See, that's the whole problem. Sometimes having a brain and having it turned on won't help you much. You'd also have to do the research and dig up the data to judge whether the stuff on Wikipedia is believable or not. At which point, frankly, why bother with Wikipedia at all?
Dig up which data? Unless you actually go to Egypt and study the pyramid, you _have_ to trust some sources. There is no way of being completely certain that something isn't false, either deliberately or accidently, without actually checking it yourself. This isn't too practical, so you will at many points have to just trust some things. Wikipedia is not the most trustworthy of resources, though it is far more trustworthy than most people assume.
Also, you can improve its usefulness by using your brain and checking the history of a page for example - it's easy to see if a page has been vandalised or changed markedly.
No... you've missed the point. The virus in question did not work as intended on previous (current) versions of Linux. The virus should have worked, so Linus produced a patch which obtained the desired behaviour of Linux, and thus let the virus work. So now the virus _does_ work as intended.
I'm with you about the lack of intelligent discussion - 1 futurama joke is fine, but why are they all modded funny? Any joke that involves "your anus" is not funny. Back to the point.
What makes this particular ring blue? I don't believe that it is just, as the article claims, the fact that it is made up of small particles.
Firstly, you've taken the quote out of context, and not addressed his point in the paragraph below the one you quoted. Here it is: Another problem is the way the media highlight and focus on nationality, for example, every time Abu Musaab is mentioned, he is mentioned as "The Jordanian" or "Jordan-born" Abu Musaab, while in positive contexts, it is rare to have nationality mentioned, you won't hear in any news "The Jordanian Dr. Rima Khalaf Assistant Secretary General and Regional Director of UNDP" or "Jordan-born Usama Fayyad, the chief data officer and senior vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions in Yahoo".
Secondly, where do you get the notion that Arab radicalism is a huge problem right now? I've not seen _any_ problems with Arab radicalism personally. Attacks by Christians easily outweigh attacks by Muslims in Europe.
Thirdly, what the hell has it got to do with him that some Arabs are nutters? I'm white, and if someone told me I was in some way responsible for nutjob white actions, I'd laugh at them. Why on earth do you think it should be different for Arabs?
Someone has to write a virus to completely screw up a crappily implemented system. Therefore, finally we may be able to attain the holy grail : free (as in beer) beer!
Pandas, on the other hand, do. So call me cynical, but I think that yes, there is indeed a reason why we know the exact number of big pandas on the planet, while other animals go completely undetected for 11 or even 390 million years.
Since homo sapiens is has only been around about 200,000 years, there is one one good reason why these animals went undetected by homo sapiens for 390,000,000 years or so.
I went to an English "Public School" and am now over 40. I only know my weight in kilogrammes. We went metric a long time ago!
Then you're pretty unusual - everyone I know who I tell my weight to in kilos just stares at me blankly. We have a long way to go before we go metric, everyone uses miles as has previously been mentioned, and most people still quote their weight in stones, which no one in the world uses apart from us. The funny thing is I accidently used stones to an American a while back, and he said he didn't understand our stupid metric system.
The analogy does not work, as has previously been mentioned.
These botnets attempt to not harm the computers they infect generally. They attempt to harm (in many cases) other, independent computers via DOS attacks.
To make the analogy valid, you'd have a situation in which lots of people are walking through that bad area of town, unknowingly getting their valuables copied (somehow), and their valuables being used against a different independent party, who locked up their valuables. Of course no one is shedding tears for those who _are not harmed_ by this, despite their lack of security.
On a separate note - I don't ever lock my house up, though I do have quite a big dog who doesn't let people in. And the entire argument along the lines that 'those that don't take enough care to protect themselves from criminals deserve what they get' should be squashed. What care is enough care, and what about those who do not know which areas of town are good and bad?
Our rule is that you can't use a computer to do things that crayons and paper do just as well
Why crayons and paper? It's not more sociable or more valuable than typing or drawing on the PC, is it? I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've actually written something down or drawn something in the last six months. That even includes my signature - my credit card has a pin now, I don't use it for anything else. And, yes, that includes writing phone numbers down - I just create a new text file usually. Why is writing important now, apart from within education? And if it is only useful within education, there's something wrong with education.
in my opinion, definately not the internet. it's not long before they/their friends start getting into AIM and things like that. before you know it, when they're still really small, they'll probably end up loading the computer with spyware and they might even have a myspace or something...teach em how to use a computer, but don't give em the internet until they're older and seem somewhat more responsible.
