Well, Google could buy one or two, Amazon another one to two, and so on (I don't know how many "and so on"s are necessary because I don't know how many record labels there are... is there a label per vinyl copy, or...?)
I wonder if the Chinese traveled back in time to tell themselves to ban talking about time travel because it was possible. Will this prevent the discovery of time travel so that they can not warn themselves? The plot thickens...
Yes, that was my first thought also! The Chinese in the year 2096 discovered time travel. Upon discovering this and inventing a workable time machine, Emperor Chian `xon Choue's first reaction was to send emissaries back in time to have a chat and ban talking about time travel. This way the future Chinese could have the secret all to themselves; except that they forgot what the secret was in the alternate reality and now the details of the meeting are lost because although it happened it never happened. So simple it's brilliant!
I know a lot of people will say that these companies should block France to bully the government to repeal the law, but that really is not workable and would be against shareholder's interests.
The easiest solution is just to comply with the law. But rather than change the data structures of the backend software to accommodate one country, they should just blank out all the passwords and disable the ability to change them. It is a win for everyone then. The companies comply with the law. The police, fraud office, customs, tax and social security bodies can all access the citizens records directly without burdening the service providers.
And of course, the French people get a valuable lesson in why they should care about who can access their accounts. Let the French people decide whether this is a good idea or not at the next election!
A win for everyone? I doubt it. I don't think that would be a "win" for clients/consumers/end-users. Are you really that myopic or is this a troll?
Right away you know this guy lives in his own little world. I can guarantee if you walk into a retail store today and checked each desktop and notebook, less than 1 in 10 will have USB 3.0.
I actually think he is quite well connected and in-tune with the modern world. For example, he knows about mini CDs and how to use them (although he didn't give instructions in the howto on how to use them or where they go... which is unfortunate because I'll probably get stuck at that point in the process).
Is this what Slashdot has come to? A how-to guide on how to add a new card to your computer!?
But this is a difficult card to install: it requires a molex connector and therefore it's not your run of the mill easy install! Many things could go wrong during this complicated process.
a mix of discarded food, charcoal, shell tools, and broken pottery
While of course people do not likely live on top of their trash, lack of motorised transport means that trash likely wasn't moved far away. Especially charcoal which can be re-used as fuel. Broken pottery well from daily accidents. Shell tools just left behind. Discarded food smells and attracts predators so that one is something they would likely try to at least take to the perimeter of their settlement.
So indeed I think it's likely a combination: dryer patches where humans started to live, making the patches even dryer with their activities. And considering we're talking humans here, I wouldn't be surprised if those activities were intentional. Like bringing in rocks or soil, or even deliberately keeping their broken pottery as foundation, to make the area better to live on. Maybe they were involved in agriculture already? The article indeed mentions that in some cases there was clear evidence of trees and shrubs growing at that place before the arrival of the human settlers.
Excellent response, and I agree with everything you state. None of these scenarios, however, invalidate the hypothesis that prehistoric garbage piles (helped) create tree islands.
In colonies of people that I've experienced who have no kind of motorised transport or anything else your summary is indeed what happens -- rubbish is not far removed from the villages and will naturally accumulate over time. But, the original height of the land is still something you can measure (if there are garbage fragments in the soil profile). In remote parts of Papua New Guinea, local villagers deliberately "mine" nearby sources of (for example) limestone to reinforce "foundations". Likewise, rubbish is not moved far away and more non-degradable rubbish is used in much the same way as imported foundation material. So, yes, you are of course correct. I still think that my response to the correlation does not equal causation argument is correct (i.e. it's not applicable in this case).
How do we know that the garbage didn't collect because the land was drier so people lived there?
Yes, well... there are a few obvious things to look at
a) Humans do not generally live on top of their rubbish dumps; if they did they'd have to continually rebuild their homes on top of the accumulated rubbish. While not completely implausible, the evidence would still be there if this is the course of action the people took b) The important thing is not the current height of the "islands" but the height of the islands minus the accumulated rubble/rubbish
Do you think that the people writing the study didn't consider these two items that I just pulled off the top of my head? I'm sure if they didn't then their peers would have throughout the review process.
