I have these things growing out of my hands, and it makes my current job as a programmer exceedingly difficult...
Those are called "fingers." Can you wiggle them? Yes? Good. Keep practicing and they will help you enter your code via the "keyboard." Then you won't have to tap that foot pedal in Morse code to type anymore.
"Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity."
They could have avoided the scalability issues if they'd just built it on Google App Engine.
Even if you can show that Linux computers account for a disproportionately small amount of malware, that doesn't necessarily show that Linux is more secure (not that I think it isn't).
Linux computers are mostly run by technically-minded people, who probably take better security measures anyway. Not to mention that Linux is a a smaller target for malware.
Guys, all we have to do to stop the madness is get the proper patent. Let's see...
"A method for securing profits by describing an idea of sufficient generality and utility that its use is inevitable, then bringing legal claims against the most successful groups to implement it."
My favorite part was that the people could come apart at the waist and their torsos snapped onto some wheeled contraption, ready to race across the bedroom with laser lance in hand. Now THAT's interchangability!
I also remember reading a story once about a guy who makes giant works of art, using Legos like pixels. I believe they said that if you want to buy like 10,000 blue bricks, you can get bulk prices straight from Lego.
When a product is so durable, you need to charge a little more for it in order to ensure your company's survival.
Exactly. Which is why computers and software, which are obselete in less than 5 years, are so cheap.
Hey, wait a minute!:)
Seriously, though, you make a good point. If they wanted to be evil, I guess they could make them less durable, but I think in the end it's better that everyone knows them as the best.
OK, OK, I'll try to be original. Um... in Soviet Russia... CowBoy Neal... GNU license... filthy record companies... tinfoil hat... aw crap I guess I can't do it.
...is often no better than literary mumbo-jumbo. Like this article mentioned in XKCD, where the creator of deconstruction (a literary method) describes why he created it:
This type of device may have enabled me to detect not only in the history of philosophy and in the related socio-historical totality, but also in what are alleged to be sciences and in so-called post-philosophical discourses that figure among the most modern (in linguistics, in anthropology, in psychoanalysis), to detect in these an evaluation of writing, or, to tell the truth, rather a devaluation of writing whose insistent, repetitive, even obscurely compulsive, character was the sign of a whole set of long-standing constraints. These constraints were practised at the price of contradictions, of denials, of dogmatic decrees.
It's always nice to see blatant garbage ridiculed. Thanks.:)
There are plenty of people that can drive a car perfectly well at.08 BAC. It is an arbitrary number. Impairment should be based on physical ability. If you are not weaving, or having any problems driving...if you get pulled over even with an open beer in the car, you should be good to go.
First off, humans are terrible at judging their own performance. Secondly, drunk humans are even worse. Thirdly, your suggestion, if made law, would encourage drunk humans to say "I'm one of those people who doesn't drive dangerously when drunk, so it's legal." End result, more drunk drivers.
I think it's much better if people know "once I've had X amount of alcohol in Y amount of time, I'm probably over the limit." Objective standards are good - especially for law enforcement.
I think your attitude of "I can handle it so it's fine" is exactly the kind of dangerous denial that gets people killed by drunk drivers all the time.
Driving impaired does not mean necessarily that you have had some alcohol. There are people out there driving sleepy or on cell phones that are more impared than someone who has had 2-3 beers....
Right. Which is why sleepy, weaving people should also be pulled over. The difference is that it's harder to quantify how sleepy they are once you've got them pulled over. And you can bet they'll wake up a bit with a cop shining a flashlight in their face. Not that being sleepy is less dangerous.
Are you implying, Libertarianism is inconsistent with the Declaration of Independence or Constitution? It is not...
Didn't mean to offend you. I'm just trying to point out that in order for me to have a right that nobody can take away, it may be necessary to prevent me from giving that right away. If I can give it away "of my own free will," someone can also coerce me into giving it away and gag me so I can't tell everyone what happened.
If it's illegal for me to sell my kidneys, I can't be pressured (as easily) to do it. Freedom FROM that pressure seems pretty crucial to me.
You would certainly be able to indenture yourself, if you choose to -- to anyone, who would want such a thing from you.
Isn't it a valid criticism that if you're free to "voluntarily" indenture yourself, you're also open to being coerced? If someone says "be my slave and tell everyone it's voluntary, or I'll kill your family," what will you do?
Whereas currently, if the government sees that you're not getting proper wages for your work, it's taken out of your hands. You don't have the right to give up your rights - they're "inalienable."
Sometimes taking away certain freedoms actually protect others. If I travel abroad with an aid organization, and they have a policy to never negotiate with terrorists, and I'm kidnapped, my supervisors don't have the freedom to negotiate. On the other hand, this policy will probably prevent many kidnappings, increasing the actual freedom of life and limb for our staff.
...Or, considering that Moses was 80 years old at the time, and was supposed to show these commandments to an entire nation from a mountain top, maybe God was just smart enough to use a LARGE FONT.
That can't be it, because Windows is not particularly convenient.