The internet is not something you should be letting children onto unsupervised probably (though I had free reign when I was a kid 15 years ago, including access to all binary newsgroups, which ISPs used to feed - and it did me no harm:P). However, it can be a useful tool, just as a computer is. And besides, who on earth would set up a computer for a child with administrative privileges? If you are concerned about spyware, don't allow the spyware to install.
At its most basic level a shoal of fish is merely a group of prey banding together so that they are less likely to be eaten, similar to herds of gazelle on land.
I always have a problem with this "shoal for protection" theory. Take for example, shoals of sardines that are herded up and eaten by dolphins, sharks, killer whales, and even humpback whales, down to the last fish. This doesn't seem too great a survival strategy to me - I doubt you'd get many humpback whales chasing around individual sardines. I realise something more complex must be going on, but I don't understand it.
The University of Hertfordshire - I was at Wall Hall. It's not a great "university" - not just my opinion - 2 people I know involved with it slate it more than I do. http://www.herts.ac.uk/
From TFA : At just 3 metres long, the creature is a small relative of T. rex, which could reach a mighty 13 metres.
I thought they could get bigger than that though. T. Rex is not the largest carnvorous dinosaur though - Giganotosaurus was bigger, and Spinosaurus was about the same size too.
Did you even read his point through? His point is about assigning intelligent quotient status to tests that are not intended to attempt that. It's pretty simple. You can't judge IQ by how high you can jump.
The biggest reason Universities in the UK are having trouble with this is because of the new targets the current government has set for % of people going to university. The government have a stated ambition of getting 50% of people into higher education by 2010. That's just wrong.
I went to university back in 1997 or so. I scraped through my A-levels (I averaged less than 50% attendance, I'm suprised they let me take the exams), and fluked a crap points offer with my A in general studies. Now, I shouldn't have gone to university. If I had the knowledge I do now, I wouldn't have. However, all my friends were (I went to a good school up to GCSEs), everyone expected me too, and it was the easiest thing to do. Needless to say I died a death academically at university - I passed my first year (with an attendance of exactly 50%, that was required), failed my second, and repeated my 2nd year with no intention of passing, I just wanted to bum about.
I should never have been there - I wasn't enjoying the education system, and I wasn't much good at it. It was only because I could and it looked fun that I went. And others paid for it, back then. I used my student loan to buy a car, I had money coming in from other sources.
Anyway, my point is that making university available to more people _necessarily_ devalues it. What we should do is change the system so that we are not making it available to more, just the same amount, but the most worthy of a university education. People like me should never have gone to university.
p.s. I should just qualify I am relatively bright - just hate academia, shouldn't be let close to it. Regarding IQ - I've never scored under 130 on any tests.
Well they might be able to turn the average rugby player into red paste - the trouble is they generally wouldn't ba able to cross the 20 yards or so between them without stopping to catch their breath. I wonder about the US - where being big and fat qualifies you for a sport.
When big fat people fall over they collide with the floor with a force that often snaps bone. That doesn't make being big and fat impressive.
My Freview box (Like US Tivo I think - in essense it's just a digital tuner and a hard disk in a box) has one of these stupid dialogues. Whoever decided this was good wording should be shot:
Are you sure you want to cancel this reservation?
[Yes] [Cancel]
Hydrogen is definately a viable power source for cars, but only if you do have plentiful clean electrical energy. As we currently do not, all we would be doing if we adopted hydrogen cars would be moving pollution out of the cities. This is ok, but not the prime goal, I don't think.
So if we did have plentiful clean electricity, we could all use hydrogen cars, which IIRC are to all intents and purposes just as practical as oil based cars. The difficult part is getting enough electricity.
Probably explains why there are about 35 fatal shootings each year in the UK, and 11,000 in the US.
