And when they ask better questions, I suppose you're going to say that it depends on what the definition of 'is' is.
That's exactly his point. In law, as in any other profession, different words mean different things. To a computer professional, "it" means "information technology." To a judge, LEO means "law enforcement officer" while to someone from NASA it means "low Earth orbit."
Lawyers know the legal meanings of words, which may not be exactly the same as what your Websters says.
They lie to the people, to Congress, to judges and even to each other. This crap started late in the GWB's second term
Ah, yes, another youth who hasn't read or lived through much history. Look up the McCarthy witch hunts, J.Edgar Hoover's spying on American anti-war protesters and civil rights activists, and the Kent State massacre just for a start. It happened at least as far back as Coolidge with prohibition; here is a book about the roaring twenties that was required reading in a general studies history class I took at SIU back in the seventies. It's well written and a good read.
I'd guess it's gone on even longer, and nobody my age is surprised by any of this. Disgusted, but not surprised.
ANY third party. Honestly, even the Socialist Party would be better than this.
Why vote for a party that isn't on ballots in enough states to win (except as a "none of the above" vote) when the Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Constitution party are on enough ballots? I've said before, if you think the government isn't working and you're Republican, vote Libertarian or Constitution. If you're a Democrat, vote Green. If you're happy with the way government is, keep voting Republicrat.
Finding evidence of past water is an indication that it might have had life. I don't know what would be more interesting, to find that Mars once had life, or that it was habitable for a billion years and never developed life.
When I finish and publish Nobots, if it ever becomes widely known (which I doubt), Christians will want to burn it (one seventy year old woman at Felbers, when I was working on it there, said "I'd burn that book" when I described the chapter with the necrophilia) and Muslims will want to murder me. But hell, you have to die from something. Being shot in the head surely is a better death than cancer, COPD, AIDS, Alzheimer's, or any of the "natural causes". As I'm 61, I only have a few short decades left at most anyway (my parents are both in their eighties).
Have you ever taken LSD? It's an experience that cannot be described to someone who has not; there is no frame of reference. Trying to describe an LSD trip is like trying to describe what the color red looks like to a man blind since birth. It's called a hallucinogen but you don't really hallucinate, rather you misinterpret your senses, which completely overload your brain. A normal brain filters the senses, LSD removes its ability to do that. When you come down you can't really remember exactly what it was like; your brain is not the same.
I point at dreams.
I believe it was Confucius who said "last night I dreamed I was a butterfly. But was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man?"
Are those who dream insane?
Insanity is a synonym for mental illness. It obviously has some evolutionary usefulness, since mammals all have REM sleep. AFAIK it hasn't been demonstrated what that purpose is but logically there must be one. I rarely remember my dreams, I only remember them when I'm awakened in the middle of one. Since nightmares can be pretty intense and have a powerful and negative effect for a short while, I'd say yes, remembering them is a short term illness.
Are gamers insane? Book readers? Theatergoers?
Of course not, unless they believe that the experience is real. Reading may possibly be a form of insanity for some; when I'm reading a novel by a particularly good writer I don't see the words, I'm there. I had to give up reading Michael Crichton, he writes too well and the effects of his books on me are too powerful. I don't believe my brain is normal; when I was in the second grade one rainy recess period I was reading a book I'd taken off the shelf and a teacher said "you can't read that!" I asked why not. "That's a sixth grade reading level!" I said "so?" She said "ok, read some out loud." So I did, completely freaking the poor woman out, who ran to find another teacher to show the weird kid to.
Of course, abnormal doesn't mean diseased; Albert Einstein's brain was obviously abnormal, but he was certainly not insane. It could even be said that he was sane and the rest of us are mentally ill, since he had a better grasp of reality than most.
I can't agree with your diagram at all; I have no fear of the unknown, I'm fascinated by the unknown. My job involves strong critical thinking skills; I take things that take three weeks for someone to do and distill it so it takes ten minutes (I guess that makes me part of the unemployment problem). Ignorance? I read all 28 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica when I was 12, learning has been one of my passions all my life. Gullibility? Well, when it come to women, yes. And the fact that half of all scientists worldwide practice some sort of religion debunks your chart as well.
That doesn't address the class of falsely superstitious people who are engaged in defrauding and otherwise taking advantage of the susceptible; those people are simply despicable
I agree completely. It is unfortunate that there are people who prey on those who pray.
