Data was an OK player. He could probably beat you or me hands down ( after all, how can you tell if he's bluffing ? ), but he'd get slaughtered in a world class poker tournament. How do I know? Because in their games, Riker always wins. Riker is the master power player on the Enterprise, not Data. Data never once won a poker hand in TNG, except for the episode where he is back in the 1900s as "a Frenchman" and wins money to finance his timeshift detector.
I suspect that an android would be bad at poker because much of the game is based on how you judge the emotional clues the other players are giving you. Machines are not very good at judging emotional responses ( yet ).
more than a thousand times the size and resolution of those generated by a typical digital camera for consumers...
Isn't this kind of insane reoslution encroaching on the limit of what our eyes can even see??? How many "pixels" can your eyes even interprey ( as in, how many rods and cones are there on the back of your retina ) ? I can't see there being more than a few billion... your brain just "fills in" the gaps.
Honestly, when you're talking about resolutions like this I think it's probably beyond anything your eye could even differentiate. It is like talking about sampling a sound at 256 KHz or something... it's just extreme overkill.
Why would you pay for it anyways?
on
Hardcore Java
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· Score: 3, Informative
Mono is free and open source. So is DotGNU. Rotor is made by MS themselves, free and "shared source". And the Microsoft Official.Net SDK is free as in beer as well, and free to distribute with any programs you make with it.
With all these free implementations, and Lots offree Open Source IDEs out there for it, implying that C# development costs money is pretty much the dumbest argument you can make against it.
Because there is *no way* to disable it. I don't want a freaking download manager.. I want a different window for each download so I can minimize them and watch their progress at a glance in the taskbar without having to pop up a goddamned window all the time.
The required use of the download manager is by far the single worst thing in Firefox.
Sure, my mailbox is well under 10 MB, even with my thousands of emails. And even the 6-10 MB limits at most webmail sites are plenty storage for the average person.
But all it takes is that *one* time you need to recieve a 5-10 MB Email attachment from soemone, and it is something important, and your provider barfs on you to totally have you screaming for blood.
The biggest benefit this increased storage has is the ability to recieve larger attachments.
It was much much more likely that it was static electricity. I don't even know anything about the science behind it but I can say this - I have been zapped by jolts getting out of my car before so strong they nearly knocked me down.
On the other hand, I also know my phone emits almost 0 power (most cell phone strengh comes from the towers), and the components in it that vibrate are so small that even if they did generate a spark it would be miniscule in comparison to the sparks that can come from static, which I know of from first hand experience.
Not to mention, I trust an electrical engineer over a firefigher when it comes to electromagnetic science.
The people who perpetuate and believe this kind of pseudo-science are the same freaks who insit that cell phones cause brain cancer despite any evidence.
While at a pump, I took out my phone and gave a buddy a call ( had to pick up something, forgot what). ABout 1/2 way trhough the call, this gas jockey came literally *hurtling* out of the store yelling at me "turn off the phone!".
After my initial shock, I quickly told my friend I had to go and hung up. I really had no clue what he was ranting about. Then the guy pointed at the numerous signs around the station banning phones. I had to laugh at him.
I always knew this was a bunch of BS. I wish they'd get the word out to the station owners though.
Your argument makes 0 sense. The whole point of what I was saying is monopolies are bad, when one company controls most of the worlds software it is bad. I did not say anything about "software companies" in general, I said when one company rules a market, and it is a market everyone depends on, then that one company *does* control your life. Such a company could, and would, manipulate global politics, whatever. No one could stop them.
The examples you gave are all markets with a) tons of competion, and b) are geographically diverse. That is, the same power companies don't control the power in California, Maine, and the UK. But the same software companies do. And if they run rampantly unchecked...
For the vast majority of people in inddustrialized countries, softwate controls how they get paid, how the bank maanges their money, how companies track their habits, how they buy goods and services, how their cars work, how *they* work, how they get to work, how they have fun, how they communicate. It controls nearly every piec eof equipment in the modern military. Getting through a day without interacting with a piece of software is near impossible unless you're on a caomping trip in the middle of the woods.
Pretty soon, software is going to be controlling your whole household. It's going to control every applianc ein the house. It's going to control your security system. It's going to control all communications in and out of that house, and it will all be unified.
So here is the doomsday scenario - in 25-30 years, when this is all in place, if one monopoly controls all this software, they *control society*. All they have to do is hide some backdoors well enough to slip through detection and they have it made. Who would be there to stop them? Anyone who spoke out on any public forum is automatically detected and flagged as a terrorist in the national database.