This is just plain wrong. Where did you get this information? This following information is just England and Wales, too. I have just noticed that there are no statistics available to show homicides as a result of firearms being shot. These are homicides involving firearms, but they include being beaten to death with one. There are statistics for shootings, but these also include shootings from crossbows, etc. Anyway, the two sets are very similar, differing by 1 or 2 per year, so I assume 90%+ of these homicides are shootings, and 90%+ of the shootings involve firearms. Just to nip you pedants in the bud;)
Crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in which firearms (including air weapons) were reported to have been used, by offence group.
Anyway, make of these statistics what you will. They are official government statistics, from http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb0104.pd f (pdf). I can't seem to find more recent ones with year by year comparisons, there are probably some about. I don't think the situation's got much better over the past couple of years though. Also, I am English, and I do support gun control of some kind, I don't think a blanket ban of handguns is the way to go though. I learnt a couple of other things looking this up. Firstly there are more guns in the UK than I thought there were, almost 2 million legally owned IIRC. Secondly, the gun controls of the UK mean that some Olympic sports are outlawed. There will be special dispensation for 2012. However, our competitors are not getting any dispensation to practise, so apparently many of them have now moved to Switzerland so that they can practise regularly.
I always used to type in 66 rather than 111 or 100 on my previous microwave. My new microwave however has stupid buttons - A 1 minute one, a 10 second one, and a 1 second one. So 1 minute is just 1 press. However, 8 minutes is 8 presses, etc.
twat Noun. 1. The female genitals. [1600s]
2. A contemptible person, an idiot.
Verb. To hit, to thump. E.g."I twatted him before he had chance to twat me."
Slashdot Mirror
See, that's the whole problem. Sometimes having a brain and having it turned on won't help you much. You'd also have to do the research and dig up the data to judge whether the stuff on Wikipedia is believable or not. At which point, frankly, why bother with Wikipedia at all?
Dig up which data? Unless you actually go to Egypt and study the pyramid, you _have_ to trust some sources. There is no way of being completely certain that something isn't false, either deliberately or accidently, without actually checking it yourself. This isn't too practical, so you will at many points have to just trust some things. Wikipedia is not the most trustworthy of resources, though it is far more trustworthy than most people assume.
Also, you can improve its usefulness by using your brain and checking the history of a page for example - it's easy to see if a page has been vandalised or changed markedly.
Obviously the media, by that i mean CNN, Fox News, SONY, etc will not be getting the word out. Its in their interest that this goes through.
This is one huge advantage of having the BBC which is, in some small ways, getting the message out. I've seen a couple of pieces on DRM & CSS etc on TV. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online /4653808.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4474143.stm are a couple of quick search results from their website. I guess at the moment they think people aren't all that interested, which is why there isn't more reporting.
No... you've missed the point. The virus in question did not work as intended on previous (current) versions of Linux. The virus should have worked, so Linus produced a patch which obtained the desired behaviour of Linux, and thus let the virus work. So now the virus _does_ work as intended.
I hope that is all clear...
I'm with you about the lack of intelligent discussion - 1 futurama joke is fine, but why are they all modded funny? Any joke that involves "your anus" is not funny. Back to the point.
What makes this particular ring blue? I don't believe that it is just, as the article claims, the fact that it is made up of small particles.
A few points :
Firstly, you've taken the quote out of context, and not addressed his point in the paragraph below the one you quoted. Here it is :
Another problem is the way the media highlight and focus on nationality, for example, every time Abu Musaab is mentioned, he is mentioned as "The Jordanian" or "Jordan-born" Abu Musaab, while in positive contexts, it is rare to have nationality mentioned, you won't hear in any news "The Jordanian Dr. Rima Khalaf Assistant Secretary General and Regional Director of UNDP" or "Jordan-born Usama Fayyad, the chief data officer and senior vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions in Yahoo".
Secondly, where do you get the notion that Arab radicalism is a huge problem right now? I've not seen _any_ problems with Arab radicalism personally. Attacks by Christians easily outweigh attacks by Muslims in Europe.
Thirdly, what the hell has it got to do with him that some Arabs are nutters? I'm white, and if someone told me I was in some way responsible for nutjob white actions, I'd laugh at them. Why on earth do you think it should be different for Arabs?
