For easy GUI programing in Linux get wxWindows for C++. It is an Open Source and cross-platform GUI library. The cool thing about wxWindows is that you write GUI code once and it works in Linux and Windows.
No, it will be $6,000. Check out this
website that contains info on their RAM. Then if you factor in the $5,000 price of flash storage it will be $11,000 just for RAM and storge. A double amputee is able to count on his fingers the people who are lined up to buy this laptop. But what I would really love to do is get some hands on time with the system pictured in TFA, make sure that it is not a fake.
Remember that this thread started when somone stated that mutation drives evolution, and that natural selection was debunked and unimportant (and anyone who thought otherwise was poorly educated).
Wow, did you even read my post? I did not say that natural selection was debunked; on the contrary I wrote that natural selection is an obvious fact of life. Natural selection is so obvious that even creationists do not dispute it; in fact natural selection was formally defined before Darwin took his little cruise. But again natural selection cannot drive evolution because it cannot create new traits. For evolution to happen, there must be new traits that arise over time. So in this sense mutations do drive evolution, they can be thought of as the fuel and engine of a car.
Even if we postulate a world without natural selection (an impossibility, kind of like a universe without gravity) there would still be evolution. Why? Because evoltuion is defined as change in organisms over time. We like to think that evolution is always benificial and uphill (i.e. from primative to complex) but this is simply not true. Evolution is blind and uncaring, it can go either way. What natural selection ensures is that good changes outweigh the bad; without natural selection the bad changes would not be removed, but organisms would still change (evolve). I am very curious to know how natural selection causes or drives evolution if it cannot work if there are no changes? If there were no changes between organisms (caused by mutaions) there would be no natural selection, there would be statis - no change. Natural selection does not cause mutations (they are random events), it can only select amoung mutations.
If you received a PhD in 2003 and were taught that natural selection is the driving force of evolution, then I am sorry that you wasted your money.
Darwin's original theory of evolution was based on two very obvious things; variations among organisms and natural selection. Natural selection was not something that Darwin "discovered", the idea had been around for a bit and is quite intuitive - those that are better adapted to their environment will survive; rather he proposed a mechanism through which beneficial changes in a population are preserved in the offspring. But he did not do a good job of how these changes are brought about. We all know that the offspring of an organism will not be identical to the parent (unless it is a clone); so that children are taller, stronger, lighter/darker (you get the idea) than their parents. What Darwin proposed was that those variations were unfavorable to an organism were weeded out by natural selection (i.e. the organism was killed by predators, could not feed, etc); while the advantageous were preserved. Darwin assumed that the variation that he saw in a species (or between closely related species) would continue indefinitely; that if an organism that can run 40 mph has offspring that can run 1 mph faster and the offspring's offspring continue the trend, this will continue until in several generations these organisms will be able to reach speeds of 100 mph.
This is where Darwin went wrong, although we must not be too hard on him because he had no knowledge of genetics. The genetic code of an organism puts an upper limit on the variation that is possible. Mendel demonstrated this in his famous experiments with peas; which incidentally took place a little after Darwin wrote "Origin". He crossed peas with red and white flowers and was able to get red, white, and pink flowers; but he never got orange, blue, or yellow flowers. Mendel could only select for those traits that were encoded in the genes. So if the population as a whole did not already have the genes for 100 mph speed (recessive or otherwise) there is no way that natural selection can select those genes. A good rule of thumb to remember is that natural selection cannot select what does not exist. So natural selection cannot drive evolution by itself as it cannot produce new traits, and the traits of an organism are determined by its' genes. So there needs to be a mechanism or process that can create new genes; and this is where mutations come in. Mutations by definition are copying mistakes that change the genes. So if there are new genes, natural selection can do its' job of weeding out the bad traits and leaving the good ones. This is known as Neo-Darwinism as the primary idea of primitive organisms evolving into complex ones remains but the process driving it is not natural selection but mutations. In Neo-Darwinism, natural selection is seen as just an obvious footnote.
I think you missed the point; he's not talking about high level code (i.e. C, C++, or whatever Apple uses), he's talking about machine code (compiled high level code). A simple one line statement in a high level can very well take several lines/instructions to execute. I used to write assembly code for a Motorola micro-controller (don't remember the model number) and an instruction that would be extremely simple in C took several intructions in Assembly.
C code:
int i = 5;
i = i + 12 * 2;
Assembly:
Reserve memory in RAM
Set memory to 5
Store memory value in CPU register A
Do multiplication and store result register B
Do register addition and store result in register A
Store value of register A in RAM Note: Some steps may be more than one instruction.
So I can understand how it may take 20+ instructions to handle entry and exit code. The CPU needs to worry about the state of the registers, RAM, stack, etc; so it takes quite a bit of extra instrcutions to check the status of the registers (and etc) before and after a function is called or whatever else is done.
It's a matter of how deep you want to go. Every movie made now can certianly be compared to a movie made in the 70s. Or 60s. Or 80s. Etc.
