My clients websites register 80-90% IE users, if I turned around and said "well they should be using a more standards compliant browser", how long do you think I'd keep my job for???
In the real world, results are what's cared about, not politics.
Wow, cutting off the 'lol' at the end of my statement only shows you didn't understand the significance of it, as your response to it confirms.
But since you bought it up -
"falling asleep"
Good quality stuff tends to be more buzzy and will keep you awake, despite even attempts to sleep (note that regular smokers will often find it difficult to sleep if they stop smoking it, which leads to the impression that it helps you sleep. This is like the impression that smoking tobacco relieves stress, simply because nicotine withdrawal creates the feeling of stress).
"severely impeded reaction time"
If reaction time is the only thing that changes then yes, but as my post pointed out, the awareness of being in such a state usually means that drivers keep their speed lower and concentrate so much more on what's going on to compensate, that they're often safer than people who are just driving "normally", who can just as easily drift off into their own minds, not pay so much attention, and push their speed above road speed limits.
I've always found it easier to recognise when someone's stoned than coked up, but the thing is, when stoned, people tend to compensate and drive slower and put more attention into it, often to the extent that they're actually more careful, safer drivers while stoned, then while straight. But then the effects of green are somewhat different, the biggest danger is that you'd forget where you're going and end up somewhere else *lol*
"and most who use coke don't do it while drinking (it would be a waste)"
That's completely untrue. "When there is alcohol and cocaine present in the blood stream, as is usually the case, the two form an even more potent stimulant - cocaethylene, an ethyl homologue of cocaine" (see 1, 2)
"I feel the need to point out that perhaps I used the wrong term"
It appears so. I'd guess you don't believe in the path that evolution is said to have taken to get us to where we are now, eg, that we didn't evolve to become humans, but we were created as humans. But really, be careful saying things like "I don't believe in evolution" because that's like saying "I don't believe in gravity". Things do evolve, we know they do, we see it happen all the time. Right down to the micro level; bacteria evolves due to not copying its DNA perfectly when it grows and divides - the new bacteria is therefore slightly different to that which spawned it. If the change gives it an advantage, then it has a higher chance of surviving (this is called natural selection, which is the bit that Darwin proposes). On the larger scale, we have evolved the ability to metabolise ethanol, due to our use of fermentation in drink preparation/storage. In parts of the world where the boiling of water tended to be used instead in preparation, people haven't evolved to have this ability, and will do things like turn bright red should they consume even small amounts of alcohol (eg, a chunk of the chinese population).
If people want to believe that we were put here by god, that's their prerogative, but disputing that evolution occurs just cannot be done by anyone but by those most ignorant of facts.
Yes, CO2 levels have increased, and yes, so has the temperature of the planet, but showing that they are both happening does NOT show that one is the cause of the other (maybe A has caused B, maybe B has caused A, maybe C is causing A and B, or maybe A and B are totally unreleated).
Humans probably are contributing, I'm not disputing that (personally, I think pollution's pretty horrible and that's enough for me to do my best to minimise it, scientific data aside). We almost certainly should be doing a lot more about it than we are, and almost certainly will pay for not doing more. But, a lot of what's reported as scientific evidence is clearly nothing more than one interpretation of the data and so no, does not stand up in the scientific community, because there is a huge ignorance over the direction of cause, irrespective of whether it's likely to be true.
"without copyright law, microsoft could not maintain a monopoly"
I know! And damn those government granted arson laws that stop us from burning down their buildings. If it wasn't illegal to burn down their buildings just for the fun of it, they would never be able to maintain a monopoly. We're not even allowed to take their programmers families as hostages and demand that they give away free copies to everyone in return for their lives. Damn the government for giving protection specifically to microsoft, while it's perfectly legal to throw grenades at anyone else who tries to write an operating system.
So, not just me then who was confused by that mod *lol* perhaps he just missed hitting funny and hit flamebait by mistake? I also believe in world peace...:-)
Synesthesia - when input on one sense can trigger/insert memories of another sense. Most common is that sounds will generate colors or patterns. Common enough to bare in mind if one or two people saw it, but doubtfully a plausable explanation for more than that (I say nothing more than that as I've not studied accounts of people who were in the buildings at the time).
I didn't say 5cm would be enough to sink an island, dumbass. I simply explained how a small overall difference can be aplified to have larger differences in different places since you couldn't understand it, but I guess it wasn't quite as "simply" as it needed to be for you, so let's just call it "magic".
