I watched the sales guy at a Radio Shack for 5 minutes in 1978. He programmed the TRS-80 Model I they had there to print out my name with the TAB() option to zigzag across the screen.
PATRICK
PATRICK
PATRICK
PATRICK
PATRICK
DRAPER
DRAPER
DRAPER
DRAPER
DRAPER
(etc.)
The useful thing that I learned in that 5 minutes was that I *really* needed to get one of those things.
I bet he could be talking about Modula-2 which is beautiful in many ways. (but silly in some other ways too...)
I guess the heyday of M2 was in the late 1980's when some good cheap compilers were available for Atari ST's and Amigas. The C compilers that I could get for my Atari ST either didn't have any floating point support, or they were too expensive for a poor student. M2 was $30 I think, so I learned it.
Wow there's a lot of bogosity there. Java gets in my way of expressing what I want to do quite frequently. My biggest peeve is not being to do if (string1 == string2). That gets in my way.
Also, C++ has great class libraries. The standard template library is excellent, and it works well with g++. It cuts way down on pointer problems, and it's extremely efficient.
Re:What about the BSA (Wandering quite OT)
on
Geek Charities?
·
· Score: 2
Responding to your points by number:
1) You're absolutely right about that. If you make a claim about a god then there must be extraordinary evidence to back it up. Atheists make no claims about the existence of god, and therefore need no evidence.
2) You twisted what I said. I will say it more clearly. If you smile at a murderer, you are two-faced. If you present a cheerful face to a murderer, you are dishonest.
3) You are absolutely right that tolerance isn't enough for freedom. Notice that I would not remove any words from the list of what a scout is. I would only add the word 'tolerant' which I think is essential. Tolerance is the core of the 1st ammendment which says that we all have the freedom to say what we want to, and worship or not worship in any way we want to.
Thanks for the compliments. My beliefs are well grounded because they have been arrived at through careful thought. I was once in the exact position that you are in right now - A believer, much more conservative than I am today. Keep arguing with atheists and see where it takes you!
Re:What about the BSA (Wandering quite OT)
on
Geek Charities?
·
· Score: 2
1) CS Lewis' arguments are faulty. I definitely did not find him to be a good read.
2) Putting on a friendly face to a murderer isn't friendly. It's... ummmm.... two-faced. I notice that "honest" is not one of the words on the list.
3) You minimize the importance of tolerance too much. Tolerance is the basis of freedom. Nobody said you have to be tolerant to murderers, and to claim that tolerance should be excluded from the list on that basis (which is what you claimed despite your denial above) is completely bogus. Tolerate everything that does not abridge your freedom. If a gay or atheist kid wants to be a scout, does that prevent you from being straight and religious?
Re:What about the BSA (Wandering quite OT)
on
Geek Charities?
·
· Score: 2
You could probably find a rational argument for respect for country. You would find it harder to find a rational argument for respect of god. A historical argument for respect based on the contribution of religion to culture would have to somehow deal with the negative aspects of religion to come out with a net positive, and that could very well be difficult.
Your argument that tolerance should be all encompassing, even to criminals, is unsupported. It is especially unpersuasive when you imply that friendliness, cheerfulness, and courtesy might not be extended to murderers. Certainly the murderer would consider me downright unfriendly, uncheerful, and uncourteous when I call the police on him!
Your point on reverence is well taken, so how about adding tolerant right after the word reverent? (subject to the same limits with regards to murderers as the word 'friendly' is)
You've also got to believe in a god before you can be a Boy Scout. This is wrong. I was a Boy Scout when I was a kid, and I think that the organization should allow atheist kids to be members. They should replace the word 'reverent' with the word 'tolerant.'
Humanity's progress to the stars (and the supposed singularity) started a long time ago. Somewhat more recently than that, we invented toilet paper.
If were were intended to wipe our asses with toilet paper, God would have caused our bodies to produce it. Toilet Paper is UNNATURAL and should not be used for our own good.
Now what's the difference between toilet paper and sentient computers? Why would you use toilet paper and not use a sentient computer? How do you draw the line?
Everyone should get over the fact that eventually the entire Earth is going to be disassembled, atom by atom, to provide the raw materials for engineering projects in the future. Saving the Earth can only be possible in the short term. In the long term, the Earth is just a pile of construction materials.
Right. Public access. Sure. I used to work for an agrochemical database compiler, and they used to have to sue researchers regularly to get the data. The researchers would promise to get the data to us, but it would get lost, or it would be late, or whatever.
In business, and in science, the person who has the first crack at the data has the best crack at making a buck/making a discovery.