While you are correct that there are only two basic types of plots, a movie can still be original in how the hero succeeds or fails. Even a remake can be original and interesting if done correctly. Case in point: The Italian Job remake, in my opinion, was as good and even better than the original. It combined plot elements of the original with completly new material so that it did not seem as if I was watching the exact same movie with different actors. When a writer/producer/director does not even try to make their movie original is when the viewers start to get mad. For me this happened with Star Wars Episode II. Here was a supposedly new movie, but when I finished watching it, it seemed to be a remake of Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikews Back. I was not exactly mad (it was Star Wars after all), but I did feel ripped off.
Not to take anything away from the scientists involved (they are at the top of their field), but I do not see in TFA where the claim came that they are creating life from scatch. Reading the article, I see that they have purchased genes from other comapanies or getting the genes from other organisms, arranging these genes in new ways, and then injecting them into other organisms. While this in itself is a big breakthrough and accomplishment, it does not live up to the hype of creating life from scratch. This is more like cutting out whole paragraphs or pages (not letters) out of several books, arranging them in a new and interesting order, and pasting them into yet another book. Creating life from scratch would be akin to writing and printing a book from scratch. Note the scientists are using pre-existing genetic information to create new strains of bactria/viri; they are not writing a new genetic code from scratch.
Also, just to play the devils advocate; this (to me) seems to be proof for intelligent design rather than against it. The scientists (who, I assume, are highly intelligent) are creating new organisms. These new organisms are not evolving randomly by themselves, but instead evolved (were created?) under the watchful eyes of highly intelligent beings. We would never (in most likelyhood) have seen these organisms if the scientists had not started tinkering in their labs. An interesting point to ponder.
It appears that we are steadily marching toward a future that Isaac Asimov predicted in several of his short stories. In them, humans developed food synthesizers that had the ability to create any protein from the basic elements (i.e. carbon, hydrogen, etc). In fact, there was one story that was particularly interesting. In it, eating actual plant or animal matter was looked on with the same repulsion that a vegan would have when offered a chance to brutally slaughter and eat the raw flesh of a calf. Food companies competed to create a new protein of the month (i.e. beef, pork, veal, lamb, or variation of these), and one company created a new and very popular protein that turned out to be synthesized human flesh.
Well it is always nice to see science catch up with Science Fiction. I remember Frank Herbert writing about binoculars with oil lenses in Dune. Nice to see our favorite authors weren't crazy, just ahead of their time.
Aside from the excellent points that the parent makes, there is another reason why DRM'd books are bad, especially for college students. I don't know about anyone else, but I have kept most of my college textbooks and still use them as references. Now let's assume that I had bought eTextBooks instead. At first a 5 month lisence seems reasonable (most semesters are a little shorter) and a cost savings is always good. Now say in a year, for some reason, I need to verify an extremely obscure fact that I know for a fact is in that eTextBook; you would not be able to use the eTextBook without buying a new license. At 33% off on a $100 book, that little bit of information will set me back $66.67 plus the original $66.67 that I paid for it; not exactly cheap or convienent especially when you consider that I could have gotten a used book printed book for about the same price and used it without any restriction.
Bullshit. It's EMULATING a winapi interface on a Linux kernel and accompaning libraries accessable to X.
Wine IS NOT an emulator in the traditional sense, it does not actually emulate anything. Wine (unlike VMWare, Virtual PC, or others) does not emulate the hardware of the PC. What the Wine project tries to do (mostly successfully) is to write an Open Source version of the Windows API. Again, Wine does not emulate anything. Windows' code runs natively on Linux, what Wine provides is the Open Source API for Windows' programs to access. One could theoretically copy Microsoft's APIs to Linux and accomplish the same thing that Wine is doing; but that would require buying a Windows license.
Calling Wine a Windows emulator is the same as calling Linux a glorified Unix emulator.
I have a Logitech Mx700 and the mouse always worked with Windows XP, with or without Logitech drivers. It worked with pre-service pack XP, with SP1, and SP2. I just plugged it in to a USB port and it worked; no need to point to some specific driver, it just works. All buttons, except for the task-switcher (I prefer Alt-Tab anyway) work fine. I am currently running Windows Vista Beta 1 and the mouse works flawlessly under it too.
Yeah I remember those. I wanted to get one of those for a 486 66MHz (I believe it upgraded a 486 to a Pentium) but decided to get a Pentium 166MHz instead. Ah the good ol' days, when was the last time anyone got a double speed increase with a processor upgrade? On another note, am I the only crazy one or is there someone else who liked Windows 3.1 better than Windows 95?
How is this news? Tom's Hardware had an article on this 2 months ago. In their benchmarks, the Pentium M out-performed the top of the line Athon64s and Pentium 4s in games. Read the article.
Uhhhhh. . . Yes there is. The Russian letter 'X' is the equivalent of the English letter 'H'. And as someone has already posted, in Cyrillic the symbol 'H' is in fact the equivalent of the English letter 'N'.
Additionally, and this is key here - scientists, by definition, work via the scientific method and thus bogus conclusions will be challenged and repudiated.
This is the theory, that scientists are unbiased researchers who follow the scientific method. This is not always the case. Please see my response to a slashdot article post about how 1/3 of all scientific studies are nonsense or falsified.
