For the sake of this argument, let me define the following four groups:
Group A: People who attempt to gain illegal access to machines on the internet for the 'fun' of it, but with no malicious intent.
Group B: People who attempt to gain illegal access to machines on the internet WITH malicious intent.
Group C: People who are adept at writing C/C++ code very quickly to do a specific thing (or similar)
Group D: Everybody else (esp. mainstream media).
Right.
Group A call themselves "Hackers". Group A call Group B "Crackers". Group B usually call themselves 31337 H4x0r5 Group B usually try to lump group A in with themselves.
Group C call themselves "Hackers". Group C also call Group A "Hackers". Many people in Group A are also in Group C. Most people (but not all) in Group B are NOT in Group C.
Group D hasn't got a f**king clue, and calls them all the same thing - "hackers". The hasn't got a f**king clue bit is fairly immaterial in this case, as they all call each other "hackers" anyway...
Basically, I think that the following naming scheme is appropriate:
Group A: Hacker Group B: Cracker Group C: Hacker (as well. Use context.) Group D: Morons
The poster of the story was suggesting to the anti-MS people that (even if you ARE ant-MS), this may be a good thing.
Like you are.
-Shane
Re:A point ignored is a point conceded.
on
Perl 5.6.0 Out
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· Score: 1
Oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Why does everybody have to be so....RUDE to each other?
And before you go on with "He started it!", "No, HE started it!", just think for a moment. You are both to blame.
No, Perl's not the be-all and end-all of programming. But No, Perl's not a worthless language either.
All programming languages have their strong and weak points. And in the end, an algorithm can be implemented in just about any language.
Perl is good for it's loose syntax, it's free-form nature, the size of it's function libraries, it's melding of a lot of nice ideas, and it's general ease of use.
Java is good for it's strict OO-ness, it's syntax, the size of it's libraries, and it's inherent extensibility.
Both are good for cross-platform apps. Both are good for network apps.
C is good for it's extreme speed and low-level access, as is Assembly.
C++ is good as an easier-to-use C.
Haskell is good for it's fresh outlook on programming.
And, yes, I program in all of them. And, no, I don't mean small scripts - I mean several-thousand lines of code applications (well, one or two:-).
No programming language is all-round better than any other programming language. Deal with this.
This is precisely the scenario our nonprofit ISP (cat.org.au) faces. Tel$tra suck bulk money for some measly 64kbit I$DN and the ongoing cost is just ludicrous. It cost me about a hundred bucks to make some helical aerials (PVC tube formers, copper wire, N-connectors and some 9913 cable) and something like that again for some WaveLan cards, and we'll be getting about 2Mb/s when it goes, for *free*. Just what the greedy corporate fucks who own the bandwidth deserve.
> Sure but you body temperature will always be > about 30-37 degrees, unless you are dead.:-)
Correct, but my point is this:
(1) We operate at (say) 37 degrees. (2) Viruses that infect us operate AT OUR TEMPERATURE (3) Viruses that are not at operating temperature often do not survive (and we can be talking as little as 5-10 degrees off operating temperature in some cases!) (4) Thus, to a temperature-sensitive virus, the colder atmosphere outside (in most places) is a formidable barrier to jumping from individual to individual....hence sexually transmitted diseases, touch-transmitted diseases, etc.... (5) Raising the external temperature may remove this barrier.
> And you can catch HIV, Colds, etc... in the > summer and winter.
Yes. HIV through a particularly pleasant 37 degree channel, but we won't go there.
Colds are a remarkably robust family of viruses, which fortunately don't tend to kill people. This is why they are transmissable anywhere.
> Viruses don't care about ambient temperature > (unless you burn them up or freeze them, but at > those temperatures, we'd be dead also), as long > as the host is the right temperature - and that > won't change.
Incorrect. Viruses care A LOT about ambient temperature, as I noted above. It is fortunate for them that the host temperature doesn't change....or are you forgetting that fevers are a DEFENSE MECHANISM against viral infections???
This definitely tends to argue my point - viruses are MUCH more sensitive to temperature changes than humans are.
> And, to the best of my knowledge, viruses aren't > any more communicable when it is warm outside, > or when it isn't. But that is just my guess.
And mine also. But I guess the other way.:-)
> I suppose a comparison of viral sickness in the > Sahara Desert to viral sickness in Siberia might > be in order. But I don't have the stats for > those places.:-)
This would be a very interesting comparison.
> And besides, our destruction or non-destruction > of the environment by moving still doesn't > affect viruses. There are many ways to destruct > the environment without making any difference to > viruses (unless they run out of people and > animals to feed off of).
This is a very naive view, possibly engendered by your lack of observing that ecosystems are extremely complex and inter-related objects.
Ecosystems are quite chaotic (in the mathematical sense of the word). Changing one variable can have very unpredictable effects elsewhere.
You can't just say, de novo, that changing an ecosystem CATASTROPHICALLY won't have an effect on the viruses within! Even changing small things has an effect!
Look, I'm not a raving greenie (or whatever you call them). I'm a biochemistry graduate, trained in science. There are _SO MANY_ things that people DON'T know about the ecosystem, viruses, etc. How can YOU claim to know that changing the environment won't change viral patterns when the EXPERTS don't know?????
> I might agree that the mingling of different > peoples has spread viruses, but I don't > necessarialy agree that our moving around the > planet ruins it. Ruining the planet and viruses > are two different points and don't meet (unless > you want to ruin the planet with a Doomsday > Boms...:-).
Again, this is naive. Viruses are part of the ecosystem, which relies on the environment. Changing the environment changes the ecosystem. QED.
Let me use an analogy....the brain relies on blood. Part of the brain controls your breathing. You're trying to say that poisoning the blood doesn't effect your breathing.
> I'm not trying to pick at stones, but this is > how I see it:
> If I take a trip alone to the African > rainforest, look around, pick up a virus and > return, and give others this virus to which none > of us have immunity I haven't likely affected > the environment. I have, however spread the > virus to people without immunity.
And hence changed the environment that YOU live in. What about if you (and others) stay in this new environment, hence giving the virus another host within which different types of challenges need to be countered? 20 years and voila! A new virus jumps back into the ecosystem. That's change.
> I just don't want another touchy feely save the > environment tone added to this discussion. There > are enough nuts (and my definition of a nut is > someone who believes blindly in anything that > supports their cause - whether it is true or > not) out there that willing to introduce the > death of humanity thru the ruining of the > environment into everything that I don't need to > hear it ever again. No, I don't hate (or > particularly dislike) groups like Greenpeace and > other environmental groups out there, but I do > dislike reading crap about global warming when I > haven't seen a SINGLE article on it that leaves > me with enough info to make an informed > decision.
???