What the hell are you on? I'm talking about people working together as a team to establish a direction, I'm talking about not confusing people with choices between x options that's all the same to them (give me a media player that works, not a choice between 10 that mostly work). I'm talking about someone doing the difficult thing and making a decision, and then making that decision work. The kernel is one of the strongest parts of the system, because of the leadership of Linus et al, backed by a great team. They decide "no, we don't want to put this in", "yes we want to do this" against all sorts of arguments; but it works. It works because they make all the tough decisions, so that the end user doesn't have to. Sure, the decision's still there if you want it (you can still download and manually patch the kernel), but you don't/have/ to choose, you can just trust their choices, and that works pretty damn well.
"Come on, guys! He doesn't understand basic physics!!!"
I'd be careful shouting things like that before actually engaging your brain yourself; he's totally correct. Say the sea level rises an average of 5cm over 50 years. This means there's an extra 5cm of water at every location there's ocean/sea. Now, if you move a massive object over one side, say, the moon, that has enough gravity to pull a huge amount of water over to one side of the earth... well now that 5cm on the one side of the planet has moved and added onto the 5cm on the other side of the planet. With more water, there's more water for the moon to pull. So, on the side with the moon, the water has gone up by the original 5cm, and all the extra being pulled by the moon.
(this is why the word 'average' is used; it implies that it's higher in some places, and lower in others)
Okay, for a start: "More species are going extinct now than were wiped out by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs"
Saying "more species are going extinct now" in the same sentense as saying "the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs" proves that what you say cannot be trusted, because you're unable to determine chance and possibility from absolute. For you to be able to come out with a statemtent like that must mean that you either have some evidance that you're keeping from the rest of the world, or you've just decided that you have no room for doubt in your mind, and so ignore anything that doesn't back up your ideas. Not "whatever killed the dinosaurs", but "the asteroid that killed them"? You really want to hinge your entire statemtent being flawed and incorrect on an absolute claim of what killed the dinosaurs?
Okay, so maybe you realise that saying that saying that was pretty silly, but see what killed the dinosaurs as being irrelevant to the actual point - the rate of extention now compared to then. Well it doesn't work like that, you've already shown that you're willing to just let all evidance to alternative theories (such as the 'radiation from nearly star' theories from nasa et al) slide just to make your point, making you instantly not credible whenever you say anything with as much certainty.
So, that page you sent me to, that says that some biologists think that a mass extintion that could compete with the previous big one's may occur over the next 100 years. That's a lot of 'some/may/could's that you convenienty missed out of your statemtent. All figures to back it up are missing, except for this magical "50%" stat. But there's a few other important things here aren't there? For example, say 50% of species went extinct now, and we're only left with 50%. But translate that into an acount number, a count of species, is this more or less than the last extintion periods? If, for example, we've gained 200%, and then lost 50%, we're still above what it was at, and we'd appear to actually just be normalising. What's the estimated average age of species that are going extinct now compared to over the last mass extintion periods? What's the population count; are there less distinct species, but more in population? What's the estimated total amount of energy used and consumed by them (the energy consumption/use to population count ratio says something about evolution, height of food chain etc. More evolved animals may require more energy, and so fewer of them can exist than lesser evolved creatures).
So, there's a lot to think about, there's a lot to take into account, and your statement screams of ignorance in stepping over all of these issues, and just delivering what you believe should be the truth. It's not the way to convince people, or be taken seriously. Just makes ya sound like a hippy (sorry, don't mean to stoop so low, just saying how it can sound!). Evaluate it yourself, watch how you react when people speak in such a way to you, and how other people react when people do to them. If you wish to be convincing, it's an invaluable thing to look into. Otherwise, don't expect to be taken seriously, because you're showing to not be taking it seriously yourself.
"That's not the problem with anarchy. It's the point"
yes, but in context: this is the problem with anarchy when applied to software development. Lack of leadership means that efforts are spread more thinly, and you end up with 10 different packages all trying to do the same thing, but accomplishing different feature sets, so the user has to decide which one to use that best suits. But when people work together, behind a strong leader, they can stop duplicating efforts, and so accomplish a lot more.