Ask the people of Darfur how the UN has failed to even try to protect them
Because they *weren't authorized to intervene by the Security Council*. What, are you picturing some huge security council debate over whether cmm.com is typosquatting on cnn.com? We're not talking about troop deployments, we're talking about the internet.
Uhhhh . . . . . Who is this they you are talking about? As far as I know the Security Council is the UN, or at the very least a part of the UN. The fact that the Security Council failed to do anything about the crisis in Darfur is a clear indication that the UN failed.
From what I gather, this statistic applies to scientific studies. Am I surprised that this happens? Not very. Most people believe that scientists are impartial observers of natural phenomena that follow the evidence where it leads. This is how Science is supposed to work, but it doesn't work like this all the time.
Why do scientists jeopardize there careers by falsifying evidence and studies? Because they are human. Some do this unintentionally by subconsciously ignoring evidence that is contrary to their preconceived hypothesis. Others do this intentionally. They do this because if their hypothesis is found wanting; they will lose prestige and/or funding. Or sometimes the evidence points to concepts that they are unable or unwilling to understand or acknowledge as true. Every scientist has preconceived beliefs on what they will discover in a given study; the good ones do not let these beliefs get in the way of the evidence.
History is littered with studies and discoveries that were later shown to be hoaxes. The Piltdown Man is a very famous one; the supposed early human fossil was created to promote a certain view of human evolution. Another recent hoax was the Chinese "feathered dinosaur" fossils that were heavily promoted by the National Geographic to be ancestral to birds (circa 1996). In fact, National Geographic created an evolutionary timeline based on these fossils and presented it as fact. Not only were these supposed fossils later exposed as elaborate hoaxes, it was revealed that National Geographic had a major lapses in scientific and journalistic ethics. First off, the fossils were stolen and smuggled out of China; secondly they were not verified as being authentic. It was shown that National Geographic knew this and still published the story. Why? Because National Geographic is a big proponent of the theropods to birds view of bird evolution, so any evidence that fit this preconceived belief was accepted and not questioned. If on the other hand the evidence had supported the tree-reptiles to birds view, the fossils would have been very critically examined and rejected.
Of course this is not limited just to archeology; many other branches of science suffer from the same problem. But I can somewhat sympathize with these researchers. Imagine arguing your whole life that your hypothesis is correct, all the evidence for the past 50 years points to your conclusion, and then suddenly new evidence pops up that invalidates your life's work. Would you not be tempted to suppress the evidence? Like I said, scientists are human just like us, and while I do not condone suppressing contrary evidence, I can understand why someone would do just that. On the upside, history shows that evidence cannot be suppressed indefinitely, it will always surface. It may take several decades, as was the case with the plate tectonics theory, but evidence cannot be silenced forever.
Scientology isn't a religion. I would not even call it a cult. It is a scam to milk as much money as possible off its followers. The founder of Scientology has been quoted as saying something to the effect that religion was the best way to scam people. A religious organization is tax deductable and enjoys many other benifits that a regular organization just cannot get. Don't think Scientology is a scam? Just do a Google on the subject. I have read of people paying up to $40,000 for a series of "treatments".
While I agree with your assertion that there have not been enough monopolies to get a conclusive analysis, I do believe that we have had enough to be able to talk probabilities. Let's look at a company that was so successful that they were taken to court on the grounds of them being a monopoly. What was this company? It was GM (General Motors). Now GM's market share was nowhere near what Microsoft has in the desktop OS market, but it was well over 50%. What happened to this company? They got too sure of themselves and refused to see the threat the Japanese imports posed to them. When they finally released that the Japanese were stealing market share, it was too late. GM also placed greater emphasis on the styling and features of the cars than on their build quality. Does this sound familiar? Microsoft was slow to release that Linux was a threat; they finally woke up when Linux had already taken over most of the server market. Also, there continual emphasis on new features in their software; instead of security and quality; does not help. Most people keep using Microsoft because there they know of no other easy to use alternative; but as Linux becomes both easier to use and more popular, Microsoft will continue to lose market share.
There is another interesting point, don't people learn from other people's mistakes? Don't they learn from History? The sad truth is no, they do not. From studying history (I am an amateur history buff), I can see that every empire that arose fell for the same reason. They did not learn from history. The Persians conquered the Assyrian empire which had grown "fat" and weak. The Assyrian kings and once mighty army became corrupt and spent more time relaxing and feasting than training. They fell easily to the Persians and Medes. The Persians, instead of learning from the mistakes of the Persians, repeated them and were conquered by the Greeks, newly united under Alexander. But they too did not learn from their predecessors, and were conquered by the Romans. The Romans held out longer than any other empire preceding them (someone must have stayed awake in history class for a while); but they too succumbed to corruption and frivolous pursuits. As everyone knows, they were conquered by some primitive barbarians.
What does this prove? For one that we humans rarely learn form history and repeat the mistakes of those who lived before us. (Another interesting point: Hitler, in his quest for world domination, made the exact same mistake that Napoleon did. Having conquered most of Europe and faced with the choice of invading England or Russia, both invaded Russia; during the winter. Both lost a sizable portion of their troops in Russia helping to turn the tide.) What do I see happening to Microsoft? There will come a time when the company will become too sure of themselves and careless. They will start making mistakes and will not be able to fend off the advancing new comers. They may hang on for a while, but in the end their aggressive streak will get tamed (to an extent), just like the others that came before them. Remember, nothing lasts forever.