To my knowledge, nobody has come forward with a touchy feely save the environment tone yet! In fact, the first poster ADVOCATED spread into new areas, but CAUTIOUS spread; he certainly wasn't saying "don't do it...".
Global warming may or not exist. The fact that you have not been given enough information to make an informed decision on it simply suggests to me that you haven't gone to a half decent library and done any research on it.
My impression is that you use mass-media force-feeding channels ONLY to attempt to base your decision on. This is NOT a good source of information - television, radio, and newspapers are designed more to keep large numbers of people interested than to cater to the few that actually require INFORMATION!
I've done a little reading, and have noticed that experts themselves seem very cautious to say yea or nay about the global warming question. However, there's PLENTY of articles that give a LOT of information (even down to the mathematical formulae that the models are based on), if you just look for them. I suggest going to your local university library and conducting a journal search on "global warming".
> And the CFC crap just totally did me in on a lot > of environmentalist theories - a company wants > to keep their patent so they manipulate the > gullible (environmentalists) to the point where > they believe their now freed from patent > chemical (freon) is dangerous so everyone should > use their new patented product (can't remember > the name - I think it was DowCorning who made > freon). A bunch of real lame claims later > written in newspapers and even the public > believes.:-)
Ah, you've been reading James P Hogan, I believe.
Yes, it's a very interesting (and quite possibly correct) viewpoint, that one. It illustrates nicely how companies subvert well-meaning people into being unconcious spokespersons...it doesn't have any bearing on the present conversation, however.
> But, you do have a point. In a small way, the > environment you are currently in affects your > chances of catching certain viruses, so I > suppose, in an even smaller way, our treatment > of the environment has a little to do with it.
In a SMALL way? This, of course, is why swamps have for YEARS been considered pestilental, as well as the Amazonian rainforest - I'd say your external environment effects your chances of catching viruses in a LARGE way.
> But only in a real small way.
Replace small by unpredictable, and you'll be correct:-)
I'm afraid that I have to disagree with you. The previous poster brought up some very interesting (and fairly subtle) connections between people's manipulation of the environment and viral activity that you appear to have missed entirely.
For instance, at one stage all of the different parts of humanity were relatively isolated. Each group of people lived in a particular area, and grew accustomed to the various viral challenges that existed in that area. In a genetic sense, these people developed long-term (generational) immunity to many of the viruses that existed.
However, when these groups begin to mingle, you suddenly find that a group WITHOUT immunity or resistance to a set of viruses comes into contact with that virus. The result, as you could imagine, may not be pretty.
Because some viruses can jump species, the very entry of humans (which penetrate diverse territories as no other animal on Earth does) into new territories can elicit new viral activity. Ebola Zaire is a particularly good example.
Finally, viruses, as with humans, are essentially made up of proteins and DNA. Unlike humans, however, viruses don't have layers of protection between themselves and the environment. They operate in a specific range of temperatures. Considering that the one's we're worried about (human-infecting viruses) have to operate at OUR body temperature (30-odd degrees extremities to 37 degrees core), we should be particularly worried about global warming enabling viruses to survive better outside of our bodies! Imagine if you could catch (say) HIV through sneezing!
If you're linking to libraries and making use of the functions therein, the software isn't entirely your own work.
If you're linking to libraries and NOT making use of the functions therein, one must ask why you're linking to the libraries....
Lets face it - if I write a really good (say) GUI toolkit, I don't want to have a commercial company rip that toolkit off as their own work!
Even worse, if I write a really good application, I definitely don't want a commercial company to modify it slightly then start selling it without acknowledgement!
It is these types of situation that the GPL is designed for. It doesn't rip off the coders, it PROTECTS THEM!!!!!
(There's also a Library version of the GPL, which if I recall correctly permits software to make use of the libraries without being GPLd????)
The world's best software creations required neither millions of dollars nor millions of hours up front.
Linux. Unix. C.
The list goes on. And regardless of any so-called "symbiotic" relationship between a company and an individual, BOTH are required. Hence, when an individual isn't recognised for his contribution, then this is theft of intellectual property.
I'm not saying DON'T recognise the company, I'm saying recognise the individual.
Linux is already very well suited to this, then, for two reasons:
(1) The window manager is seperate from X _AND_ seperate from the kernel. This means that new cut-down versions of the WM and of X can fairly easily be tailor-made for embedded-type products. (Also can be replaced with relative ease...)
(2) The source for all the different bits are free, so _anyone_ can write a new Window Manager!!!! If we ever get a linux embedded system similar to the Palm Pilots, not only will people be able to download ne apps into it, but also new interfaces! Kewl!
I guess the sad thing about this is that we HAVE been slipping into an Orwellian society. Not just your wonderful US of A, but elsewhere, as well.
To me, the biggest non-violent crime out there is the stealing of intellectual property. But can anyone tell me who invented the mouse? The OS? Fridges? Washing machines? Digital clocks? Scanners? etc. etc. - the list goes on.
We wax lyrical about our sporting heroes. But what about the people who REALLY changed society for the better? It's not Logitech (or whoever), it's the guy who thought up the first mouse! THESE are the guys we should be worshipping on national TV. THESE are the guys that should be getting prizes, international recognition, lots of money, etc. After all, THESE are the guys that deserve it! Who cares if somebody can hit a ball over a net very fast?
If you work at a University, anything you think up and/or do is automatically the property of the University. And these organisations are supposed to be more free than commercial ones!
And this IS one of the concepts of an Orwellian society! If we didn't know that it was Linus Torvalds that designed Linux (ie if a company had released it), do you think it would attain the same "alternative" or "rebellion" status that it has today?
That would actually be a fairly decent way of running things.
Intelligent thought seems to be limited to a fairly small subset of the total number of people who post on a particular topic.
For instance, in any one SlashDot thread, out of 200-odd posts, there might be 20 that are REALLY worth reading (if you're lucky), and anothe 20-30 that are worth reading.
A layered system, where people could post in certain "circles" by invitation only, but anybody could read any of the circles (or perhaps even restrict reading of the highest levels by the lowest levels...) might help to keep the 40-50 intelligent posters talking with each other, and restrict the 10-20 odd flame-idiots to the lowest of lows.
However, some potential problems:
* (This one is particularly near-and-dear to me, coming from Australia) - often I see an intelligent post that hasn't been moderated up because it was posted too late in the day. Over here, we only get to post stuff well after discussions have ended over there in Yankeeland. I think the reason for this is that slashdot is organised on a day-by-day basis. After discussions are more than a day or two old, they die.
* Different people have different concepts of "intelligent discourse". For instance; some people quite like sardonicor sarcastic humour; others think of this as flaming. Some think that (say) a post discussing the horrors of certain OSs highlights some interesting points, while others treat the post as a personal attack.
