OK - this is just my (read: JUST MY) opinion on the whole Java vs C++/C issue.
I'm a comp-eng student, and have learnt a decent amount of Java. I've also played around with it a fair bit (as an aside, does _anybody_ know a decent amount about the ImageProducer/ImageConsumer framework???). I'm also trying to teach myself C++ at home, with a decent amount of success.
In NEITHER area am I ANYTHING close to expert - so please feel free to correct me about any of the details that follow.
Java - the idea - is very cool. This is what most people tout when they say JINI is blahblah, or this does that, etc etc. The whole point of Java and all it's peripheral technologies is hugely distributable code. That's really cool.
Java - the implementation - is very good in SOME ways, but fairly bad in others (AGAIN - MY OPINION ONLY! CALM YOURSELF!). For instance - a genetic algorithm program that I've written gets quite nice speeds running under the BlackDown port of JDK1.1.7 in Linux (haven't tested it anywhere else:-). There's no native methods in it, either.
On the other hand - any AWT stuff that I've tried to do is almost pathetically slow, especially compared to the X-Windows stuff that I've tried to do. I also suspect (but aren't sure) that the Swing components are add-ons to the whole AWT idea, and not a fundamental re-organisation of the AWT event model (am I right???). The reason that I say this is because there's lots of things about the AWT event model that suck - for instance, only one thread for the entire AWT system (how do you implement sprites easily? You can't - you have to manually write code that updates each one in turn. With new AWT threads being spawned at will, you could just "spawn" a new sprite with internal timing signals, and everything would be fine and dandy).
Look - XWindows was ALREADY a platform-independant and fast windowing toolkit (with networking capabilities too:-). Why didn't the Java guys just provide a set of wrappers for that??? Or at least provide a set of methods to interface with it?
Also - C++ (ANSI) is extremely fast and fairly standard. Java is basically a subset of the C++ methods, along with a whole bunch of new code ("libraries") and some kewl new ideas about method/class organisation, all organised in such a fashion as to make it platform independant.
So _WHY_ is it so slow? Sure, it's interpreted virtual machine code, not precompiled actualy machine codes (hence bytecodes and JVM, etc), but (for instance) VMWare runs an extremely tight virtual Intel processor that gets about 50-75% actual speed (by this I mean that if I run VMWare on my Intel processor I get about 50-75% of the actual processor speed as the speed of my virtaul processor)!
So my opinion is that Java is an extremely good idea that was moderately badly implemented. Again, just my opinion.
As a corollary, by the way, that means there's a market for good implementations of similar ideas. Because lets face it - the Java idea has so much to offer computing/programming.
Yeah, but that still isn't attempting to answer the question...
Look - take it as given that these mitochondria don't reproduce (if they did, they'd be present in Dolly).
Right, now - WHY don't they reproduce? That's the question that you don't have a theory on.
WHY do they simply age and disappear? WHY are they unable to reproduce and maintain themselves?
Oh - and there are certain amino acid sequences on some transcribed proteins that specifically target these proteins to the mitochondria, which at least suggests that these proteins were never part of the general cell mechanism that were taken advantage of, but instead specific, required proteins that the nucleus started to produce instead of the mitochondria.
It is just as likely, in fact, that the DNA code changed AFTER mitochondria entered the cell, and not before - remember it's fairly likely that the prototype eukaryotic cell and the prototype mitochondrial invader looked pretty similar.
I think you've just over-reacted because somebody's attacked your favorite company.
The guy you just rabidly attacked was clearly pointing out the injustness of the law - ever heard of sarcasm? Incedentally, he was also pointing out another interesting fact - that money does buy you out of illegal situations in a "democracy".
In a sense, microsoft HAS broken the law. Sure, they probably did it through complete and utter incompetent stupidity (and who would expect anything less), but remember that ignorance of a law is NOT an excuse for breaking it!
The point is, there is now a widely available operating system which can potentially have extremely strong (128 bit, 256 bit, you name it!) encryption installed on it, and that this OS originated in America.
I'd say that was clearly in contravention of the anti-export of encryption laws. After all, if it wasn't, then why the hell did Microsoft go to all the trouble of providing a signing mechanism in the first place????
Get over your "Oh! Somebody's bashing Microsoft!" reflex action and actually READ the posts, numbnut!!!
-Shane Stephens (yes, I'm not afraid to use MY real name...)
(1) Primary key destroyed by natural disaster- Why would you store a backup secondary key when you can store a backup COPY of the primary key? Having two keys is more of a security risk - there's TWO access points to hack, instead of just one!
