I'll have to give NeoOffice another shot when I do make the switch to an Intel Mac.
The NeoOffice guys are almost done extensively Aqua-fying, reiconing, and switching NeoOffice over to the OOO 2.0.3 codebase. They have a closed beta of that version out now. It starts about twice as fast (as OOO 2.0 starts faster than 000 1.0 and for the same reasons), is faster in operation, works on Intel Macs, and looks a lot nicer to boot.
in addition, it's making me have some slight apprehension regarding my plan to put a couple linux machines in the systems room at work. be a bit embarrassing if the new guy's machines got owned.
New Windows machines get owned too but I don't think that is exactly your concern. Any alternative has to be outrageosly superior to whatever established way of doing things is being replaced. The various ways that Windows machines can malfunction are common experiences to many and after long conditioning somewhat forgivable. Even though a Linux machine may be an outstanding way to replace a cranky Windows server, ANY malfunction is evidence "This Linux stuff sucks!" even though worse might be tolerated from the accustomed Windows solutions.
I've been the advocate for many such Linux deployments. Being the advocate, I make it my personal and professional business that the solutions I advance work. I've pulled a few overtimes here and there sorting issues out. It's what you have to do when it is YOUR big idea being tried out and that big idea bucks prejudices.
If you've been a long while from Linux, then you are correct to hang back. Find a little time to get to know your shit again so that if you ever DO propose a Linux trial that you can do the groundwork to really make it perform.
Not to say the Chinese government is benevolent or anything, it quite clearly isn't, but to claim legally tried and convicted death penalties are murder is a mighty big slur on, say, Texas and Florida for starters...
You can get the death penalty in China for tax evasion as well as over 2000 other offenses most of which aren't rape or murder. The death penalty in China is a whole 'nother kettle of fish from what we have here in the US. I'm not a fan of the death penalty in this country either but even I recognize the difference between the type of things it is applied to in the US and the type of things that earn in China. Even in Texas or Florida you have to do something pretty heinous (multiple murder, sex-related murder, murder-kidnapping, serial rape,...get the picture?) to ride the gurney. Things like tax fraud aren't going to result in one of those nifty Death Buses pulling up in front of your jailhouse.
I'll also point out that organs aren't harvested from convicts unless they voluntarily agreed to do so. We also don't charge the families for the chemicals or bullets used to carry out executions. Furthermore, the families of the executed are further respected in that the bodies are returned to them for funeral rites. About the only thing in common between the death penalty in China and here is that convicts can die. The thresholds necessary to earn the penalty and the ways in which it is carried out couldn't be more different.
I recommended Puppy Linux to a friend with a machine of similar specs. It performed acceptably for him. If you can get 128MB in the machine, then Puppy can run entirely from RAM and not hit a disk at all. But even with only 64 MB, such a machine is usable with Puppy.
Since you're reading, why not just have a new kernel/OS to go with that filesystem? As I understand the difficulty, your filesystem requires it's own VFS that replicates most of what Linux' VFS already does. The kernel devs don't want a duplicate VFS, they seem to want to update the in-place VFS and adapt the rest of the filesystem code to it. If this is indeed the case, I can see their point. I understand that Reiser4 is YOUR baby but Linux is THEIRS. You aren't the first and probably won't be the last developer they insist follow certain styles and conventions. It isn't entirely unreasonable. If you think the Linux kernel devs have been difficult, pitch Reiser4 to Theo DeRaadt. And yes I understand there are other issues besides the VFS one. Reiser4 has genuinely new ideas but new ideas break old assumptions....and some of them could reach clear down to userland software.
If Reiser4 is unable to be adapted to the requirements of the projects you propose to put it in then why not a new OS to go with it? Or maybe an existing project would be a better fit. There are various attempts to create an opensource BeOS and Reiser4 seems a natural fit.
Now was not the time to splatter this information all over the world. If they had waited for wider deployment, this hole could have been kept wedged open as closing it on hundreds of thousands of clients wouldn't have been terribly practical.