* Somebody needs to do the rating; they need to do it _VERY_ well, or (as we have seen on SlashDot DESPITE the magnificent service that it offers to the online community) they will get flamed. You can't have automatic ratings based on volumes of postings. You can't have a small subset of people rating often. It needs to be community-based. Perhaps a vote - "Does the 'seventh heaven' want member X to join?"), with more than 50% of the members of the 'seventh heaven' having to say yes. This way the prejudices of each circle are maintained - the majority of the people within that circle would then be happy.
Nanotechnology is a subject that has had a lot of FUD and a lot of misconceptions floating around.
Everything I'm going to say here I got from Eric K. Drexler's "Engines of Creation" (A very good book IMHO), and my undergraduate biochemistry degree. Nothing is particularly inaccessible to "the general public", in fact Engines of Creation is VERY readable indeed. Yet the majority of people that say things about nanotechnology seem not to have even read this book (and EKD is _THE_ guy who thought up the whole nanotech field!!!)
OK. Enough bull$hit, etc.
Self-Assembly is almost _exactly_ like crystallisation. Essentially, you have a number of components that are complicated enough to only fit together in one configuration - and set things up so that the crystallised configuration has better energy characteristics than the uncrystallised configuration. I suppose one difference is that you don't end up with a single crystal with conceptually infinite dimensions, but instead with a number of discrete entities.
Some simple (and _NATURAL_) examples of self-assembly:
(1) Bilipid layers will spontaneously self-assemble from phospholipids. The reason is this: Phospholipids have a highly hydrophilic (water-attracted) "heads" at one end, and a highly hydrophobic (water-repellant) "tail" at the other (this is actually a fatty acid tail). When a sufficient concentration of these phospholipids are brought together, they tend to clump with the tails pointing inwards and the heads pointing outwards, towards the water. In this manner, they form little spheres. Occasionally, they will also clump in a double layer, with one layer consisting of phospholipids oriented with the heads pointing outwards, and the other layer oriented with the heads pointing INWARDS - you then get a flat sheet which often folds into a hollow sphere, that contains water in the middle.
This process can be made to occur quite easily - yet each and every one of our cells contains a phospholipid bilayer that keeps it as a discrete entity!
(2) Macrophages. These are viruses that prey on bacteria (I suppose as such we should be happy about them!). They are also very cool - after infecting a bacteria, they get it to produce a whole bunch of protein components (as well as a nucleic acid strand). These components SPONTANEOUSLY self-assemble into new macrophages - and these macrophages have quite a complicated structure (they look like eye-droppers with legs).
In both cases, there is absolutely no intelligence and/or control in the actual assembly process. The components naturally assemble by virtue of their shape.
I'm assuming that it's a similar process that is occuring in the case of the switch - each component is fabricated so as to assemble in a particular way. When they are mixed together, they just - assemble!
Another thing that a lot of people seem to be talking about / worried about is the concept of grey goo. I'm not sure whether this concept was invented by EKD or not, but he certainly talks about it.
The concept arose in the context of Von-Neumann machines (sorry if I spelt it wrongly!). These conceptual machines were designed to repclicate themselves. Possible applications of such machines would be as miners on remote planets -send out a Von-Neumann machine, which finds a particular quantity of Iron, replicates itself twice, then comes back to Earth. Each child machine does the same thing, ad infinatum....
The problem here is that such machines could replicate incorrectly (hey, it happens on Earth - we're Von-Neumann machines, and mutations occur quite frequently....it's part of a process called Evolution). Say a Von-Neumann machine was created that "forgot" that Earth was the mother planet, and began finding Iron and replicating ON EARTH....These machines would have been designed to find Iron anywhere they could....I'm sure you begin to see the possible problems here.
Nanomachines could potentially be made as Von-Neumann machines. I won't go into the whole purpose-of-nanomachines-as-Von-Neumann-machines thing, because EKD covers this _VERY_ well.
Grey goo is what happens when self-replicating nanomachines go "out of control", and chew up every available food source (like we're doing on Earth at the moment). Remember that, just as animals on Earth have evolved to get the most of just about any Carbon source, so too (potentially) could sufficiently complicated Von-Neumann machines. We (among other things) are Carbon sources.
So, yes, Grey goo is a BIG potential problem that needs to be addressed very carefully before we start to make self-replicating nanomachines.
Self-assembly, though, is an entirely different thing, one with a lot less inherent danger mainly because machines assemble out of materials that WE provide, and then can not replicate themselves.
I also don't want to sound too much like a scare-mongerer. Nanotechnology in a sufficiently advanced form could provide many benefits to humans - from feeding the world's masses, to space travel, to rapid assembly of products, to extension of life span (possibly indefinitely). Again, these topics are very well covered in EKD's book so I won't go into them too much.
FACT: Microsoft took steps to limit the use of Netscape. These steps are well documented in Judge Jackson's "Finding of Facts". This document is not an opinion, but a statement of facts that were shown to be true during the trial.
FACT: Therefore, revenue that Netscape would otherwise have obtained was not present. Obviously, if your market share is declining, your revenue goes down.
FACT: This decline in market share means that money Netscape could otherwise have devoted to imroving their product was not available. In addition, this decline in market share meant that Netscape was a less viable company, less able to innovate and expand.
FACT: The steps that Microsoft took were not legal steps, but instead relied on the monopoly that Microsoft held in the operating system market. Check out "Findings of Facts"....
CONCLUSION: Therefore, a set of illegal actions taken by Microsoft to specifically damage Netscape had their desired effect.
Hardly what I'd call "natural" evolution.
Imagine that Hitler had succeeded. Would it then have been "natural" evolution that there were no longer any Jews? I don't think so.
I'm very sorry for you that you still use Internet Explorer, and that you don't see the differences between Novell and Microsoft. These are, however, your opinions, and don't "prove" that Novell and Netscape are not any better than Microsoft.
Neither do my opinions prove the converse. What has been proven, and is undeniable and basic fact, however, is that Microsoft contributed illegally to the death of Netscape. NOT natural evolution.
Sure. Some "free software" people are what you have described. Equally as sure. Most aren't.
And guess what? It's in the same proportion as normal!!!
Yeah! Believe it or not, there are anti democratic elitist eugenicist racist and sexist people who AREN'T 'free software' people. In an equal proportion.
And what about the free software USERS, who are the majority of the population and are more likely to enact global change than the CODERS....
Wake up. It's people like you that promote racism, by drawing distinctions.
Oh, really? That's quite an incredible idea, considering that several races of Islanders were completely seperate from the rest of humanity for a _lot_ longer than the Mexican ruling "race" could possibly have been.
And all of these races still look human/can breed with humans/etc.....(and have the same skulls..)