(2) Secondary key used to replace primary key in case of security hack- How exactly did you want microsoft to switch keys? A THIRD key???? Also, if keys were switched, then no programs implementing the old system would work on new versions of the OS, and no programs implementing the new system would work on old versions of the OS. Finally, assuming there was a security hack, anybody could just obtain an older copy of the OS (and there's plenty around...) to perform their nefarious deeds on.
I'm sorry - it may not be (probably isn't) actually anything to do with the NSA, but SOMETHING stinks to high heaven here.
Unfortunately, a late post, so probably nobody will read this...:-(
A couple of things:
1) It has been postulated (and is, I think, a necessary part of the prokaryote-decendant theory) that a lot of mitochondrial DNA was actually snarfed by the nucleus - support for this postulate is precisely the fact that you mentioned - the nucleus provides a lot of supporting proteins/enzymes/etc. to mitochondria.
This means that the nucleus could easily also be producing the mitochondrial proteins for mitochondrial attack on self-non-similar mitochondria. Therefore this possibility is not ruled, at least not by that argument.
(2) I seem to recall 2 years ago that our biochemistry lecturer was adamant that we STILL didn't know what the majority of those nifty little Mitochondrial proteins did.
We have the genetic code, but certainly not the protein-encoded meaning!!! A statement "there aren't any enzymes that could do such things" is not necessarily true....there are a lot of proteins that still have unassigned actions.
(3) WHY are male mitochondria incapable of reproducing is exactly the question we are all hypothesizing about.
It isn't sufficient simply to say that they are (incapable) - of course they are, they're not present in Dolly!!!!! I'm simply trying to present one possibility (they get bashed by the other mitochondria).
** Sorry - that's just a little dig. If you shoot my theory down in flames, I'm gonna show you don't have one...;-) **
There is actually a theory of conciousness that suggests that our subconcious parallel-ly models a large number of things at a time, and these compete for conciousness status.
The model that wins is what we view as our conciousness - the models continually compete, so what we conciously think of changes in response to new inputs.
I'm not sure if this supports your argument or mine!!!
Our brains are divided into at least 2 independent chunks - the left and the right side. These two sides are only connected by a fairly tenous collection of neurons known as the Corpus Callosum (there are a couple of other very small connections as well...).
People have actually had their corpus callosum severed - so-called "split brain" patients. In general, experiments with these people show that the two sides of the brain are largely independent - for instance if people are shown an object in such a manner that only one side of the brain can see it, then the other side of the brain is not aware of the position of this object. If the patient is then asked to reach for the object with the hand governed by the other side of the brain, they will try, but not know where the object is.
Doesn't this tend to suggest at least 2 independent "chunks", with the CC normally governing communication between these chunks?
To me, if the brain is really a large parallel machine, there's no reason why seperate threads of computation can't be going on in seperate parts of the brain - each taking up a small physical region of resources.
These threads could even communicate with each other fairly readily. There's really only problems when the two threads want the same resources.
This is backed up by experiment, too - Richard Feynmann did some very interesting experiments in keeping time. He found that without a watch, he could keep time very well....when he counted to 60, he _ALWAYS_ got 72 +- 1 seconds (or something like that).
The interesting thing is what happened when he tried to do other things while counting. The majority of tasks had absolutely no effect on the counting. A few tasks slowed or sped up the counting. And some tasks precluded counting - he couldn't count at all while doing these tasks.
(He also did some experiments to make sure he wasn't basing his counting on some internal physical clock like the heart beating or breathing - he counted while running up and down stairs. No change in the rate of counting.)
Now I admit that a fast-switching serial model would work just as well in explaining these results, but considering that the brain is demonstrably a parallel architecture, I think that the parallel model is a lot more elegant.
Just one thing - the aging problem may not be as solvable as you think...
...you pointed out that plants can live for a very long time. If you notice, plants that live for extended periods of time either get very LARGE (eg trees) or grow very SLOWLY (eg blackboys), but the point is that plants never stop growing.
And the stuff that is old; dies anyway. If you cut a tree down (please don't) you will notice the large section in the middle known as deadwood. This _is_ dead wood.
I don't know if the aging problem is truly surmountable, but the fact that tree parts grow old and die, and that to survive trees have to keep growing, may suggest that it's not.
I had thought that the Mitochondria inside the spermatozoa were locked into a segment between the nucleus and the tail (sort of a pre-tail energy-generation region), so that they couldn't actually be injected into the egg anyway???...