Open Source software, especially for anything at the national infastructure / military level, should be *paramount* on people's mids. The only reason it is not is an educational one. Us people in the know really need to get the word out on why this is important, because as software becomes mroe powerful, we're treading downa slippery slope.
I mean, come on. If you have internet then odds are pretty high you have Email from you ISP. There is also Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Excite Mail, Mail.com, and thousands of other free email providers.
So basiclaly you have choices out the ass, email is one area in which *no one* can claim they have a monopoly.
So what's the big deal? Feel threatened by GMail? Then don't sign up for an account. It's not like anyone is holding a gun to your back.
But it has significantly less of those problems than the US.
Not to mention that politically, Europe swings more to the left, which is much in line with Canada - as opposed to the US, which swings quite far toward the right.
How about North America vs. the Europe? Then its ~12 trillion vs 9.5 trillion.
Except that, in terms of exconomics and politics, Canada is *MUCH* closer to Europe than the US. NAFTA not withstanding, ( NAFTA is about trade only, nothing else ) Canadians would more likely vote to become a member of the EU than some US-run North American organization.
The EU is becoming more and more unified every year, and the economy of Europe is quickly becoming simmilar to the economy of the US, where you can compare a European country to a US state.
United States:
Total GDP (2002) - 10.4 Trillion $
GDP/head - $37,600
Ranked 1st (countries)
European Union:
Total GDP (2002) - 9.61 Trillion
GDP/head - 21,125
Ranked 1st if counted as a single country
Europe is coming up fast... not to mention China and India. The days of the US as the economic superpoer of the wolrd are numbered by just abount any metric you use.
Who in their right mind would run an unstable distro in *any* production environmnent?
If you're running Fedora in a production lab you admin, *you* need *your* head examined. Fedora is no more stable than Debian Unstable, in fact I would say less stable.
Ok, for one - filing a bug using reportbug is going to tag it with the exact package version, you can't get more detailed.
Another thing - comparing Debians release schedule to RedHat is like comparing apples to oranges - that is, ripe apples to rotten oranges. Debian has a *VERY* firm concept of a release - that is, a Debian relase is *STABLE*. It is rock solid. No holes, no bugs, nothing. They will test and test the release, and delay it if necessary, until done.
RedHat et. al need to meet release deadlines because they have to shove out "the latest and greatest" to make $$$. Debian has no such problems - that's why Debian Stable puts all other distros to shame when it comes to reliability and stability. It may not have all the whiz-bangs, but it is *_rock solid_*.
Aside from that, you're obviously trolling with this comment "and at this point it's not even clear they are EVER going to have another release: the current "release" has been delayed *years* already". Debian Stable was released July 2002. They are not "delayed by years". There is no fixed date when the next release will be out - it will be out when it is out.
That said, this is why most people in the know *do* run Debian Unstable and apt-get update && upgrade daily, because it is desktop where stability is not as mission critical. Hell, when there is a bug, it's usually fixed by the next day I find.
Debian is the original community project,, and no one does it better. It runs on umpteen platforms, has the most packages of any Linux distro, runs apt out of the box, is a joy to install using Knoppix, and you can be sure that in 10 years it will still be around, no matter what corporations come and go, since it is totally community driven. And compared to Debian Unstable, even Fedora seems out of date ( apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade once / day usually ends up doing around 20+ packages )
RedHat isn't formally supporting Fedora anyways, so I don't get it, what is the incentive?
The reason he was comparing the CBC to the BBC is that they are both publicly funded and government owned television stations.... NOT that their name start with their respective countries ( which is where I think you got the ABC reference ).
The main difference between them ( aside from the obvious nationality and cultural difference ) is that in Canada there is no "TV tax" like in the UK, so the CBC doesn't have as many dollars to play with, and thus it airs commercials. The BBC has no commercials AFAIK, at least not the BBC news stations.
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Data was an OK player. He could probably beat you or me hands down ( after all, how can you tell if he's bluffing ? ), but he'd get slaughtered in a world class poker tournament. How do I know? Because in their games, Riker always wins. Riker is the master power player on the Enterprise, not Data. Data never once won a poker hand in TNG, except for the episode where he is back in the 1900s as "a Frenchman" and wins money to finance his timeshift detector.
I suspect that an android would be bad at poker because much of the game is based on how you judge the emotional clues the other players are giving you. Machines are not very good at judging emotional responses ( yet ).
more than a thousand times the size and resolution of those generated by a typical digital camera for consumers...