There seems to be a lot of misconception about what Apple has decided to do. Quite a bit of people seem to think that Apple wants to port OSX over to the x86 platform, i.e. to create a version of OSX that supports current x86 hardware. They are very wrong. The only thing that Apple is doing is switching to Intel x86 chips and porting OSX code to compile and run on these chips.
For those who harbor fantasies of running OSX on their current WinTel machines, forget it. Apple, primarily a hardware manufacturer, will almost certainly make this impossible. How? Very easy, they can do his using a combination of software and hardware locks. They will not take some OEM motherboard that Dell or HP use and port OSX to it. It would be a quick and dirty solution, but Apple doesn't generally do quick and dirty.
Let's take a look at a typical WinTel motherboard. What makes it tick? Well we have the processor and RAM, too costly to change so they stay the same. Then there are the North and Southbridges, an interesting possibility but Apple may just use the stock bridges that Intel makes. What else is there? Oh yes, the BIOS. This is where I see the biggest potential for Apple to keep their proprietary control over Apple hardware. The current PC BIOS is a perfect example of vestigial code being hacked to the point of where it is good enough, but still junk. There have been talks in the PC industry of replacing the BIOS with something that is more modern and user-friendly. Modern, user-friendly? Aren't those the very goals of all Apple products? I predict that Apple will create a new BIOS for its' new Mac; no Apple BIOS, no OSX. This will also eliminate the possibility of running Windows on the Apple hardware, at least until Microsoft releases some drivers.
Remember, just because Apple is coming over to the x86 world does not mean they are joining the WinTel world. They are just buying x86 chips (and maybe the bridges) from Intel. They are not getting the latest and greatest ASUS motherboards, sticking them into Apple cases, and calling them Macs. Apple's business model remains the same, just with a different chip partner.
Actually, I did try several snapshots of 1.9, but they were so unstable on my system that I was not able to do anything with them. Writer crashed as soon as I opened it while Impress gave me about five minutes before it too crashed. So for now I decided to stick with what is stable.
Using that same logic, why was Firefox 1.0.3 available for download when it was "a product with [known] vulnerabilities?"
Metzli you're completely missing the point; when Firefox 1.0.3 was shipped, the vulnerabilities were not known! Therefore, when they became known, Firefox 1.0.4 was released. That is why Ben Goodger blasted Netscape; they were using software with known (but corrected in another release) vulnerabilities. The same cannot be said of Firefox. Granted Netscape corrected the vulnerabilities within 24 hours, but only because of all the negative publicity.
Ben Goodger had a very valid point when he wrote that Firefox is able to more quickly and better address its' vulnerabilities. Anytime your product is dependent on someone else's product, there will be lag time between their release and your release. Let's say that some vulnerability is discovered in Firefox, the Firefox developers fix it and have Firefox 1.0.5 out in a week. Since Netscape is based on Firefox 1.0.4, it has the same vulnerability; but it must wait for Firefox 1.0.5 to be released (suppose a week goes by) and then integrate the new version into Netscape (say another week). That leaves the Netscape user vulnerable for two weeks, while Firefox users were vulnerable for only one.
Another example is the drivers made available by hardware manufactures who use other's chips (for example Asus and Nvidia). I ran into this problem when I bought an nForce2 motherboard from Asus. I had installed the chipset drivers that came with the driver CD, and behold my compter only restarts (even if Shutdown and Standby are choosen in Windows). Naturally, I suspected that the driver was at fault, so I went to Asus' website and got their newest driver. Same problem. Finally, I got the latest driver from Nvidia; problem fixed. Asus had not posted the new driver because they either had not tested it, known that it existed, or thought the updates were unimportant. Do you now understand the problem of lag?
What compounds the problem is that the release cycles of Firefox and Netscape are not the same. From what I have seen, Firefox is pretty good about fixing bugs and vulnerabilities quickly; how can I as a user be sure that Netscape will release an update every time Firefox does? What if Netscape releases version 8.02 (based on Firefox 1.0.5) and Firefox releases version 1.0.6 the next day? Will Netscape release version 8.03 within a week or will they wait for Firefox 1.0.7 to be released? These are the questions that I, as a user who is worried about security (which is why I use an alternative browser in the first place), am concerned about.
You too? Man are we dumb. Although that is a good idea. When I'm checking an auction knowing the time that the auction will end (as opposed to in how many days, hours, etc) is much more helpful.
Not that I'm Microsoft's biggest fan or anything; but there may be a reason that PowerPoint may not display its own slideshows correctly.
Say you create a PowerPoint presentation and then open it in OpenOffice or NeoOffice or whatever, it then is mangled by the program. You save it in its mangled state and then open it on PowerPoint again. This mangles it even more.