...there shouldn't really be that much reason why male mitochondria can't exchange nutrients with the egg - remember that the female mitochondria end up thriving in a half-male/half-female environment...which may also preclude recognition of male mitochondria by the female egg.
Isn't it more likely that the female mitochondria are THEMSELVES recognising and destroying the male mitochondria? This also fits in with the whole theory that mitochondria are adapted prokaryotic cells - presumably prokaryotic implantation into eukaryotes began as a parasitic attack, and prokaryotes that actively ejected other prokaryotic attacks would have a selective benefit.
Come on! Every time I develop a Java applet or application on JDK (either in Windows or in Unix or in Linux) I have to tweak it like CRAZY to get it to work in a Microsoft distribution!
That's utter crap - the best implementation of Java around is the Sun Java plugin/JRE! That's because it IS the Java implentation. Anything else is just a copy. And MS's copy is a particularly bad one...
Microsoft software has retarded the software industry like nothing else in history! There is no way that you could call ANYTHING Microsoft years ahead of ANYTHING!!!!
Let's face the issue like it really is:
Microsoft, a completely normal company (just like every other company the world over) wants to make money. The best way for Microsoft to make money is to control the software market. BUT - this means that Microsoft has to either innovate or suppress innovation. I think everyone'll agree that they don't innovate....
Microsoft has, and will continue to, actively engaged in obtaining other people's ideas and developing them as their own. In the process, they destroy any hope of having open source software or multi-platform software, the two things that could really advance the software industry BUT (and this is important) also relinquish Microsoft's stranglehold on the market.
In addition, anybody who attempts to innovate has their ideas seized! This means that less people bother - more retardation on the software industry.
For some specific examples:
(1) Java - Microsoft tried to aquire this. They failed. Thank god. They will probably try again - who wants to bet that if they do get it then they won't support non-MS operating systems?
(2) The Internet - there's a court case about this at the moment! Microsoft demonstrably (and it must be demonstrable, otherwise it wouldn't be in court) tried to grab the software market for internet browsers(nb - what's at issue is whether they did it legally...). This is a bad thing - if they had completely succeeded, would we even HAVE browsers for alternative OSs? Would we have developed XML? Etc, etc. As it is, hasn't the huge war between Microsoft and Netscape massively retarded the development of JavaScript, HTML, VRML (which MS tried to grab as well..), and others?
(3) OpenDoc standards for documents - MS stayed with this for just long enough to ensure that it sank when they abandoned it. It would have meant that any office software could swap files with any other office software. This is both innovative and powerful. I wonder why MS opposed it ?!?!?!
(4) Any other software that I want, written in an Open Source manner - check out OpenGL vs directX, for instance.............
There are several other examples - perhaps other people can post them...I'm too tired right now!
The point is this: Microsoft is not necessarily an evil company. They are just a company, doing what every company does. The problem is, they have a monopoly. And this is retarding growth.
It is this retardation of growth that I oppose. And let's face it - Microsoft is NOT ahead of anything!
I can get for my Linux platform (completely free):
(1) A good integrated office package (StarOffice) that uses the OpenDoc standard (I think) - so it's WAY ahead of M$ stuff. Oh, and it doesn't come on 2 CDs...:-)
(2) As many software development packages as I want (including IBMs VisualAge for Java, which is an absolutely KickArse IDE for Java - but not free:-( )
(3) An extensible, flexible, powerful, stable, and most of all developable GUI - XWindows. This shits all over M$ so much and in so many ways that it's not funny. For one, it's NOT part of the kernel, so it can be changed/updated at ANY stage. Next, it's Open Source. Next, there are a huge range of toolkits available for development. Next, it doesn't crash. Next, the arrangement enables any one of a number of Window Managers to interface with it (or I could write one of my own...). Oh, and by default it works over networks...
I hope you're getting my drift. There are just so many technologies and ideas that are part of Linux and _not_ part of M$ operating systems that it's just not funny!
Take a look at threads, for instance. Unlike the extremely simple (and hence powerful) thread model that Linux uses, Windows NT uses an ugly, complicated mess of threading that just defies understanding.
Or speed of loading? Linux is much faster. And, unlike NT, it doesn't complain when you touch the master boot record....
One problem with Linux is that it is developed by a large number of people, so it is, to a certain extent, all over the place. However, people like RedHat are working quite well to create simple install procedures and highly graphical environments.
I just can't see how anyone could say that M$ is years ahead!
I don't have a degree in physics OR computer science. I'm currently studying computer engineering, and I have a degree in Biochemistry.