Someone has to write a virus to completely screw up a crappily implemented system. Therefore, finally we may be able to attain the holy grail : free (as in beer) beer!
Pandas, on the other hand, do. So call me cynical, but I think that yes, there is indeed a reason why we know the exact number of big pandas on the planet, while other animals go completely undetected for 11 or even 390 million years.
Since homo sapiens is has only been around about 200,000 years, there is one one good reason why these animals went undetected by homo sapiens for 390,000,000 years or so.
I went to an English "Public School" and am now over 40. I only know my weight in kilogrammes. We went metric a long time ago!
Then you're pretty unusual - everyone I know who I tell my weight to in kilos just stares at me blankly. We have a long way to go before we go metric, everyone uses miles as has previously been mentioned, and most people still quote their weight in stones, which no one in the world uses apart from us. The funny thing is I accidently used stones to an American a while back, and he said he didn't understand our stupid metric system.
The analogy does not work, as has previously been mentioned.
These botnets attempt to not harm the computers they infect generally. They attempt to harm (in many cases) other, independent computers via DOS attacks.
To make the analogy valid, you'd have a situation in which lots of people are walking through that bad area of town, unknowingly getting their valuables copied (somehow), and their valuables being used against a different independent party, who locked up their valuables. Of course no one is shedding tears for those who _are not harmed_ by this, despite their lack of security.
On a separate note - I don't ever lock my house up, though I do have quite a big dog who doesn't let people in. And the entire argument along the lines that 'those that don't take enough care to protect themselves from criminals deserve what they get' should be squashed. What care is enough care, and what about those who do not know which areas of town are good and bad?
Our rule is that you can't use a computer to do things that crayons and paper do just as well
Why crayons and paper? It's not more sociable or more valuable than typing or drawing on the PC, is it? I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've actually written something down or drawn something in the last six months. That even includes my signature - my credit card has a pin now, I don't use it for anything else. And, yes, that includes writing phone numbers down - I just create a new text file usually. Why is writing important now, apart from within education? And if it is only useful within education, there's something wrong with education.
in my opinion, definately not the internet. it's not long before they/their friends start getting into AIM and things like that. before you know it, when they're still really small, they'll probably end up loading the computer with spyware and they might even have a myspace or something...teach em how to use a computer, but don't give em the internet until they're older and seem somewhat more responsible.
The internet is not something you should be letting children onto unsupervised probably (though I had free reign when I was a kid 15 years ago, including access to all binary newsgroups, which ISPs used to feed - and it did me no harm :P). However, it can be a useful tool, just as a computer is. And besides, who on earth would set up a computer for a child with administrative privileges? If you are concerned about spyware, don't allow the spyware to install.
At its most basic level a shoal of fish is merely a group of prey banding together so that they are less likely to be eaten, similar to herds of gazelle on land.
I always have a problem with this "shoal for protection" theory. Take for example, shoals of sardines that are herded up and eaten by dolphins, sharks, killer whales, and even humpback whales, down to the last fish. This doesn't seem too great a survival strategy to me - I doubt you'd get many humpback whales chasing around individual sardines. I realise something more complex must be going on, but I don't understand it.
The University of Hertfordshire - I was at Wall Hall. It's not a great "university" - not just my opinion - 2 people I know involved with it slate it more than I do. http://www.herts.ac.uk/
From TFA : At just 3 metres long, the creature is a small relative of T. rex, which could reach a mighty 13 metres.
I thought they could get bigger than that though. T. Rex is not the largest carnvorous dinosaur though - Giganotosaurus was bigger, and Spinosaurus was about the same size too.
Did you even read his point through? His point is about assigning intelligent quotient status to tests that are not intended to attempt that. It's pretty simple. You can't judge IQ by how high you can jump.
The biggest reason Universities in the UK are having trouble with this is because of the new targets the current government has set for % of people going to university. The government have a stated ambition of getting 50% of people into higher education by 2010. That's just wrong.