There are no atheists in foxholes,' the saying goes.
And it's a fucking stupid thing to say: The mere fact that they're in a foxhole shows that they're putting their faith in boring old non-supernatural dirt to save them, not in their god(s).
A man was in his house as the floodwaters reached his porch, and a rowboat came to give him a ride to safety. "God will save me," he said.
As the water reached the second floor, another rowboat came by his window. "God will save me," he says confidently.
As he's sitting on his roof a helicopter comes, and again he refuses the ride. "God will save me."
The man drowns, and when he meets his maker says "God! Why did you let me die?"
God responds "I sent two boats and a helicopter, what more did you want?"
Luke 4:12 - "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." That's why they're in the foxholes; they're not stupid.
Thousands of other people die doing exactly the same. Were they not good enough to be saved?
Everybody dies. Everybody. Being good won't keep you alive, and being evil won't kill you. "It rains on the just and the unjust." There's no such thing as Earl Hickey's version of karma.
Sorry, but when it comes to medical treatments, your mom does not count as "numerous cases."
I think he meant numerous times when it came to her. Statistics don't apply to outliers; only the median.
How many other people have disregarded their doctor's advice, used their own intuition, and subsequently died horrible painful deaths?
Most deaths are horribly painful, and in the case of cancer, the treatments are almost as bad as the disease.
Here's another anecdote about a statistical outlier: my grandmother, whose doctor told her when she was 70 if she didn't get her cholesterol down she'd die. Well, the doctor died. The next doctor told her the same thing. He died, too. Three more dead doctors later she did die, when she fell and broke her hip at age 99.
If all four of your grandparents died of heart disease before age 50, no matter what you eat or how much you exercise, you're not likely to make it past 60. If all your grandparents made it to their upper nineties, you're probably going to outlive most people you know even if you eat McDonalds every day with lots of salt, get no exercise, and smoke. Of course, you're likely to live longer if you don't do those things but you'll still probably make it to your seventies.
If something has been shown to not work, like homeopathy, it doesn't work.
As to folks gaining a greater faith in science when faced with a terminal illness makes sense. Religion (most of them, anyway) see this existence as a temporary phase that continues after death -- but few people want to die. It's basic psychology. The cancer patient, no matter how devout, can't count on God to save them; everyone dies, but the science might keep you alive longer.
If you experience a thing, you know it exists. Faulty thinking is being absolutely certain that a thing exists or doesn't exist based on faith. Some of us have experienced God, yet you're absolutely sure that all those people are insane.
I illustrated this in the most recent version of the last chapter of Nobots (not the whole chapter, and SPOILER ALERT)
"But I don't understand" interrupted Gorn. "That seems perfectly logical."
"Yes,â said Ragwell, "and that's the trap. We can't live without the nobots; they're inside us, millions of them, keeping our biological machinery healthy and in working order. Without them our lifespans would only be maybe a century, and I don't think there's a human Experimental alive that young. We're trapped in an array of cubes. Everything we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell is controlled by the nobots. You see, we can't know what's real and what's not.
"And the nobots aren't sentient, although they certainly can seem to be. They're just microscopically tiny computerized machines that are all networked together into a collective.
"They can be programmed, but they can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until they are dead!
"And the principles are so deeply imbedded in their operating systems they can't be removed without a complete redesign, which would take centuries.
"We're safe in our cubes, but we really aren't free. There's been little real scientific or technological progress in we're not sure how long. For all I know, this whole thing could be fiction. For all I know, you don't really exist."
A horrified look crossed Gorn's face. "How... oh, no. Nobots were here! They'll construct a matrix and imprison us!"
No,â said Ragwell. "Our species diverged millions of years ago. To the nobots, you're not human."
Gorn looked even more alarmed. "They'll wipe us out as a threat to you!"
"No,â Ragwell said. âoeA respect... not exactly an accurate word, by the way, since they're machines and can't feel respect; I'm anthropomorphizing here... a 'respect' for all living things has been programmed into them. They wouldn't harm you even if you were a grave danger to us.
"Look at the Venusians, they wanted to kill everybody on Earth and Mars, but not a single Venusian died. At least, not from anything except other Venusians, the gamma ray burst, and the ones headed for Earth that you fellows killed. The nobots didn't harm a single one."