Remember would be DVD-Jons, if you find DRM holes in new media tech SHUT YOUR YAP UNTIL EVERYBODY AND HIS DOG HAS BOUGHT SOME. THEN RELEASE THE INFO. When you do release the information, do so complete with "mom friendly" utilities and use warez "spreaders" to be sure everybody and his dog can start using it right away. This also complicates shutting the hole in various social and technical ways.
Technically, we are celebrating the day we declared ourselves no longer a colony (where the colonists were explicitly denied the rights of even common Englishmen....) but rather an independent state in our own right. There isn't a thing wrong with that either; there is plenty of justification in that for a holiday.
What's sad is that our government is doing things that are every bit as egregious (or more!) as the things King George did and the sheeple by and large don't notice a thing. If the Brits had waited a few hundred years, we'd be their bitches now and they wouldn't have to fire a shot.
To this day we are still independent from Britain (and it could be argued that perhaps Britain acts more like they are OUR colony these days) so your second question is technically answered as well. We don't have to quarter troops in our homes but we DO have various forms of taxation without representation and various forms of insecurity in our effects, papers, homes, privacy, and other rights so perhaps all that has been accomplished is to trade masters. It looks like the jury is out on your third question but I have little doubt that the verdict will be ugly; it is often suggested that hooking up a dynamo to the graves of our Founding Fathers would provide gobs of Free Energy.
Actually, South Korea is militarily much more powerful than North Korea. They have a vibrant economy, advanced weaponry, and, counting reserves, more men under arms. They can easily defend themselves.
I thought NK was supposed to have the world's fourth largest standing army. I can see SK having more advanced weaponry and ammo to kill them with but just how are "reserves" counted? Also, Seoul is said to have one hell of a lot of dialed in artillery pointed at it. In the event the NK/SK mini cold war goes hot, SK will pretty much lose Seoul off the bat. SK has a LOT of incentive to maintain the status quo.
I doubt China is terribly happy with the potential loose cannon in their backyard these days. Provided China's borders and interests aren't threatened, I don't see them being terribly eager to prop up NK militarily this time around. They have likely made it clear to Kim Jong Il just how far their support would go. China is in business these days and KimmieBoy dredging up moldy Cold War BS is just bad bad bad for it.
In the event Kim Jong Il grows a dick and tries to take SK, he'll do a lot of damage initially. Seoul will be a smoking hole in the ground, the DMZ overrun and some ground taken in the first days. Provided we don't menace their borders, China will likely be more than happy to let us and SK pound them from the air and either push their armies back across the DMZ or decimate them pretty thoroughly. After that an understanding would have to be reached. I have no idea what that would look like. Slicing NK up Germany style might go over. Leaving NK politically intact but with their military kept stunted enforced by the US and China would probably work better.
Should Kim Jong Il be foolish enough to go nuclear, I suspect we'll tell China either you turn them into a glass parking lot or we will. As a courtesy, we'll make sure you're not downwind of the fallout. Come to think of it, does NK have any reason not to be deterred by what we could throw at them? NK and SK are STUCK with the current situation.
The smartest thing for NK to do is to pull a Roman Senate on Kimmieboy and get themselves a saner oligarchy in it's place. Losing the personality cult was the smartest move both the Soviet Union and China ever made.
Now, as a precedent, Kelo is undeniably dangerous. I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that in the particular case of New London, it was the right choice to make.
Since New London was foolishly permitted to make that choice, a multitude stand to lose homes, property, and businesses anytime bigger fish feel like greasing palms. Expediency for New London is no excuse for what is going to happen now.
Those type of scenes never scared me. What they did do was exasperate the hell out of me. "You moron! The psycopathic killer from beyond the grave is going to bash your skull with an axe as soon as you step in there."
"Don't these friggin' idiots EVER look behind them? Especially after four of their friends bought it that way."
And don't get me started on body disposal methods for supernatural psycho killers. These numbdumbs just bury Jason then act all surprised when he comes back a month or two later. HELLO!, you had to kill him ten times over just get him in the grave.