I manage a few non-profit computer labs for seniors and low-income families and in one of my labs I installed OpenOffice (didn't feel like shelling out $200-$300 for each of the eight computers, nor did I have the funding), while at the two other labs and at home I have Microsoft Office. So when I type up some documentation at home and try to edit it at the OpenOffice lab, the Word document always get mangled. Any kind of formatting beyond the basic (font, font size, bold, italic, underline, text alignment) gets screwed so badly that I have to redo all the formatting. It is easier to leave it unformatted and do the formating in OpenOffice. I hope OpenOffice 2.0 fixes this.
That having been said, I do recommend OpenOffice to those who need basic wordprocessing and do not want to dish out $300. We teach basic computer skills at our labs and we teach (and give out CDs of) OpenOffice.
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For easy GUI programing in Linux get wxWindows for C++. It is an Open Source and cross-platform GUI library. The cool thing about wxWindows is that you write GUI code once and it works in Linux and Windows.
No, it will be $6,000. Check out this website that contains info on their RAM. Then if you factor in the $5,000 price of flash storage it will be $11,000 just for RAM and storge. A double amputee is able to count on his fingers the people who are lined up to buy this laptop. But what I would really love to do is get some hands on time with the system pictured in TFA, make sure that it is not a fake.
Wow, did you even read my post? I did not say that natural selection was debunked; on the contrary I wrote that natural selection is an obvious fact of life. Natural selection is so obvious that even creationists do not dispute it; in fact natural selection was formally defined before Darwin took his little cruise. But again natural selection cannot drive evolution because it cannot create new traits. For evolution to happen, there must be new traits that arise over time. So in this sense mutations do drive evolution, they can be thought of as the fuel and engine of a car.
Even if we postulate a world without natural selection (an impossibility, kind of like a universe without gravity) there would still be evolution. Why? Because evoltuion is defined as change in organisms over time. We like to think that evolution is always benificial and uphill (i.e. from primative to complex) but this is simply not true. Evolution is blind and uncaring, it can go either way. What natural selection ensures is that good changes outweigh the bad; without natural selection the bad changes would not be removed, but organisms would still change (evolve). I am very curious to know how natural selection causes or drives evolution if it cannot work if there are no changes? If there were no changes between organisms (caused by mutaions) there would be no natural selection, there would be statis - no change. Natural selection does not cause mutations (they are random events), it can only select amoung mutations.
If you received a PhD in 2003 and were taught that natural selection is the driving force of evolution, then I am sorry that you wasted your money.
Darwin's original theory of evolution was based on two very obvious things; variations among organisms and natural selection. Natural selection was not something that Darwin "discovered", the idea had been around for a bit and is quite intuitive - those that are better adapted to their environment will survive; rather he proposed a mechanism through which beneficial changes in a population are preserved in the offspring. But he did not do a good job of how these changes are brought about. We all know that the offspring of an organism will not be identical to the parent (unless it is a clone); so that children are taller, stronger, lighter/darker (you get the idea) than their parents. What Darwin proposed was that those variations were unfavorable to an organism were weeded out by natural selection (i.e. the organism was killed by predators, could not feed, etc); while the advantageous were preserved. Darwin assumed that the variation that he saw in a species (or between closely related species) would continue indefinitely; that if an organism that can run 40 mph has offspring that can run 1 mph faster and the offspring's offspring continue the trend, this will continue until in several generations these organisms will be able to reach speeds of 100 mph.
This is where Darwin went wrong, although we must not be too hard on him because he had no knowledge of genetics. The genetic code of an organism puts an upper limit on the variation that is possible. Mendel demonstrated this in his famous experiments with peas; which incidentally took place a little after Darwin wrote "Origin". He crossed peas with red and white flowers and was able to get red, white, and pink flowers; but he never got orange, blue, or yellow flowers. Mendel could only select for those traits that were encoded in the genes. So if the population as a whole did not already have the genes for 100 mph speed (recessive or otherwise) there is no way that natural selection can select those genes. A good rule of thumb to remember is that natural selection cannot select what does not exist. So natural selection cannot drive evolution by itself as it cannot produce new traits, and the traits of an organism are determined by its' genes. So there needs to be a mechanism or process that can create new genes; and this is where mutations come in. Mutations by definition are copying mistakes that change the genes. So if there are new genes, natural selection can do its' job of weeding out the bad traits and leaving the good ones. This is known as Neo-Darwinism as the primary idea of primitive organisms evolving into complex ones remains but the process driving it is not natural selection but mutations. In Neo-Darwinism, natural selection is seen as just an obvious footnote.
I think you missed the point; he's not talking about high level code (i.e. C, C++, or whatever Apple uses), he's talking about machine code (compiled high level code).
A simple one line statement in a high level can very well take several lines/instructions to execute. I used to write assembly code for a Motorola micro-controller (don't remember the model number) and an instruction that would be extremely simple in C took several intructions in Assembly.
C code:
int i = 5;
i = i + 12 * 2;
Assembly:
Reserve memory in RAM
Set memory to 5
Store memory value in CPU register A
Do multiplication and store result register B
Do register addition and store result in register A
Store value of register A in RAM
Note: Some steps may be more than one instruction.
So I can understand how it may take 20+ instructions to handle entry and exit code. The CPU needs to worry about the state of the registers, RAM, stack, etc; so it takes quite a bit of extra instrcutions to check the status of the registers (and etc) before and after a function is called or whatever else is done.
