Read The God Delusion. We are entering the post-post-modern era. Post-modernism failed. Things are whether testable and thus true or false (or unsure), or are not testable and thus not relevant. There is no reason to keep the taboo of attacking someones bullshit beliefs. A religious opinion is not different from any other opinion, so it requires arguments and evidence. All progress comes from keeping the good ideas and throwing away the bad ones. Our society completely depends on this, and this fact is getting more and more attention. Religion was always protected from this, to keep the religious from killing each other. But as society has grown stronger and humanity is rapidly becoming more peaceful, we don't need this taboo any longer. People like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens do attack religion, and they are gaining momentum. We are entering a new age of reason, but expect the religious to resist.
I can second that. It's also very useful when i change my mind while dragging a file. This happens, quite often i have to admit. The feature is also very straight-forward; new users will never ever misunderstand it. This is surely not the case for the 'changing icons'-approach.
I always get a little nervous about the combination of driving licenses and drinking. If they go through all the trouble of registering those licenses at the bars, please let them check whether the drinkers use it afterwards or not.
The best summary of the anthropic principle i've ever come across is: "If things were different, things would be different." Yes, the universe as it is allows us to exist, but that's all we have to do with it. If you "tweak" the equations with an amount small enough to do nothing but just let some astroid 65 mya miss the earth, then you'll have a universe without clever primates thinking *their* conscienseness is fundamental to the universe.
If we're not careful, Flash is going to become more and more prominent in casual websites. The only advantage the the current standards have is that they're free and don't require a commercial solution to produce.
Another, very important feature of the standards is that they put the viewer of the webpage in the drivers seat. With a nice xhtml&css-page, you can control fonts and pics, shut css on and off, and block popups. But that's not in the interest of the advertisers. Flash makes it almost impossible to avoid advertising, and this is the real reason why it's becoming more popular. It is also the biggest problem any standard will have to overcome: how to keep the user in the drivers seat and keep the advertisers at bay.
AutoCad (AutoKut in Dutch) is NOT the #1 CAD program because it's so good. It was simply the first cheap CAD-program that ran on dos/windows. So it is used in many, many companies while gaining a reputation in designing lock-in formats. Everybody uses it, because everybody uses it. Autodesk is just like M$; crappy software and an unhealthy monopoly. Better, unix-based CAD programs have always existed.
"Vance Ferrell, who said he put together the material posted on Evolution-facts.org, said if the paper had been retracted he would remove the reference to it. Mr. Ferrell said he had no way of knowing what motivated Dr. Jacobson, but said that if scientists "look like they are pro-creationist they can get into trouble.""
Anyone who is pro-creationist is in deep trouble. Most don't realise, however.
Simple. Use multiple desktops. Go to Kcontrol and for taskbar deselect "show windows from all desktops". Now do all your GIMP on one desktop and use Compiz-Fusion to have some fun while switching. If uou don't want to use it the way it's meant to be used, you're not guaranteed to have all of the fun.
Most modern wind turbines don't have a gearbox. That's one of the reasons a 1G windpark is more quiet nowadays than an 1G coal or nuclear power station.
Why do so many geeks want you to keep your PC running all the time? When i'm done computing, i just shut it down, together with monitors and x powersupplies sucking energy. I do it with lights and washing machines too. It will save you enough electricity to buy a few gigs of memory at the end of the year. Now that's a speed improvement!
There is no need for that hypothesis. - Laplace, in response to Napoleon's objection that Laplace had omitted God from Celestial Mechanics (Boyer 1968, p. 538)
...if you would fully understand how the human ear works. The point is, we don't. Sometimes a minimal distortion results in a pain for the ear, on the other hand you can throw away 80% of the signal without much loss of quality (aka ogg vorbis).
Nice analyses, except for one thing: it's only relevant for the USA. In the rest of the world, there is no patent question. In Europe, for example, MS is forced to open up their protocols, US patents or not. Even if the Novell/MS deals blows all American Linux-companies out of the water because of the patents, Linux will be legally used & developed all over the world. Novell GPL'ed Suse completely, so any Suse/windows compatibility will be used by all. If MS tries to prevent this, it will be kicked in the nuts by the EU. China and India will just laugh.
I really think MS made the big mistake here. They didn't expect the verdict in the EU antitrust case. They didn't expect their clients to almost pay for a downgrade to XP. They didn't expect the resistance against OOXML to have any succes. They didn't realise the windows-linux interfaces could be developed and out of the bottle this fast. Linux only got better, and 96% of the worlds population doesn't give a shit about the IP threat.
And that's of course where you're missing the point. GNOME, XFCE and MacOSX attempt to be usable by default.
And that is why Gnome, XFCE and especially Apple (hatesit!hatesit!hatesit!) completely fail to make a decent GUI. There is no default user. It might come as a surprise, but people are not the same. What's fine and intuitive for me is a hell for someone else. Really. Users should be able adjust the GUI to their wishes, not the other way around. Defaults are for people who don't care enough to change it. Which is a reasonable choice by the way, and should be supported by the system. KDE is the only GUI i ever used that gave me the possibilities to adjust it's behaviour exactly to fit my intuition. The holy grail of THE perfect GUI that fits THE intuition of THE user is a fiction. It seems only KDE understands this.
This seems to be the ideal situation. Let the playback devices have the option to add compression for people who want loud, crushed music and keep the recordings with the full dynamic range (as there's no way to get it back when it's gone.)
You mean, like giving the user control over content he/she bought? You made a big mistake not to post AC, as you will hear an RIAA-official knock on your door late at night.
I guarantee it is easier to produce a "pop rap song" today, than it is to create something like what Elton John has done.
