I'm in a class right now where the lectures are word for word out of the textbook. This is especially bad as my school has generally had good classes and teachers, but this one is just plain awful.
I've only had one class with breakout groups though, English. Everything else is completely focused on the professor (I get the impression this is less because the professor believes it's a better way to learn, and more a function of attention.)
Which does nothing to help out those who either can't (insert system admin worries here) or don't patch their machines.
The current system works fine for those people who autopatch. It takes only a very short time to get the latest patch, shorter than it takes to get the bug, find a good page to work it onto, build up enough trust to get people there, and then deploy it. All this really affects is those users who don't patch their machines.
At least 2GB of RAM for a typical home computer? I want some of what you're smoking. Wow...I must live in the wrong area with my 1GB primary computer, which I use to play games on. Guess I should be upgrading so I can run this web browser...
I mean seriously. 1GB is still a perfectly reasonable amount of ram. I can run 80% of modern games (GAMES! We're talking Call of Duty 4 without lag here) and my system isn't up to spec for this WEB BROWSER! And the default response is, of course, 2GB isn't that much. I mean, no one has less than 3 right now right?
Sometimes even those of us who love technology and play computer games can't afford an upgrade (and before you talk about how cheap ram is, my laptop won't take standard ram, and has 2 512 cards right now. It would be ~$60 to upgrade to 2 gigs, and I'd have to either have a tech out or send it in. Yay Laptops) No Web Browser should require more RAM than Call of Duty 4. Ever.
"If you think of the brain as a machine with inputs and outputs free will falls out of the equation pretty quick"
Well except for the fact that different brains presented with the same inputs come to a different output, even at the subconscious level, is indicative of different wiring, which is so close to free will so as to be debatable the same thing (if your brain is wired differently from mine, and that's partially because of choices you made, which were made because your brain is wired differently from mine, which led to it being wired differently from mine ad infinitum, then what's the difference between having your brain alter itself to work in a certain way and you altering your brain to work in a certain way? Is there really any way to detect the difference?).
I've made plenty of decisions on a subconscious level. I can't think of a certain one that I wouldn't have made the same way had I done so consciously. My subconscious and my conscious minds don't usually disagree. Is that because neither one has free will, or both have the same free will? Is there any way to experimentally check which it is?
(If you understood the end of that second paragraph I hereby grant you one internet nickel, good for one you-tube video search, in honor of your ability to understand horrible writing:P)
I think he was more pointing out that taking 7 seconds from input to output for such a simple choice is indicative of something else...
Personally I think the summary is just absurd. So the fact that we can make simple decisions up to 7 seconds before we know we made the decision shows we're not making a decision, it's being made for us? Free Will can exist at a sub-conscious level if you accept the subconscious as part of your thinking process.
Did every subject make the same choice when presented with the same stimulus? Now that's a good question of free will right there, not 'Can we determine what they're thinking before they know they're thinking it?'. I've had plenty of moments where I realized I'd been thinking about a problem, and solved it, before even consciously trying to think about it. Does that imply my solutions didn't involve any free will? Or, perhaps, that the human brain is capable of thinking on a couple of levels, some of which are outside conscious detection but still individual?
Odd. When I went shopping every single dealer wanted to ride shotgun. They did say that I could refuse, but it was more 'You can if you want, but...' type things than making it clear.
Slippery Slope fallacy. This isn't even remotely close to what you're proposing it will lead to. While there may someday (and already have been) cases of vigilantism gone wrong there are just as many case of it gone right. So long as the correct sort of vigilantism (the 'get some info and call the police', not the 'go batman on them') is portrait as a good thing I highly doubt the other one will become seriously popular.
'What is right and wrong will always be a subjective and philosophical definition.'
'People need to move away from the mindset where media pompously and wrongly attributes polar positions such as "right and wrong" and "use and abuse" to be a 100% lexical replacement for "legal and illegal."'