Default installation on new machines and network effects ("I can have the same programs/open the same files as everyone else I know, and I can use the same interface I've seen elsewhere") DO make it convenient. Not necessarily good, but convenient.
If another OS can get enough market share, and open standards take off, some of that will go away. But it does exist.
One of my personal theories is that morality is a luxury and a technology... How could they devote time and thought to existentialism when survival is an issue?
I think there are at least two major ways of disagreeing with this statement. One, from an evolutionary/materialist point of view, some people argue that morality IS a survival mechanism. They would say that humans survive well because we take care of one another.
From a philosophical/spiritual point of view, I would note that "humanity" can be used as a synonym for "compassion," precisely because we feel it to be an essential human trait. Few things are as moving as accounts of people's kindness in the face of death. I would not like to subscribe to a worldview that reduced such unselfishness to illogical inefficiency.
Two tests: Give the Amazon natives sufficient food and water and safety from other people, and see how long they can comfortably survive in lands where English is spoken.
Then give native English speakers sufficient food and water and safety from other people, and see how long they can comfortably survive in the Amazon region.
If you're trying to show that Amazonians aren't inferior to us, I agree. If you're trying to show that they're superior, I disagree.
Each of us knows what we need to know. Getting "food and water and safety" is the primary task of every individual in a society like that, and you betcha they know a lot about it. We live in a very very specialized society, where a person can spend his whole career getting letters and numbers to appear on a screen correctly and never know where his food comes from.
Trying to get a programmer to live as an Amazonian is more hazardous than trying to get an Amazonian to live as a programmer, precisely because most of the Amazonian's "job" is "try to stay alive." And it is very hard - I'm sure their life expectancies are shorter than ours. If syntax errors made computers explode into shrapnel, it would be more even.
In some outdoor cafes in buggy coastal areas, they have these little "mosquito traps" that silently trap and kill mosquitoes. They have a gas tank that looks like what you'd attach to a gas grill, and I believe they somehow emit CO2 to attract the pests.
My wife and I recently gave some money to a missionary group going to Uganda so that they could buy and distribute mosquito nets for people there. Devices like this, which kill mosquitoes without spraying chemicals that could be harmful to humans, might help slow the spread of disease. That would be a really beneficial technology.
Well, unless you told the reporter this was off the record.
When I worked as a reporter, people tried to use "off the record" like a magic phrase to redact my writing. All. The. Time.
I had a police officer tell me something like, "Yes, the state has been very helpful with this program. Off the record, they haven't done a dang thing." Of course I didn't quote either of his duplicitous remarks. I'm not going to help him lie.
When is it off the record? When we both agree ahead of time. When will we agree to that? When there's no other way for me to get the information. After all, off-the-record info is useless to me, except that it may help me to get printable info somewhere else.
Now, for inconsequential stuff, like when the city manager says he's irritated with a loud-mouthed council member, I don't have to print that. I don't want to clam the guy up to where he's afraid to say anything in front of me next time. But I certainly wouldn't promise to take anything off the record that anybody wants, just because they said the magic words after the fact. If you're talking to a reporter, you should expect that it's on the record. Making the record is his/her job.
Slashdot Mirror
True. The hard part is staying on that tiny horse.
That's nothing. I just found a way to frabjimate SUPERconductor lasers without lenses.
Those are called "fingers." Can you wiggle them? Yes? Good. Keep practicing and they will help you enter your code via the "keyboard." Then you won't have to tap that foot pedal in Morse code to type anymore.
They could have avoided the scalability issues if they'd just built it on Google App Engine.
Sounds fantastic! Who needs to retire in Florida when you can go where the atmosphere is always trying to kill you?
Even if you can show that Linux computers account for a disproportionately small amount of malware, that doesn't necessarily show that Linux is more secure (not that I think it isn't).
Linux computers are mostly run by technically-minded people, who probably take better security measures anyway. Not to mention that Linux is a a smaller target for malware.
Guys, all we have to do to stop the madness is get the proper patent. Let's see...
"A method for securing profits by describing an idea of sufficient generality and utility that its use is inevitable, then bringing legal claims against the most successful groups to implement it."
PWND!!
My favorite part was that the people could come apart at the waist and their torsos snapped onto some wheeled contraption, ready to race across the bedroom with laser lance in hand. Now THAT's interchangability!
I also remember reading a story once about a guy who makes giant works of art, using Legos like pixels. I believe they said that if you want to buy like 10,000 blue bricks, you can get bulk prices straight from Lego.
Exactly. Which is why computers and software, which are obselete in less than 5 years, are so cheap.
Hey, wait a minute! :)
Seriously, though, you make a good point. If they wanted to be evil, I guess they could make them less durable, but I think in the end it's better that everyone knows them as the best.
OK, OK, I'll try to be original. Um... in Soviet Russia... CowBoy Neal... GNU license... filthy record companies... tinfoil hat... aw crap I guess I can't do it.
...is often no better than literary mumbo-jumbo. Like this article mentioned in XKCD, where the creator of deconstruction (a literary method) describes why he created it:
It's always nice to see blatant garbage ridiculed. Thanks. :)
The big secret: Lego Mindstorm robots are running the factory.