Those cranky old bastards at universities weren't opposed to getting us data. They were just opposed to us getting the data in time to make money from putting it into a database.
So, yet another situation where theory is different than practice.
I still think that the person putting together this database is going to hit political resistance just as soon as his economy threatens the ability of astronomers to bring in grant dollars for their universities.
I don't know about you, but if it weren't for the fact that my employer gives me money, I doubt I would take the trouble to go to work every day.
All the other stuff is nice and dandy, but money is the reason people work. Employees will NOT refuse a $90K job because they like the $30K job that comes with a ping pong table and a $10K performance based "bonus".
The way to stop this kind of nonsense is to make your own MP3 and put it on their site.
Then immediately sue them for hosting your MP3 illegally.
Since they are censoring their customers they cannot pretend that they are common carriers. If they censor their customers, then any oversight in the censorship opens them up to being bent over the rail in a courtroom.
It makes me wonder. Researchers usually have their own datasets, and they spend gobs of time working on them with their specialized prorams. It seems to me that the really valuable stuff out there is in these closed datasets, not in the everyday stuff that's available on the internet.
As an example, you can get a gazillion CD-ROM's with the Magellan data from Venus. But what good is that raw data? Not much. You'd probably want to get a look at the data on the Venus-geologist's computer instead, because it's been analyzed and selected and generally picked over to produce something meaningful.
then why is it that I'm always on the same network fragment as that idiot spammer who returns your search request with an html extension but containing a stupid advertizement?
Slashdot Mirror
I watched the sales guy at a Radio Shack for 5 minutes in 1978. He programmed the TRS-80 Model I they had there to print out my name with the TAB() option to zigzag across the screen.
PATRICK
PATRICK
PATRICK
PATRICK
PATRICK
DRAPER
DRAPER
DRAPER
DRAPER
DRAPER
(etc.)
The useful thing that I learned in that 5 minutes was that I *really* needed to get one of those things.
I bet he could be talking about Modula-2 which is beautiful in many ways. (but silly in some other ways too...)
I guess the heyday of M2 was in the late 1980's when some good cheap compilers were available for Atari ST's and Amigas. The C compilers that I could get for my Atari ST either didn't have any floating point support, or they were too expensive for a poor student. M2 was $30 I think, so I learned it.
I think your life is strongly influenced by something circling Uranus!
Heh heh. Uranus. Heh heh.
Please will someone who opposed the launch of the Cassini probe please reply to this message? I have something very urgent to say to you....
HA HA. U R DUM.
It seems to me that Slashdot's coverage of things political is just as bad as the regular media's coverage of things scientific.
How many times have we read this week that the space station is getting some wings? What good are wings in a vacuum? Sheesh.
There once was a poet from Sufi
Who went by the first name of Rufi.
He composed in Persian
'cause the Sufi version
Paid even less than Bababufi.
Wow there's a lot of bogosity there. Java gets in my way of expressing what I want to do quite frequently. My biggest peeve is not being to do if (string1 == string2). That gets in my way.
Also, C++ has great class libraries. The standard template library is excellent, and it works well with g++. It cuts way down on pointer problems, and it's extremely efficient.
Responding to your points by number:
1) You're absolutely right about that. If you make a claim about a god then there must be extraordinary evidence to back it up. Atheists make no claims about the existence of god, and therefore need no evidence.
2) You twisted what I said. I will say it more clearly. If you smile at a murderer, you are two-faced. If you present a cheerful face to a murderer, you are dishonest.
3) You are absolutely right that tolerance isn't enough for freedom. Notice that I would not remove any words from the list of what a scout is. I would only add the word 'tolerant' which I think is essential. Tolerance is the core of the 1st ammendment which says that we all have the freedom to say what we want to, and worship or not worship in any way we want to.
Thanks for the compliments. My beliefs are well grounded because they have been arrived at through careful thought. I was once in the exact position that you are in right now - A believer, much more conservative than I am today. Keep arguing with atheists and see where it takes you!
1) CS Lewis' arguments are faulty. I definitely did not find him to be a good read.
... ummmm .... two-faced. I notice that "honest" is not one of the words on the list.
2) Putting on a friendly face to a murderer isn't friendly. It's
3) You minimize the importance of tolerance too much. Tolerance is the basis of freedom. Nobody said you have to be tolerant to murderers, and to claim that tolerance should be excluded from the list on that basis (which is what you claimed despite your denial above) is completely bogus. Tolerate everything that does not abridge your freedom. If a gay or atheist kid wants to be a scout, does that prevent you from being straight and religious?