The "correlation is not causation" argument is valid, but I tend to think it's overused; it's only really valid if you read the original paper and the limitations, assumptions and methodology within.
Um.. enzymes are just proteins, they don't reproduce. There is no more danger of that occurring than there is of my spilling a vial of muriatic acid and it dissolving the whole Earth.
I guess that would depend on how big the vial of HCl was that you spill...
I should also note that recently I've taken up the habit of wearing my panties and bra on the outside of my clothing, so my "new power" status is unsurprising even though I am a male. I also agree with the Greens that the enhanced security threat are excessive.
Recently new powers were handed spymasters to deal with the enhanced security threat that the Greens party said were 'excessive.'"
Because when the Greens party says an enhanced security threat is excessive, you know the new powers won't be able to deal with it unless we hand them spymasters!
(Is a apymaster kinda like a viewmaster, you know, those old stereoscope-wheel gadgets?)
I was handed a new spymaster; it's much better than my old one and I am now comfortable in knowing that I am a new power. My old spymaster only took 35mm film -- with this new one I can gaze into a fictional world with such clarity and definition that you'd think it was real.
10 or 12 years ago, maybe (yes, MAYBE) the statement "Debian is the most important Linux" may have been true. At that time it was definitely influential and all the cool kids used it and thought users of other distros just hadn't seen the light. Even then it was mostly bravado and some kind of elitism -- I did ask many Debian users back then just why it was so much better compared to other distros and the almost invariable response was "it just is"; yeah... very informative. Honestly, their responses were almost always a load of crap. At several "install fests" the Debian guys were there touting how much better Debian was, but the impression I got was that they thought it was better because of dkpg; after the actual operating system was installed it was basically the same as any other distro. But, the ncurses based dkpg seemed to be the pinnacle of success.
Fast forward to now. Stable releases are so infrequent that the distro may as well be dead. Development seems to have halted and when a "release" is forthcoming it's hardly stable or "complete". Yes, I will have fond memories of Debian, but I think they will remain in the past.
" 'The real key is they need a piece of equipment that works from the Fourth of July, on the busiest day of the year, and it's consistent and they can depend on it,' Mike Lane, Bob's Space Racers."
Are media outlets contracting journalism work to illiterate morons now, or has it always been that way and I'm just now noticing it?
I you hadn't of discovered this I am pretty sure that on some point of the future, probably on the busiest day of the year, you'd have the mormons knocking at your door and would of discovered this your self. This thus has always be the way. The journalism writers are correct in there.
Show it's repeatable in anything approaching reasonable rigorous scientific conditions, and perhaps I'll consider doing something other than laughing in your face about what a gullible idiot you are.
Miracles are not repeatable, mainly because they're coincidences. It doesn't make the person a gullible idiot though --- sometimes people want to believe in faith and a coincidence occurring bolsters their belief. As long as they accept that I and others will not believe them then no real harm is done.
I always thought that the F stood for fucking. I.e. RTFM = read the fucking manual and TFA = the fucking article, etc. Extrapolating from this, your statement should be "The fucking story links to a blog [...]". What's this "fine" nonsense?
Code::Blocks was not around back then, and the last time I used it the debugger (well, the gdb interface) was horribly broken -- couldn't break out of an infinite loop, for example. DevCpp was pretty good, but as far as I can tell it's no longer maintained. I actually never had any problems with kdevelop. It's currently in (for me) an unusable state though because of the KDE 4 "upgrade". Visual Studio is quite nice, but it's WINDOWS ONLY so that only supports my reasoning for moving from Linux to Windows as my main DE. Eclipse is "ok". Only ok.
I've been running Windows in a window since around 2001, and haven't booted MS software on the bare metal since. This way I get all the usability and admin goodness of whatever Linux flavor I want, while still getting to use any Windows-only software that work requires of me. And having the ability to take snapshots of the machine is quite nice -- if an install hoses something in the virtual Windows box, I just roll back to the last snapshot. Plus the VMs are portable, since they're basically files, so I can just copy the whole VM over to my laptop when I'm traveling.