I don't know about you but that's exactly what I read him as saying, that right and wrong depended on the individual (for the most part, nothing's black and white, not even the rules that say everything's gray) but legal and illegal have different meanings. Basically that illegal activities should not be called abuse, just illegal, as in illegal drug use rather than drug abuse.
Never in my life did I think I'd see a concert analogy for black holes that was so close to correct. I applaud you king of absurd but mostly truthful analogies!
Photoshop is much easier to use. I say this as a person who desperately wanted to drop photoshop in favor of the GIMP. I still have it installed, but for a hundred small reasons I can't come up with offhand it simply is not as easy to use. It's the standard problem with open source really, I'm sure there's a ton of features that surpass photoshop hiding somewhere in the GIMP, and that it's every bit as powerful. I don't have the hours necessary to adapt and discover those things, however, when I can just as easily use photoshop.
All too often the two sexes are reduced to simple stereotypes in these sorts of discussions, it's rather irritating. Guys are perceived as wanting to do anything that moves, even though those types of people are rather rare in reality. Glad to see someone here is actually living in the real world rather than some imaginary one.
I would be an issue if nuclear weapons (at least of the standard gun-fired uranium type) weren't trivial to design. The primary issues are getting the detonation sequence timed properly (unlikely to be in any of these patents) and getting the fissible material (and if they included samples then the patent people have a lot more problems to deal with. Hey...that would actually explain a few things).
Not to mention the entire point of the GP post, which was that people with the desire to detonate a nuclear weapon aren't going to be worried about something as silly as a patent lawsuit.
I swear, some/.ers can't see the forest for the trees...
"If you're designing a government with the fundamental idea that all governments are corrupt, then you've failed before you've even begun."
Patently false. All humans are corruptible, if you don't believe that then you are a naive fool. All governments are run by humans. If you don't design your government around the fundamental idea that governments are corrupt then it will become corrupt and you'll have nothing you can do about it. Want some non-US examples? Just look at any modern European government (or at least most of them). Why do you think Monarchy no longer rules? (I know it still exists, but there's always a parliament with more power, at least to the best of my knowledge). The Magna Carta was designed as an answer to the corruption of a government which had been created with the idea that a non-corrupt government could work. The world is very lucky that it worked, because there was no built in recourse that could be used.
Power corrupts. If you don't believe that then you haven't experienced it. Any group with power needs to have built in checks on that power to prevent corruption from having an impact. This isn't a US only thing, most modern governments are designed in such a way. In fact the US took part of it from Britain's government and another part from a statement by a British historian. There are many reasons why the US is strange, holding that government may become corrupt and that checks on its power are needed is not one of them.
Crashes decrease fuel efficiency, however. Just because something is lighter does not make it better. Joysticks are far less intuative than wheels for turning. They make perfect sense for planes, which require more dimensions of travel and it's not that important if you're off by a degree or two in the long run. A steering wheel is far superior when it comes to traveling through 1 dimension (sideways).
Now here's a question for you. Why not drive-by-wire with a steering wheel? There's plenty of examples of it working, I had a steering wheel peripheral for my PS1 not too long ago. If you want to reduce weight without sacrificing utility then duplicate the old interface with new technology, don't re-invent the interface (unless that's what needs to be improved, and steering wheels are a perfectly good interface in my book).
Unless you like new stuff, which is a problem when a software engineer (who either loves new stuff or hates his job basically:P) tries to predict the actions of a business person (who likes his technology to work and be cheap, not cutting edge).
If software engineers ran businesses mainframes would be gone because they are old and not cool anymore. But software engineers don't run businesses (if they did they'd be business people) and so they're still around, which is a good thing in my book (mainframe models make a lot more sense than individual for many problems).
Note that I'm speaking of the stereotypical software engineer. There are plenty who like old stuff, but the majority of software engineers I've met would rather use a brand new system to do something than an old one, that, or they aren't very good at their job because they hate it. Not that there's anything wrong with either way of course, different ideas != good and bad ideas neccessarily.