You could probably find a rational argument for respect for country. You would find it harder to find a rational argument for respect of god. A historical argument for respect based on the contribution of religion to culture would have to somehow deal with the negative aspects of religion to come out with a net positive, and that could very well be difficult.
Your argument that tolerance should be all encompassing, even to criminals, is unsupported. It is especially unpersuasive when you imply that friendliness, cheerfulness, and courtesy might not be extended to murderers. Certainly the murderer would consider me downright unfriendly, uncheerful, and uncourteous when I call the police on him!
Your point on reverence is well taken, so how about adding tolerant right after the word reverent? (subject to the same limits with regards to murderers as the word 'friendly' is)
Text. Good old black and white text.
You were lucky. A quick little search shows that not every atheist fares as well as you did.
You've also got to believe in a god before you can be a Boy Scout. This is wrong. I was a Boy Scout when I was a kid, and I think that the organization should allow atheist kids to be members. They should replace the word 'reverent' with the word 'tolerant.'
Humanity's progress to the stars (and the supposed singularity) started a long time ago. Somewhat more recently than that, we invented toilet paper.
If were were intended to wipe our asses with toilet paper, God would have caused our bodies to produce it. Toilet Paper is UNNATURAL and should not be used for our own good.
Now what's the difference between toilet paper and sentient computers? Why would you use toilet paper and not use a sentient computer? How do you draw the line?
Everyone should get over the fact that eventually the entire Earth is going to be disassembled, atom by atom, to provide the raw materials for engineering projects in the future. Saving the Earth can only be possible in the short term. In the long term, the Earth is just a pile of construction materials.
The appropriate response to an ASK is a NASK.
WQL - wackle
SQL - squeal
Right. Public access. Sure. I used to work for an agrochemical database compiler, and they used to have to sue researchers regularly to get the data. The researchers would promise to get the data to us, but it would get lost, or it would be late, or whatever.
In business, and in science, the person who has the first crack at the data has the best crack at making a buck/making a discovery.
Those cranky old bastards at universities weren't opposed to getting us data. They were just opposed to us getting the data in time to make money from putting it into a database.
So, yet another situation where theory is different than practice.
I still think that the person putting together this database is going to hit political resistance just as soon as his economy threatens the ability of astronomers to bring in grant dollars for their universities.
Not about the money?
I don't know about you, but if it weren't for the fact that my employer gives me money, I doubt I would take the trouble to go to work every day.
All the other stuff is nice and dandy, but money is the reason people work. Employees will NOT refuse a $90K job because they like the $30K job that comes with a ping pong table and a $10K performance based "bonus".
The way to stop this kind of nonsense is to make your own MP3 and put it on their site.
Then immediately sue them for hosting your MP3 illegally.
Since they are censoring their customers they cannot pretend that they are common carriers. If they censor their customers, then any oversight in the censorship opens them up to being bent over the rail in a courtroom.
Turing Award? How big was his dataset? I guess I should have been more clear.
I meant to ask if he is a researcher that works with datasets larger than he can pull out of his ass?
If he was, he'd figure out that a huge amount of data means something to just a couple people.
He'd also figure out that researchers build their little kingdoms, and they are NOT going to want to contribute their data to the project.
In short, the creator of this Astronomy database sounds like he doesn't understand the politics of the situation.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
It makes me wonder. Researchers usually have their own datasets, and they spend gobs of time working on them with their specialized prorams. It seems to me that the really valuable stuff out there is in these closed datasets, not in the everyday stuff that's available on the internet.
As an example, you can get a gazillion CD-ROM's with the Magellan data from Venus. But what good is that raw data? Not much. You'd probably want to get a look at the data on the Venus-geologist's computer instead, because it's been analyzed and selected and generally picked over to produce something meaningful.
Whoever marked the above post 'flamebait' LISTEN UP.
1) The comment might have been serious, in which case it deserves an interesting or insightful
2) if the comment was NOT serious, then it's a TROLL. Flamebait is when I call you a yellow bellied sneech, and besides that, you're a Windows user.
A troll is when you post a bogus comment with the intention of getting numerous followups. Playing the devil's advocate is one example of trolling.
Posting goatse.cx is NOT a troll. It's 'offtopic'
BTW, this posting is also offtopic. If you must mod me down for this, please use the correct selection at least!
Nope, more like 23 people.
e nce.html
Check out the birthday paradox, and please don't write any code that needs to be secure. Thank you.
http://www.cut-the-knot.com/do_you_know/coincid
then why is it that I'm always on the same network fragment as that idiot spammer who returns your search request with an html extension but containing a stupid advertizement?