You can only heavily stun such a creature at best. Should one of non-idiot characters manage this then the correct thing to do is to bind ankles and wrists with HEAVY chain or rope then thoroughly dismember and slice and dice the creature. If intelligence was employed in the binding then the fact that the creature lives through this should pose no problem. Don't let a hack writer take your life at the last minute. The pieces should then be thoroughly burned and the ashes scattered in separate bodies of water. Any solid pieces should be encased in concrete and likewise scattered. Throughly soaking any remaining pieces in holy water is optional but can't hurt. NOTE: Do NOT put holy water on an intact Creature; it'll just wake up angry.
The case of the Liquid Metal Terminator was one of the rare cases of correct Super Creature Body Disposal. Sumbitch probably wound up in 40 different cars. RoboCop 2 had a good Creature Dismantling but they botched the job by dumping the pieces where his buddies could put him back together again. And those IDIOTS who thought running Christine through a car-crusher was sufficient, they should have checked with the Connors.
Maybe I should start one of those Evil Overlord type lists for Super Evil Creature Combat.
Hmm. That's an interesting perspective. Can you provide some examples?
I'll give you a couple from the hacker/engineering point of view. Thomas Edison clearly could not stand being "the loser". Google up the "The War Of The Currents" and Edison's treatment of Nikola Tesla for several examples. Edwin Armstrong was a highly gifted inventor and engineer. He invented FM Radio and also was the TRUE inventor of the regenerative and superheterodyne radio circuits. Lee DeForest was a tinkerer who nonetheless got VERY lucky with the invention of the triode vacuum tube. DeForest basically seemed to feel that he owned any possible circuit that could be built from tubes. DeForest was an early user of frivolous patents to shut down true innovators. His shabby use of lawyers against Armstrong eventually drove the man to suicide. To give you an idea of the DeForest's actual engineering ability, his idea for a telephone answering machine was an arm that picked up a telephone receiver and held it up to a tape recorder. Despite his stumbing onto the triode arrangement, he hadn't the slightest idea how it or any other circuit really worked. It was nonetheless progress. The fruits of that progress were used to a destroy a man more gifted but less medacious than he.
Most of society and culture is wasteful and useless if your goal is to live and be happy.
Like it or not and I don't, a lot of progress comes from people who can only be happy if they feel like they have more than everybody else. The trick is in letting such feel like they're "winning" without selling everybody else down the river.
Microsoft's past track record is one of frequent lying and treachery going back over twenty years. One press release from a man who has been appointed their attack dog on FOSS in the past does not suffice to erase this. It isn't even worth entertaining at this point. No it isn't. And we are entirely rational and fair to judge this man and his company on their past words and deeds.
If MS earnest spends several years actually trying to interoperate and interact with FOSS in a civilized way THEN minds will start to change and their press statements will get more than a cynical hearing.
Words from MS won't cut it in the face of their past deeds. Only sustained new action to match their new words will change minds.
In the case of the asteriod, there is a thin layer of iridium that can be found just about anywhere on the planet. The thickness (thin) and age of the layer (about same as purported asteroid hit) is pretty consistent. One reasonable explanation for the iridium layer is that material from a large vaporized asteroid was deposited over the entire planet.
There is also the area of the Yucatan hit. It isn't too hard to show that something really big hit the Earth there and altered the geology of the place. The size and age of the hit make it a good candidate for the killer asteriod.
they are trying to make it so that it is the ONLY program you will ever need to run on your PC... personally I am all for decentralization but I realise there are some users who want to open up one program and then start typing an e-mail and buy movie tickets within the same app (a few years off in WMP)...
All they need to do is add a text editor that can be extended with LISP and they'll come full circle.
A piece of Sci-Fi I read once (I forget the name of the story and author) had a subplot involving an artificial universe populated by insectlike forms whose hives developed sentience. When those sentient lifeforms were able to derive "a set of twenty field equations" that described their universe and it's origins, that universe started to grow out of control and consumed the universe of it's creator's.
Perhaps their track record is so good because the effects of QM on the visible world are negligible?
Not really. QM effects already figure into a vast array of engineering and scientific disciplines. QM is definitely making itself felt in electronics, nanotechnology, instrumentation, cryptography, chemistry, materials science, and many many others. Incidentally, just what sort of people discovered and worked out QM in the first place?
