What makes more sense: spending millions (billions?) of dollars on kicking off a space program for no real reason other than peer pressure, or spending those same millions (billions?) on feeding the starving population of your damn country?
Well, if you ask me (and you did, sort of), it makes at least as much sense if not more to kick off the space program.
Seriously, think about it. Say they spend a billion dollars on feeding their already too many people. They will continue to reproduce like little bunnies as they already are. This will mean next year they will have even less to spend on anything else. So it makes no sense to artificially inflate their population even farther above what they can support.
So if all these dumb ass "feed the hungry" groups actually gave a shit about the well-being of the people there they would let them die off until the population stabilized at a point that was actually maintainable.
They are already starving. That is a sign to anyone with any sense: there are too many people there. Also, they chose to be in the situation they are in. The only people with any right to complain about those conditions are those who have chosen not to have children. Everyone else is the cause of the problem. ---CONFLICT!!---
He's not dumb, but you apparently are. A PII in a laptop is a cheesy little toy compared to a PII in a desktop. A G3 in a laptop is the same exact processor as the one in the desktops. So a 233 G3 powerbook is much faster than a 400 PII laptop. It also has about twice the battery life. ---CONFLICT!!---
This is something the memory producers have worked to bring about to actually make real profits on memory for the first time in more than a decade.
Ummm..... dude.... Ram is about the highest marked up piece of equipment you can put in a computer. I did computer sales a few years ago, and the markup we could look at (which was less than the actual markup) was like 800%.
This is a little different just because of the way our society is. People, in general, see themselves as being better than anything else on the planet. This depends completely on your definition of "good" to which better is relative.
In this case morality does enter into it since according to society-as-a-whole's morals killing people is not just wrong, but illegal.
Personally I'll agree with this one but subject to my definition of "human". Rapists, child molestors, and anyone threatening me aren't covered by my definition ---CONFLICT!!---
You can always pack multiple return values (or multiple arguments) in a tuple (struct, record, whatever you want to call it)
Sure, and you can do this with a mathematical function as well. Your m-tuple function value is still one unique value in m-dimensional space.
Your second paragraph is really interesting. I wasn't aware of the distinction between languages that are or aren't referentialy transparent. Could you give an example of a few that are and aren't? Also, how does that work if you know? ---CONFLICT!!---
I'm a little confused by the term "moral vegetarian".
The term sounds like it should mean that you find it morally wrong to eat animals. This makes no sense.
So if I revise this to mean that you feel it is morally wrong to kill to feed yourself, then that makes you a hypocrite.
Plants are just as alive as animals, they feel pain, respond to their environment etc.etc.
Morally there is no difference between killing a plant and an animal. The only difference is that animals have those big brown eyes to look into. You can be morally opposed to killing to survive, in which case you will starve to death. Rationalizing which living things it is and is not ok to kill based on some arbitrary factor is hideously immoral.
Given this I suppose you must have another meaning for the phrase which is much less intuitive. Could you please clarify your meaning? ---CONFLICT!!---
In fact, it is confusing, since "function" in programming is very different from "function" in mathematics.
As I progressed in math and programming it struck me as the opposite. A function in programming is almost exactly the same as in math.
A p-function takes some number of parameters each of which are of a certain data type. A m-function takes a number of variables each from some given space. The cartesian product of these spaces is your domain. So you would have, for example, a function of 2 integers and a real number. Your domain would be ZxZxR. This translates perfectly between programming and math.
A function in math can only return one value. This is similar to but not exactly like in programming. In programming ( the languages I'm familiar with anyway) you can return at most one value but you need not return anything.
So a programming function is basically the same as a mathematical function. ---CONFLICT!!---
For what it's worth, I'd also like to remind you that it's entirely possible for moderately intelligent, well-informed members of the public to support Microsoft.
I disagree with this statement. Certainly it is possible for moderately intelligent or even very intelligent people to support microsoft. I don't think it is possible to truly be well informed about them and still support them.
Well, actually I can see one situation. If you own their stock, obviously your net worth depends on them. This makes you non-objective about the issue. My personal morals won't allow me to profit from the types of actions microsoft is famous for.