While you are correct that there are only two basic types of plots, a movie can still be original in how the hero succeeds or fails. Even a remake can be original and interesting if done correctly. Case in point: The Italian Job remake, in my opinion, was as good and even better than the original. It combined plot elements of the original with completly new material so that it did not seem as if I was watching the exact same movie with different actors. When a writer/producer/director does not even try to make their movie original is when the viewers start to get mad. For me this happened with Star Wars Episode II. Here was a supposedly new movie, but when I finished watching it, it seemed to be a remake of Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikews Back. I was not exactly mad (it was Star Wars after all), but I did feel ripped off.
Not to take anything away from the scientists involved (they are at the top of their field), but I do not see in TFA where the claim came that they are creating life from scatch. Reading the article, I see that they have purchased genes from other comapanies or getting the genes from other organisms, arranging these genes in new ways, and then injecting them into other organisms. While this in itself is a big breakthrough and accomplishment, it does not live up to the hype of creating life from scratch. This is more like cutting out whole paragraphs or pages (not letters) out of several books, arranging them in a new and interesting order, and pasting them into yet another book. Creating life from scratch would be akin to writing and printing a book from scratch. Note the scientists are using pre-existing genetic information to create new strains of bactria/viri; they are not writing a new genetic code from scratch.
Also, just to play the devils advocate; this (to me) seems to be proof for intelligent design rather than against it. The scientists (who, I assume, are highly intelligent) are creating new organisms. These new organisms are not evolving randomly by themselves, but instead evolved (were created?) under the watchful eyes of highly intelligent beings. We would never (in most likelyhood) have seen these organisms if the scientists had not started tinkering in their labs. An interesting point to ponder.
It appears that we are steadily marching toward a future that Isaac Asimov predicted in several of his short stories. In them, humans developed food synthesizers that had the ability to create any protein from the basic elements (i.e. carbon, hydrogen, etc). In fact, there was one story that was particularly interesting. In it, eating actual plant or animal matter was looked on with the same repulsion that a vegan would have when offered a chance to brutally slaughter and eat the raw flesh of a calf. Food companies competed to create a new protein of the month (i.e. beef, pork, veal, lamb, or variation of these), and one company created a new and very popular protein that turned out to be synthesized human flesh.
Well it is always nice to see science catch up with Science Fiction. I remember Frank Herbert writing about binoculars with oil lenses in Dune. Nice to see our favorite authors weren't crazy, just ahead of their time.
Aside from the excellent points that the parent makes, there is another reason why DRM'd books are bad, especially for college students. I don't know about anyone else, but I have kept most of my college textbooks and still use them as references. Now let's assume that I had bought eTextBooks instead. At first a 5 month lisence seems reasonable (most semesters are a little shorter) and a cost savings is always good. Now say in a year, for some reason, I need to verify an extremely obscure fact that I know for a fact is in that eTextBook; you would not be able to use the eTextBook without buying a new license. At 33% off on a $100 book, that little bit of information will set me back $66.67 plus the original $66.67 that I paid for it; not exactly cheap or convienent especially when you consider that I could have gotten a used book printed book for about the same price and used it without any restriction.
Wine IS NOT an emulator in the traditional sense, it does not actually emulate anything. Wine (unlike VMWare, Virtual PC, or others) does not emulate the hardware of the PC. What the Wine project tries to do (mostly successfully) is to write an Open Source version of the Windows API. Again, Wine does not emulate anything. Windows' code runs natively on Linux, what Wine provides is the Open Source API for Windows' programs to access. One could theoretically copy Microsoft's APIs to Linux and accomplish the same thing that Wine is doing; but that would require buying a Windows license.
Calling Wine a Windows emulator is the same as calling Linux a glorified Unix emulator.
I have a Logitech Mx700 and the mouse always worked with Windows XP, with or without Logitech drivers. It worked with pre-service pack XP, with SP1, and SP2. I just plugged it in to a USB port and it worked; no need to point to some specific driver, it just works. All buttons, except for the task-switcher (I prefer Alt-Tab anyway) work fine. I am currently running Windows Vista Beta 1 and the mouse works flawlessly under it too.
Yeah I remember those. I wanted to get one of those for a 486 66MHz (I believe it upgraded a 486 to a Pentium) but decided to get a Pentium 166MHz instead. Ah the good ol' days, when was the last time anyone got a double speed increase with a processor upgrade? On another note, am I the only crazy one or is there someone else who liked Windows 3.1 better than Windows 95?
How is this news? Tom's Hardware had an article on this 2 months ago. In their benchmarks, the Pentium M out-performed the top of the line Athon64s and Pentium 4s in games. Read the article.
Uhhhhh. . . Yes there is. The Russian letter 'X' is the equivalent of the English letter 'H'. And as someone has already posted, in Cyrillic the symbol 'H' is in fact the equivalent of the English letter 'N'.
This is the theory, that scientists are unbiased researchers who follow the scientific method. This is not always the case. Please see my response to a slashdot article post about how 1/3 of all scientific studies are nonsense or falsified.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155771&cid=130 61094
Uhhhh . . . . . Who is this they you are talking about? As far as I know the Security Council is the UN, or at the very least a part of the UN. The fact that the Security Council failed to do anything about the crisis in Darfur is a clear indication that the UN failed.