While Santa was delivering presents, his famous book, which lists all the boys and girls as either being good or bad over the past year, was stolen. The book was protected with "Secure Present Flight" which should have kept it secure, but it is now believed that this information has fallen into the hands of advertising agencies, and the government, threatening privacy and personal freedom everywhere. This is the third theft of this kind just this month, all over the world people are asking "how safe is all this information being collected about me?", and all over the world they're finding the answer is a very certain "shhh!".
No. A decent system has to be easy to learn. What we're seeing far too much of is design of computer systems to be usable without any risk of the user learning anything. The result? People who can use a computer for a couple of years and still remain totally clueless.
What interfaces really need is 'discoverability', to drive a "I wonder what happens if I do..." level of curiosity that begins the learning process, rather than the damning "oo... are you sure you meant to do that? Seriously? Yes/No?" type messages that leave people with a subconscious (at the least) feeling of "I'm gonna break something" that quickly puts a cap on any further curiosity.
An interface shouldn't hold users at arms distance, it should suck them in, and establish a new language which best gets the job done, not provide one that's so lazy to use that your brain powers off leaving you unlikely to progress naturally.
Subliminal messages... detect a good enough graphics card to be able to flash political messages at a quick enough rate so they're not consciously spotted, and then let the reprogramming begin!
Don't be silly, I use each and every single one of the 30 calculators, 60 text file viewers, 40 email clients...
This is the problem with anarchy; everyone will tend towards choosing different things. Some leadership is required to say "we're going to concentrate here", so that resources are consolidated, and projects can really start moving forward at a much faster rate.
"What possible improvement of RSS would, in your opinion, justify the title 'invention'?"
Are you seriously asking him to invent an improvement for RSS on the spot, that would qualify as being patentable, and just announce it here? I'd have to say some kind of "really stupid question" filter would be great... maybe you can begin implementing it?
Slashdot Mirror
My clients websites register 80-90% IE users, if I turned around and said "well they should be using a more standards compliant browser", how long do you think I'd keep my job for???
In the real world, results are what's cared about, not politics.
Why did you disconnect my services, and what's this court order all about?
"You still haven't paid your bill, once you do, we will reconnect."
But I've already told you, I'm just waiting for my bank to support firefox!
(...and in the real world...)
Wow, cutting off the 'lol' at the end of my statement only shows you didn't understand the significance of it, as your response to it confirms.
But since you bought it up -
"falling asleep"
Good quality stuff tends to be more buzzy and will keep you awake, despite even attempts to sleep (note that regular smokers will often find it difficult to sleep if they stop smoking it, which leads to the impression that it helps you sleep. This is like the impression that smoking tobacco relieves stress, simply because nicotine withdrawal creates the feeling of stress).
"severely impeded reaction time"
If reaction time is the only thing that changes then yes, but as my post pointed out, the awareness of being in such a state usually means that drivers keep their speed lower and concentrate so much more on what's going on to compensate, that they're often safer than people who are just driving "normally", who can just as easily drift off into their own minds, not pay so much attention, and push their speed above road speed limits.
"Drivers impaired by drugs, be it aspirin, cough syrup, crack or heroin, are often counted as drunk drivers"
If your driving abilities are impaired by aspirin, you definitely shouldn't be driving!
"I really don't have the trunk space to be hauling around a child just to get my car started"
Oh you can cut them down pretty small so I wouldn't worry about that aspect of it.
I've always found it easier to recognise when someone's stoned than coked up, but the thing is, when stoned, people tend to compensate and drive slower and put more attention into it, often to the extent that they're actually more careful, safer drivers while stoned, then while straight. But then the effects of green are somewhat different, the biggest danger is that you'd forget where you're going and end up somewhere else *lol*
"and most who use coke don't do it while drinking (it would be a waste)"
That's completely untrue. "When there is alcohol and cocaine present in the blood stream, as is usually the case, the two form an even more potent stimulant - cocaethylene, an ethyl homologue of cocaine" (see 1, 2)
"I feel the need to point out that perhaps I used the wrong term"
It appears so. I'd guess you don't believe in the path that evolution is said to have taken to get us to where we are now, eg, that we didn't evolve to become humans, but we were created as humans. But really, be careful saying things like "I don't believe in evolution" because that's like saying "I don't believe in gravity". Things do evolve, we know they do, we see it happen all the time. Right down to the micro level; bacteria evolves due to not copying its DNA perfectly when it grows and divides - the new bacteria is therefore slightly different to that which spawned it. If the change gives it an advantage, then it has a higher chance of surviving (this is called natural selection, which is the bit that Darwin proposes). On the larger scale, we have evolved the ability to metabolise ethanol, due to our use of fermentation in drink preparation/storage. In parts of the world where the boiling of water tended to be used instead in preparation, people haven't evolved to have this ability, and will do things like turn bright red should they consume even small amounts of alcohol (eg, a chunk of the chinese population).