"What about the Venusians? Are they really no longer a threat?â
Ragwell laughed. "They never really were. Not to us, anyway, although I guess they might have been to you. But they're no threat to you anymore. The Venusians don't know it yet, but their weapons no longer function; nobots have disabled them all. They're stuck on their own planet now and can beat on each other with sticks and stones as long as they want to stay stupid.
"I shudder to think what would have happened had they developed nobotics first, no way would they have developed the three principles. But that's another reason you shouldn't have nobots; if you stagnate, the Venusians may some day catch up to you, and that would be the end of Earth and Mars."
"What about the Amish? Did the nobots assimilate them, too?"
"No, of course not. Changing them with technology would destroy their culture, which would run afoul of the first principle. They would not be themselves without their culture. The nobots actually perform '
Indeed. The AC was wrong. HIV is a blood-borne disease, not an STD. It didn't get to humans through sex, but from butchering monkeys for food - get a little infected blood on a cut and you'll catch it.
The GP is obviously an anti-government tin foil hat wearer and racist to boot. I can't figure out why so many anti-intellectuals like him are spouting off in a nerd site.
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, although it provides high-performance computing resources to researchers across the country. Support for NCSA comes from the National Science Foundation, the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, business and industry partners, and other federal agencies.
NCSA provides leading-edge computing, data storage, and visualization resources. NCSA computational and data environment implements a multi-architecture hardware strategy, deploying both clusters and shared memory systems to support high-end users and communities on the architectures best-suited to their requirements. Nearly 1,360 scientists, engineers and students used the computing and data systems at NCSA to support research in more than 830 projects. A list of NCSA hardware is available at NCSA.
History A plaque commemorating the creation of Mosaic web browser, in front of the new NCSA building
NCSA is one of the five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program.
Larry Smarr wrote a proposal to address the future needs of scientific research. Seven other University of Illinois professors joined as co-principal investigators, and many others provided descriptions of what could be accomplished if the proposal were accepted. Known as the Black Proposal (after the color of its cover), it was submitted to the NSF in 1983. It met the NSF's mandate and its contents immediately generated excitement. However, the NSF had no organization in place to support it, and the proposal itself did not contain a clearly defined home for its implementation.
The NSF established an Office of Scientific Computing in 1984 and, with strong congressional support, it quickly announced a national competition that would fund a set of supercomputer centers like the one described in the Black Proposal.[4] The result was that four supercomputer centers would be chartered (Cornell, Illinois, Princeton, and San Diego), with a fifth (Pittsburgh) added later.
U of I has been a supercomputing center for decades. It's where the tevatron, the largest atom smasher there was before the LHC was completed.
The AC's comment is pretty trollish, annoying, and incorrect. I can't figure out why anti-research people like him come to a nerd site.
Your eye/brain combination is far, far better than the best camera ever made. Open a window on a bright sunny day, you can clearly see everything outside and inside. Now take a picture of it. Either nothing inside will show or nothing outside will. It seems that the graphene sensors would greatly improve this.
That sounds logical, but is entirely incorrect. When SUVs were new their occupants suffered more deaths per mile than any other vehicle except motorcycles; they were the least safe of any 4 wheeled vehicle. Large, top-heavy vehicles roll over easily, aren't the least bit nimble, and take longer to stop.
Most fatal accidents are from "t-boning" (side impact) and head-on collisions, which happen on undivided highways with intersections, and rollovers when the occupants aren't belted in and are ejected from the vehicle.
A smaller vehicle is easier to engineer good handling with, can stop faster and avoid an accident the big rig can't.
What saves you in an accident are seat belts, air bags, and crumple zones. If a semi t-bones you in your Hummer at 40 mph you're probably going to die and will certainly be injured.
From your link: "Old English spelt, perhaps an early borrowing from Late Latin spelta "spelt" (c.400, noted as a foreign word), which is perhaps ultimately from PIE root *spel- 'to split, to break off' (probably in reference to the splitting of its husks in threshing), which is related to the root of flint."
So what he actually said was "If it's self-aware, then it should be able to anticipate when I'm going to swear at it for 'correcting' my perfectly broken off text". Akin to saying "He should loose his money" when he means "lose".