Perhaps someday we will be able to scientifically explain consciousness. We certainly can't now so it is cricket to entertain any ideas about it you care to have. I don't believe in any case that QM is any sort of blank check. The basement ductwork of the universe is baffling, strange, and can only be described in terms of probabilities. Nonetheless, it too operates according to some rules and not others. If you want to label some of those "consciousness" then have at it.
This suggests that the act of conscious observation affects the environment.
I suspect "suggests" means that what you meant can be cast into any suitable terms. I've spent quite a bit of time around New Agers who speak using the exact type of language and ideas you were expressing. When I pinned them down with what science and physics actually meant, they too insisted that I "had it all wrong".
What other reasonable way can I take where you are coming from? In some of your other posts, you are scornful of "materialistic mindsets"? QM is one way of putting a scientific imprimateur on classical "God Of The Gaps" arguments but QM does not by itself explain consciousness or human perception even if someday of those naughty empirical materialists shows that it figures into on some level or another. At any rate, nothing more than speculation along those lines has happened thus far so consciousness is apropos of nothing when discussing QM. Incidentally, the track record of the materialist empiricists is pretty damn good; they've explained in verifiable detail one hell of a lot more than the mystical philosphers. I also suspect that while QM may figure in consciousness I severely doubt that the reverse is true....although good evidence could change my mind.
Here's a simple example: An electron does not have a definite position until someone or something observes it. Here's another: If you repeat a quantum experiment and perfectly duplicate the environment, you will still get different results based on probabilities (i.e. the electron showed up there this time, and there that time). This suggests that the act of conscious observation affects the environment. I'll have to get back to you later with even more examples if you want, I'm still not done reading this book.
Bzzzzzzzzzzt!! Mysticists (is that a word?) who use QM as the justification for mysticism can be counted on to abuse what physicists mean when they say "observation". First things first, "observation" is not something that is taking place in a human's mind. "Observation" is anything that causes a quantum state to collapse into a more defined state. "Anything" in this case is either photon or some other particle that disturbs the system; there most certainly isn't any real evidence for "chakra energy" or any other such foolishness being the driver of such processes. I'll put it less snidely: The universe goes about it's working regardless of whether humans perceive or it not. This influence can be supplied naturally by the environment or by a physicist's instrument. "Observation" can also take place if a quantum system de-coheres on it's own and energy from it influences another system...say an instrument in a physicist's lab. If the physicist sets up the experiment and goes on vacation for week, his instruments will do all the "observing" while he is away: no consciousness required.
The primary error you are making is conflating "observation" with "perception". If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, the phenomenon of sound waves don't take a vacation because humans aren't around to perceive them as sound. They could do anything from not much of note to starting an avalanche (which needn't have humans in the path of it....). The sound waves starting an avalanche are much closer to what the physicist means by "observation" which in physics is a technical term rather than a psychological or even psychic one.
I loaded IE and got presented with some log in screen. I then pulled out my jump drive, stuck it in, and loaded Portable Firefox. I got all the webaccess I wanted, no proxy, no login screen, and a browser I actually knew how to use.
You can get caught quite easily if their network admins care to look for that. An assload of http traffic hitting one IP stands out like a sore thumb and is easy to see. If the network in question is using layer 7 filtering or inspection then it gets point and and click easy to find. Encryption won't help you either. An assload of SSL traffic not in use by a staff member likewise stands out.
The danger in assuming you are more clever than the admins is that you could be wrong. Every once in awhile you will come up against one who is every bit as geeky as you are. That geeky admin has an advantage you don't: He can monitor every single packet entering and leaving his network if need be. There are very few things I like more than lowering the boom on 5kr1p7 k1dd13s. Call me Hitler if you want but I throw the book at the little creeps. Some kid finds an unblocked porno site? I really don't care; he's in a bit of trouble but I'm not fussed about it. That is the administration's hangup. Try to hack the network I'm charged with keeping running and I will FRY your little ass.
If you want to do anything you want then pay for your own access and use your own equipment to do it.
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Boy! Is my face red?!?
I'll have to give NeoOffice another shot when I do make the switch to an Intel Mac.