Isn't this kind of insane reoslution encroaching on the limit of what our eyes can even see??? How many "pixels" can your eyes even interprey ( as in, how many rods and cones are there on the back of your retina ) ? I can't see there being more than a few billion... your brain just "fills in" the gaps.
Honestly, when you're talking about resolutions like this I think it's probably beyond anything your eye could even differentiate. It is like talking about sampling a sound at 256 KHz or something... it's just extreme overkill.
I gave 3 other examples of free C# compilers.
It has a form designer and everything
Mono is free and open source. So is DotGNU. Rotor is made by MS themselves, free and "shared source". And the Microsoft Official .Net SDK is free as in beer as well, and free to distribute with any programs you make with it.
With all these free implementations, and Lots of free Open Source IDEs out there for it, implying that C# development costs money is pretty much the dumbest argument you can make against it.
Because there is *no way* to disable it. I don't want a freaking download manager.. I want a different window for each download so I can minimize them and watch their progress at a glance in the taskbar without having to pop up a goddamned window all the time.
The required use of the download manager is by far the single worst thing in Firefox.
The use will make itself apparant someday.
Sure, my mailbox is well under 10 MB, even with my thousands of emails. And even the 6-10 MB limits at most webmail sites are plenty storage for the average person.
But all it takes is that *one* time you need to recieve a 5-10 MB Email attachment from soemone, and it is something important, and your provider barfs on you to totally have you screaming for blood.
The biggest benefit this increased storage has is the ability to recieve larger attachments.
1. The guy came running out because he was worried my phone would cause an explosion
2. I was using the phone to call a friend because I *forgot something*, so that I didn't have to drive a half an hour back and forth to my house.
How about "don't be an arse, shut your pie-hole I can us emy phone when I see fit" instead.
It was much much more likely that it was static electricity. I don't even know anything about the science behind it but I can say this - I have been zapped by jolts getting out of my car before so strong they nearly knocked me down.
On the other hand, I also know my phone emits almost 0 power (most cell phone strengh comes from the towers), and the components in it that vibrate are so small that even if they did generate a spark it would be miniscule in comparison to the sparks that can come from static, which I know of from first hand experience.
Not to mention, I trust an electrical engineer over a firefigher when it comes to electromagnetic science.
The people who perpetuate and believe this kind of pseudo-science are the same freaks who insit that cell phones cause brain cancer despite any evidence.
While at a pump, I took out my phone and gave a buddy a call ( had to pick up something, forgot what). ABout 1/2 way trhough the call, this gas jockey came literally *hurtling* out of the store yelling at me "turn off the phone!".
After my initial shock, I quickly told my friend I had to go and hung up. I really had no clue what he was ranting about. Then the guy pointed at the numerous signs around the station banning phones. I had to laugh at him.
I always knew this was a bunch of BS. I wish they'd get the word out to the station owners though.
You think the TV networks would continue to operate if 62% of the worlds routers wen't offline?
If so I envy you, since you seem to be living in a fantasy land...
Your argument makes 0 sense. The whole point of what I was saying is monopolies are bad, when one company controls most of the worlds software it is bad. I did not say anything about "software companies" in general, I said when one company rules a market, and it is a market everyone depends on, then that one company *does* control your life. Such a company could, and would, manipulate global politics, whatever. No one could stop them.
The examples you gave are all markets with a) tons of competion, and b) are geographically diverse. That is, the same power companies don't control the power in California, Maine, and the UK. But the same software companies do. And if they run rampantly unchecked...
Computer software *does* control your life.
For the vast majority of people in inddustrialized countries, softwate controls how they get paid, how the bank maanges their money, how companies track their habits, how they buy goods and services, how their cars work, how *they* work, how they get to work, how they have fun, how they communicate. It controls nearly every piec eof equipment in the modern military. Getting through a day without interacting with a piece of software is near impossible unless you're on a caomping trip in the middle of the woods.
Pretty soon, software is going to be controlling your whole household. It's going to control every applianc ein the house. It's going to control your security system. It's going to control all communications in and out of that house, and it will all be unified.
So here is the doomsday scenario - in 25-30 years, when this is all in place, if one monopoly controls all this software, they *control society*. All they have to do is hide some backdoors well enough to slip through detection and they have it made. Who would be there to stop them? Anyone who spoke out on any public forum is automatically detected and flagged as a terrorist in the national database.
Open Source software, especially for anything at the national infastructure / military level, should be *paramount* on people's mids. The only reason it is not is an educational one. Us people in the know really need to get the word out on why this is important, because as software becomes mroe powerful, we're treading downa slippery slope.