Second rate? Motorola makes better radios than anybody, my phone gets a signal when other phones won't. Too bad the OS design on it is borked (it's a pre-google Motorola).
As to the subject, "self-aware"? Talk about anthropomorphism and HYPE. Saying it's self-aware is pathetic. Are all CEOs lying sacks of shit? Anybody on slashdot should consider their intelligence insulted by this nonsense.
I wouldn't say "broken by design," but I'd say it's very poorly designed. I have Win7 on this notebook and kubuntu on my tower. The notebook has twice the memory and processor speed as the tower, but takes twice as long to boot. It will be running Linux when I clear enough disk space, it's really getting slow. The tower is actually faster than it used to be, Linux upgrades speed things up rather than slow them down.
I don't mind powering down the tower. When I get up I hit the power button, make coffee, and it's just as it was when I shut it down; it enters the password for me (I live alone). When it gets updates I click once and keep working, no reboot required.
Windows, otoh, God but I hate Patch Tuesdays. The notebook is unusable for twenty minutes as it downloads the patches, then sits there trying to close programs when you do the mandatory reboot; that's just shitty programming. It should close the damned programs one at a time, giving the "save data?" dialog, THEN reboot. And a reboot should NOT be necessary.
To do anything in Windows takes twice as many steps as in KDE. Windows is a pain in the ass. IMO if Windows didn't come with every new computer few people would use it.
And I hate Windows astroturfers, spreading misinformation about Linux.
Windows is prettier than Linux, but I want my tools to be functional, not pretty.
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but massive geek points aside, sounds like OP needs to get out of the basement more...
That sounds a little like me, Win 7 laptop that will have Linux when I can clear enough space on its hard drive, a tower running kubuntu and an XP box I only use for storage. I have no idea what OS that old Motorola phone is running.
But I get out of the house. I have to work every day and I usually work on Nobots at the bar (if you haven't read the online draft, don't. It will only be a spoiler).
But the OP was probably right, there are probably a lot more phones and tablets than PCs these days, and almost all of them are Apple or Android.
And sabotaging the EPA, the FDA, and all the other regulatory agencies. Paul is old enough to know how filthy the air and water was before the EPA and how much more dangerous factories were before OSHA. As head of all these agencies he could have done a lot worse to the country than even Bush did.
If you put someone in power who thinks government is always the problem you're going to have a shitty ineffective government. I'd like to see more politicians in office who would keep corporations on a short leash. I LIKE being able to breathe while driving past a Monsanto plant. It was impossible before the EPA.
The mailing list would not be valuable to Paul but it would be to advertisers. If Ron Paul deserves to take over ronpaul.com than I should be able to get my own name. Why should fame have anything to do with it? Paul was in the wrong here.
You're too modest. You guys have a hard job, mentally and physically. You save lives.
As to the karma bonus, I don't want to permanently disable it, just when I have an offtopic comment to a single slashdotter, like giving you and your fellow firefighters a pat on the back.
Slashdot Mirror
And when they ask better questions, I suppose you're going to say that it depends on what the definition of 'is' is.
That's exactly his point. In law, as in any other profession, different words mean different things. To a computer professional, "it" means "information technology." To a judge, LEO means "law enforcement officer" while to someone from NASA it means "low Earth orbit."
Lawyers know the legal meanings of words, which may not be exactly the same as what your Websters says.
They lie to the people, to Congress, to judges and even to each other. This crap started late in the GWB's second term
Ah, yes, another youth who hasn't read or lived through much history. Look up the McCarthy witch hunts, J.Edgar Hoover's spying on American anti-war protesters and civil rights activists, and the Kent State massacre just for a start. It happened at least as far back as Coolidge with prohibition; here is a book about the roaring twenties that was required reading in a general studies history class I took at SIU back in the seventies. It's well written and a good read.
I'd guess it's gone on even longer, and nobody my age is surprised by any of this. Disgusted, but not surprised.
It's difficult to be a law abiding citizen because there are so many laws that it's difficult to not run afoul of at least a few.
OK, name one crime that I could innocently commit and wind up in jail for.
ANY third party. Honestly, even the Socialist Party would be better than this.