I also think that the idea of another, more advanced, race on Earth might be a bit far fetched...did they live on Atlantis????
Nevertheless, show me some independent evidence, and I'll reconsider....
I'm from Australia, not the US, so the whole Anti-Communism drive thingo isn't as bad over here as it is over there...:-)
However, it's still alive and well, to a certain extent.
Along with two friends (one of them Chinese), I visited China in January of this year. What we found there was just incredible - and so different to the culturally-mediated expectations that we had been instilled with!
You are right - China isn't a communist dictatorship any more. The whole country is opening up, both culturally and technologically.
There are still a lot of police around, but people don't seem to be afraid of them. Everybody is fed (food is so incredibly cheap, even in the relative sense). Technology is cheap.
Housing is still expensive, but in one of the more overcrowded countries in the world, what would you expect? And the government is trying to do something about this (albeit in a way that offends our human rights sensibilities) with the one-child policy. Now, while I disagree with the way that this policy is implemented, I recognize that in one way or another, every single country in the world is eventually going to have to have a similar policy - or we'll ALL die!
Now, to keep this post on topic (hmmm..), relate the whole opening up of China to the adoption of OS software. That the government is allowing this kind of thing to occur should suggest that they're not the big-brother style Mao-ist regime that they once were. And that the population (by all accounts an intelligent one) is taking THIS idea on board BY DEFAULT, before the kind of closed-source, private software development model gets ingrained, bodes very well for the open source community in general!
Yes, but even between these two extremely similar branches of the evolutionary tree (if I remember first year biology correctly), there are big differences - for instance, part of a reptile's jaw bone became our middle-ear bones (malleus, stapes, incus???). So there you go!
As to the rest of your comment, I agree with you wholeheartedly!
The perpetrators of this... web page... themselves admit the striking similarities between the human skull and the starchild skull. They discuss in detail the fact that many blood vessels and nerves follow the same path. They mention that the same bones are present. The tone suggests that the similarities FAR outweigh the differences.
There can only be two potential conclusions based on this -
1) the starchild skull evolved on Earth. The likelyhood of a skull that evolved on a completely different planet (presumably with a completely different evolutionary tree) having such striking similarities with a human skull is extremely small!
2) the starchild skull isn't actually a real skull (ie it's a hoax of some kind). Considering that there's no independant testimonies claiming to have seen the skull, I would suggest that this is a significant possibility!
Well, just a few updates on this particular experiment...
...first of all, on an "origin of life on earth" basis, the experiment was subsequently shown to have simulated the wrong starting conditions...and stimulating the RIGHT starting conditions didn't produce the molecules.
Second of all, the concentration of the molecules was w..a..a..y too low to do anything useful or interesting - basically the breakdown rate was too high to increase the concentration to anything even marginally useful.
However, neither of these facts have all that much to do with the topic at hand - and here's possibly some supporting evidence for what you're saying:
In a recent SciAm article, scientists discussed the possibility of the building blocks for life on earth coming from (wait for it...) Comets! And other space "junk"! Many of the comments were in support of this sort of scenario.
So there you go.
However, when it comes to this "alien", my alarm bells start ringing A LOT! Here's why:
* they're asking for money * they're making the basic (and in my opinion STUPID) assumption that aliens must look like humans (more on this further down) * they won't list anyone else who's actually seen the skull * there are no independent witnesses who have come forward and claimed that they've seen the skull * HOW on earth did a teenage girl get two skulls (which by all accounts must have been fairly fragile) out of Mexico without alerting the authorities...or her parents??????
All right... the most important point, I think, is that these people have decided that aliens must look (basically) like humans. Why?
Even on earth, bilateral symmetry was chosen essentially by accident - one of the huge explosions of life-forms (pre-Cambrian, I think, but could be wrong) had trilateral symmetry and other even wierder (to us) things popping up. It happened that, ON EARTH, bilateral symmetry was best, AT THAT POINT IN TIME. But what about Squids / Octopi / Starfish / other non bilaterally symmetric creatures? Or what about the majority of quadrapeds / other significantly different-looking creatures to us? I'll guarantee that if any of these creatures developed significant intelligence (I mean significant enough to develop space travel), they would NOT LOOK LIKE HUMANS!
And that's just on earth. On one planet, the form of the first race of creatures to develop rudimentary space-travel was decided by chance alone from a very large number of possibilities.
Why on EARTH (hehe) would aliens look similar? And I noted further down that this skull had a lot of the SAME bones (but deformed), the SAME foramens for blood vessels and nerves, the SAME muscular attachment points, etc etc etc - WHY WOULD ALIENS HAVE THE SAME BODILY STRUCTURE AS HUMANS WHEN THE TWO DEVELOPED COMPLETELY INDEPENDANTLY???????
I mean, take even two moderately different earthly creatures like reptiles and mammals and look at the differences in skull make-up!!!!!!
OK - enough of the sucking up. May I ask you a couple more questions?
The thing about XWindows being extremely high bandwidth, etc. over a network environment - this is surely true of ANY program that tries to control windows. If not - then this means that an extension to XWindows would be possible that DID cut down on the bandwidth.
Also, I'm still happy with the idea of transporting bytecode rather than images - I just think that XWindows is a faster way of displaying images than the AWT stuff is. And it has some neat-o features built in too.
The point I was trying to make about C++ isn't that it's nice, because you're right, it's F**KING awful!
But - it is fast. Very fast. And a lot of Java is based on C (syntax, etc) - a cut-down, partially redisgned version of C++ could look very similar to Java and be one heck_of_a_lot faster - even a Java-To-C++ translator that gave you C++ code to compile would probably end up faster than the native Java!
Which, I suppose, is exactly what we're both saying about the nasty implementation...
And, yes - that is kind of funny - in a sort of satirical way. The difference is that we don't need to defend Linux, nor do we feel the need to defend Linux.
The fact that people get so worked up over Java makes me worry a little, though - what are you guys trying to hide???
Slashdot Mirror
For the sake of this argument, let me define the following four groups:
Group A: People who attempt to gain illegal access to machines on the internet for the 'fun' of it, but with no malicious intent.
Group B: People who attempt to gain illegal access to machines on the internet WITH malicious intent.
Group C: People who are adept at writing C/C++ code very quickly to do a specific thing (or similar)
Group D: Everybody else (esp. mainstream media).
Right.
Group A call themselves "Hackers".
Group A call Group B "Crackers".
Group B usually call themselves 31337 H4x0r5
Group B usually try to lump group A in with themselves.
Group C call themselves "Hackers".
Group C also call Group A "Hackers".
Many people in Group A are also in Group C.
Most people (but not all) in Group B are NOT in Group C.