I mean, come on. If you have internet then odds are pretty high you have Email from you ISP. There is also Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Excite Mail, Mail.com, and thousands of other free email providers.
So basiclaly you have choices out the ass, email is one area in which *no one* can claim they have a monopoly.
So what's the big deal? Feel threatened by GMail? Then don't sign up for an account. It's not like anyone is holding a gun to your back.
But it has significantly less of those problems than the US.
Not to mention that politically, Europe swings more to the left, which is much in line with Canada - as opposed to the US, which swings quite far toward the right.
How about North America vs. the Europe? Then its ~12 trillion vs 9.5 trillion.
Except that, in terms of exconomics and politics, Canada is *MUCH* closer to Europe than the US. NAFTA not withstanding, ( NAFTA is about trade only, nothing else ) Canadians would more likely vote to become a member of the EU than some US-run North American organization.
The EU is becoming more and more unified every year, and the economy of Europe is quickly becoming simmilar to the economy of the US, where you can compare a European country to a US state.
United States:
Total GDP (2002) - 10.4 Trillion $
GDP/head - $37,600
Ranked 1st (countries)
European Union:
Total GDP (2002) - 9.61 Trillion
GDP/head - 21,125
Ranked 1st if counted as a single country
Europe is coming up fast... not to mention China and India. The days of the US as the economic superpoer of the wolrd are numbered by just abount any metric you use.
Who in their right mind would run an unstable distro in *any* production environmnent?
If you're running Fedora in a production lab you admin, *you* need *your* head examined. Fedora is no more stable than Debian Unstable, in fact I would say less stable.
Ok, for one - filing a bug using reportbug is going to tag it with the exact package version, you can't get more detailed.
Another thing - comparing Debians release schedule to RedHat is like comparing apples to oranges - that is, ripe apples to rotten oranges. Debian has a *VERY* firm concept of a release - that is, a Debian relase is *STABLE*. It is rock solid. No holes, no bugs, nothing. They will test and test the release, and delay it if necessary, until done.
RedHat et. al need to meet release deadlines because they have to shove out "the latest and greatest" to make $$$. Debian has no such problems - that's why Debian Stable puts all other distros to shame when it comes to reliability and stability. It may not have all the whiz-bangs, but it is *_rock solid_*.
Aside from that, you're obviously trolling with this comment "and at this point it's not even clear they are EVER going to have another release: the current "release" has been delayed *years* already". Debian Stable was released July 2002. They are not "delayed by years". There is no fixed date when the next release will be out - it will be out when it is out.
That said, this is why most people in the know *do* run Debian Unstable and apt-get update && upgrade daily, because it is desktop where stability is not as mission critical. Hell, when there is a bug, it's usually fixed by the next day I find.
Debian is the original community project,, and no one does it better. It runs on umpteen platforms, has the most packages of any Linux distro, runs apt out of the box, is a joy to install using Knoppix, and you can be sure that in 10 years it will still be around, no matter what corporations come and go, since it is totally community driven. And compared to Debian Unstable, even Fedora seems out of date ( apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade once / day usually ends up doing around 20+ packages )
RedHat isn't formally supporting Fedora anyways, so I don't get it, what is the incentive?
Go Debian!
Does it still do that data copy in 2.6? I was under the impression that 2.6 was a "zero copy" stack.
How different is the Linux stack that the *BSD stacks? Is there that large a performance difference?
And a better question, if NetBSD has a better stack, why doesn't Linux just adopt it? After all, it *is* BSD license..
Or is it just good old pride getting in the way again?
The reason he was comparing the CBC to the BBC is that they are both publicly funded and government owned television stations.... NOT that their name start with their respective countries ( which is where I think you got the ABC reference ).
The main difference between them ( aside from the obvious nationality and cultural difference ) is that in Canada there is no "TV tax" like in the UK, so the CBC doesn't have as many dollars to play with, and thus it airs commercials. The BBC has no commercials AFAIK, at least not the BBC news stations.
The moral of the story is
"If you have any option in your area whatsoever, do nto use Comcast as an ISP"
The only way these companies and media groups listen to the consumer is when you speak with your wallet.
Every year there is a huge influx of morons into first year.
:P
And also, every year there is a huge *outflux* of morons from first and second years who finally realize they can't hack it.
Every decent university sees this. They encourage it. Hell most overbook themselves on the basis that only 65% of students stay past their first year.
The reason? Why turn away a morons first year tution?