The fact that they falsified evidence in a court of law would force me to divest myself of all association with the company assuming I had any. Nearly everything they have produced is released years after some other company already had it out. I say nearly in the interest of fairness although I cannot personally come up with a counter-example. Yet they keep spouting about their innovation. They also talk about how much they have added to productivity and the like. But take their figures (made up though they are) and subtract the cost associated with the various viruses, worms, and trojans which they made possible through a complete disregard for common sense in security matters (also made up this time by the victims) and most likely they have ended up costing us far more than they have helped.
Actually this does show one innovation. For about as long as email has been around there have been false virus alerts floating around warning of a virus that could infect your computer just from reading an email. This was one of the lamest hoaxes going around since anyone who was at all informed about computers knew that this was impossible. Microsoft apparently thought that this was what people wanted and so decided to one up it by making it possible to be infected merely from previewing an email.
Their technical decisions are based on destroying interoperability which is critical in the internet world. Their lack of innovation and destruction of innovative companies threatens to stagnate the industry.
This is the conclusion that being well informed forces upon you. You apparently are more concerned with your short term profits than with any choice being available to me. I can't say I think much of you for your choices since it is thoughtless attitudes like this which are making America, and to some extent the world, less free day by day. ---CONFLICT!!---
This is direct evidence against the existence of a god that is both omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving.
Well, he could be omnipotent, omniscient, or both, but there is no way he could be all-loving.
However you said "both" and listed 3 characteristics. This is an error, albeit a small one. Now since god is perfect and you are created in his image, you can't make errors. You will please note that we have reached a contradiction. Therefore God is not perfect either. QED;-)
Nice well thought out argument. You did use a bad example at one point, though:
Imagine if Einstein had had to pay the heirs of Newton in order to do research related to gravity. Einstein would have remained a patent clerk and physics would have stagnated. Information is most valuable when everyone can use it to generate more information.
In this case, since Einstein worked for the patent office he could have managed to push through his own patent regardless of the prior art. Alternatively he could have "lost" Newton's patent paperwork (no computer back ups back then) or merely worked with his associates to have his ideas considered "different enough". ---CONFLICT!!---
So does that mean I can rip all the copyright and registration info out of Maelstrom and distribute it as long as I replace the color sprites with grey-scale and downgrade the sound files? ---CONFLICT!!---
I can't remember the name of the version I instsalled (if you're interested I'll find it when I get home), but I got the international version of PGP and it works with just about everything on my system. Eudora, BBEdit, Simple Text, and many more. There's a permanent icon menu for it in the menu bar too. Pretty sweet.
You may think so, but there's no way you could ever patent that one. There's so much prior art on that one that even the patent office couldn't mess that one up. ---CONFLICT!!---
I just finished Pastwatch as well. It was good, but I don't think you finished it if you're looking for more. Kind of tough to have more pastwatching going on. ---CONFLICT!!---
Most trolls are just complete idiots, but I'll agree that some of them are funny.
However, OOG is not a troll. If you had ever bothered to read his posts you would realize that he posts on topic. While not always insightful his posts are generally interesting and since he doesn't post that often I would assume that he mainly posts when he knows something about the subject.
Just because he came up with an original style doesn't make him a troll.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes more sense: spending millions (billions?) of dollars on kicking off a space program for no real reason other than peer pressure, or spending those same millions (billions?) on feeding the starving population of your damn country?
Well, if you ask me (and you did, sort of), it makes at least as much sense if not more to kick off the space program.
Seriously, think about it. Say they spend a billion dollars on feeding their already too many people. They will continue to reproduce like little bunnies as they already are. This will mean next year they will have even less to spend on anything else. So it makes no sense to artificially inflate their population even farther above what they can support.
So if all these dumb ass "feed the hungry" groups actually gave a shit about the well-being of the people there they would let them die off until the population stabilized at a point that was actually maintainable.
They are already starving. That is a sign to anyone with any sense: there are too many people there. Also, they chose to be in the situation they are in. The only people with any right to complain about those conditions are those who have chosen not to have children. Everyone else is the cause of the problem.
---CONFLICT!!---
He's not dumb, but you apparently are.
