That's because in that case, "a beer" is not purely a liquid, but a unit of a certain amount of this liquid beer contained in a bottle or glass etc, which you are asking for two of. It's shortened purely to save time getting the orders in:-)
"this is more akin to a car pulling into a different brands factory and modifying the equipment there to reproduce more of itself instead of the competing model"
No it's not, it's more akin to a car being seen in the driveway of a car factory, and the factory workers getting distracted by looking at that car whilst they're meant to be making another car, and so instead building parts for the car on the driveway instead of the car they're meant to be.
"As said, it's a gray area, and there is no simple, definitive way to prove whether it is alive or not"
No it's not, it's incredibly simple.
"Certainly, viruses are a bit too compicated to write off as simply a bunch of chemicals"
No they're not, they're so incredibly simple it's amazing. They can exist as only a handful of different types of molecules. Take a look at the HIV virus makeup. That's a TINY number of atoms in one of those compared to anything one would call alive. What's complicated is everything that exists in the host cell that facilitates the copying of the viruse. What's complicated about that?
It's not a difficult concept. Viruses get copied in cells, like a document in a photocopier. The document isn't reproducing, it is being reproduced by the photocopier. In the same way, a virus doesn't reproduce, it gets reproduced by the copying mechanism within the host cell.\
Viruses. Virii would imply the latin word, which described a liquid like substance. As we know, liquid has quantity, not quantities, therefore is not pluralised (eg, four pints of water, or four water pints. We see the quantity is pluralised, not the substance).
Understanding what viruses actually are came a long time after latin became a dead language, and so the pluralisation occured in our modern languages, while the pluralisation in latin continues to make no sense.
"it will definitely look like the only alive thing in it is the DNA"
DNA looks no more alive than a series of 1's and 0's on a floppy disk, and a virus "cell" as you call it is nothing more than the plastic case the floppy disk is contained in to protect it.
"Drawing the boundaries of life in our heads is so easy and will raise more questions than actual answers"
Only because you're stopping at asking questions and not answering them, even though the answers are all there. Is a molecule alive? No, but it can be a building block to life.
Is our planet alive? So far, no. If we could split our planet in two, and say, start collecting asteroid materials, until each split is large enough to also be able to split in two, then we could say yes, our planet is alive, and we are the equivalent of the enzymes that exist in us that are responsible for our being able to reproduce. What's more likely is that our planets topping is alive, can grow, spread to other planets etc, as that's much easier than dividing the actual planet.
"What's worse is that the exercise of drawing that line adds nothing to our knowledge"
There is a difference between defining, inventing, and describing, yes. Producing a description of something you know, correct, gives you no extra knowledge. But passing a description along to something/someone that can understand it does, as is the purpose of a description. I am neither creating or defining life by describing something as being alive, I am not giving it life by giving it the description of life, I am not creating information, it is merely for the purpose of communication. How important is communication? Well you tell me, you're reading this. Is transference of information pointless? Can it be done without the pointless exercise of drawing lines as to what words mean? Yes? Mostly? Sometimes? Hardly? No? Where's the line on that answer?
"it's easy enough to imagine a more complex life form which might depend on their host for reproduction in some way"
Yep, through metabolism for example.
"Complexity is more the thing"
What's doing the copying is more the thing. Humans require feeding from a host (eg, eating other animals/plants, drinking alcohol) to reproduce (try f**king, carrying a child and giving birth without eating... this is slashdot, most of you will fail at the first step). Just because the process requires fueling, doesn't mean it's the fuel that carries out the process. Food doesn't make babies. People make babies out of food.
"That's not too far off from how a virus reproduces"
Yes it is. A virus is like a bad analogy, it's just a piece of information represented in some form, like a car, or the blueprints for a car. If you have the correct machinery, and the a full detailed description, you can make a copy of that car, or if you have someone willing to listen, you can spread a bad analogy. But the car didn't reproduce, neither did the analogy. They were reproduced. Needing petrol to run on, or a mind to exist in, doesn't make it alive.
Viruses can be preproduced... just like a document can be preproduced by sticking it in a photocopier along with toner and paper. But there is a difference between being reproduced and reproducing.
"I think that those things ought to be priorities above desktop-friendliness"
They are... to some people, and in some operating systems... other people have other priorities, and so will choose operating systems designed with similar priorities. I have a different set of priorities for my laptop as I do my NAT/firewall/media machine... so guess what... they run different operating systems.
Also... the X protocol... efficient?!! Sure there are cases where it can be, but there's a bit fat many cases where it's far far from it. How many context switches does it take for an application to just draw a line in X? While modern extensions are finding their way into the codebase to allow more efficient drawing to the screen, that which "has been around since the 70s" by no means fits the description of efficient. But that's not what it was meant for, network transparency was the higher priority there.
Other OS's could do what Win98 could do, far more efficiently and securely? And I suppose user-friendliey and fully-featurey? And you list 98 as an example? Remebering of course that back pre-Y2K, Apple hadn't even released an operating system with protected memory or full preemptive multitasking, features windows had had for quite some time? Linux installation (both system and application) was hardly as friendly as it can be now or provide much of a common interface to the end user (with command line often required for much system configuration, with a host of applications written using a host of different widget libraries that interoperated at a very hit-or-miss level)...