If people want to believe that we were put here by god, that's their prerogative, but disputing that evolution occurs just cannot be done by anyone but by those most ignorant of facts.
Yes, CO2 levels have increased, and yes, so has the temperature of the planet, but showing that they are both happening does NOT show that one is the cause of the other (maybe A has caused B, maybe B has caused A, maybe C is causing A and B, or maybe A and B are totally unreleated).
Humans probably are contributing, I'm not disputing that (personally, I think pollution's pretty horrible and that's enough for me to do my best to minimise it, scientific data aside). We almost certainly should be doing a lot more about it than we are, and almost certainly will pay for not doing more. But, a lot of what's reported as scientific evidence is clearly nothing more than one interpretation of the data and so no, does not stand up in the scientific community, because there is a huge ignorance over the direction of cause, irrespective of whether it's likely to be true.
Seems that some of them have mod points too!
Oh I remember the knives that you used to be able to cut nostalgia with! Those were the days...
"without copyright law, microsoft could not maintain a monopoly"
I know! And damn those government granted arson laws that stop us from burning down their buildings. If it wasn't illegal to burn down their buildings just for the fun of it, they would never be able to maintain a monopoly. We're not even allowed to take their programmers families as hostages and demand that they give away free copies to everyone in return for their lives. Damn the government for giving protection specifically to microsoft, while it's perfectly legal to throw grenades at anyone else who tries to write an operating system.
Yes I know, I'm being stupid. But you started it.
So, not just me then who was confused by that mod *lol* perhaps he just missed hitting funny and hit flamebait by mistake? I also believe in world peace... :-)
Synesthesia - when input on one sense can trigger/insert memories of another sense. Most common is that sounds will generate colors or patterns. Common enough to bare in mind if one or two people saw it, but doubtfully a plausable explanation for more than that (I say nothing more than that as I've not studied accounts of people who were in the buildings at the time).
I didn't say 5cm would be enough to sink an island, dumbass. I simply explained how a small overall difference can be aplified to have larger differences in different places since you couldn't understand it, but I guess it wasn't quite as "simply" as it needed to be for you, so let's just call it "magic".
What the hell are you on? I'm talking about people working together as a team to establish a direction, I'm talking about not confusing people with choices between x options that's all the same to them (give me a media player that works, not a choice between 10 that mostly work). I'm talking about someone doing the difficult thing and making a decision, and then making that decision work. The kernel is one of the strongest parts of the system, because of the leadership of Linus et al, backed by a great team. They decide "no, we don't want to put this in", "yes we want to do this" against all sorts of arguments; but it works. It works because they make all the tough decisions, so that the end user doesn't have to. Sure, the decision's still there if you want it (you can still download and manually patch the kernel), but you don't /have/ to choose, you can just trust their choices, and that works pretty damn well.
WTH's that got to do with "running everything"?
"Come on, guys! He doesn't understand basic physics!!!"
I'd be careful shouting things like that before actually engaging your brain yourself; he's totally correct. Say the sea level rises an average of 5cm over 50 years. This means there's an extra 5cm of water at every location there's ocean/sea. Now, if you move a massive object over one side, say, the moon, that has enough gravity to pull a huge amount of water over to one side of the earth... well now that 5cm on the one side of the planet has moved and added onto the 5cm on the other side of the planet. With more water, there's more water for the moon to pull. So, on the side with the moon, the water has gone up by the original 5cm, and all the extra being pulled by the moon.
(this is why the word 'average' is used; it implies that it's higher in some places, and lower in others)
Okay, for a start:
"More species are going extinct now than were wiped out by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs"
Saying "more species are going extinct now" in the same sentense as saying "the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs" proves that what you say cannot be trusted, because you're unable to determine chance and possibility from absolute. For you to be able to come out with a statemtent like that must mean that you either have some evidance that you're keeping from the rest of the world, or you've just decided that you have no room for doubt in your mind, and so ignore anything that doesn't back up your ideas. Not "whatever killed the dinosaurs", but "the asteroid that killed them"? You really want to hinge your entire statemtent being flawed and incorrect on an absolute claim of what killed the dinosaurs?