I found Linux extremely easy and valuable to install. Not only was it enjoyable, but it was also POWERFUL(!!!)
I admit that Linux has a way to go before the user interface is completely user-friendly, but the point is that it is heading in that direction.
There is a fundamental difference between Linux and M$:
M$ software is designed to be inflexible - M$ gets a huge competitive advantage by making the only people that fully understand the OSs the M$ employees. This way they can produce "better" software for their OSs than anybody else.
It's also designed to be easy to use, but AT THE EXPENSE OF CONFIGURABILITY AND POWER. It's a simple choice, really - if M$ made a powerful operating system, then people wouldn't need to buy their other products to add functionality!
On the other hand, Linux was designed with flexibility and power in mind. It's also Open Source, which means that anybody who wants to can understand the guts of the Kernel.
But the major thing about Linux is that IT DOESN'T PRECLUDE USER-FRIENDLINESS. It is entirely possible to write a suite of software for linux that makes it extremely usable/user-friendly WITHOUT compromising any of the power of a Unix-like OS.
In fact, Redhat is currently making huge inroads in this direction. They're not all the way yet, but mark my words, they will be!
I hoope that Microsoft DOES think that they'd be stupid to release a version of Linux - because exactly the same thing would happen there as has happened with Win95/98/2K/NT:
Huge amounts of kernel code would be altered and become proprietry. People wouldn't get to understand how their OS worked. Large amounts of the functionality that is part of Linux would be hidden or worse banned from users (even administrators).
The whole point of linux is that you have as much control as you want over the operations of your machine. You just don't get that in a M$ operating system.
Hmm - you are right about the infeasability of internet voting at this point in time, or with the internet that we currently have.
However, I still have to disagree with you about a "representative" "democracy" (both words in quotations because both are currently used by govts in perversion of the real meaning of the words!). A representative democracy is basically a dictatorship, with a few obscuring facts to make people think otherwise.
For one, the "head" of the dictatorship changes. Be careful here, though - although the head changes, the policies (and the outcomes) don't.
Also, there's this funny thing called "the vote" that makes people think they have a choice. But remember - they essentially get to choose one of two "heads", who will make the policies anyway.
Anybody who wants to change the system, as you mentioned, is going to have an extremely hard time of it. One of two things will happen:
(1) You won't address the fundamental issue, but instead "high XXX in XXX", or something. Sure, maybe you'll even win this issue (you probably won't), but if you do, the basic state of events doesn't alter.
(2) You try and address the fundamental issue, and get shot down in flames by a huge amount of scare-tactic type politics directed against you by the majority of politicians who like things JUST as they are, thankyou very much!
Not to mention the fact that the media benefits from the current system as well - remember that the current system is completely corporation-oriented. The media is a corporation. QED!
The point is this: In a representative democracy you DON'T get a say, whether you want one or not!
Did you, for instance, have a say in the last tax bill? Did you get to help choose whether or not the GAAT went through? what about NAFTA? Did you even get to hear what these fairly important agreements are?
Did you have a say on matters of immigration? Did you get to vote on whether to go to war with Saddam Hussein?
The answer to all of these must be a resounding "NO!" What we have is a democracy in name only. We DO have an Aristocracy. It's an aristocracy of the ruling class (oops! That's a rude word in America) over the working class, and the only way to fix it is to get EVERYBODY WHO WANTS TO to vote on EVERY ISSUE THAT THEY WANT TO (not just on which party makes the same decision as the other party would have...)
You're right - the NSA DOES have some clue in regards to information security - and this IS why they "offered" the advice....if you get my drift?
It's patently obvious that the Microsoft response to these allegations doesn't cut the cheese. Why have a backup key if a backup copy of the original key would be just as easy to store?
Equally, arguments that say M$ has a second key in case of compromise of the first don't hold any water - why didn't microsoft just say this was the case?
The NSA's concern with information security is that everybody else's information may be too secure...hence the NSA_Key solution!
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OK - this is just my (read: JUST MY) opinion on the whole Java vs C++/C issue.
:-). There's no native methods in it, either.
:-). Why didn't the Java guys just provide a set of wrappers for that??? Or at least provide a set of methods to interface with it?
I'm a comp-eng student, and have learnt a decent amount of Java. I've also played around with it a fair bit (as an aside, does _anybody_ know a decent amount about the ImageProducer/ImageConsumer framework???). I'm also trying to teach myself C++ at home, with a decent amount of success.