Group D hasn't got a f**king clue, and calls them all the same thing - "hackers". The hasn't got a f**king clue bit is fairly immaterial in this case, as they all call each other "hackers" anyway...
Basically, I think that the following naming scheme is appropriate:
Group A: Hacker
Group B: Cracker
Group C: Hacker (as well. Use context.)
Group D: Morons
-Shane Stephens
I parsed the situation more as the following:
The poster of the story was suggesting to the anti-MS people that (even if you ARE ant-MS), this may be a good thing.
Like you are.
-Shane
Oh dear.
:-).
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Why does everybody have to be so....RUDE to each other?
And before you go on with "He started it!", "No, HE started it!", just think for a moment. You are both to blame.
No, Perl's not the be-all and end-all of programming. But No, Perl's not a worthless language either.
All programming languages have their strong and weak points. And in the end, an algorithm can be implemented in just about any language.
Perl is good for it's loose syntax, it's free-form nature, the size of it's function libraries, it's melding of a lot of nice ideas, and it's general ease of use.
Java is good for it's strict OO-ness, it's syntax, the size of it's libraries, and it's inherent extensibility.
Both are good for cross-platform apps. Both are good for network apps.
C is good for it's extreme speed and low-level access, as is Assembly.
C++ is good as an easier-to-use C.
Haskell is good for it's fresh outlook on programming.
And, yes, I program in all of them. And, no, I don't mean small scripts - I mean several-thousand lines of code applications (well, one or two
No programming language is all-round better than any other programming language. Deal with this.
AND STOP FLAMING EACH OTHER!
-Shane Stephens
This is precisely the scenario our nonprofit ISP (cat.org.au) faces. Tel$tra suck bulk money for some measly 64kbit I$DN and the ongoing cost is just ludicrous. It cost me about a hundred bucks to make some helical aerials (PVC tube formers, copper wire, N-connectors and some 9913 cable) and something like that again for some WaveLan cards, and we'll be getting about 2Mb/s when it goes, for *free*. Just what the greedy corporate fucks who own the bandwidth deserve.
never had a 502, myself, thru NT or Linux.
What OS are you using? What browser?
> Sure but you body temperature will always be :-)
:-)
:-)
:-).
:-)
:-)
> about 30-37 degrees, unless you are dead.
Correct, but my point is this:
(1) We operate at (say) 37 degrees.
(2) Viruses that infect us operate AT OUR TEMPERATURE
(3) Viruses that are not at operating temperature often do not survive (and we can be talking as little as 5-10 degrees off operating temperature in some cases!)
(4) Thus, to a temperature-sensitive virus, the colder atmosphere outside (in most places) is a formidable barrier to jumping from individual to individual....hence sexually transmitted diseases, touch-transmitted diseases, etc....
(5) Raising the external temperature may remove this barrier.
> And you can catch HIV, Colds, etc... in the
> summer and winter.
Yes. HIV through a particularly pleasant 37 degree channel, but we won't go there.
Colds are a remarkably robust family of viruses, which fortunately don't tend to kill people. This is why they are transmissable anywhere.
> Viruses don't care about ambient temperature
> (unless you burn them up or freeze them, but at
> those temperatures, we'd be dead also), as long
> as the host is the right temperature - and that
> won't change.
Incorrect. Viruses care A LOT about ambient temperature, as I noted above. It is fortunate for them that the host temperature doesn't change....or are you forgetting that fevers are a DEFENSE MECHANISM against viral infections???
This definitely tends to argue my point - viruses are MUCH more sensitive to temperature changes than humans are.
> And, to the best of my knowledge, viruses aren't
> any more communicable when it is warm outside,
> or when it isn't. But that is just my guess.
And mine also. But I guess the other way.
> I suppose a comparison of viral sickness in the
> Sahara Desert to viral sickness in Siberia might
> be in order. But I don't have the stats for
> those places.
This would be a very interesting comparison.
> And besides, our destruction or non-destruction
> of the environment by moving still doesn't
> affect viruses. There are many ways to destruct
> the environment without making any difference to
> viruses (unless they run out of people and
> animals to feed off of).
This is a very naive view, possibly engendered by your lack of observing that ecosystems are extremely complex and inter-related objects.
Ecosystems are quite chaotic (in the mathematical sense of the word). Changing one variable can have very unpredictable effects elsewhere.
You can't just say, de novo, that changing an ecosystem CATASTROPHICALLY won't have an effect on the viruses within! Even changing small things has an effect!
Look, I'm not a raving greenie (or whatever you call them). I'm a biochemistry graduate, trained in science. There are _SO MANY_ things that people DON'T know about the ecosystem, viruses, etc. How can YOU claim to know that changing the environment won't change viral patterns when the EXPERTS don't know?????
> I might agree that the mingling of different
> peoples has spread viruses, but I don't
> necessarialy agree that our moving around the
> planet ruins it. Ruining the planet and viruses
> are two different points and don't meet (unless
> you want to ruin the planet with a Doomsday
> Boms...
Again, this is naive. Viruses are part of the ecosystem, which relies on the environment. Changing the environment changes the ecosystem. QED.
Let me use an analogy....the brain relies on blood. Part of the brain controls your breathing. You're trying to say that poisoning the blood doesn't effect your breathing.
> I'm not trying to pick at stones, but this is
> how I see it:
> If I take a trip alone to the African
> rainforest, look around, pick up a virus and
> return, and give others this virus to which none
> of us have immunity I haven't likely affected
> the environment. I have, however spread the
> virus to people without immunity.
And hence changed the environment that YOU live in. What about if you (and others) stay in this new environment, hence giving the virus another host within which different types of challenges need to be countered? 20 years and voila! A new virus jumps back into the ecosystem. That's change.
> I just don't want another touchy feely save the
> environment tone added to this discussion. There
> are enough nuts (and my definition of a nut is
> someone who believes blindly in anything that
> supports their cause - whether it is true or
> not) out there that willing to introduce the
> death of humanity thru the ruining of the
> environment into everything that I don't need to
> hear it ever again. No, I don't hate (or
> particularly dislike) groups like Greenpeace and
> other environmental groups out there, but I do
> dislike reading crap about global warming when I
> haven't seen a SINGLE article on it that leaves
> me with enough info to make an informed
> decision.
???
To my knowledge, nobody has come forward with a touchy feely save the environment tone yet! In fact, the first poster ADVOCATED spread into new areas, but CAUTIOUS spread; he certainly wasn't saying "don't do it...".
Global warming may or not exist. The fact that you have not been given enough information to make an informed decision on it simply suggests to me that you haven't gone to a half decent library and done any research on it.
My impression is that you use mass-media force-feeding channels ONLY to attempt to base your decision on. This is NOT a good source of information - television, radio, and newspapers are designed more to keep large numbers of people interested than to cater to the few that actually require INFORMATION!