Especially when it doesn't seem all that common to the legislators. Software patents being silly doesn't seem like common sense to someone for whom software is the magical system that does all sorts of handy things via some system. It seems very patentable then...
"You're aware that microwave ovens work in the 2.4-3 GHz range right? If that doesn't "affect us" I'm not sure how you define affect."
So wait...anything that makes use of radiation and affects people is capable of causing cancer? Kids, stay away from that fire, it'll give you cancer!
Microwave radiation becomes heat within a few inches of the surface of the skin. That's the entire premise of the new Less-Than-Lethal laser weapons under development. That's certainly an affect, but trying to link that in any way to cancer or any other long term damage is as absurd as trying to say that the heat from a fire will give you cancer (which I have little doubt California has already done:P).
Oh, and people are wearing more sunscreen for one simple reason, they've been informated that it's a good idea. People are also going outside less, does that show that outside is dangerous? Solar radiation is harmful, that much is sure, but trying to say that another kind of radiation is just as dangerous using UV as an example is just stupid.
And I've never even heard of an EM sensitive person complaining about the sun. Care to back that one up? Not everyone is EM sensitive you know...
"Why do you think we still have these nose cones, anyway? The US has not come all that far since the 60s in terms of nuclear weapon design. By the 60s we were already detonating fusion bombs, and I guarantee you that the designs and electronics used in the 60s to create hydrogen bombs will still work today."
True, but they have gotten much, much smaller. Ever look at a picture of a modern ICBM vs. Fat Man? There's quite a size difference involved. Using that line of reasoning we haven't come all that far from 3 ton analog computers, and I'll guarentee that the designs and electronics used back them will still work today.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm in a class right now where the lectures are word for word out of the textbook. This is especially bad as my school has generally had good classes and teachers, but this one is just plain awful.
I've only had one class with breakout groups though, English. Everything else is completely focused on the professor (I get the impression this is less because the professor believes it's a better way to learn, and more a function of attention.)
Which does nothing to help out those who either can't (insert system admin worries here) or don't patch their machines.
The current system works fine for those people who autopatch. It takes only a very short time to get the latest patch, shorter than it takes to get the bug, find a good page to work it onto, build up enough trust to get people there, and then deploy it. All this really affects is those users who don't patch their machines.
At least 2GB of RAM for a typical home computer? I want some of what you're smoking. Wow...I must live in the wrong area with my 1GB primary computer, which I use to play games on. Guess I should be upgrading so I can run this web browser...
I mean seriously. 1GB is still a perfectly reasonable amount of ram. I can run 80% of modern games (GAMES! We're talking Call of Duty 4 without lag here) and my system isn't up to spec for this WEB BROWSER! And the default response is, of course, 2GB isn't that much. I mean, no one has less than 3 right now right?
Sometimes even those of us who love technology and play computer games can't afford an upgrade (and before you talk about how cheap ram is, my laptop won't take standard ram, and has 2 512 cards right now. It would be ~$60 to upgrade to 2 gigs, and I'd have to either have a tech out or send it in. Yay Laptops) No Web Browser should require more RAM than Call of Duty 4. Ever.
IE's horridness trancends the mere concept of acronyms.
"If you think of the brain as a machine with inputs and outputs free will falls out of the equation pretty quick"
:P)
Well except for the fact that different brains presented with the same inputs come to a different output, even at the subconscious level, is indicative of different wiring, which is so close to free will so as to be debatable the same thing (if your brain is wired differently from mine, and that's partially because of choices you made, which were made because your brain is wired differently from mine, which led to it being wired differently from mine ad infinitum, then what's the difference between having your brain alter itself to work in a certain way and you altering your brain to work in a certain way? Is there really any way to detect the difference?).