Don't make out that other operating systems have had everything windows has had for as long as windows has, because different OS's have won different races at different times in different areas of the technology, you're blatantly biased. One of my Linux workloads at the moment keeps hitting temporary deadlocks where multiple cores are sitting around doing next to nothing waiting for internal kernel/FS locks to release and allow the system to continue running, causing massive IO stavation and everything to grind to a halt, a problem I do not experience with Solaris or Windows kernels. Linux is still not even completely rid of its BLK. Windows doesn't have one of those! So why am I using Linux at all? Because it has plenty of other advantages, and I know the developers are working on the locking issues.
"MS doesn't put their product in schools, not that I've seen"
School I went to, as I was leaving, got involved in some MS funding project that saw a big injection of Windows machines (where previously using BBC Micros and a bunch of machines running Risc OS)... maybe it doesn't happen much and it's just that it happened very close to home, but it definitely happens (this would've been mid-late 90's)
Or something that converts the LASER beam to electricity and use it to power your [whatever they wanna shoot]. Then, leak that you're something dangerous that needs destroying, light yourself up as a target, and then use them trying to shoot you out of the sky to power your mission! yay!
"If I have to be connected to the internet in order to use the MS Office functionality... no thanks"
Not me! I often use Google Docs, sure functionality is pretty low compared to desktop word processors, it's a little clunky, but ability to share documents with just a link is invaluable.
I'm so not old just because I know what you're talking about without having to ask my parents! I'm a whippersnapper! What do you mean "that word's so last century, grandad"?
OS's are hardly just OS's anymore tho are they? They provide many services to the software and to the users in the form of a common interface. As the number of things done with a computer increases, the benefit of having common interfaces that cover those things increases also. Games don't need to include their own graphics cards drivers anymore as many used to (eg those for voodoo cards), a lot of networking code that used to be in the software is now in the operating system allowing much more software the ability to use it etc etc. They provide millions of ways to ask a user if they're sure, but never if they have any regrets... and loads of useless stuff too!
Slashdot Mirror
"So now explain what you mean by "preproduce""
Awww, can your brain really not figure out what I obviously meant there? Feel sorry for ya dude.
Only to the unknowledgeable ;-)
That's because in that case, "a beer" is not purely a liquid, but a unit of a certain amount of this liquid beer contained in a bottle or glass etc, which you are asking for two of. It's shortened purely to save time getting the orders in :-)
"this is more akin to a car pulling into a different brands factory and modifying the equipment there to reproduce more of itself instead of the competing model"
No it's not, it's more akin to a car being seen in the driveway of a car factory, and the factory workers getting distracted by looking at that car whilst they're meant to be making another car, and so instead building parts for the car on the driveway instead of the car they're meant to be.
"As said, it's a gray area, and there is no simple, definitive way to prove whether it is alive or not"
No it's not, it's incredibly simple.
"Certainly, viruses are a bit too compicated to write off as simply a bunch of chemicals"
No they're not, they're so incredibly simple it's amazing. They can exist as only a handful of different types of molecules. Take a look at the HIV virus makeup. That's a TINY number of atoms in one of those compared to anything one would call alive. What's complicated is everything that exists in the host cell that facilitates the copying of the viruse. What's complicated about that?
It's not a difficult concept. Viruses get copied in cells, like a document in a photocopier. The document isn't reproducing, it is being reproduced by the photocopier. In the same way, a virus doesn't reproduce, it gets reproduced by the copying mechanism within the host cell.\
virii
Viruses. Virii would imply the latin word, which described a liquid like substance. As we know, liquid has quantity, not quantities, therefore is not pluralised (eg, four pints of water, or four water pints. We see the quantity is pluralised, not the substance).
Understanding what viruses actually are came a long time after latin became a dead language, and so the pluralisation occured in our modern languages, while the pluralisation in latin continues to make no sense.
"it will definitely look like the only alive thing in it is the DNA"
DNA looks no more alive than a series of 1's and 0's on a floppy disk, and a virus "cell" as you call it is nothing more than the plastic case the floppy disk is contained in to protect it.
"Drawing the boundaries of life in our heads is so easy and will raise more questions than actual answers"
Only because you're stopping at asking questions and not answering them, even though the answers are all there. Is a molecule alive? No, but it can be a building block to life.
Is our planet alive? So far, no. If we could split our planet in two, and say, start collecting asteroid materials, until each split is large enough to also be able to split in two, then we could say yes, our planet is alive, and we are the equivalent of the enzymes that exist in us that are responsible for our being able to reproduce. What's more likely is that our planets topping is alive, can grow, spread to other planets etc, as that's much easier than dividing the actual planet.
So where's the unanswered questions?
"What's worse is that the exercise of drawing that line adds nothing to our knowledge"
There is a difference between defining, inventing, and describing, yes. Producing a description of something you know, correct, gives you no extra knowledge. But passing a description along to something/someone that can understand it does, as is the purpose of a description. I am neither creating or defining life by describing something as being alive, I am not giving it life by giving it the description of life, I am not creating information, it is merely for the purpose of communication. How important is communication? Well you tell me, you're reading this. Is transference of information pointless? Can it be done without the pointless exercise of drawing lines as to what words mean? Yes? Mostly? Sometimes? Hardly? No? Where's the line on that answer?