Is this actually relevant? One could also argue that it's much easier to produce an Elton John hit than to create something like what Godspeed has done. Apples and oranges, you know. Stupid music today doesn't prove yesterdays music was better.
Slashdot Mirror
Read The God Delusion. We are entering the post-post-modern era. Post-modernism failed. Things are whether testable and thus true or false (or unsure), or are not testable and thus not relevant. There is no reason to keep the taboo of attacking someones bullshit beliefs. A religious opinion is not different from any other opinion, so it requires arguments and evidence. All progress comes from keeping the good ideas and throwing away the bad ones. Our society completely depends on this, and this fact is getting more and more attention. Religion was always protected from this, to keep the religious from killing each other. But as society has grown stronger and humanity is rapidly becoming more peaceful, we don't need this taboo any longer. People like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens do attack religion, and they are gaining momentum. We are entering a new age of reason, but expect the religious to resist.
I can second that. It's also very useful when i change my mind while dragging a file. This happens, quite often i have to admit. The feature is also very straight-forward; new users will never ever misunderstand it. This is surely not the case for the 'changing icons'-approach.
I always get a little nervous about the combination of driving licenses and drinking. If they go through all the trouble of registering those licenses at the bars, please let them check whether the drinkers use it afterwards or not.
The best summary of the anthropic principle i've ever come across is: "If things were different, things would be different." Yes, the universe as it is allows us to exist, but that's all we have to do with it. If you "tweak" the equations with an amount small enough to do nothing but just let some astroid 65 mya miss the earth, then you'll have a universe without clever primates thinking *their* conscienseness is fundamental to the universe.
Another, very important feature of the standards is that they put the viewer of the webpage in the drivers seat. With a nice xhtml&css-page, you can control fonts and pics, shut css on and off, and block popups. But that's not in the interest of the advertisers. Flash makes it almost impossible to avoid advertising, and this is the real reason why it's becoming more popular. It is also the biggest problem any standard will have to overcome: how to keep the user in the drivers seat and keep the advertisers at bay.
it's a pleonasm.
AutoCad (AutoKut in Dutch) is NOT the #1 CAD program because it's so good. It was simply the first cheap CAD-program that ran on dos/windows. So it is used in many, many companies while gaining a reputation in designing lock-in formats. Everybody uses it, because everybody uses it. Autodesk is just like M$; crappy software and an unhealthy monopoly. Better, unix-based CAD programs have always existed.
If it encourages people to shut their machines down when the'yre done computing, i would call it a feature, not a bug.
to see the plans of the universities to deter the threats on science and reason, like the ID-movement.
And most of them are translators. Which is quite useful, if you want legal interoperability.
Simple. Use multiple desktops. Go to Kcontrol and for taskbar deselect "show windows from all desktops". Now do all your GIMP on one desktop and use Compiz-Fusion to have some fun while switching. If uou don't want to use it the way it's meant to be used, you're not guaranteed to have all of the fun.
It's 15,5 Gb/mm^2.
Most modern wind turbines don't have a gearbox. That's one of the reasons a 1G windpark is more quiet nowadays than an 1G coal or nuclear power station.
Why do so many geeks want you to keep your PC running all the time? When i'm done computing, i just shut it down, together with monitors and x powersupplies sucking energy. I do it with lights and washing machines too. It will save you enough electricity to buy a few gigs of memory at the end of the year. Now that's a speed improvement!
There is no need for that hypothesis. -
Laplace, in response to Napoleon's objection that Laplace had omitted God from Celestial Mechanics (Boyer 1968, p. 538)
...if you would fully understand how the human ear works. The point is, we don't. Sometimes a minimal distortion results in a pain for the ear, on the other hand you can throw away 80% of the signal without much loss of quality (aka ogg vorbis).
The right one is http://www.gatt.org/
Nice analyses, except for one thing: it's only relevant for the USA. In the rest of the world, there is no patent question. In Europe, for example, MS is forced to open up their protocols, US patents or not. Even if the Novell/MS deals blows all American Linux-companies out of the water because of the patents, Linux will be legally used & developed all over the world. Novell GPL'ed Suse completely, so any Suse/windows compatibility will be used by all. If MS tries to prevent this, it will be kicked in the nuts by the EU. China and India will just laugh.
I really think MS made the big mistake here. They didn't expect the verdict in the EU antitrust case. They didn't expect their clients to almost pay for a downgrade to XP. They didn't expect the resistance against OOXML to have any succes. They didn't realise the windows-linux interfaces could be developed and out of the bottle this fast. Linux only got better, and 96% of the worlds population doesn't give a shit about the IP threat.
And that is why Gnome, XFCE and especially Apple (hatesit!hatesit!hatesit!) completely fail to make a decent GUI. There is no default user. It might come as a surprise, but people are not the same. What's fine and intuitive for me is a hell for someone else. Really. Users should be able adjust the GUI to their wishes, not the other way around. Defaults are for people who don't care enough to change it. Which is a reasonable choice by the way, and should be supported by the system. KDE is the only GUI i ever used that gave me the possibilities to adjust it's behaviour exactly to fit my intuition. The holy grail of THE perfect GUI that fits THE intuition of THE user is a fiction. It seems only KDE understands this.
You mean, like giving the user control over content he/she bought? You made a big mistake not to post AC, as you will hear an RIAA-official knock on your door late at night.
since it says 3.5.6 is the latest version of KDE...
Because they don't need to be 'Vista-ready'.
I guarantee it is easier to produce a "pop rap song" today, than it is to create something like what Elton John has done.
Is this actually relevant? One could also argue that it's much easier to produce an Elton John hit than to create something like what Godspeed has done. Apples and oranges, you know. Stupid music today doesn't prove yesterdays music was better.