The NeoOffice guys are almost done extensively Aqua-fying, reiconing, and switching NeoOffice over to the OOO 2.0.3 codebase. They have a closed beta of that version out now. It starts about twice as fast (as OOO 2.0 starts faster than 000 1.0 and for the same reasons), is faster in operation, works on Intel Macs, and looks a lot nicer to boot.
in addition, it's making me have some slight apprehension regarding my plan to put a couple linux machines in the systems room at work. be a bit embarrassing if the new guy's machines got owned.
New Windows machines get owned too but I don't think that is exactly your concern. Any alternative has to be outrageosly superior to whatever established way of doing things is being replaced. The various ways that Windows machines can malfunction are common experiences to many and after long conditioning somewhat forgivable. Even though a Linux machine may be an outstanding way to replace a cranky Windows server, ANY malfunction is evidence "This Linux stuff sucks!" even though worse might be tolerated from the accustomed Windows solutions.
I've been the advocate for many such Linux deployments. Being the advocate, I make it my personal and professional business that the solutions I advance work. I've pulled a few overtimes here and there sorting issues out. It's what you have to do when it is YOUR big idea being tried out and that big idea bucks prejudices.
If you've been a long while from Linux, then you are correct to hang back. Find a little time to get to know your shit again so that if you ever DO propose a Linux trial that you can do the groundwork to really make it perform.
Not to say the Chinese government is benevolent or anything, it quite clearly isn't, but to claim legally tried and convicted death penalties are murder is a mighty big slur on, say, Texas and Florida for starters...
You can get the death penalty in China for tax evasion as well as over 2000 other offenses most of which aren't rape or murder. The death penalty in China is a whole 'nother kettle of fish from what we have here in the US. I'm not a fan of the death penalty in this country either but even I recognize the difference between the type of things it is applied to in the US and the type of things that earn in China. Even in Texas or Florida you have to do something pretty heinous (multiple murder, sex-related murder, murder-kidnapping, serial rape, ...get the picture?) to ride the gurney. Things like tax fraud aren't going to result in one of those nifty Death Buses pulling up in front of your jailhouse.
I'll also point out that organs aren't harvested from convicts unless they voluntarily agreed to do so. We also don't charge the families for the chemicals or bullets used to carry out executions. Furthermore, the families of the executed are further respected in that the bodies are returned to them for funeral rites. About the only thing in common between the death penalty in China and here is that convicts can die. The thresholds necessary to earn the penalty and the ways in which it is carried out couldn't be more different.
I recommended Puppy Linux to a friend with a machine of similar specs. It performed acceptably for him. If you can get 128MB in the machine, then Puppy can run entirely from RAM and not hit a disk at all. But even with only 64 MB, such a machine is usable with Puppy.
Since you're reading, why not just have a new kernel/OS to go with that filesystem? As I understand the difficulty, your filesystem requires it's own VFS that replicates most of what Linux' VFS already does. The kernel devs don't want a duplicate VFS, they seem to want to update the in-place VFS and adapt the rest of the filesystem code to it. If this is indeed the case, I can see their point. I understand that Reiser4 is YOUR baby but Linux is THEIRS. You aren't the first and probably won't be the last developer they insist follow certain styles and conventions. It isn't entirely unreasonable. If you think the Linux kernel devs have been difficult, pitch Reiser4 to Theo DeRaadt. And yes I understand there are other issues besides the VFS one. Reiser4 has genuinely new ideas but new ideas break old assumptions....and some of them could reach clear down to userland software.
If Reiser4 is unable to be adapted to the requirements of the projects you propose to put it in then why not a new OS to go with it? Or maybe an existing project would be a better fit. There are various attempts to create an opensource BeOS and Reiser4 seems a natural fit.
Now was not the time to splatter this information all over the world. If they had waited for wider deployment, this hole could have been kept wedged open as closing it on hundreds of thousands of clients wouldn't have been terribly practical.
Remember would be DVD-Jons, if you find DRM holes in new media tech SHUT YOUR YAP UNTIL EVERYBODY AND HIS DOG HAS BOUGHT SOME. THEN RELEASE THE INFO. When you do release the information, do so complete with "mom friendly" utilities and use warez "spreaders" to be sure everybody and his dog can start using it right away. This also complicates shutting the hole in various social and technical ways.