In NEITHER area am I ANYTHING close to expert - so please feel free to correct me about any of the details that follow.
Java - the idea - is very cool. This is what most people tout when they say JINI is blahblah, or this does that, etc etc. The whole point of Java and all it's peripheral technologies is hugely distributable code. That's really cool.
Java - the implementation - is very good in SOME ways, but fairly bad in others (AGAIN - MY OPINION ONLY! CALM YOURSELF!). For instance - a genetic algorithm program that I've written gets quite nice speeds running under the BlackDown port of JDK1.1.7 in Linux (haven't tested it anywhere else
On the other hand - any AWT stuff that I've tried to do is almost pathetically slow, especially compared to the X-Windows stuff that I've tried to do. I also suspect (but aren't sure) that the Swing components are add-ons to the whole AWT idea, and not a fundamental re-organisation of the AWT event model (am I right???). The reason that I say this is because there's lots of things about the AWT event model that suck - for instance, only one thread for the entire AWT system (how do you implement sprites easily? You can't - you have to manually write code that updates each one in turn. With new AWT threads being spawned at will, you could just "spawn" a new sprite with internal timing signals, and everything would be fine and dandy).
Look - XWindows was ALREADY a platform-independant and fast windowing toolkit (with networking capabilities too
Also - C++ (ANSI) is extremely fast and fairly standard. Java is basically a subset of the C++ methods, along with a whole bunch of new code ("libraries") and some kewl new ideas about method/class organisation, all organised in such a fashion as to make it platform independant.
So _WHY_ is it so slow? Sure, it's interpreted virtual machine code, not precompiled actualy machine codes (hence bytecodes and JVM, etc), but (for instance) VMWare runs an extremely tight virtual Intel processor that gets about 50-75% actual speed (by this I mean that if I run VMWare on my Intel processor I get about 50-75% of the actual processor speed as the speed of my virtaul processor)!
So my opinion is that Java is an extremely good idea that was moderately badly implemented. Again, just my opinion.
As a corollary, by the way, that means there's a market for good implementations of similar ideas. Because lets face it - the Java idea has so much to offer computing/programming.
One final time, Just mY oPinIon
-Shane Stephens
Yeah, but that still isn't attempting to answer the question...
Look - take it as given that these mitochondria don't reproduce (if they did, they'd be present in Dolly).
Right, now - WHY don't they reproduce? That's the question that you don't have a theory on.
WHY do they simply age and disappear? WHY are they unable to reproduce and maintain themselves?
Oh - and there are certain amino acid sequences on some transcribed proteins that specifically target these proteins to the mitochondria, which at least suggests that these proteins were never part of the general cell mechanism that were taken advantage of, but instead specific, required proteins that the nucleus started to produce instead of the mitochondria.
It is just as likely, in fact, that the DNA code changed AFTER mitochondria entered the cell, and not before - remember it's fairly likely that the prototype eukaryotic cell and the prototype mitochondrial invader looked pretty similar.
-Shane Stephens
I think you've just over-reacted because somebody's attacked your favorite company.
The guy you just rabidly attacked was clearly pointing out the injustness of the law - ever heard of sarcasm? Incedentally, he was also pointing out another interesting fact - that money does buy you out of illegal situations in a "democracy".
In a sense, microsoft HAS broken the law. Sure, they probably did it through complete and utter incompetent stupidity (and who would expect anything less), but remember that ignorance of a law is NOT an excuse for breaking it!
The point is, there is now a widely available operating system which can potentially have extremely strong (128 bit, 256 bit, you name it!) encryption installed on it, and that this OS originated in America.
I'd say that was clearly in contravention of the anti-export of encryption laws. After all, if it wasn't, then why the hell did Microsoft go to all the trouble of providing a signing mechanism in the first place????
Get over your "Oh! Somebody's bashing Microsoft!" reflex action and actually READ the posts, numbnut!!!
-Shane Stephens (yes, I'm not afraid to use MY real name...)
Eeerm - no, I don't think so...
There's still one major flaw in that argument.
Third party crypto modules (signed ones) would immediately stop working. Oops!
-Shane Stephens
Hmmm
Sorry, but this is just poor logic:
(1) Primary key destroyed by natural disaster-
Why would you store a backup secondary key when you can store a backup COPY of the primary key? Having two keys is more of a security risk - there's TWO access points to hack, instead of just one!