Cheers,
Yes, you've listed several distinct advantages of the VM approach. I should have included in my initial post that I still do have Linux machines (my fileserver for example) I just don't use it as my primary desktop OS.
I've since switched to GIMP but I did run Photoshop under wine perfectly for many years. For Windows apps that you absolutely can't live without and aren't supported in wine, there are always VM apps. I used to run Windows 2000 in qemu until I finally decided to cut the cord completely.
Last I tried Photoshop (CS4?) under Wine it didn't work perfectly, but it's quite possible I stuffed up the installation.
Yes, having Linux as my primary OS and using VM's to run those programs I cannot live without is a perfectly valid and reasonable option. It's just that 99% of my apps require Windows so I do it the other way around now (run linux in a VM, whereas in I used to run XP in a VM under linux and have a dualboot system as well). I don't do a lot of programming these days, but when I do I use the linux VM. Similarly my (quite extensive) mySQL databases I run and maintain from within the VM. Even though the databases are a significant part of my work they still don't justify (for me) having Linux as my primary OS. Of course this is a personal choice and everyone's particular situation and requirements will vary;)
One day my priorities are likely to change again and Linux will once again take pride of place on my desktop. Just not today
I actually miss Linux in many ways. I used it daily from 1994 (Yggdrasil linux) until 2008 or early 2009 (various distros in between but during 2007-2009, Fedora). Then I got distracted with my photography and other tasks that basically _required_ me to use Windows (no, Photoshop under Wine did NOT work well at all, and GIMP doesn't cut it for lots of reasons). I changed my dual-boot to default to booting Windows XP and eventually the linux partition disappeared entirely. If I recall my last install of linux onto a partition was when KDE 4.something was released. I do not like Gnome at all and retrofitting the distros with KDE 3.5 was too much bother -- I had (and have) more important priorities these days. I also love KDevelop and... anyway... it's a long story. Nowadays I run Windows 7 and Ubuntu in a virtual machine and am happy with the set up. I do sometimes pine for the days when I used linux almost exclusively, but my current configuration "just works". Maybe I'll install fedora on a virtual machine and check out KDE4.6... maybe it's usable again
... this really does sound like a case of paranoid schizophrenia. The business with the photo of the lighting transformer pretty much proves it.:(
Frankly, he'd have been better off being clubbed by mobsters and stuffed into the trunk of a car. I hope they find him before he does serious harm to himself or anyone else.
Well it might not be. I recently came home from a hacker conference where we discussed the relative merits of using puts("Hello Word!!!\n"); against printf ("Hello World!!!\n"); and how both are open to attacks from malware juggernauts. Upon returning home I noticed THIS installed on my roof. It's damn lucky I have a keen eye for subtle details or I could have been another victim of malware overlords bugging my house. These people have power beyond your understanding.
I was going to moderate in this thread but I can't now. It is the USA that has cultured this environment where corporations have so much power and the consumer has basically none (except for buying power which is pretty futile when you're going up against these mega-corporations). I'll get modded troll or something for this, but I don't care. I agree with your post, but your solution is to pass more laws? Fuck passing laws, there are already too many fucking laws that serve nobody but the corporations the laws exist to increase their profit. The solution isn't to create more stupid laws, the solution is to abolish those laws that serve nobody except for those with the deepest pockets and corporations.
Before you suggest that I don't butt into something that is a US thing and has nothing to do with the rest of the world, I will say "yes it does affect the rest of the world". The arrogance of your "elected" government (which is really just a representation for the mega-corporations is totally fucked up. It affects the rest of the world through trade agreements, limiting what other governments in the world can do. Fortunately there are a lot of well-regarded people who foresee the collapse of the USA. I hope it happens sooner than later. I do not have anything against US citizens -- it's your government and their not so opaque concern regarding corporations rather than your people that pisses me off.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Google could buy one or two, Amazon another one to two, and so on (I don't know how many "and so on"s are necessary because I don't know how many record labels there are... is there a label per vinyl copy, or...?)
It took them 6 years to make Half Life 2. It took them ONE year to make left 4 dead 2.
Yes, you're right. Remind me how long it took for HL2 Episode 3 to be released...