I've done a little reading, and have noticed that experts themselves seem very cautious to say yea or nay about the global warming question. However, there's PLENTY of articles that give a LOT of information (even down to the mathematical formulae that the models are based on), if you just look for them. I suggest going to your local university library and conducting a journal search on "global warming".
> And the CFC crap just totally did me in on a lot
> of environmentalist theories - a company wants
> to keep their patent so they manipulate the
> gullible (environmentalists) to the point where
> they believe their now freed from patent
> chemical (freon) is dangerous so everyone should
> use their new patented product (can't remember
> the name - I think it was DowCorning who made
> freon). A bunch of real lame claims later
> written in newspapers and even the public
> believes.
Ah, you've been reading James P Hogan, I believe.
Yes, it's a very interesting (and quite possibly correct) viewpoint, that one. It illustrates nicely how companies subvert well-meaning people into being unconcious spokespersons...it doesn't have any bearing on the present conversation, however.
> But, you do have a point. In a small way, the
> environment you are currently in affects your
> chances of catching certain viruses, so I
> suppose, in an even smaller way, our treatment
> of the environment has a little to do with it.
In a SMALL way? This, of course, is why swamps have for YEARS been considered pestilental, as well as the Amazonian rainforest - I'd say your external environment effects your chances of catching viruses in a LARGE way.
> But only in a real small way.
Replace small by unpredictable, and you'll be correct
-Shane Stephens
I'm afraid that I have to disagree with you. The previous poster brought up some very interesting (and fairly subtle) connections between people's manipulation of the environment and viral activity that you appear to have missed entirely.
For instance, at one stage all of the different parts of humanity were relatively isolated. Each group of people lived in a particular area, and grew accustomed to the various viral challenges that existed in that area. In a genetic sense, these people developed long-term (generational) immunity to many of the viruses that existed.
However, when these groups begin to mingle, you suddenly find that a group WITHOUT immunity or resistance to a set of viruses comes into contact with that virus. The result, as you could imagine, may not be pretty.
Because some viruses can jump species, the very entry of humans (which penetrate diverse territories as no other animal on Earth does) into new territories can elicit new viral activity. Ebola Zaire is a particularly good example.
Finally, viruses, as with humans, are essentially made up of proteins and DNA. Unlike humans, however, viruses don't have layers of protection between themselves and the environment. They operate in a specific range of temperatures. Considering that the one's we're worried about (human-infecting viruses) have to operate at OUR body temperature (30-odd degrees extremities to 37 degrees core), we should be particularly worried about global warming enabling viruses to survive better outside of our bodies! Imagine if you could catch (say) HIV through sneezing!
Anyway, just a few thoughts,
-Shane Stephens
I really hate to break it to you:
If you're linking to libraries and making use of the functions therein, the software isn't entirely your own work.
If you're linking to libraries and NOT making use of the functions therein, one must ask why you're linking to the libraries....
Lets face it - if I write a really good (say) GUI toolkit, I don't want to have a commercial company rip that toolkit off as their own work!
Even worse, if I write a really good application, I definitely don't want a commercial company to modify it slightly then start selling it without acknowledgement!
It is these types of situation that the GPL is designed for. It doesn't rip off the coders, it PROTECTS THEM!!!!!
(There's also a Library version of the GPL, which if I recall correctly permits software to make use of the libraries without being GPLd????)
Yeah, but linux doesn't do rm -r /etc/* by default, does it????
-Shane Stephens
Please don't send your e-business to Au!
We don't want it.
In fact, we don't want any type of commercial internet business at all!
That's because commerce is destroying the net.
It was better when it was a bunch of hackers who could only type a line at a time.
The world's best software creations required neither millions of dollars nor millions of hours up front.
Linux.
Unix.
C.
The list goes on. And regardless of any so-called "symbiotic" relationship between a company and an individual, BOTH are required. Hence, when an individual isn't recognised for his contribution, then this is theft of intellectual property.
I'm not saying DON'T recognise the company, I'm saying recognise the individual.
-Shane Stephens
Linux is already very well suited to this, then, for two reasons:
(1) The window manager is seperate from X _AND_ seperate from the kernel. This means that new cut-down versions of the WM and of X can fairly easily be tailor-made for embedded-type products. (Also can be replaced with relative ease...)
(2) The source for all the different bits are free, so _anyone_ can write a new Window Manager!!!! If we ever get a linux embedded system similar to the Palm Pilots, not only will people be able to download ne apps into it, but also new interfaces! Kewl!
-Shane Stephens
Ermm...corporations function through heirarchies and PRETEND to employ teamwork.
-Shane Stephens
I guess the sad thing about this is that we HAVE been slipping into an Orwellian society. Not just your wonderful US of A, but elsewhere, as well.
To me, the biggest non-violent crime out there is the stealing of intellectual property. But can anyone tell me who invented the mouse? The OS? Fridges? Washing machines? Digital clocks? Scanners? etc. etc. - the list goes on.
We wax lyrical about our sporting heroes. But what about the people who REALLY changed society for the better? It's not Logitech (or whoever), it's the guy who thought up the first mouse! THESE are the guys we should be worshipping on national TV. THESE are the guys that should be getting prizes, international recognition, lots of money, etc. After all, THESE are the guys that deserve it! Who cares if somebody can hit a ball over a net very fast?
If you work at a University, anything you think up and/or do is automatically the property of the University. And these organisations are supposed to be more free than commercial ones!
And this IS one of the concepts of an Orwellian society! If we didn't know that it was Linus Torvalds that designed Linux (ie if a company had released it), do you think it would attain the same "alternative" or "rebellion" status that it has today?
-Shane Stephens
That would actually be a fairly decent way of running things.
Intelligent thought seems to be limited to a fairly small subset of the total number of people who post on a particular topic.
For instance, in any one SlashDot thread, out of 200-odd posts, there might be 20 that are REALLY worth reading (if you're lucky), and anothe 20-30 that are worth reading.
A layered system, where people could post in certain "circles" by invitation only, but anybody could read any of the circles (or perhaps even restrict reading of the highest levels by the lowest levels...) might help to keep the 40-50 intelligent posters talking with each other, and restrict the 10-20 odd flame-idiots to the lowest of lows.
However, some potential problems:
* (This one is particularly near-and-dear to me, coming from Australia) - often I see an intelligent post that hasn't been moderated up because it was posted too late in the day. Over here, we only get to post stuff well after discussions have ended over there in Yankeeland. I think the reason for this is that slashdot is organised on a day-by-day basis. After discussions are more than a day or two old, they die.