Why vote for a party that isn't on ballots in enough states to win (except as a "none of the above" vote) when the Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Constitution party are on enough ballots? I've said before, if you think the government isn't working and you're Republican, vote Libertarian or Constitution. If you're a Democrat, vote Green. If you're happy with the way government is, keep voting Republicrat.
there may have been water on it. so what.
Finding evidence of past water is an indication that it might have had life. I don't know what would be more interesting, to find that Mars once had life, or that it was habitable for a billion years and never developed life.
But anyway, that's what.
When I finish and publish Nobots, if it ever becomes widely known (which I doubt), Christians will want to burn it (one seventy year old woman at Felbers, when I was working on it there, said "I'd burn that book" when I described the chapter with the necrophilia) and Muslims will want to murder me. But hell, you have to die from something. Being shot in the head surely is a better death than cancer, COPD, AIDS, Alzheimer's, or any of the "natural causes". As I'm 61, I only have a few short decades left at most anyway (my parents are both in their eighties).
Artificially: I point at LSD.
Have you ever taken LSD? It's an experience that cannot be described to someone who has not; there is no frame of reference. Trying to describe an LSD trip is like trying to describe what the color red looks like to a man blind since birth. It's called a hallucinogen but you don't really hallucinate, rather you misinterpret your senses, which completely overload your brain. A normal brain filters the senses, LSD removes its ability to do that. When you come down you can't really remember exactly what it was like; your brain is not the same.
I point at dreams.
I believe it was Confucius who said "last night I dreamed I was a butterfly. But was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man?"
Are those who dream insane?
Insanity is a synonym for mental illness. It obviously has some evolutionary usefulness, since mammals all have REM sleep. AFAIK it hasn't been demonstrated what that purpose is but logically there must be one. I rarely remember my dreams, I only remember them when I'm awakened in the middle of one. Since nightmares can be pretty intense and have a powerful and negative effect for a short while, I'd say yes, remembering them is a short term illness.
Are gamers insane? Book readers? Theatergoers?
Of course not, unless they believe that the experience is real. Reading may possibly be a form of insanity for some; when I'm reading a novel by a particularly good writer I don't see the words, I'm there. I had to give up reading Michael Crichton, he writes too well and the effects of his books on me are too powerful. I don't believe my brain is normal; when I was in the second grade one rainy recess period I was reading a book I'd taken off the shelf and a teacher said "you can't read that!" I asked why not. "That's a sixth grade reading level!" I said "so?" She said "ok, read some out loud." So I did, completely freaking the poor woman out, who ran to find another teacher to show the weird kid to.
Of course, abnormal doesn't mean diseased; Albert Einstein's brain was obviously abnormal, but he was certainly not insane. It could even be said that he was sane and the rest of us are mentally ill, since he had a better grasp of reality than most.
I can't agree with your diagram at all; I have no fear of the unknown, I'm fascinated by the unknown. My job involves strong critical thinking skills; I take things that take three weeks for someone to do and distill it so it takes ten minutes (I guess that makes me part of the unemployment problem). Ignorance? I read all 28 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica when I was 12, learning has been one of my passions all my life. Gullibility? Well, when it come to women, yes. And the fact that half of all scientists worldwide practice some sort of religion debunks your chart as well.
That doesn't address the class of falsely superstitious people who are engaged in defrauding and otherwise taking advantage of the susceptible; those people are simply despicable
I agree completely. It is unfortunate that there are people who prey on those who pray.
A man was in his house as the floodwaters reached his porch, and a rowboat came to give him a ride to safety. "God will save me," he said.
As the water reached the second floor, another rowboat came by his window. "God will save me," he says confidently.
As he's sitting on his roof a helicopter comes, and again he refuses the ride. "God will save me."
The man drowns, and when he meets his maker says "God! Why did you let me die?"
God responds "I sent two boats and a helicopter, what more did you want?"
Luke 4:12 - "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." That's why they're in the foxholes; they're not stupid.
Thousands of other people die doing exactly the same. Were they not good enough to be saved?
Everybody dies. Everybody. Being good won't keep you alive, and being evil won't kill you. "It rains on the just and the unjust." There's no such thing as Earl Hickey's version of karma.
Sorry, but when it comes to medical treatments, your mom does not count as "numerous cases."
I think he meant numerous times when it came to her. Statistics don't apply to outliers; only the median.
How many other people have disregarded their doctor's advice, used their own intuition, and subsequently died horrible painful deaths?