Okay, so maybe you realise that saying that saying that was pretty silly, but see what killed the dinosaurs as being irrelevant to the actual point - the rate of extention now compared to then. Well it doesn't work like that, you've already shown that you're willing to just let all evidance to alternative theories (such as the 'radiation from nearly star' theories from nasa et al) slide just to make your point, making you instantly not credible whenever you say anything with as much certainty.
So, that page you sent me to, that says that some biologists think that a mass extintion that could compete with the previous big one's may occur over the next 100 years. That's a lot of 'some/may/could's that you convenienty missed out of your statemtent. All figures to back it up are missing, except for this magical "50%" stat. But there's a few other important things here aren't there? For example, say 50% of species went extinct now, and we're only left with 50%. But translate that into an acount number, a count of species, is this more or less than the last extintion periods? If, for example, we've gained 200%, and then lost 50%, we're still above what it was at, and we'd appear to actually just be normalising. What's the estimated average age of species that are going extinct now compared to over the last mass extintion periods? What's the population count; are there less distinct species, but more in population? What's the estimated total amount of energy used and consumed by them (the energy consumption/use to population count ratio says something about evolution, height of food chain etc. More evolved animals may require more energy, and so fewer of them can exist than lesser evolved creatures).
So, there's a lot to think about, there's a lot to take into account, and your statement screams of ignorance in stepping over all of these issues, and just delivering what you believe should be the truth. It's not the way to convince people, or be taken seriously. Just makes ya sound like a hippy (sorry, don't mean to stoop so low, just saying how it can sound!). Evaluate it yourself, watch how you react when people speak in such a way to you, and how other people react when people do to them. If you wish to be convincing, it's an invaluable thing to look into. Otherwise, don't expect to be taken seriously, because you're showing to not be taking it seriously yourself.
No, we are exercising that freedom by running different things in different ways to best suit our needs.
"That's not the problem with anarchy. It's the point"
yes, but in context: this is the problem with anarchy when applied to software development. Lack of leadership means that efforts are spread more thinly, and you end up with 10 different packages all trying to do the same thing, but accomplishing different feature sets, so the user has to decide which one to use that best suits. But when people work together, behind a strong leader, they can stop duplicating efforts, and so accomplish a lot more.
"More species are going extinct now than were wiped out by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs"
Making shit up isn't gonna help anyone.
While Santa was delivering presents, his famous book, which lists all the boys and girls as either being good or bad over the past year, was stolen. The book was protected with "Secure Present Flight" which should have kept it secure, but it is now believed that this information has fallen into the hands of advertising agencies, and the government, threatening privacy and personal freedom everywhere. This is the third theft of this kind just this month, all over the world people are asking "how safe is all this information being collected about me?", and all over the world they're finding the answer is a very certain "shhh!".
No. A decent system has to be easy to learn. What we're seeing far too much of is design of computer systems to be usable without any risk of the user learning anything. The result? People who can use a computer for a couple of years and still remain totally clueless.
What interfaces really need is 'discoverability', to drive a "I wonder what happens if I do..." level of curiosity that begins the learning process, rather than the damning "oo... are you sure you meant to do that? Seriously? Yes/No?" type messages that leave people with a subconscious (at the least) feeling of "I'm gonna break something" that quickly puts a cap on any further curiosity.
An interface shouldn't hold users at arms distance, it should suck them in, and establish a new language which best gets the job done, not provide one that's so lazy to use that your brain powers off leaving you unlikely to progress naturally.
Subliminal messages... detect a good enough graphics card to be able to flash political messages at a quick enough rate so they're not consciously spotted, and then let the reprogramming begin!
Don't be silly, I use each and every single one of the 30 calculators, 60 text file viewers, 40 email clients...
This is the problem with anarchy; everyone will tend towards choosing different things. Some leadership is required to say "we're going to concentrate here", so that resources are consolidated, and projects can really start moving forward at a much faster rate.
"What possible improvement of RSS would, in your opinion, justify the title 'invention'?"
Are you seriously asking him to invent an improvement for RSS on the spot, that would qualify as being patentable, and just announce it here? I'd have to say some kind of "really stupid question" filter would be great... maybe you can begin implementing it?