I wonder if the Chinese traveled back in time to tell themselves to ban talking about time travel because it was possible. Will this prevent the discovery of time travel so that they can not warn themselves? The plot thickens...
Yes, that was my first thought also! The Chinese in the year 2096 discovered time travel. Upon discovering this and inventing a workable time machine, Emperor Chian `xon Choue's first reaction was to send emissaries back in time to have a chat and ban talking about time travel. This way the future Chinese could have the secret all to themselves; except that they forgot what the secret was in the alternate reality and now the details of the meeting are lost because although it happened it never happened. So simple it's brilliant!
In other words: Stay the fuck out of the USA.
Damn good point. I will not travel there again... it's a country of idiocracy.
I know a lot of people will say that these companies should block France to bully the government to repeal the law, but that really is not workable and would be against shareholder's interests.
The easiest solution is just to comply with the law. But rather than change the data structures of the backend software to accommodate one country, they should just blank out all the passwords and disable the ability to change them. It is a win for everyone then. The companies comply with the law. The police, fraud office, customs, tax and social security bodies can all access the citizens records directly without burdening the service providers.
And of course, the French people get a valuable lesson in why they should care about who can access their accounts. Let the French people decide whether this is a good idea or not at the next election!
A win for everyone? I doubt it. I don't think that would be a "win" for clients/consumers/end-users. Are you really that myopic or is this a troll?
Right away you know this guy lives in his own little world. I can guarantee if you walk into a retail store today and checked each desktop and notebook, less than 1 in 10 will have USB 3.0.
I actually think he is quite well connected and in-tune with the modern world. For example, he knows about mini CDs and how to use them (although he didn't give instructions in the howto on how to use them or where they go... which is unfortunate because I'll probably get stuck at that point in the process).
Is this what Slashdot has come to? A how-to guide on how to add a new card to your computer!?
But this is a difficult card to install: it requires a molex connector and therefore it's not your run of the mill easy install! Many things could go wrong during this complicated process.
Well, you could just create an account and get them all at once; it's not that difficult is it?
Actually, it's 289999998.... best to leave out the commas and decimal points entirely when speaking to a global audience.
Just sayin'
The rubbish in this situation was
a mix of discarded food, charcoal, shell tools, and broken pottery
While of course people do not likely live on top of their trash, lack of motorised transport means that trash likely wasn't moved far away. Especially charcoal which can be re-used as fuel. Broken pottery well from daily accidents. Shell tools just left behind. Discarded food smells and attracts predators so that one is something they would likely try to at least take to the perimeter of their settlement.
So indeed I think it's likely a combination: dryer patches where humans started to live, making the patches even dryer with their activities. And considering we're talking humans here, I wouldn't be surprised if those activities were intentional. Like bringing in rocks or soil, or even deliberately keeping their broken pottery as foundation, to make the area better to live on. Maybe they were involved in agriculture already? The article indeed mentions that in some cases there was clear evidence of trees and shrubs growing at that place before the arrival of the human settlers.
Excellent response, and I agree with everything you state. None of these scenarios, however, invalidate the hypothesis that prehistoric garbage piles (helped) create tree islands.
In colonies of people that I've experienced who have no kind of motorised transport or anything else your summary is indeed what happens -- rubbish is not far removed from the villages and will naturally accumulate over time. But, the original height of the land is still something you can measure (if there are garbage fragments in the soil profile). In remote parts of Papua New Guinea, local villagers deliberately "mine" nearby sources of (for example) limestone to reinforce "foundations". Likewise, rubbish is not moved far away and more non-degradable rubbish is used in much the same way as imported foundation material. So, yes, you are of course correct. I still think that my response to the correlation does not equal causation argument is correct (i.e. it's not applicable in this case).
How do we know that the garbage didn't collect because the land was drier so people lived there?
Yes, well... there are a few obvious things to look at
a) Humans do not generally live on top of their rubbish dumps; if they did they'd have to continually rebuild their homes on top of the accumulated rubbish. While not completely implausible, the evidence would still be there if this is the course of action the people took
b) The important thing is not the current height of the "islands" but the height of the islands minus the accumulated rubble/rubbish
Do you think that the people writing the study didn't consider these two items that I just pulled off the top of my head? I'm sure if they didn't then their peers would have throughout the review process.