(2) Secondary key used to replace primary key in case of security hack-
How exactly did you want microsoft to switch keys? A THIRD key???? Also, if keys were switched, then no programs implementing the old system would work on new versions of the OS, and no programs implementing the new system would work on old versions of the OS. Finally, assuming there was a security hack, anybody could just obtain an older copy of the OS (and there's plenty around...) to perform their nefarious deeds on.
I'm sorry - it may not be (probably isn't) actually anything to do with the NSA, but SOMETHING stinks to high heaven here.
-Shane Stephens
Then explain to em exactly why the Crypto API is used...why not just lock the door...???
-Shane Stephens
Unfortunately, a late post, so probably nobody will read this... :-(
;-) **
A couple of things:
1) It has been postulated (and is, I think, a necessary part of the prokaryote-decendant theory) that a lot of mitochondrial DNA was actually snarfed by the nucleus - support for this postulate is precisely the fact that you mentioned - the nucleus provides a lot of supporting proteins/enzymes/etc. to mitochondria.
This means that the nucleus could easily also be producing the mitochondrial proteins for mitochondrial attack on self-non-similar mitochondria. Therefore this possibility is not ruled, at least not by that argument.
(2) I seem to recall 2 years ago that our biochemistry lecturer was adamant that we STILL didn't know what the majority of those nifty little Mitochondrial proteins did.
We have the genetic code, but certainly not the protein-encoded meaning!!! A statement "there aren't any enzymes that could do such things" is not necessarily true....there are a lot of proteins that still have unassigned actions.
(3) WHY are male mitochondria incapable of reproducing is exactly the question we are all hypothesizing about.
It isn't sufficient simply to say that they are (incapable) - of course they are, they're not present in Dolly!!!!! I'm simply trying to present one possibility (they get bashed by the other mitochondria).
** Sorry - that's just a little dig. If you shoot my theory down in flames, I'm gonna show you don't have one...
-Shane Stephens
There is actually a theory of conciousness that suggests that our subconcious parallel-ly models a large number of things at a time, and these compete for conciousness status.
The model that wins is what we view as our conciousness - the models continually compete, so what we conciously think of changes in response to new inputs.
I'm not sure if this supports your argument or mine!!!
-Shane Stephens
Our brains are divided into at least 2 independent chunks - the left and the right side. These two sides are only connected by a fairly tenous collection of neurons known as the Corpus Callosum (there are a couple of other very small connections as well...).
People have actually had their corpus callosum severed - so-called "split brain" patients. In general, experiments with these people show that the two sides of the brain are largely independent - for instance if people are shown an object in such a manner that only one side of the brain can see it, then the other side of the brain is not aware of the position of this object. If the patient is then asked to reach for the object with the hand governed by the other side of the brain, they will try, but not know where the object is.
Doesn't this tend to suggest at least 2 independent "chunks", with the CC normally governing communication between these chunks?
To me, if the brain is really a large parallel machine, there's no reason why seperate threads of computation can't be going on in seperate parts of the brain - each taking up a small physical region of resources.
These threads could even communicate with each other fairly readily. There's really only problems when the two threads want the same resources.
This is backed up by experiment, too - Richard Feynmann did some very interesting experiments in keeping time. He found that without a watch, he could keep time very well....when he counted to 60, he _ALWAYS_ got 72 +- 1 seconds (or something like that).
The interesting thing is what happened when he tried to do other things while counting. The majority of tasks had absolutely no effect on the counting. A few tasks slowed or sped up the counting. And some tasks precluded counting - he couldn't count at all while doing these tasks.
(He also did some experiments to make sure he wasn't basing his counting on some internal physical clock like the heart beating or breathing - he counted while running up and down stairs. No change in the rate of counting.)
Now I admit that a fast-switching serial model would work just as well in explaining these results, but considering that the brain is demonstrably a parallel architecture, I think that the parallel model is a lot more elegant.
-Shane Stephens
Im not entirely sure, but I think that the Office 2000 file formats are exactly the same as the Office 95/97 file formats.
So now we'll be calling it Office 95/97/00.....Oh, how I hate Office
-Shane Stephens
Just one thing - the aging problem may not be as solvable as you think...
...you pointed out that plants can live for a very long time. If you notice, plants that live for extended periods of time either get very LARGE (eg trees) or grow very SLOWLY (eg blackboys), but the point is that plants never stop growing.
And the stuff that is old; dies anyway. If you cut a tree down (please don't) you will notice the large section in the middle known as deadwood. This _is_ dead wood.
I don't know if the aging problem is truly surmountable, but the fact that tree parts grow old and die, and that to survive trees have to keep growing, may suggest that it's not.