Technically, we are celebrating the day we declared ourselves no longer a colony (where the colonists were explicitly denied the rights of even common Englishmen....) but rather an independent state in our own right. There isn't a thing wrong with that either; there is plenty of justification in that for a holiday.
What's sad is that our government is doing things that are every bit as egregious (or more!) as the things King George did and the sheeple by and large don't notice a thing. If the Brits had waited a few hundred years, we'd be their bitches now and they wouldn't have to fire a shot.
To this day we are still independent from Britain (and it could be argued that perhaps Britain acts more like they are OUR colony these days) so your second question is technically answered as well. We don't have to quarter troops in our homes but we DO have various forms of taxation without representation and various forms of insecurity in our effects, papers, homes, privacy, and other rights so perhaps all that has been accomplished is to trade masters. It looks like the jury is out on your third question but I have little doubt that the verdict will be ugly; it is often suggested that hooking up a dynamo to the graves of our Founding Fathers would provide gobs of Free Energy.
Actually, South Korea is militarily much more powerful than North Korea. They have a vibrant economy, advanced weaponry, and, counting reserves, more men under arms. They can easily defend themselves.
I thought NK was supposed to have the world's fourth largest standing army. I can see SK having more advanced weaponry and ammo to kill them with but just how are "reserves" counted? Also, Seoul is said to have one hell of a lot of dialed in artillery pointed at it. In the event the NK/SK mini cold war goes hot, SK will pretty much lose Seoul off the bat. SK has a LOT of incentive to maintain the status quo.
I doubt China is terribly happy with the potential loose cannon in their backyard these days. Provided China's borders and interests aren't threatened, I don't see them being terribly eager to prop up NK militarily this time around. They have likely made it clear to Kim Jong Il just how far their support would go. China is in business these days and KimmieBoy dredging up moldy Cold War BS is just bad bad bad for it.
In the event Kim Jong Il grows a dick and tries to take SK, he'll do a lot of damage initially. Seoul will be a smoking hole in the ground, the DMZ overrun and some ground taken in the first days. Provided we don't menace their borders, China will likely be more than happy to let us and SK pound them from the air and either push their armies back across the DMZ or decimate them pretty thoroughly. After that an understanding would have to be reached. I have no idea what that would look like. Slicing NK up Germany style might go over. Leaving NK politically intact but with their military kept stunted enforced by the US and China would probably work better.
Should Kim Jong Il be foolish enough to go nuclear, I suspect we'll tell China either you turn them into a glass parking lot or we will. As a courtesy, we'll make sure you're not downwind of the fallout. Come to think of it, does NK have any reason not to be deterred by what we could throw at them? NK and SK are STUCK with the current situation.
The smartest thing for NK to do is to pull a Roman Senate on Kimmieboy and get themselves a saner oligarchy in it's place. Losing the personality cult was the smartest move both the Soviet Union and China ever made.
Now, as a precedent, Kelo is undeniably dangerous. I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that in the particular case of New London, it was the right choice to make.
Since New London was foolishly permitted to make that choice, a multitude stand to lose homes, property, and businesses anytime bigger fish feel like greasing palms. Expediency for New London is no excuse for what is going to happen now.
By sucking all the happiness out of you? Maybe. More likely they'll just send you to 'Azkaban'.
They have these really nifty Avada Kedavra Vans too.
Those type of scenes never scared me. What they did do was exasperate the hell out of me. "You moron! The psycopathic killer from beyond the grave is going to bash your skull with an axe as soon as you step in there."
"Don't these friggin' idiots EVER look behind them? Especially after four of their friends bought it that way."
And don't get me started on body disposal methods for supernatural psycho killers. These numbdumbs just bury Jason then act all surprised when he comes back a month or two later. HELLO!, you had to kill him ten times over just get him in the grave.