I went to university back in 1997 or so. I scraped through my A-levels (I averaged less than 50% attendance, I'm suprised they let me take the exams), and fluked a crap points offer with my A in general studies. Now, I shouldn't have gone to university. If I had the knowledge I do now, I wouldn't have. However, all my friends were (I went to a good school up to GCSEs), everyone expected me too, and it was the easiest thing to do. Needless to say I died a death academically at university - I passed my first year (with an attendance of exactly 50%, that was required), failed my second, and repeated my 2nd year with no intention of passing, I just wanted to bum about.
I should never have been there - I wasn't enjoying the education system, and I wasn't much good at it. It was only because I could and it looked fun that I went. And others paid for it, back then. I used my student loan to buy a car, I had money coming in from other sources.
Anyway, my point is that making university available to more people _necessarily_ devalues it. What we should do is change the system so that we are not making it available to more, just the same amount, but the most worthy of a university education. People like me should never have gone to university.
p.s. I should just qualify I am relatively bright - just hate academia, shouldn't be let close to it. Regarding IQ - I've never scored under 130 on any tests.
so I can share a single picture or movie with my girlfriend
Are you sure that shouldn't read "so I can share a single picture or movie of my "girlfriend"?
Well they might be able to turn the average rugby player into red paste - the trouble is they generally wouldn't ba able to cross the 20 yards or so between them without stopping to catch their breath. I wonder about the US - where being big and fat qualifies you for a sport.
When big fat people fall over they collide with the floor with a force that often snaps bone. That doesn't make being big and fat impressive.
My Freview box (Like US Tivo I think - in essense it's just a digital tuner and a hard disk in a box) has one of these stupid dialogues. Whoever decided this was good wording should be shot:
Are you sure you want to cancel this reservation?
[Yes] [Cancel]
Hydrogen is definately a viable power source for cars, but only if you do have plentiful clean electrical energy. As we currently do not, all we would be doing if we adopted hydrogen cars would be moving pollution out of the cities. This is ok, but not the prime goal, I don't think.
So if we did have plentiful clean electricity, we could all use hydrogen cars, which IIRC are to all intents and purposes just as practical as oil based cars. The difficult part is getting enough electricity.
Probably explains why there are about 35 fatal shootings each year in the UK, and 11,000 in the US.
This is just plain wrong. Where did you get this information? This following information is just England and Wales, too. I have just noticed that there are no statistics available to show homicides as a result of firearms being shot. These are homicides involving firearms, but they include being beaten to death with one. There are statistics for shootings, but these also include shootings from crossbows, etc. Anyway, the two sets are very similar, differing by 1 or 2 per year, so I assume 90%+ of these homicides are shootings, and 90%+ of the shootings involve firearms. Just to nip you pedants in the bud ;)
The following information I find particularly interesting. Bear in mind that hand guns were outlawed (to all intents and purposes) in 1997.
Anyway, make of these statistics what you will. They are official government statistics, from http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb0104.pd f (pdf). I can't seem to find more recent ones with year by year comparisons, there are probably some about. I don't think the situation's got much better over the past couple of years though. Also, I am English, and I do support gun control of some kind, I don't think a blanket ban of handguns is the way to go though. I learnt a couple of other things looking this up. Firstly there are more guns in the UK than I thought there were, almost 2 million legally owned IIRC. Secondly, the gun controls of the UK mean that some Olympic sports are outlawed. There will be special dispensation for 2012. However, our competitors are not getting any dispensation to practise, so apparently many of them have now moved to Switzerland so that they can practise regularly.
I always used to type in 66 rather than 111 or 100 on my previous microwave. My new microwave however has stupid buttons - A 1 minute one, a 10 second one, and a 1 second one. So 1 minute is just 1 press. However, 8 minutes is 8 presses, etc.
twat
Noun. 1. The female genitals. [1600s]
2. A contemptible person, an idiot.
Verb. To hit, to thump. E.g."I twatted him before he had chance to twat me."
I was just about to order when...
Chest piece does not light up. Helmet does not change your voice.
2. We could do the same thing already by building more nuclear power plants. The reason we don't is because of liberal evironmentalist whacknuts.
Lots of "liberal evironmentalist whacknuts" are actually pretty supportive of nuclear power. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore_(enviro nmentalist)