-Shane Stephens
I had thought that the Mitochondria inside the spermatozoa were locked into a segment between the nucleus and the tail (sort of a pre-tail energy-generation region), so that they couldn't actually be injected into the egg anyway???...
...there shouldn't really be that much reason why male mitochondria can't exchange nutrients with the egg - remember that the female mitochondria end up thriving in a half-male/half-female environment...which may also preclude recognition of male mitochondria by the female egg.
Isn't it more likely that the female mitochondria are THEMSELVES recognising and destroying the male mitochondria? This also fits in with the whole theory that mitochondria are adapted prokaryotic cells - presumably prokaryotic implantation into eukaryotes began as a parasitic attack, and prokaryotes that actively ejected other prokaryotic attacks would have a selective benefit.
Intriguing, anyway!
-Shane Stephens
Aaawww - boolsheet!
Come on! Every time I develop a Java applet or application on JDK (either in Windows or in Unix or in Linux) I have to tweak it like CRAZY to get it to work in a Microsoft distribution!
That's utter crap - the best implementation of Java around is the Sun Java plugin/JRE! That's because it IS the Java implentation. Anything else is just a copy. And MS's copy is a particularly bad one...
-Shane Stephens
Oh, crap!
:-)
:-( )
Microsoft software has retarded the software industry like nothing else in history! There is no way that you could call ANYTHING Microsoft years ahead of ANYTHING!!!!
Let's face the issue like it really is:
Microsoft, a completely normal company (just like every other company the world over) wants to make money. The best way for Microsoft to make money is to control the software market. BUT - this means that Microsoft has to either innovate or suppress innovation. I think everyone'll agree that they don't innovate....
Microsoft has, and will continue to, actively engaged in obtaining other people's ideas and developing them as their own. In the process, they destroy any hope of having open source software or multi-platform software, the two things that could really advance the software industry BUT (and this is important) also relinquish Microsoft's stranglehold on the market.
In addition, anybody who attempts to innovate has their ideas seized! This means that less people bother - more retardation on the software industry.
For some specific examples:
(1) Java - Microsoft tried to aquire this. They failed. Thank god. They will probably try again - who wants to bet that if they do get it then they won't support non-MS operating systems?
(2) The Internet - there's a court case about this at the moment! Microsoft demonstrably (and it must be demonstrable, otherwise it wouldn't be in court) tried to grab the software market for internet browsers(nb - what's at issue is whether they did it legally...). This is a bad thing - if they had completely succeeded, would we even HAVE browsers for alternative OSs? Would we have developed XML? Etc, etc. As it is, hasn't the huge war between Microsoft and Netscape massively retarded the development of JavaScript, HTML, VRML (which MS tried to grab as well..), and others?
(3) OpenDoc standards for documents - MS stayed with this for just long enough to ensure that it sank when they abandoned it. It would have meant that any office software could swap files with any other office software. This is both innovative and powerful. I wonder why MS opposed it ?!?!?!
(4) Any other software that I want, written in an Open Source manner - check out OpenGL vs directX, for instance.............
There are several other examples - perhaps other people can post them...I'm too tired right now!
The point is this: Microsoft is not necessarily an evil company. They are just a company, doing what every company does. The problem is, they have a monopoly. And this is retarding growth.
It is this retardation of growth that I oppose. And let's face it - Microsoft is NOT ahead of anything!
I can get for my Linux platform (completely free):
(1) A good integrated office package (StarOffice) that uses the OpenDoc standard (I think) - so it's WAY ahead of M$ stuff. Oh, and it doesn't come on 2 CDs...
(2) As many software development packages as I want (including IBMs VisualAge for Java, which is an absolutely KickArse IDE for Java - but not free
(3) An extensible, flexible, powerful, stable, and most of all developable GUI - XWindows. This shits all over M$ so much and in so many ways that it's not funny. For one, it's NOT part of the kernel, so it can be changed/updated at ANY stage. Next, it's Open Source. Next, there are a huge range of toolkits available for development. Next, it doesn't crash. Next, the arrangement enables any one of a number of Window Managers to interface with it (or I could write one of my own...). Oh, and by default it works over networks...
I hope you're getting my drift. There are just so many technologies and ideas that are part of Linux and _not_ part of M$ operating systems that it's just not funny!
Take a look at threads, for instance. Unlike the extremely simple (and hence powerful) thread model that Linux uses, Windows NT uses an ugly, complicated mess of threading that just defies understanding.
Or speed of loading? Linux is much faster. And, unlike NT, it doesn't complain when you touch the master boot record....