You can only heavily stun such a creature at best. Should one of non-idiot characters manage this then the correct thing to do is to bind ankles and wrists with HEAVY chain or rope then thoroughly dismember and slice and dice the creature. If intelligence was employed in the binding then the fact that the creature lives through this should pose no problem. Don't let a hack writer take your life at the last minute. The pieces should then be thoroughly burned and the ashes scattered in separate bodies of water. Any solid pieces should be encased in concrete and likewise scattered. Throughly soaking any remaining pieces in holy water is optional but can't hurt. NOTE: Do NOT put holy water on an intact Creature; it'll just wake up angry.
The case of the Liquid Metal Terminator was one of the rare cases of correct Super Creature Body Disposal. Sumbitch probably wound up in 40 different cars. RoboCop 2 had a good Creature Dismantling but they botched the job by dumping the pieces where his buddies could put him back together again. And those IDIOTS who thought running Christine through a car-crusher was sufficient, they should have checked with the Connors.
Maybe I should start one of those Evil Overlord type lists for Super Evil Creature Combat.
Tell that to the bnetd guys.....
Hmm. That's an interesting perspective. Can you provide some examples?
I'll give you a couple from the hacker/engineering point of view. Thomas Edison clearly could not stand being "the loser". Google up the "The War Of The Currents" and Edison's treatment of Nikola Tesla for several examples. Edwin Armstrong was a highly gifted inventor and engineer. He invented FM Radio and also was the TRUE inventor of the regenerative and superheterodyne radio circuits. Lee DeForest was a tinkerer who nonetheless got VERY lucky with the invention of the triode vacuum tube. DeForest basically seemed to feel that he owned any possible circuit that could be built from tubes. DeForest was an early user of frivolous patents to shut down true innovators. His shabby use of lawyers against Armstrong eventually drove the man to suicide. To give you an idea of the DeForest's actual engineering ability, his idea for a telephone answering machine was an arm that picked up a telephone receiver and held it up to a tape recorder. Despite his stumbing onto the triode arrangement, he hadn't the slightest idea how it or any other circuit really worked. It was nonetheless progress. The fruits of that progress were used to a destroy a man more gifted but less medacious than he.
Most of society and culture is wasteful and useless if your goal is to live and be happy.
Like it or not and I don't, a lot of progress comes from people who can only be happy if they feel like they have more than everybody else. The trick is in letting such feel like they're "winning" without selling everybody else down the river.
But OpenBSD had that billy club wielding cop. But then they seem to have ditched the cop for the puffer fish.
Microsoft's past track record is one of frequent lying and treachery going back over twenty years. One press release from a man who has been appointed their attack dog on FOSS in the past does not suffice to erase this. It isn't even worth entertaining at this point. No it isn't. And we are entirely rational and fair to judge this man and his company on their past words and deeds.
If MS earnest spends several years actually trying to interoperate and interact with FOSS in a civilized way THEN minds will start to change and their press statements will get more than a cynical hearing.
Words from MS won't cut it in the face of their past deeds. Only sustained new action to match their new words will change minds.
In the case of the asteriod, there is a thin layer of iridium that can be found just about anywhere on the planet. The thickness (thin) and age of the layer (about same as purported asteroid hit) is pretty consistent. One reasonable explanation for the iridium layer is that material from a large vaporized asteroid was deposited over the entire planet.
There is also the area of the Yucatan hit. It isn't too hard to show that something really big hit the Earth there and altered the geology of the place. The size and age of the hit make it a good candidate for the killer asteriod.
they are trying to make it so that it is the ONLY program you will ever need to run on your PC... personally I am all for decentralization but I realise there are some users who want to open up one program and then start typing an e-mail and buy movie tickets within the same app (a few years off in WMP)...
All they need to do is add a text editor that can be extended with LISP and they'll come full circle.
A piece of Sci-Fi I read once (I forget the name of the story and author) had a subplot involving an artificial universe populated by insectlike forms whose hives developed sentience. When those sentient lifeforms were able to derive "a set of twenty field equations" that described their universe and it's origins, that universe started to grow out of control and consumed the universe of it's creator's.
Perhaps their track record is so good because the effects of QM on the visible world are negligible?
Not really. QM effects already figure into a vast array of engineering and scientific disciplines. QM is definitely making itself felt in electronics, nanotechnology, instrumentation, cryptography, chemistry, materials science, and many many others. Incidentally, just what sort of people discovered and worked out QM in the first place?