I've made plenty of decisions on a subconscious level. I can't think of a certain one that I wouldn't have made the same way had I done so consciously. My subconscious and my conscious minds don't usually disagree. Is that because neither one has free will, or both have the same free will? Is there any way to experimentally check which it is?
(If you understood the end of that second paragraph I hereby grant you one internet nickel, good for one you-tube video search, in honor of your ability to understand horrible writing
I think he was more pointing out that taking 7 seconds from input to output for such a simple choice is indicative of something else...
Personally I think the summary is just absurd. So the fact that we can make simple decisions up to 7 seconds before we know we made the decision shows we're not making a decision, it's being made for us? Free Will can exist at a sub-conscious level if you accept the subconscious as part of your thinking process.
Did every subject make the same choice when presented with the same stimulus? Now that's a good question of free will right there, not 'Can we determine what they're thinking before they know they're thinking it?'. I've had plenty of moments where I realized I'd been thinking about a problem, and solved it, before even consciously trying to think about it. Does that imply my solutions didn't involve any free will? Or, perhaps, that the human brain is capable of thinking on a couple of levels, some of which are outside conscious detection but still individual?
Odd. When I went shopping every single dealer wanted to ride shotgun. They did say that I could refuse, but it was more 'You can if you want, but...' type things than making it clear.
Slippery Slope fallacy. This isn't even remotely close to what you're proposing it will lead to. While there may someday (and already have been) cases of vigilantism gone wrong there are just as many case of it gone right. So long as the correct sort of vigilantism (the 'get some info and call the police', not the 'go batman on them') is portrait as a good thing I highly doubt the other one will become seriously popular.
'What is right and wrong will always be a subjective and philosophical definition.'
'People need to move away from the mindset where media pompously and wrongly attributes polar positions such as "right and wrong" and "use and abuse" to be a 100% lexical replacement for "legal and illegal."'
I don't know about you but that's exactly what I read him as saying, that right and wrong depended on the individual (for the most part, nothing's black and white, not even the rules that say everything's gray) but legal and illegal have different meanings. Basically that illegal activities should not be called abuse, just illegal, as in illegal drug use rather than drug abuse.
Never in my life did I think I'd see a concert analogy for black holes that was so close to correct. I applaud you king of absurd but mostly truthful analogies!
Photoshop is much easier to use. I say this as a person who desperately wanted to drop photoshop in favor of the GIMP. I still have it installed, but for a hundred small reasons I can't come up with offhand it simply is not as easy to use. It's the standard problem with open source really, I'm sure there's a ton of features that surpass photoshop hiding somewhere in the GIMP, and that it's every bit as powerful. I don't have the hours necessary to adapt and discover those things, however, when I can just as easily use photoshop.
"There are women on Slashdot!"
It's a Kilt!
That depends...who am I playing as?
Or DDR, or some more physical game if you're looking for the second option.
All too often the two sexes are reduced to simple stereotypes in these sorts of discussions, it's rather irritating. Guys are perceived as wanting to do anything that moves, even though those types of people are rather rare in reality. Glad to see someone here is actually living in the real world rather than some imaginary one.
I would be an issue if nuclear weapons (at least of the standard gun-fired uranium type) weren't trivial to design. The primary issues are getting the detonation sequence timed properly (unlikely to be in any of these patents) and getting the fissible material (and if they included samples then the patent people have a lot more problems to deal with. Hey...that would actually explain a few things).
Not to mention the entire point of the GP post, which was that people with the desire to detonate a nuclear weapon aren't going to be worried about something as silly as a patent lawsuit.
/.ers can't see the forest for the trees...
I swear, some
Bad Math Proves A Point!
(Kudos to anyone who gets the reference)
"If you're designing a government with the fundamental idea that all governments are corrupt, then you've failed before you've even begun."