Most deaths are horribly painful, and in the case of cancer, the treatments are almost as bad as the disease.
Here's another anecdote about a statistical outlier: my grandmother, whose doctor told her when she was 70 if she didn't get her cholesterol down she'd die. Well, the doctor died. The next doctor told her the same thing. He died, too. Three more dead doctors later she did die, when she fell and broke her hip at age 99.
If all four of your grandparents died of heart disease before age 50, no matter what you eat or how much you exercise, you're not likely to make it past 60. If all your grandparents made it to their upper nineties, you're probably going to outlive most people you know even if you eat McDonalds every day with lots of salt, get no exercise, and smoke. Of course, you're likely to live longer if you don't do those things but you'll still probably make it to your seventies.
If something has been shown to not work, like homeopathy, it doesn't work.
As to folks gaining a greater faith in science when faced with a terminal illness makes sense. Religion (most of them, anyway) see this existence as a temporary phase that continues after death -- but few people want to die. It's basic psychology. The cancer patient, no matter how devout, can't count on God to save them; everyone dies, but the science might keep you alive longer.
Religion is faulty thinking, that's all.
If you experience a thing, you know it exists. Faulty thinking is being absolutely certain that a thing exists or doesn't exist based on faith. Some of us have experienced God, yet you're absolutely sure that all those people are insane.
I illustrated this in the most recent version of the last chapter of Nobots (not the whole chapter, and SPOILER ALERT)
Here in the US it seems to be the right that is statist, but the misnamed PATRIOT act (IMO should be repealed immediately) was a bipartisan thing.
My joining the USAF during Vietnam, my dad joining the army during Korea, my grandpa fighting in France in WWI were all in vain, apparently.
Orwell was an optimist. The only bright spot is polls say over 95% of Americans are totally against this nonsense.
Well, there's MythBusters and the Big BangTheory.
Don't woosh me, bro.
Indeed. The AC was wrong. HIV is a blood-borne disease, not an STD. It didn't get to humans through sex, but from butchering monkeys for food - get a little infected blood on a cut and you'll catch it.
The GP is obviously an anti-government tin foil hat wearer and racist to boot. I can't figure out why so many anti-intellectuals like him are spouting off in a nerd site.
From wikipedia:
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, although it provides high-performance computing resources to researchers across the country. Support for NCSA comes from the National Science Foundation, the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, business and industry partners, and other federal agencies.
NCSA provides leading-edge computing, data storage, and visualization resources. NCSA computational and data environment implements a multi-architecture hardware strategy, deploying both clusters and shared memory systems to support high-end users and communities on the architectures best-suited to their requirements. Nearly 1,360 scientists, engineers and students used the computing and data systems at NCSA to support research in more than 830 projects. A list of NCSA hardware is available at NCSA.
History
A plaque commemorating the creation of Mosaic web browser, in front of the new NCSA building
NCSA is one of the five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program.
Larry Smarr wrote a proposal to address the future needs of scientific research. Seven other University of Illinois professors joined as co-principal investigators, and many others provided descriptions of what could be accomplished if the proposal were accepted. Known as the Black Proposal (after the color of its cover), it was submitted to the NSF in 1983. It met the NSF's mandate and its contents immediately generated excitement. However, the NSF had no organization in place to support it, and the proposal itself did not contain a clearly defined home for its implementation.
The NSF established an Office of Scientific Computing in 1984 and, with strong congressional support, it quickly announced a national competition that would fund a set of supercomputer centers like the one described in the Black Proposal.[4] The result was that four supercomputer centers would be chartered (Cornell, Illinois, Princeton, and San Diego), with a fifth (Pittsburgh) added later.
U of I has been a supercomputing center for decades. It's where the tevatron, the largest atom smasher there was before the LHC was completed.
The AC's comment is pretty trollish, annoying, and incorrect. I can't figure out why anti-research people like him come to a nerd site.
Your eye/brain combination is far, far better than the best camera ever made. Open a window on a bright sunny day, you can clearly see everything outside and inside. Now take a picture of it. Either nothing inside will show or nothing outside will. It seems that the graphene sensors would greatly improve this.