The "correlation is not causation" argument is valid, but I tend to think it's overused; it's only really valid if you read the original paper and the limitations, assumptions and methodology within.
Um.. enzymes are just proteins, they don't reproduce. There is no more danger of that occurring than there is of my spilling a vial of muriatic acid and it dissolving the whole Earth.
I guess that would depend on how big the vial of HCl was that you spill...
I should also note that recently I've taken up the habit of wearing my panties and bra on the outside of my clothing, so my "new power" status is unsurprising even though I am a male. I also agree with the Greens that the enhanced security threat are excessive.
Recently new powers were handed spymasters to deal with the enhanced security threat that the Greens party said were 'excessive.'"
Because when the Greens party says an enhanced security threat is excessive, you know the new powers won't be able to deal with it unless we hand them spymasters!
(Is a apymaster kinda like a viewmaster, you know, those old stereoscope-wheel gadgets?)
I was handed a new spymaster; it's much better than my old one and I am now comfortable in knowing that I am a new power. My old spymaster only took 35mm film -- with this new one I can gaze into a fictional world with such clarity and definition that you'd think it was real.
10 or 12 years ago, maybe (yes, MAYBE) the statement "Debian is the most important Linux" may have been true. At that time it was definitely influential and all the cool kids used it and thought users of other distros just hadn't seen the light. Even then it was mostly bravado and some kind of elitism -- I did ask many Debian users back then just why it was so much better compared to other distros and the almost invariable response was "it just is"; yeah... very informative. Honestly, their responses were almost always a load of crap. At several "install fests" the Debian guys were there touting how much better Debian was, but the impression I got was that they thought it was better because of dkpg; after the actual operating system was installed it was basically the same as any other distro. But, the ncurses based dkpg seemed to be the pinnacle of success.
Fast forward to now. Stable releases are so infrequent that the distro may as well be dead. Development seems to have halted and when a "release" is forthcoming it's hardly stable or "complete". Yes, I will have fond memories of Debian, but I think they will remain in the past.
FTFA:
" 'If they hadn't of discovered [...]' "
and:
" 'The real key is they need a piece of equipment that works from the Fourth of July, on the busiest day of the year, and it's consistent and they can depend on it,' Mike Lane, Bob's Space Racers."
Are media outlets contracting journalism work to illiterate morons now, or has it always been that way and I'm just now noticing it?
I you hadn't of discovered this I am pretty sure that on some point of the future, probably on the busiest day of the year, you'd have the mormons knocking at your door and would of discovered this your self. This thus has always be the way. The journalism writers are correct in there.
If each cigarette you smoke takes 5 minutes off of your life, but you are an eternal being, how does that work?
Yes, what is infinity minus one (or five)?
Show it's repeatable in anything approaching reasonable rigorous scientific conditions, and perhaps I'll consider doing something other than laughing in your face about what a gullible idiot you are.
Miracles are not repeatable, mainly because they're coincidences. It doesn't make the person a gullible idiot though --- sometimes people want to believe in faith and a coincidence occurring bolsters their belief. As long as they accept that I and others will not believe them then no real harm is done.
I always thought that the F stood for fucking. I.e. RTFM = read the fucking manual and TFA = the fucking article, etc. Extrapolating from this, your statement should be "The fucking story links to a blog [...]". What's this "fine" nonsense?
Code::Blocks was not around back then, and the last time I used it the debugger (well, the gdb interface) was horribly broken -- couldn't break out of an infinite loop, for example. DevCpp was pretty good, but as far as I can tell it's no longer maintained. I actually never had any problems with kdevelop. It's currently in (for me) an unusable state though because of the KDE 4 "upgrade". Visual Studio is quite nice, but it's WINDOWS ONLY so that only supports my reasoning for moving from Linux to Windows as my main DE. Eclipse is "ok". Only ok.