One problem with Linux is that it is developed by a large number of people, so it is, to a certain extent, all over the place. However, people like RedHat are working quite well to create simple install procedures and highly graphical environments.
I just can't see how anyone could say that M$ is years ahead!
-Shane Stephens
I disagree - Win32/Mac are un-necessarily dumbed down....
-Shane Stephens
I don't have a degree in physics OR computer science. I'm currently studying computer engineering, and I have a degree in Biochemistry.
I found Linux extremely easy and valuable to install. Not only was it enjoyable, but it was also POWERFUL(!!!)
I admit that Linux has a way to go before the user interface is completely user-friendly, but the point is that it is heading in that direction.
There is a fundamental difference between Linux and M$:
M$ software is designed to be inflexible - M$ gets a huge competitive advantage by making the only people that fully understand the OSs the M$ employees. This way they can produce "better" software for their OSs than anybody else.
It's also designed to be easy to use, but AT THE EXPENSE OF CONFIGURABILITY AND POWER. It's a simple choice, really - if M$ made a powerful operating system, then people wouldn't need to buy their other products to add functionality!
On the other hand, Linux was designed with flexibility and power in mind. It's also Open Source, which means that anybody who wants to can understand the guts of the Kernel.
But the major thing about Linux is that IT DOESN'T PRECLUDE USER-FRIENDLINESS. It is entirely possible to write a suite of software for linux that makes it extremely usable/user-friendly WITHOUT compromising any of the power of a Unix-like OS.
In fact, Redhat is currently making huge inroads in this direction. They're not all the way yet, but mark my words, they will be!
I hoope that Microsoft DOES think that they'd be stupid to release a version of Linux - because exactly the same thing would happen there as has happened with Win95/98/2K/NT:
Huge amounts of kernel code would be altered and become proprietry. People wouldn't get to understand how their OS worked. Large amounts of the functionality that is part of Linux would be hidden or worse banned from users (even administrators).
The whole point of linux is that you have as much control as you want over the operations of your machine. You just don't get that in a M$ operating system.
-Shane Stephens
Hmm - you are right about the infeasability of internet voting at this point in time, or with the internet that we currently have.
However, I still have to disagree with you about a "representative" "democracy" (both words in quotations because both are currently used by govts in perversion of the real meaning of the words!). A representative democracy is basically a dictatorship, with a few obscuring facts to make people think otherwise.
For one, the "head" of the dictatorship changes. Be careful here, though - although the head changes, the policies (and the outcomes) don't.
Also, there's this funny thing called "the vote" that makes people think they have a choice. But remember - they essentially get to choose one of two "heads", who will make the policies anyway.
Anybody who wants to change the system, as you mentioned, is going to have an extremely hard time of it. One of two things will happen:
(1) You won't address the fundamental issue, but instead "high XXX in XXX", or something. Sure, maybe you'll even win this issue (you probably won't), but if you do, the basic state of events doesn't alter.
(2) You try and address the fundamental issue, and get shot down in flames by a huge amount of scare-tactic type politics directed against you by the majority of politicians who like things JUST as they are, thankyou very much!
Not to mention the fact that the media benefits from the current system as well - remember that the current system is completely corporation-oriented. The media is a corporation. QED!
-Shane Stephens
I think this has gone a bit off track:
The point is this: In a representative democracy you DON'T get a say, whether you want one or not!
Did you, for instance, have a say in the last tax bill? Did you get to help choose whether or not the GAAT went through? what about NAFTA? Did you even get to hear what these fairly important agreements are?
Did you have a say on matters of immigration? Did you get to vote on whether to go to war with Saddam Hussein?
The answer to all of these must be a resounding "NO!" What we have is a democracy in name only. We DO have an Aristocracy. It's an aristocracy of the ruling class (oops! That's a rude word in America) over the working class, and the only way to fix it is to get EVERYBODY WHO WANTS TO to vote on EVERY ISSUE THAT THEY WANT TO (not just on which party makes the same decision as the other party would have...)
-Shane Stephens
You're right - the NSA DOES have some clue in regards to information security - and this IS why they "offered" the advice....if you get my drift?
It's patently obvious that the Microsoft response to these allegations doesn't cut the cheese. Why have a backup key if a backup copy of the original key would be just as easy to store?
Equally, arguments that say M$ has a second key in case of compromise of the first don't hold any water - why didn't microsoft just say this was the case?
The NSA's concern with information security is that everybody else's information may be too secure...hence the NSA_Key solution!
-Shane Stephens