A PII in a laptop is a cheesy little toy compared to a PII in a desktop. A G3 in a laptop is the same exact processor as the one in the desktops.
So a 233 G3 powerbook is much faster than a 400 PII laptop. It also has about twice the battery life.
---CONFLICT!!---
- on topic
- appreciated
- not wasting people's time
Besides, they need more new material---CONFLICT!!---
check out Macosrumors to see that Apple is being hit just as bad since their main source for DDR is Hitachi
---CONFLICT!!---
This is something the memory producers have worked to bring about to actually make real profits on memory for the first time in more than a decade.
Ummm..... dude.... Ram is about the highest marked up piece of equipment you can put in a computer.
I did computer sales a few years ago, and the markup we could look at (which was less than the actual markup) was like 800%.
---CONFLICT!!---
more user friendly == easier cracking (generally).
Not really. Mac's are by far the most user friendly, but the least crackable systems.
---CONFLICT!!---
This is a little different just because of the way our society is. People, in general, see themselves as being better than anything else on the planet.
This depends completely on your definition of "good" to which better is relative.
In this case morality does enter into it since according to society-as-a-whole's morals killing people is not just wrong, but illegal.
Personally I'll agree with this one but subject to my definition of "human".
Rapists, child molestors, and anyone threatening me aren't covered by my definition
---CONFLICT!!---
You can always pack multiple return values (or multiple arguments) in a tuple (struct, record, whatever you want to call it)
Sure, and you can do this with a mathematical function as well. Your m-tuple function value is still one unique value in m-dimensional space.
Your second paragraph is really interesting. I wasn't aware of the distinction between languages that are or aren't referentialy transparent.
Could you give an example of a few that are and aren't? Also, how does that work if you know?
---CONFLICT!!---
Their idiots anyway
ROFLMAO!
You're killing me with this. Seriously, my stomach hurts. Stop it please.
---CONFLICT!!---
I'm a little confused by the term "moral vegetarian".
The term sounds like it should mean that you find it morally wrong to eat animals. This makes no sense.
So if I revise this to mean that you feel it is morally wrong to kill to feed yourself, then that makes you a hypocrite.
Plants are just as alive as animals, they feel pain, respond to their environment etc.etc.
Morally there is no difference between killing a plant and an animal. The only difference is that animals have those big brown eyes to look into.
You can be morally opposed to killing to survive, in which case you will starve to death. Rationalizing which living things it is and is not ok to kill based on some arbitrary factor is hideously immoral.
Given this I suppose you must have another meaning for the phrase which is much less intuitive. Could you please clarify your meaning?
---CONFLICT!!---
In fact, it is confusing, since "function" in programming is very different from "function" in mathematics.
As I progressed in math and programming it struck me as the opposite. A function in programming is almost exactly the same as in math.
A p-function takes some number of parameters each of which are of a certain data type.
A m-function takes a number of variables each from some given space.
The cartesian product of these spaces is your domain. So you would have, for example, a function of 2 integers and a real number. Your domain would be ZxZxR. This translates perfectly between programming and math.
A function in math can only return one value.
This is similar to but not exactly like in programming. In programming ( the languages I'm familiar with anyway) you can return at most one value but you need not return anything.
So a programming function is basically the same as a mathematical function.
---CONFLICT!!---
For what it's worth, I'd also like to remind you that it's entirely possible for moderately intelligent, well-informed members of the public to support Microsoft.
I disagree with this statement. Certainly it is possible for moderately intelligent or even very intelligent people to support microsoft. I don't think it is possible to truly be well informed about them and still support them.
Well, actually I can see one situation. If you own their stock, obviously your net worth depends on them. This makes you non-objective about the issue. My personal morals won't allow me to profit from the types of actions microsoft is famous for.
The fact that they falsified evidence in a court of law would force me to divest myself of all association with the company assuming I had any. Nearly everything they have produced is released years after some other company already had it out. I say nearly in the interest of fairness although I cannot personally come up with a counter-example. Yet they keep spouting about their innovation. They also talk about how much they have added to productivity and the like. But take their figures (made up though they are) and subtract the cost associated with the various viruses, worms, and trojans which they made possible through a complete disregard for common sense in security matters (also made up this time by the victims) and most likely they have ended up costing us far more than they have helped.