I rock.
But usually only when I think back to my childhood.
"it's easy enough to imagine a more complex life form which might depend on their host for reproduction in some way"
Yep, through metabolism for example.
"Complexity is more the thing"
What's doing the copying is more the thing. Humans require feeding from a host (eg, eating other animals/plants, drinking alcohol) to reproduce (try f**king, carrying a child and giving birth without eating... this is slashdot, most of you will fail at the first step). Just because the process requires fueling, doesn't mean it's the fuel that carries out the process. Food doesn't make babies. People make babies out of food.
"That's not too far off from how a virus reproduces"
Yes it is. A virus is like a bad analogy, it's just a piece of information represented in some form, like a car, or the blueprints for a car. If you have the correct machinery, and the a full detailed description, you can make a copy of that car, or if you have someone willing to listen, you can spread a bad analogy. But the car didn't reproduce, neither did the analogy. They were reproduced. Needing petrol to run on, or a mind to exist in, doesn't make it alive.
"But yeah, if a /man/ created self-reproducing life, that would definitely make it into the history books"
Nope, that happens every day. I've just done it in fact, in your sister, and I believe billions of other men have too :-p
Not if they don't believe in evolution.
the noise you make when a heavy concept lands on your toe, especially when your feet are cold.
"I'm pretty sure they can reproduce"
Viruses can be preproduced... just like a document can be preproduced by sticking it in a photocopier along with toner and paper. But there is a difference between being reproduced and reproducing.
"I think that those things ought to be priorities above desktop-friendliness"
They are... to some people, and in some operating systems... other people have other priorities, and so will choose operating systems designed with similar priorities. I have a different set of priorities for my laptop as I do my NAT/firewall/media machine... so guess what... they run different operating systems.
Also... the X protocol... efficient?!! Sure there are cases where it can be, but there's a bit fat many cases where it's far far from it. How many context switches does it take for an application to just draw a line in X? While modern extensions are finding their way into the codebase to allow more efficient drawing to the screen, that which "has been around since the 70s" by no means fits the description of efficient. But that's not what it was meant for, network transparency was the higher priority there.
Other OS's could do what Win98 could do, far more efficiently and securely? And I suppose user-friendliey and fully-featurey? And you list 98 as an example? Remebering of course that back pre-Y2K, Apple hadn't even released an operating system with protected memory or full preemptive multitasking, features windows had had for quite some time? Linux installation (both system and application) was hardly as friendly as it can be now or provide much of a common interface to the end user (with command line often required for much system configuration, with a host of applications written using a host of different widget libraries that interoperated at a very hit-or-miss level)...
Don't make out that other operating systems have had everything windows has had for as long as windows has, because different OS's have won different races at different times in different areas of the technology, you're blatantly biased. One of my Linux workloads at the moment keeps hitting temporary deadlocks where multiple cores are sitting around doing next to nothing waiting for internal kernel/FS locks to release and allow the system to continue running, causing massive IO stavation and everything to grind to a halt, a problem I do not experience with Solaris or Windows kernels. Linux is still not even completely rid of its BLK. Windows doesn't have one of those! So why am I using Linux at all? Because it has plenty of other advantages, and I know the developers are working on the locking issues.
So seriously, quit making stuff up.
"MS doesn't put their product in schools, not that I've seen"
School I went to, as I was leaving, got involved in some MS funding project that saw a big injection of Windows machines (where previously using BBC Micros and a bunch of machines running Risc OS)... maybe it doesn't happen much and it's just that it happened very close to home, but it definitely happens (this would've been mid-late 90's)
"would you focus it?"
Electromagnetically?
"you coat the missile in a nice insulator"
Or something that converts the LASER beam to electricity and use it to power your [whatever they wanna shoot]. Then, leak that you're something dangerous that needs destroying, light yourself up as a target, and then use them trying to shoot you out of the sky to power your mission! yay!
"I would run like hell!"
Gentle walking speed is plenty sufficient; the internet has no legs.
(insert Al Gore and 'tubes' jokes here)
"If I have to be connected to the internet in order to use the MS Office functionality... no thanks"
Not me! I often use Google Docs, sure functionality is pretty low compared to desktop word processors, it's a little clunky, but ability to share documents with just a link is invaluable.
Ironically my post got modded funnier than yours *lol*
I'm so not old just because I know what you're talking about without having to ask my parents! I'm a whippersnapper! What do you mean "that word's so last century, grandad"?
OS's are hardly just OS's anymore tho are they? They provide many services to the software and to the users in the form of a common interface. As the number of things done with a computer increases, the benefit of having common interfaces that cover those things increases also. Games don't need to include their own graphics cards drivers anymore as many used to (eg those for voodoo cards), a lot of networking code that used to be in the software is now in the operating system allowing much more software the ability to use it etc etc. They provide millions of ways to ask a user if they're sure, but never if they have any regrets... and loads of useless stuff too!