Patently false. All humans are corruptible, if you don't believe that then you are a naive fool. All governments are run by humans. If you don't design your government around the fundamental idea that governments are corrupt then it will become corrupt and you'll have nothing you can do about it. Want some non-US examples? Just look at any modern European government (or at least most of them). Why do you think Monarchy no longer rules? (I know it still exists, but there's always a parliament with more power, at least to the best of my knowledge). The Magna Carta was designed as an answer to the corruption of a government which had been created with the idea that a non-corrupt government could work. The world is very lucky that it worked, because there was no built in recourse that could be used.
Power corrupts. If you don't believe that then you haven't experienced it. Any group with power needs to have built in checks on that power to prevent corruption from having an impact. This isn't a US only thing, most modern governments are designed in such a way. In fact the US took part of it from Britain's government and another part from a statement by a British historian. There are many reasons why the US is strange, holding that government may become corrupt and that checks on its power are needed is not one of them.
Whoosh!
Crashes decrease fuel efficiency, however. Just because something is lighter does not make it better. Joysticks are far less intuative than wheels for turning. They make perfect sense for planes, which require more dimensions of travel and it's not that important if you're off by a degree or two in the long run. A steering wheel is far superior when it comes to traveling through 1 dimension (sideways).
:P.
Now here's a question for you. Why not drive-by-wire with a steering wheel? There's plenty of examples of it working, I had a steering wheel peripheral for my PS1 not too long ago. If you want to reduce weight without sacrificing utility then duplicate the old interface with new technology, don't re-invent the interface (unless that's what needs to be improved, and steering wheels are a perfectly good interface in my book).
There's very rarely just two options
Unless you like new stuff, which is a problem when a software engineer (who either loves new stuff or hates his job basically :P) tries to predict the actions of a business person (who likes his technology to work and be cheap, not cutting edge).
If software engineers ran businesses mainframes would be gone because they are old and not cool anymore. But software engineers don't run businesses (if they did they'd be business people) and so they're still around, which is a good thing in my book (mainframe models make a lot more sense than individual for many problems).
Note that I'm speaking of the stereotypical software engineer. There are plenty who like old stuff, but the majority of software engineers I've met would rather use a brand new system to do something than an old one, that, or they aren't very good at their job because they hate it. Not that there's anything wrong with either way of course, different ideas != good and bad ideas neccessarily.
Especially when it doesn't seem all that common to the legislators. Software patents being silly doesn't seem like common sense to someone for whom software is the magical system that does all sorts of handy things via some system. It seems very patentable then...
"You're aware that microwave ovens work in the 2.4-3 GHz range right? If that doesn't "affect us" I'm not sure how you define affect."
:P).
So wait...anything that makes use of radiation and affects people is capable of causing cancer? Kids, stay away from that fire, it'll give you cancer!
Microwave radiation becomes heat within a few inches of the surface of the skin. That's the entire premise of the new Less-Than-Lethal laser weapons under development. That's certainly an affect, but trying to link that in any way to cancer or any other long term damage is as absurd as trying to say that the heat from a fire will give you cancer (which I have little doubt California has already done
Oh, and people are wearing more sunscreen for one simple reason, they've been informated that it's a good idea. People are also going outside less, does that show that outside is dangerous? Solar radiation is harmful, that much is sure, but trying to say that another kind of radiation is just as dangerous using UV as an example is just stupid.
And I've never even heard of an EM sensitive person complaining about the sun. Care to back that one up? Not everyone is EM sensitive you know...
"Why do you think we still have these nose cones, anyway? The US has not come all that far since the 60s in terms of nuclear weapon design. By the 60s we were already detonating fusion bombs, and I guarantee you that the designs and electronics used in the 60s to create hydrogen bombs will still work today."
True, but they have gotten much, much smaller. Ever look at a picture of a modern ICBM vs. Fat Man? There's quite a size difference involved. Using that line of reasoning we haven't come all that far from 3 ton analog computers, and I'll guarentee that the designs and electronics used back them will still work today.
Works != Is good