Actually this does show one innovation. For about as long as email has been around there have been false virus alerts floating around warning of a virus that could infect your computer just from reading an email. This was one of the lamest hoaxes going around since anyone who was at all informed about computers knew that this was impossible. Microsoft apparently thought that this was what people wanted and so decided to one up it by making it possible to be infected merely from previewing an email.
Their technical decisions are based on destroying interoperability which is critical in the internet world. Their lack of innovation and destruction of innovative companies threatens to stagnate the industry.
This is the conclusion that being well informed forces upon you. You apparently are more concerned with your short term profits than with any choice being available to me. I can't say I think much of you for your choices since it is thoughtless attitudes like this which are making America, and to some extent the world, less free day by day.
---CONFLICT!!---
This is direct evidence against the existence of a god that is both omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving.
;-)
Well, he could be omnipotent, omniscient, or both, but there is no way he could be all-loving.
However you said "both" and listed 3 characteristics. This is an error, albeit a small one. Now since god is perfect and you are created in his image, you can't make errors.
You will please note that we have reached a contradiction.
Therefore God is not perfect either.
QED
---CONFLICT!!---
Nice well thought out argument.
You did use a bad example at one point, though:
Imagine if Einstein had had to pay the heirs of Newton in order to do research related to gravity. Einstein would have remained a patent clerk and physics would have stagnated. Information is most valuable when everyone can use it to generate more information.
In this case, since Einstein worked for the patent office he could have managed to push through his own patent regardless of the prior art. Alternatively he could have "lost" Newton's patent paperwork (no computer back ups back then) or merely worked with his associates to have his ideas considered "different enough".
---CONFLICT!!---
>>>I had to throw something together fast that would make it past the lameness filter.
You had to, huh?
This is as opposed to noting that it's called a lameness filter because what you are doing is LAME and not doing it.
>>>Wow, nice bigotry.
Anyone as lame as you has no place to complain about anything anyone else chooses to say about you.
---CONFLICT!!---
So does that mean I can rip all the copyright and registration info out of Maelstrom and distribute it as long as I replace the color sprites with grey-scale and downgrade the sound files?
---CONFLICT!!---
I generally try to speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences. ;-)
---CONFLICT!!---
>>(What do you think the /. preview button is for!?!)
;-)
I think it's mostly something to be used in the abstract. e.g. If I had previewed maybe I would have remembered to close my italic tag.
(of course the sad part here is that I previewed to make sure that this "feature" hadn't been fixed
---CONFLICT!!---
Look folks,
I'm on page 3 and the article is really getting interesting but it's really slowing down when I try to go on.
Could you please hold off until I finish reading it?
Thanks very much,
Darby
---CONFLICT!!---
Right on.
They're putting their money where their mouth is.
All in all, I think they're making the transition from free (beer) software company to for profit company with their integrity intact.
---CONFLICT!!---
I can't remember the name of the version I instsalled (if you're interested I'll find it when I get home), but I got the international version of PGP and it works with just about everything on my system.
Eudora, BBEdit, Simple Text, and many more.
There's a permanent icon menu for it in the menu bar too. Pretty sweet.
---CONFLICT!!---
>> timely and complete access to the parts of the Windows operating system code used by independent software companies.
Yes, it's intended to sound like that, but they left out the part about the parts which only microsoft uses.
---CONFLICT!!---
>>Me thinks so.
You may think so, but there's no way you could ever patent that one. There's so much prior art on that one that even the patent office couldn't mess that one up.
---CONFLICT!!---
I just finished Pastwatch as well.
It was good, but I don't think you finished it if you're looking for more. Kind of tough to have more pastwatching going on.
---CONFLICT!!---
Most trolls are just complete idiots, but I'll agree that some of them are funny.
However, OOG is not a troll. If you had ever bothered to read his posts you would realize that he posts on topic. While not always insightful his posts are generally interesting and since he doesn't post that often I would assume that he mainly posts when he knows something about the subject.
Just because he came up with an original style doesn't make him a troll.
---CONFLICT!!---