I, for one, welcome our new bumpy-headed overlords.
First off, humans are terrible at judging their own performance. Secondly, drunk humans are even worse. Thirdly, your suggestion, if made law, would encourage drunk humans to say "I'm one of those people who doesn't drive dangerously when drunk, so it's legal." End result, more drunk drivers.
I think it's much better if people know "once I've had X amount of alcohol in Y amount of time, I'm probably over the limit." Objective standards are good - especially for law enforcement.
I think your attitude of "I can handle it so it's fine" is exactly the kind of dangerous denial that gets people killed by drunk drivers all the time.
Right. Which is why sleepy, weaving people should also be pulled over. The difference is that it's harder to quantify how sleepy they are once you've got them pulled over. And you can bet they'll wake up a bit with a cop shining a flashlight in their face. Not that being sleepy is less dangerous.
Didn't mean to offend you. I'm just trying to point out that in order for me to have a right that nobody can take away, it may be necessary to prevent me from giving that right away. If I can give it away "of my own free will," someone can also coerce me into giving it away and gag me so I can't tell everyone what happened.
If it's illegal for me to sell my kidneys, I can't be pressured (as easily) to do it. Freedom FROM that pressure seems pretty crucial to me.
Isn't it a valid criticism that if you're free to "voluntarily" indenture yourself, you're also open to being coerced? If someone says "be my slave and tell everyone it's voluntary, or I'll kill your family," what will you do?
Whereas currently, if the government sees that you're not getting proper wages for your work, it's taken out of your hands. You don't have the right to give up your rights - they're "inalienable."
Sometimes taking away certain freedoms actually protect others. If I travel abroad with an aid organization, and they have a policy to never negotiate with terrorists, and I'm kidnapped, my supervisors don't have the freedom to negotiate. On the other hand, this policy will probably prevent many kidnappings, increasing the actual freedom of life and limb for our staff.
...Or, considering that Moses was 80 years old at the time, and was supposed to show these commandments to an entire nation from a mountain top, maybe God was just smart enough to use a LARGE FONT.
Finally, I will be able to play Wolfenstein 3D in all its beautiful glory!
Just now upgrading to Pentiums? This must be a real "fly-by-night" operation! [Cue "corny joke" sound effects]
Default installation on new machines and network effects ("I can have the same programs/open the same files as everyone else I know, and I can use the same interface I've seen elsewhere") DO make it convenient. Not necessarily good, but convenient.
If another OS can get enough market share, and open standards take off, some of that will go away. But it does exist.
I think there are at least two major ways of disagreeing with this statement. One, from an evolutionary/materialist point of view, some people argue that morality IS a survival mechanism. They would say that humans survive well because we take care of one another.
From a philosophical/spiritual point of view, I would note that "humanity" can be used as a synonym for "compassion," precisely because we feel it to be an essential human trait. Few things are as moving as accounts of people's kindness in the face of death. I would not like to subscribe to a worldview that reduced such unselfishness to illogical inefficiency.
No fee needed - it's under a Destructive Commons License. :)
If you're trying to show that Amazonians aren't inferior to us, I agree. If you're trying to show that they're superior, I disagree.
Each of us knows what we need to know. Getting "food and water and safety" is the primary task of every individual in a society like that, and you betcha they know a lot about it. We live in a very very specialized society, where a person can spend his whole career getting letters and numbers to appear on a screen correctly and never know where his food comes from.
Trying to get a programmer to live as an Amazonian is more hazardous than trying to get an Amazonian to live as a programmer, precisely because most of the Amazonian's "job" is "try to stay alive." And it is very hard - I'm sure their life expectancies are shorter than ours. If syntax errors made computers explode into shrapnel, it would be more even.
In some outdoor cafes in buggy coastal areas, they have these little "mosquito traps" that silently trap and kill mosquitoes. They have a gas tank that looks like what you'd attach to a gas grill, and I believe they somehow emit CO2 to attract the pests.
My wife and I recently gave some money to a missionary group going to Uganda so that they could buy and distribute mosquito nets for people there. Devices like this, which kill mosquitoes without spraying chemicals that could be harmful to humans, might help slow the spread of disease. That would be a really beneficial technology.
When I worked as a reporter, people tried to use "off the record" like a magic phrase to redact my writing. All. The. Time.
I had a police officer tell me something like, "Yes, the state has been very helpful with this program. Off the record, they haven't done a dang thing." Of course I didn't quote either of his duplicitous remarks. I'm not going to help him lie.
When is it off the record? When we both agree ahead of time. When will we agree to that? When there's no other way for me to get the information. After all, off-the-record info is useless to me, except that it may help me to get printable info somewhere else.
Now, for inconsequential stuff, like when the city manager says he's irritated with a loud-mouthed council member, I don't have to print that. I don't want to clam the guy up to where he's afraid to say anything in front of me next time. But I certainly wouldn't promise to take anything off the record that anybody wants, just because they said the magic words after the fact. If you're talking to a reporter, you should expect that it's on the record. Making the record is his/her job.