I've been running Windows in a window since around 2001, and haven't booted MS software on the bare metal since. This way I get all the usability and admin goodness of whatever Linux flavor I want, while still getting to use any Windows-only software that work requires of me. And having the ability to take snapshots of the machine is quite nice -- if an install hoses something in the virtual Windows box, I just roll back to the last snapshot. Plus the VMs are portable, since they're basically files, so I can just copy the whole VM over to my laptop when I'm traveling.
Cheers,
Yes, you've listed several distinct advantages of the VM approach. I should have included in my initial post that I still do have Linux machines (my fileserver for example) I just don't use it as my primary desktop OS.
I've since switched to GIMP but I did run Photoshop under wine perfectly for many years.
For Windows apps that you absolutely can't live without and aren't supported in wine, there are always VM apps.
I used to run Windows 2000 in qemu until I finally decided to cut the cord completely.
Last I tried Photoshop (CS4?) under Wine it didn't work perfectly, but it's quite possible I stuffed up the installation.
Yes, having Linux as my primary OS and using VM's to run those programs I cannot live without is a perfectly valid and reasonable option. It's just that 99% of my apps require Windows so I do it the other way around now (run linux in a VM, whereas in I used to run XP in a VM under linux and have a dualboot system as well). I don't do a lot of programming these days, but when I do I use the linux VM. Similarly my (quite extensive) mySQL databases I run and maintain from within the VM. Even though the databases are a significant part of my work they still don't justify (for me) having Linux as my primary OS. Of course this is a personal choice and everyone's particular situation and requirements will vary ;)
One day my priorities are likely to change again and Linux will once again take pride of place on my desktop. Just not today
I actually miss Linux in many ways. I used it daily from 1994 (Yggdrasil linux) until 2008 or early 2009 (various distros in between but during 2007-2009, Fedora). Then I got distracted with my photography and other tasks that basically _required_ me to use Windows (no, Photoshop under Wine did NOT work well at all, and GIMP doesn't cut it for lots of reasons). I changed my dual-boot to default to booting Windows XP and eventually the linux partition disappeared entirely. If I recall my last install of linux onto a partition was when KDE 4.something was released. I do not like Gnome at all and retrofitting the distros with KDE 3.5 was too much bother -- I had (and have) more important priorities these days. I also love KDevelop and... anyway... it's a long story. Nowadays I run Windows 7 and Ubuntu in a virtual machine and am happy with the set up. I do sometimes pine for the days when I used linux almost exclusively, but my current configuration "just works". Maybe I'll install fedora on a virtual machine and check out KDE4.6... maybe it's usable again
... this really does sound like a case of paranoid schizophrenia. The business with the photo of the lighting transformer pretty much proves it. :(
Frankly, he'd have been better off being clubbed by mobsters and stuffed into the trunk of a car. I hope they find him before he does serious harm to himself or anyone else.
Well it might not be. I recently came home from a hacker conference where we discussed the relative merits of using puts("Hello Word!!!\n"); against printf ("Hello World!!!\n"); and how both are open to attacks from malware juggernauts. Upon returning home I noticed THIS installed on my roof. It's damn lucky I have a keen eye for subtle details or I could have been another victim of malware overlords bugging my house. These people have power beyond your understanding.
I was going to moderate in this thread but I can't now. It is the USA that has cultured this environment where corporations have so much power and the consumer has basically none (except for buying power which is pretty futile when you're going up against these mega-corporations). I'll get modded troll or something for this, but I don't care. I agree with your post, but your solution is to pass more laws? Fuck passing laws, there are already too many fucking laws that serve nobody but the corporations the laws exist to increase their profit. The solution isn't to create more stupid laws, the solution is to abolish those laws that serve nobody except for those with the deepest pockets and corporations.
Before you suggest that I don't butt into something that is a US thing and has nothing to do with the rest of the world, I will say "yes it does affect the rest of the world". The arrogance of your "elected" government (which is really just a representation for the mega-corporations is totally fucked up. It affects the rest of the world through trade agreements, limiting what other governments in the world can do. Fortunately there are a lot of well-regarded people who foresee the collapse of the USA. I hope it happens sooner than later. I do not have anything against US citizens -- it's your government and their not so opaque concern regarding corporations rather than your people that pisses me off.