From what I gather, this statistic applies to scientific studies. Am I surprised that this happens? Not very. Most people believe that scientists are impartial observers of natural phenomena that follow the evidence where it leads. This is how Science is supposed to work, but it doesn't work like this all the time.
Why do scientists jeopardize there careers by falsifying evidence and studies? Because they are human. Some do this unintentionally by subconsciously ignoring evidence that is contrary to their preconceived hypothesis. Others do this intentionally. They do this because if their hypothesis is found wanting; they will lose prestige and/or funding. Or sometimes the evidence points to concepts that they are unable or unwilling to understand or acknowledge as true. Every scientist has preconceived beliefs on what they will discover in a given study; the good ones do not let these beliefs get in the way of the evidence.
History is littered with studies and discoveries that were later shown to be hoaxes. The Piltdown Man is a very famous one; the supposed early human fossil was created to promote a certain view of human evolution. Another recent hoax was the Chinese "feathered dinosaur" fossils that were heavily promoted by the National Geographic to be ancestral to birds (circa 1996). In fact, National Geographic created an evolutionary timeline based on these fossils and presented it as fact. Not only were these supposed fossils later exposed as elaborate hoaxes, it was revealed that National Geographic had a major lapses in scientific and journalistic ethics. First off, the fossils were stolen and smuggled out of China; secondly they were not verified as being authentic. It was shown that National Geographic knew this and still published the story. Why? Because National Geographic is a big proponent of the theropods to birds view of bird evolution, so any evidence that fit this preconceived belief was accepted and not questioned. If on the other hand the evidence had supported the tree-reptiles to birds view, the fossils would have been very critically examined and rejected.
Of course this is not limited just to archeology; many other branches of science suffer from the same problem. But I can somewhat sympathize with these researchers. Imagine arguing your whole life that your hypothesis is correct, all the evidence for the past 50 years points to your conclusion, and then suddenly new evidence pops up that invalidates your life's work. Would you not be tempted to suppress the evidence? Like I said, scientists are human just like us, and while I do not condone suppressing contrary evidence, I can understand why someone would do just that. On the upside, history shows that evidence cannot be suppressed indefinitely, it will always surface. It may take several decades, as was the case with the plate tectonics theory, but evidence cannot be silenced forever.
Scientology isn't a religion. I would not even call it a cult. It is a scam to milk as much money as possible off its followers. The founder of Scientology has been quoted as saying something to the effect that religion was the best way to scam people. A religious organization is tax deductable and enjoys many other benifits that a regular organization just cannot get. Don't think Scientology is a scam? Just do a Google on the subject. I have read of people paying up to $40,000 for a series of "treatments".
While I agree with your assertion that there have not been enough monopolies to get a conclusive analysis, I do believe that we have had enough to be able to talk probabilities. Let's look at a company that was so successful that they were taken to court on the grounds of them being a monopoly. What was this company? It was GM (General Motors). Now GM's market share was nowhere near what Microsoft has in the desktop OS market, but it was well over 50%. What happened to this company? They got too sure of themselves and refused to see the threat the Japanese imports posed to them. When they finally released that the Japanese were stealing market share, it was too late. GM also placed greater emphasis on the styling and features of the cars than on their build quality. Does this sound familiar? Microsoft was slow to release that Linux was a threat; they finally woke up when Linux had already taken over most of the server market. Also, there continual emphasis on new features in their software; instead of security and quality; does not help. Most people keep using Microsoft because there they know of no other easy to use alternative; but as Linux becomes both easier to use and more popular, Microsoft will continue to lose market share.
There is another interesting point, don't people learn from other people's mistakes? Don't they learn from History? The sad truth is no, they do not. From studying history (I am an amateur history buff), I can see that every empire that arose fell for the same reason. They did not learn from history. The Persians conquered the Assyrian empire which had grown "fat" and weak. The Assyrian kings and once mighty army became corrupt and spent more time relaxing and feasting than training. They fell easily to the Persians and Medes. The Persians, instead of learning from the mistakes of the Persians, repeated them and were conquered by the Greeks, newly united under Alexander. But they too did not learn from their predecessors, and were conquered by the Romans. The Romans held out longer than any other empire preceding them (someone must have stayed awake in history class for a while); but they too succumbed to corruption and frivolous pursuits. As everyone knows, they were conquered by some primitive barbarians.
What does this prove? For one that we humans rarely learn form history and repeat the mistakes of those who lived before us. (Another interesting point: Hitler, in his quest for world domination, made the exact same mistake that Napoleon did. Having conquered most of Europe and faced with the choice of invading England or Russia, both invaded Russia; during the winter. Both lost a sizable portion of their troops in Russia helping to turn the tide.) What do I see happening to Microsoft? There will come a time when the company will become too sure of themselves and careless. They will start making mistakes and will not be able to fend off the advancing new comers. They may hang on for a while, but in the end their aggressive streak will get tamed (to an extent), just like the others that came before them. Remember, nothing lasts forever.
