaukar for the dinner party is an interesting move; it sets up a different dynamic, since he will actually know something about [her (spoiler snipped)]. Not necessarily a bad change, depending on how it is played out.
I was very put off by the early introduction of Irulan at first, but the longer I thought about it, the more it made sense. After all, in the book, we're introduced to Irulan very early, as sort of a semi-narrator. Irulan is established as a major character, despite the fact that she doesn't really appear in the narrative until near the end. Even though Irulan's scene last night took liberties with the book, I thought that it was an effective way to convey her importance. (Or at least, I don't know of a better way to do it. I'd hate to have her introduce each scene with some kind of monologue.)
That said, I still thought last night's adaptation was fairly weak. (I also caught myself referring to Gurney as "Picard" several times, but that's an unrelated problem.)
Have a look at Visicheck and see what your site looks like to those with (among other things) red/green colour deficit.
This sounded like a really neat service, so I went there immediately to check my own website. When the results came back, I saw stark black text on a plain white background.
That's when I remembered that I don't keep any color information in my HTML pages themselves. I keep it locked away nice and tidy in a CSS file on my server. I guess Vischeck doesn't read style sheets.
Oh well. Now I'm going to have to find a colorblind person and pay him to describe my own website to me.
What I still don't understand is, *what* is RGB if it is not a subset of CMYK?
RGB is a color model based on the interaction of light. It is well-suited to, say, computer monitors.
CYMK is a color model based on the interaction of inks. It is well-suited to, say, prints.
The color spaces of the two models are such that neither one is a subset of the other. In other words, it is possible to describe a color in RGB that is impossible to describe in CYMK, and vice versa.
Slashdot Mirror
You've seen idle tellers? OMG! What did they look like? Where can I see one?
Correct, but let me elaborate on your answer.
Most people think that the Theory of Evolution implies that organisms have been in a constant state of flux - slowly but steadily changing over the eons. (This is what Darwin himself believed.) However, the fossil record indicates that this belief is flawed.
Through forces not well understood (at least, I don't understand), the climate of the earth periodically changes. Mean temperatures rise and fall, the composition of the atmosphere changes, etc. What's more, these canges occur very suddenly, in geological terms.
The fossil record seems to indicate that species trudge along happily for thousands/millions of years, and then *BAM* suddenly evolve. These evolutionary spurts typically coincide with a climactic change or other similarly catastrophic event. So essentially, evolution works like this:
Anyone who's done any work in evolutionary programming (sometimes referred to as genetic programming) can testify to this. (Evolutionary programming for the layperson is: (1) choosing a bunch of "random" solutions to a problem, (2) grading these solutions as to how well the solve the problem, (3) discarding the poor solutions, and (4) creating new solutions by combining and mutating the last batch.) The initial bunch of random solutions improves in quality very quickly. However, a point is eventually reached where any change is likely to result in a lower-quality solution. (Much to my own consternation, this is typically just before the optimal solution is actually reached.)
So the fossil record and my own programming experience seem to agree.
Oh, and just for full disclosure: I am in fact a Christian.
Boy, that's not a name I like to see come up in theological discussions, but what the hey.
I'd love to, but I'd have a difficult time coming up with something better than John Donne.
Web searches will come up with the complete text, for those who are interested.
I don't ever remember hearing that claim, but I'll take a stab* at it.
Immunization.
(Granted, it sort of depends on how you define "technology".)
A couple of days ago, I had to go to the emergency room after attempting to prepare dinner myself. As the nurse was sticking a needle in my arm, all I could think of was, "Boy, I sure am glad I'm not going to die of tetanus." I'm also glad I'm not going to die of influenza, measles, etc. like so many of my ancestors.
* This is a pun. You have to read the whole post to get it, though.
<OT intensity=waaaaay>
This is a condition known as "sleep paralysis", of which I have been a chronic sufferer since childhood. (I was sort of slow as a child, and I just assumed it happened to everyone. By the time I figured out otherwise, I had learned to live with it.) It's not well understood, although it seems to have a link to narcolepsy, for some reason.
There's not much information (that I know of) out there on sleep paralysis, although you can look it up in the DSM-IV. From my own experiences, I can tell you that it happens only during the transition state from sleep into wakefulness (or vice versa), and that high levels of stress seem to correlate to it. At my last job, it happened nearly every morning. I quit 9 months ago, and it's only happened a half-dozen times.
(I've also developed a Bene Gesserit-like ability to force myself awake at times through muscle exercises, but that's neither here nor there.)
</OT>
<OT intensity=very>
Max Schreck was the original Nosferatu.
</OT>
Are you honestly asking me to pity you for being thin? Is that what you're asking? Oh, you poor, poor baby!
"I just eat and eat and eat, and I can't gain any weight. Woe is me."