That sounds logical, but is entirely incorrect. When SUVs were new their occupants suffered more deaths per mile than any other vehicle except motorcycles; they were the least safe of any 4 wheeled vehicle. Large, top-heavy vehicles roll over easily, aren't the least bit nimble, and take longer to stop.
Most fatal accidents are from "t-boning" (side impact) and head-on collisions, which happen on undivided highways with intersections, and rollovers when the occupants aren't belted in and are ejected from the vehicle.
A smaller vehicle is easier to engineer good handling with, can stop faster and avoid an accident the big rig can't.
What saves you in an accident are seat belts, air bags, and crumple zones. If a semi t-bones you in your Hummer at 40 mph you're probably going to die and will certainly be injured.
From your link: "Old English spelt, perhaps an early borrowing from Late Latin spelta "spelt" (c.400, noted as a foreign word), which is perhaps ultimately from PIE root *spel- 'to split, to break off' (probably in reference to the splitting of its husks in threshing), which is related to the root of flint."
So what he actually said was "If it's self-aware, then it should be able to anticipate when I'm going to swear at it for 'correcting' my perfectly broken off text". Akin to saying "He should loose his money" when he means "lose".
Still funny!
If it's self-aware, then it should be able to anticipate when I'm going to swear at it for "correcting" my perfectly spelt text
If I had mod points you'd get a +1 funny from me.
Second rate? Motorola makes better radios than anybody, my phone gets a signal when other phones won't. Too bad the OS design on it is borked (it's a pre-google Motorola).
As to the subject, "self-aware"? Talk about anthropomorphism and HYPE. Saying it's self-aware is pathetic. Are all CEOs lying sacks of shit? Anybody on slashdot should consider their intelligence insulted by this nonsense.
I wouldn't say "broken by design," but I'd say it's very poorly designed. I have Win7 on this notebook and kubuntu on my tower. The notebook has twice the memory and processor speed as the tower, but takes twice as long to boot. It will be running Linux when I clear enough disk space, it's really getting slow. The tower is actually faster than it used to be, Linux upgrades speed things up rather than slow them down.
I don't mind powering down the tower. When I get up I hit the power button, make coffee, and it's just as it was when I shut it down; it enters the password for me (I live alone). When it gets updates I click once and keep working, no reboot required.
Windows, otoh, God but I hate Patch Tuesdays. The notebook is unusable for twenty minutes as it downloads the patches, then sits there trying to close programs when you do the mandatory reboot; that's just shitty programming. It should close the damned programs one at a time, giving the "save data?" dialog, THEN reboot. And a reboot should NOT be necessary.
To do anything in Windows takes twice as many steps as in KDE. Windows is a pain in the ass. IMO if Windows didn't come with every new computer few people would use it.
And I hate Windows astroturfers, spreading misinformation about Linux.
Windows is prettier than Linux, but I want my tools to be functional, not pretty.
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but massive geek points aside, sounds like OP needs to get out of the basement more...
That sounds a little like me, Win 7 laptop that will have Linux when I can clear enough space on its hard drive, a tower running kubuntu and an XP box I only use for storage. I have no idea what OS that old Motorola phone is running.
But I get out of the house. I have to work every day and I usually work on Nobots at the bar (if you haven't read the online draft, don't. It will only be a spoiler).
But the OP was probably right, there are probably a lot more phones and tablets than PCs these days, and almost all of them are Apple or Android.
And sabotaging the EPA, the FDA, and all the other regulatory agencies. Paul is old enough to know how filthy the air and water was before the EPA and how much more dangerous factories were before OSHA. As head of all these agencies he could have done a lot worse to the country than even Bush did.
If you put someone in power who thinks government is always the problem you're going to have a shitty ineffective government. I'd like to see more politicians in office who would keep corporations on a short leash. I LIKE being able to breathe while driving past a Monsanto plant. It was impossible before the EPA.
The mailing list would not be valuable to Paul but it would be to advertisers. If Ron Paul deserves to take over ronpaul.com than I should be able to get my own name. Why should fame have anything to do with it? Paul was in the wrong here.
This isn't an Islamic country and that wasn't an Islamic family. Islam has absolutely nothing to do with it.
You're too modest. You guys have a hard job, mentally and physically. You save lives.
As to the karma bonus, I don't want to permanently disable it, just when I have an offtopic comment to a single slashdotter, like giving you and your fellow firefighters a pat on the back.