* Different people have different concepts of "intelligent discourse". For instance; some people quite like sardonicor sarcastic humour; others think of this as flaming. Some think that (say) a post discussing the horrors of certain OSs highlights some interesting points, while others treat the post as a personal attack.
* Somebody needs to do the rating; they need to do it _VERY_ well, or (as we have seen on SlashDot DESPITE the magnificent service that it offers to the online community) they will get flamed. You can't have automatic ratings based on volumes of postings. You can't have a small subset of people rating often. It needs to be community-based. Perhaps a vote - "Does the 'seventh heaven' want member X to join?"), with more than 50% of the members of the 'seventh heaven' having to say yes. This way the prejudices of each circle are maintained - the majority of the people within that circle would then be happy.
Well, that's all I can think of right now.
-Shane Stephens
Nanotechnology is a subject that has had a lot of FUD and a lot of misconceptions floating around.
Everything I'm going to say here I got from Eric K. Drexler's "Engines of Creation" (A very good book IMHO), and my undergraduate biochemistry degree. Nothing is particularly inaccessible to "the general public", in fact Engines of Creation is VERY readable indeed. Yet the majority of people that say things about nanotechnology seem not to have even read this book (and EKD is _THE_ guy who thought up the whole nanotech field!!!)
OK. Enough bull$hit, etc.
Self-Assembly is almost _exactly_ like crystallisation. Essentially, you have a number of components that are complicated enough to only fit together in one configuration - and set things up so that the crystallised configuration has better energy characteristics than the uncrystallised configuration. I suppose one difference is that you don't end up with a single crystal with conceptually infinite dimensions, but instead with a number of discrete entities.
Some simple (and _NATURAL_) examples of self-assembly:
(1) Bilipid layers will spontaneously self-assemble from phospholipids. The reason is this: Phospholipids have a highly hydrophilic (water-attracted) "heads" at one end, and a highly hydrophobic (water-repellant) "tail" at the other (this is actually a fatty acid tail). When a sufficient concentration of these phospholipids are brought together, they tend to clump with the tails pointing inwards and the heads pointing outwards, towards the water. In this manner, they form little spheres. Occasionally, they will also clump in a double layer, with one layer consisting of phospholipids oriented with the heads pointing outwards, and the other layer oriented with the heads pointing INWARDS - you then get a flat sheet which often folds into a hollow sphere, that contains water in the middle.
This process can be made to occur quite easily - yet each and every one of our cells contains a phospholipid bilayer that keeps it as a discrete entity!
(2) Macrophages. These are viruses that prey on bacteria (I suppose as such we should be happy about them!). They are also very cool - after infecting a bacteria, they get it to produce a whole bunch of protein components (as well as a nucleic acid strand). These components SPONTANEOUSLY self-assemble into new macrophages - and these macrophages have quite a complicated structure (they look like eye-droppers with legs).
In both cases, there is absolutely no intelligence and/or control in the actual assembly process. The components naturally assemble by virtue of their shape.
I'm assuming that it's a similar process that is occuring in the case of the switch - each component is fabricated so as to assemble in a particular way. When they are mixed together, they just - assemble!
Another thing that a lot of people seem to be talking about / worried about is the concept of grey goo. I'm not sure whether this concept was invented by EKD or not, but he certainly talks about it.
The concept arose in the context of Von-Neumann machines (sorry if I spelt it wrongly!). These conceptual machines were designed to repclicate themselves. Possible applications of such machines would be as miners on remote planets -send out a Von-Neumann machine, which finds a particular quantity of Iron, replicates itself twice, then comes back to Earth. Each child machine does the same thing, ad infinatum....
The problem here is that such machines could replicate incorrectly (hey, it happens on Earth - we're Von-Neumann machines, and mutations occur quite frequently....it's part of a process called Evolution). Say a Von-Neumann machine was created that "forgot" that Earth was the mother planet, and began finding Iron and replicating ON EARTH....These machines would have been designed to find Iron anywhere they could....I'm sure you begin to see the possible problems here.
Nanomachines could potentially be made as Von-Neumann machines. I won't go into the whole purpose-of-nanomachines-as-Von-Neumann-machines thing, because EKD covers this _VERY_ well.
Grey goo is what happens when self-replicating nanomachines go "out of control", and chew up every available food source (like we're doing on Earth at the moment). Remember that, just as animals on Earth have evolved to get the most of just about any Carbon source, so too (potentially) could sufficiently complicated Von-Neumann machines. We (among other things) are Carbon sources.
So, yes, Grey goo is a BIG potential problem that needs to be addressed very carefully before we start to make self-replicating nanomachines.
Self-assembly, though, is an entirely different thing, one with a lot less inherent danger mainly because machines assemble out of materials that WE provide, and then can not replicate themselves.
I also don't want to sound too much like a scare-mongerer. Nanotechnology in a sufficiently advanced form could provide many benefits to humans - from feeding the world's masses, to space travel, to rapid assembly of products, to extension of life span (possibly indefinitely). Again, these topics are very well covered in EKD's book so I won't go into them too much.
-Shane Stephens
We can analyse this very logically:
FACT: Microsoft took steps to limit the use of Netscape. These steps are well documented in Judge Jackson's "Finding of Facts". This document is not an opinion, but a statement of facts that were shown to be true during the trial.
FACT: Therefore, revenue that Netscape would otherwise have obtained was not present. Obviously, if your market share is declining, your revenue goes down.
FACT: This decline in market share means that money Netscape could otherwise have devoted to imroving their product was not available. In addition, this decline in market share meant that Netscape was a less viable company, less able to innovate and expand.
FACT: The steps that Microsoft took were not legal steps, but instead relied on the monopoly that Microsoft held in the operating system market. Check out "Findings of Facts"....
CONCLUSION: Therefore, a set of illegal actions taken by Microsoft to specifically damage Netscape had their desired effect.
Hardly what I'd call "natural" evolution.
Imagine that Hitler had succeeded. Would it then have been "natural" evolution that there were no longer any Jews? I don't think so.
I'm very sorry for you that you still use Internet Explorer, and that you don't see the differences between Novell and Microsoft. These are, however, your opinions, and don't "prove" that Novell and Netscape are not any better than Microsoft.
Neither do my opinions prove the converse. What has been proven, and is undeniable and basic fact, however, is that Microsoft contributed illegally to the death of Netscape. NOT natural evolution.
-Shane Stephens
I shouldn't even reply to this crap.
Sure. Some "free software" people are what you have described. Equally as sure. Most aren't.
And guess what? It's in the same proportion as normal!!!
Yeah! Believe it or not, there are anti democratic elitist eugenicist racist and sexist people who AREN'T 'free software' people. In an equal proportion.
And what about the free software USERS, who are the majority of the population and are more likely to enact global change than the CODERS....
Wake up. It's people like you that promote racism, by drawing distinctions.