"My Porsche and my new Ferarri can't both fit in my garage at the same time. I'll have to park one in the driveway. The horror!"
"So many attractive people want to have sex with me, I can't make up my mind. Pity me!"
Bite me, twig-boy.
At a job I held for several years, my official title was "The Computer Guy". I don't know about pompousness, but it was really pretty accurate.
Very true. However, electronic texts have one very distinct advantage, which has only been tangentially touched on:
Ease of transport.
I have a number of books on CD. (Most are reference books, although I have Project Gutenberg's archives on a pair of CDs, courtesy of Walnut Creek.) True, they're not as convenient as paper books, but they're terrific when I need to travel; much lighter and more compact than stacks of books.
Or, for a more common example: I am a Perl programmer, and therefore lazy. Occasionally I need to refresh my memory on some syntax issue.* I could walk across the room, pick my copy of Programming Perl out of the bookcase, flip to the index, flip to the correct section, and read. However, it's much easier for me to grab my Perl CD Bookshelf, click, click, click, done. Same for Design Patterns.
Other posters in this story have mentioned PDAs much more skillfully than I can, so I won't go there.
* Amazingly, despite Perl's clean and elegant syntax, I still need to look up the meaning of simple expressions like "$[=$.".
Hold it upside-down and shake vigorously.
If there's a Big Bang and no one is around to hear it, does it truly make a sound?
That's an interesting question. I'd like to see Slashdot do a second interview with the band. How about it, guys?
Hmm... bottled bear. I could have used some of that at my last review. Can I get it in 6-packs?
Naw, Mi-Go, man, Mi-Go. The Fungi from Yoggoth.
Let me add one thing. Legislators tend to put a lot more stock in written mail than email. (I think this has been said before on /.) By all means, write your representative. But I would encourage you to use snail mail if possible.
Perhaps he means that programmers punch code the same way that cowboys punch cattle. Hmm... I kinda dig that imagery. "Sherrif! Black Bart's causing memory leaks up and down Main Street!" "Hand me my smart pointers, boy."
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go wrangle some ADO objects.
Of course, there is historical precedent for such a solution. As I recall, the users of the old Incompatible Timesharing System had problems with some of the newer hackers trying to crash the system, as sort of a coming-of-age ritual. The authors of ITS added an explicit kill command, so that any user could crash the system at any time, simply by typing "KILL" at a command prompt. Suddenly, there were no more attempts to crash the system.
It has been alleged by certain people (most notably Lloyd Kaufmann, head of Troma Studios) that the MPAA doles out ratings in an incredibly biased manner, from studio to studio. (I don't have any evidence to back this up, since I'm at work right now. When I get home tonight, I'll try to post something a little more relevant.) So I wouldn't accept your statement as canon, yet.
A lot of people don't seem to like them, but I own a Sony Mavica. It stores the pictures in JPEG format on a 3.5" floppy disk, and I can view them on any computer than happens to be handy. Well, except for iMacs.
I've always insisted on high-reliability computer components for my own personal stuff. However, at a former job (names deleted to protect the innocent), reliability was second to cost. A distant second.
As the (entire) IS staff for the company, I butted heads several times with the company president and his insistence on buying cheap (in both price and quality) components. The hardware philosophy of the company was essentially "Buy cheap. If it breaks, have it fixed while using a backup system." As the person who returned the faulty components to the store, set up the backup systems, called customer support, etc., this was a real pain in the neck.
Some anecdotes:
Anyway, my point is: computer companies might just be responding to market pressure. Component quality won't improve unless businesses (not individuals) demand it.
I think they mean original as in "we made this", as opposed to, say, "we bought the syndication rights to this".
I was very put off by the early introduction of Irulan at first, but the longer I thought about it, the more it made sense. After all, in the book, we're introduced to Irulan very early, as sort of a semi-narrator. Irulan is established as a major character, despite the fact that she doesn't really appear in the narrative until near the end. Even though Irulan's scene last night took liberties with the book, I thought that it was an effective way to convey her importance. (Or at least, I don't know of a better way to do it. I'd hate to have her introduce each scene with some kind of monologue.)
That said, I still thought last night's adaptation was fairly weak. (I also caught myself referring to Gurney as "Picard" several times, but that's an unrelated problem.)
This sounded like a really neat service, so I went there immediately to check my own website. When the results came back, I saw stark black text on a plain white background.
That's when I remembered that I don't keep any color information in my HTML pages themselves. I keep it locked away nice and tidy in a CSS file on my server. I guess Vischeck doesn't read style sheets.
Oh well. Now I'm going to have to find a colorblind person and pay him to describe my own website to me.
Helpful? Yes? No?
Not to pick nits, but 'twas Bedivere. Percival was played by the very aptly named Sir Not-Appering-In-This-Film.