Perhaps someday we will be able to scientifically explain consciousness. We certainly can't now so it is cricket to entertain any ideas about it you care to have. I don't believe in any case that QM is any sort of blank check. The basement ductwork of the universe is baffling, strange, and can only be described in terms of probabilities. Nonetheless, it too operates according to some rules and not others. If you want to label some of those "consciousness" then have at it.
I've misunderstood very little. Remember this?
This suggests that the act of conscious observation affects the environment.
I suspect "suggests" means that what you meant can be cast into any suitable terms. I've spent quite a bit of time around New Agers who speak using the exact type of language and ideas you were expressing. When I pinned them down with what science and physics actually meant, they too insisted that I "had it all wrong".
What other reasonable way can I take where you are coming from? In some of your other posts, you are scornful of "materialistic mindsets"? QM is one way of putting a scientific imprimateur on classical "God Of The Gaps" arguments but QM does not by itself explain consciousness or human perception even if someday of those naughty empirical materialists shows that it figures into on some level or another. At any rate, nothing more than speculation along those lines has happened thus far so consciousness is apropos of nothing when discussing QM. Incidentally, the track record of the materialist empiricists is pretty damn good; they've explained in verifiable detail one hell of a lot more than the mystical philosphers. I also suspect that while QM may figure in consciousness I severely doubt that the reverse is true....although good evidence could change my mind.
Here's a simple example: An electron does not have a definite position until someone or something observes it. Here's another: If you repeat a quantum experiment and perfectly duplicate the environment, you will still get different results based on probabilities (i.e. the electron showed up there this time, and there that time). This suggests that the act of conscious observation affects the environment. I'll have to get back to you later with even more examples if you want, I'm still not done reading this book.
Bzzzzzzzzzzt!! Mysticists (is that a word?) who use QM as the justification for mysticism can be counted on to abuse what physicists mean when they say "observation". First things first, "observation" is not something that is taking place in a human's mind. "Observation" is anything that causes a quantum state to collapse into a more defined state. "Anything" in this case is either photon or some other particle that disturbs the system; there most certainly isn't any real evidence for "chakra energy" or any other such foolishness being the driver of such processes. I'll put it less snidely: The universe goes about it's working regardless of whether humans perceive or it not. This influence can be supplied naturally by the environment or by a physicist's instrument. "Observation" can also take place if a quantum system de-coheres on it's own and energy from it influences another system...say an instrument in a physicist's lab. If the physicist sets up the experiment and goes on vacation for week, his instruments will do all the "observing" while he is away: no consciousness required.
The primary error you are making is conflating "observation" with "perception". If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, the phenomenon of sound waves don't take a vacation because humans aren't around to perceive them as sound. They could do anything from not much of note to starting an avalanche (which needn't have humans in the path of it....). The sound waves starting an avalanche are much closer to what the physicist means by "observation" which in physics is a technical term rather than a psychological or even psychic one.
I loaded IE and got presented with some log in screen. I then pulled out my jump drive, stuck it in, and loaded Portable Firefox. I got all the webaccess I wanted, no proxy, no login screen, and a browser I actually knew how to use.
You can get caught quite easily if their network admins care to look for that. An assload of http traffic hitting one IP stands out like a sore thumb and is easy to see. If the network in question is using layer 7 filtering or inspection then it gets point and and click easy to find. Encryption won't help you either. An assload of SSL traffic not in use by a staff member likewise stands out.
The danger in assuming you are more clever than the admins is that you could be wrong. Every once in awhile you will come up against one who is every bit as geeky as you are. That geeky admin has an advantage you don't: He can monitor every single packet entering and leaving his network if need be. There are very few things I like more than lowering the boom on 5kr1p7 k1dd13s. Call me Hitler if you want but I throw the book at the little creeps. Some kid finds an unblocked porno site? I really don't care; he's in a bit of trouble but I'm not fussed about it. That is the administration's hangup. Try to hack the network I'm charged with keeping running and I will FRY your little ass.
If you want to do anything you want then pay for your own access and use your own equipment to do it.
"I won't get high to HAVE good ideas. I'll get high as a REWARD for having good ideas."