There seems to be a lot of misconception about what Apple has decided to do. Quite a bit of people seem to think that Apple wants to port OSX over to the x86 platform, i.e. to create a version of OSX that supports current x86 hardware. They are very wrong. The only thing that Apple is doing is switching to Intel x86 chips and porting OSX code to compile and run on these chips.
For those who harbor fantasies of running OSX on their current WinTel machines, forget it. Apple, primarily a hardware manufacturer, will almost certainly make this impossible. How? Very easy, they can do his using a combination of software and hardware locks. They will not take some OEM motherboard that Dell or HP use and port OSX to it. It would be a quick and dirty solution, but Apple doesn't generally do quick and dirty.
Let's take a look at a typical WinTel motherboard. What makes it tick? Well we have the processor and RAM, too costly to change so they stay the same. Then there are the North and Southbridges, an interesting possibility but Apple may just use the stock bridges that Intel makes. What else is there? Oh yes, the BIOS. This is where I see the biggest potential for Apple to keep their proprietary control over Apple hardware. The current PC BIOS is a perfect example of vestigial code being hacked to the point of where it is good enough, but still junk. There have been talks in the PC industry of replacing the BIOS with something that is more modern and user-friendly. Modern, user-friendly? Aren't those the very goals of all Apple products? I predict that Apple will create a new BIOS for its' new Mac; no Apple BIOS, no OSX. This will also eliminate the possibility of running Windows on the Apple hardware, at least until Microsoft releases some drivers.
Remember, just because Apple is coming over to the x86 world does not mean they are joining the WinTel world. They are just buying x86 chips (and maybe the bridges) from Intel. They are not getting the latest and greatest ASUS motherboards, sticking them into Apple cases, and calling them Macs. Apple's business model remains the same, just with a different chip partner.
Actually, I did try several snapshots of 1.9, but they were so unstable on my system that I was not able to do anything with them. Writer crashed as soon as I opened it while Impress gave me about five minutes before it too crashed. So for now I decided to stick with what is stable.
Metzli you're completely missing the point; when Firefox 1.0.3 was shipped, the vulnerabilities were not known! Therefore, when they became known, Firefox 1.0.4 was released. That is why Ben Goodger blasted Netscape; they were using software with known (but corrected in another release) vulnerabilities. The same cannot be said of Firefox. Granted Netscape corrected the vulnerabilities within 24 hours, but only because of all the negative publicity.
Ben Goodger had a very valid point when he wrote that Firefox is able to more quickly and better address its' vulnerabilities. Anytime your product is dependent on someone else's product, there will be lag time between their release and your release. Let's say that some vulnerability is discovered in Firefox, the Firefox developers fix it and have Firefox 1.0.5 out in a week. Since Netscape is based on Firefox 1.0.4, it has the same vulnerability; but it must wait for Firefox 1.0.5 to be released (suppose a week goes by) and then integrate the new version into Netscape (say another week). That leaves the Netscape user vulnerable for two weeks, while Firefox users were vulnerable for only one.
Another example is the drivers made available by hardware manufactures who use other's chips (for example Asus and Nvidia). I ran into this problem when I bought an nForce2 motherboard from Asus. I had installed the chipset drivers that came with the driver CD, and behold my compter only restarts (even if Shutdown and Standby are choosen in Windows). Naturally, I suspected that the driver was at fault, so I went to Asus' website and got their newest driver. Same problem. Finally, I got the latest driver from Nvidia; problem fixed. Asus had not posted the new driver because they either had not tested it, known that it existed, or thought the updates were unimportant. Do you now understand the problem of lag?
What compounds the problem is that the release cycles of Firefox and Netscape are not the same. From what I have seen, Firefox is pretty good about fixing bugs and vulnerabilities quickly; how can I as a user be sure that Netscape will release an update every time Firefox does? What if Netscape releases version 8.02 (based on Firefox 1.0.5) and Firefox releases version 1.0.6 the next day? Will Netscape release version 8.03 within a week or will they wait for Firefox 1.0.7 to be released? These are the questions that I, as a user who is worried about security (which is why I use an alternative browser in the first place), am concerned about.
Not that I'm Microsoft's biggest fan or anything; but there may be a reason that PowerPoint may not display its own slideshows correctly.
Say you create a PowerPoint presentation and then open it in OpenOffice or NeoOffice or whatever, it then is mangled by the program. You save it in its mangled state and then open it on PowerPoint again. This mangles it even more.
I manage a few non-profit computer labs for seniors and low-income families and in one of my labs I installed OpenOffice (didn't feel like shelling out $200-$300 for each of the eight computers, nor did I have the funding), while at the two other labs and at home I have Microsoft Office. So when I type up some documentation at home and try to edit it at the OpenOffice lab, the Word document always get mangled. Any kind of formatting beyond the basic (font, font size, bold, italic, underline, text alignment) gets screwed so badly that I have to redo all the formatting. It is easier to leave it unformatted and do the formating in OpenOffice. I hope OpenOffice 2.0 fixes this.
That having been said, I do recommend OpenOffice to those who need basic wordprocessing and do not want to dish out $300. We teach basic computer skills at our labs and we teach (and give out CDs of) OpenOffice.