-Shane Stephens
3 and a half weeks....$1600 total cost (including plane fare)....and that's Australian dollars too....so try about $1000 american :-)
The trick is to go with a Chinese person who has family living in China...
-Shane Stephens
Oh, really? That's quite an incredible idea, considering that several races of Islanders were completely seperate from the rest of humanity for a _lot_ longer than the Mexican ruling "race" could possibly have been.
And all of these races still look human/can breed with humans/etc.....(and have the same skulls..)
I also think that the idea of another, more advanced, race on Earth might be a bit far fetched...did they live on Atlantis????
Nevertheless, show me some independent evidence, and I'll reconsider....
-Shane Stephens
I'm from Australia, not the US, so the whole Anti-Communism drive thingo isn't as bad over here as it is over there... :-)
However, it's still alive and well, to a certain extent.
Along with two friends (one of them Chinese), I visited China in January of this year. What we found there was just incredible - and so different to the culturally-mediated expectations that we had been instilled with!
You are right - China isn't a communist dictatorship any more. The whole country is opening up, both culturally and technologically.
There are still a lot of police around, but people don't seem to be afraid of them. Everybody is fed (food is so incredibly cheap, even in the relative sense). Technology is cheap.
Housing is still expensive, but in one of the more overcrowded countries in the world, what would you expect? And the government is trying to do something about this (albeit in a way that offends our human rights sensibilities) with the one-child policy. Now, while I disagree with the way that this policy is implemented, I recognize that in one way or another, every single country in the world is eventually going to have to have a similar policy - or we'll ALL die!
Now, to keep this post on topic (hmmm..), relate the whole opening up of China to the adoption of OS software. That the government is allowing this kind of thing to occur should suggest that they're not the big-brother style Mao-ist regime that they once were. And that the population (by all accounts an intelligent one) is taking THIS idea on board BY DEFAULT, before the kind of closed-source, private software development model gets ingrained, bodes very well for the open source community in general!
-Shane Stephens
Yes, but even between these two extremely similar branches of the evolutionary tree (if I remember first year biology correctly), there are big differences - for instance, part of a reptile's jaw bone became our middle-ear bones (malleus, stapes, incus???). So there you go!
... web page ... themselves admit the striking similarities between the human skull and the starchild skull. They discuss in detail the fact that many blood vessels and nerves follow the same path. They mention that the same bones are present. The tone suggests that the similarities FAR outweigh the differences.
As to the rest of your comment, I agree with you wholeheartedly!
The perpetrators of this
There can only be two potential conclusions based on this -
1) the starchild skull evolved on Earth. The likelyhood of a skull that evolved on a completely different planet (presumably with a completely different evolutionary tree) having such striking similarities with a human skull is extremely small!
2) the starchild skull isn't actually a real skull (ie it's a hoax of some kind). Considering that there's no independant testimonies claiming to have seen the skull, I would suggest that this is a significant possibility!
-Shane Stephens
Well, just a few updates on this particular experiment...
...first of all, on an "origin of life on earth" basis, the experiment was subsequently shown to have simulated the wrong starting conditions...and stimulating the RIGHT starting conditions didn't produce the molecules.
Second of all, the concentration of the molecules was w..a..a..y too low to do anything useful or interesting - basically the breakdown rate was too high to increase the concentration to anything even marginally useful.
However, neither of these facts have all that much to do with the topic at hand - and here's possibly some supporting evidence for what you're saying:
In a recent SciAm article, scientists discussed the possibility of the building blocks for life on earth coming from (wait for it...) Comets! And other space "junk"! Many of the comments were in support of this sort of scenario.
So there you go.
However, when it comes to this "alien", my alarm bells start ringing A LOT! Here's why:
* they're asking for money
* they're making the basic (and in my opinion STUPID) assumption that aliens must look like humans (more on this further down)
* they won't list anyone else who's actually seen the skull
* there are no independent witnesses who have come forward and claimed that they've seen the skull
* HOW on earth did a teenage girl get two skulls (which by all accounts must have been fairly fragile) out of Mexico without alerting the authorities...or her parents??????
All right... the most important point, I think, is that these people have decided that aliens must look (basically) like humans. Why?
Even on earth, bilateral symmetry was chosen essentially by accident - one of the huge explosions of life-forms (pre-Cambrian, I think, but could be wrong) had trilateral symmetry and other even wierder (to us) things popping up. It happened that, ON EARTH, bilateral symmetry was best, AT THAT POINT IN TIME. But what about Squids / Octopi / Starfish / other non bilaterally symmetric creatures? Or what about the majority of quadrapeds / other significantly different-looking creatures to us? I'll guarantee that if any of these creatures developed significant intelligence (I mean significant enough to develop space travel), they would NOT LOOK LIKE HUMANS!
And that's just on earth. On one planet, the form of the first race of creatures to develop rudimentary space-travel was decided by chance alone from a very large number of possibilities.
Why on EARTH (hehe) would aliens look similar? And I noted further down that this skull had a lot of the SAME bones (but deformed), the SAME foramens for blood vessels and nerves, the SAME muscular attachment points, etc etc etc - WHY WOULD ALIENS HAVE THE SAME BODILY STRUCTURE AS HUMANS WHEN THE TWO DEVELOPED COMPLETELY INDEPENDANTLY???????
I mean, take even two moderately different earthly creatures like reptiles and mammals and look at the differences in skull make-up!!!!!!
Well, that's my little piece of rant.
-Shane Stephens
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
:-(
Thank you so much for a good reply!
OK - enough of the sucking up. May I ask you a couple more questions?
The thing about XWindows being extremely high bandwidth, etc. over a network environment - this is surely true of ANY program that tries to control windows. If not - then this means that an extension to XWindows would be possible that DID cut down on the bandwidth.
Also, I'm still happy with the idea of transporting bytecode rather than images - I just think that XWindows is a faster way of displaying images than the AWT stuff is. And it has some neat-o features built in too.
The point I was trying to make about C++ isn't that it's nice, because you're right, it's F**KING awful!
But - it is fast. Very fast. And a lot of Java is based on C (syntax, etc) - a cut-down, partially redisgned version of C++ could look very similar to Java and be one heck_of_a_lot faster - even a Java-To-C++ translator that gave you C++ code to compile would probably end up faster than the native Java!
Which, I suppose, is exactly what we're both saying about the nasty implementation...
Oh well. Will nothing ever be done Right???
0Shane Stephens0
It's funny that you get so worked up over it!
And, yes - that is kind of funny - in a sort of satirical way. The difference is that we don't need to defend Linux, nor do we feel the need to defend Linux.
The fact that people get so worked up over Java makes me worry a little, though - what are you guys trying to hide???
-Shane Stephens