Are you saying monkeys are feeling smug because of all that poo flinging?
Actually, human beings are far more intelligent than all life-forms discovered so far, in terms of the mathematical depth of their cognitive ability. Douglas Adams is sweet on the ears, but I don't think your average dolphin could understand probability densities in Quantum Mechanics if it wanted to.
And we have a *very* distinctive feature in our genetic makeup - the ability to abstract, document, and communicate information, particularly to next generations. No other species has ever done this, and it is why we regard knowledge so highly in our societies.
I prefer to just lock up those that cannot understand the difference between something you own and something someone else owns. You've just locked up 90% of the Windows OS consumer base, who know little about the technical difference when applied to Wi-Fi, where your own network can be mixed up with the neighbor's or the thousands of other free w-lans out there. If your open garden also had other bikes that you were allowed to borrow for free, would you be so mad if somebody took your unsecured bike?
Come on, people. There are plans to have free w-lan access across entire states for chrissake..how the hell is some crackhead with a laptop supposed to know the difference between a free "Linksys" and a neighbour's "Linksys" if the two are open for usage? If you want to protect your network then at least show an effort that would require technical skill to overcome. At least then you have a case that a sane court can judge upon, because your effort is then analogous to warning against trespassing.
I can't believe they charged the guy $1000 for something his adapter's Windows client probably did on it's own. Hell, my *Linux* wrapper drivers catch on to the open network with the best signal automatically. I have had to intervene manually several times to stop this piggybacking, or humping as I prefer to call it. And not many people know enough to do this. In particular, you can't expect people to click cancel on an OS that requires a confirmation every time you want to scratch your balls. Wake up, Britain.
I was about to submit this BBC article, then saw the embarrassment over the wording would be too much and decided otherwise:)
But I find simplifying matters this way a very noble way of getting knowledge about the universe across to the layman. Without the balls-on-rubber-sheets, we would have to be talking about Riemann geometry and differentiable manifolds and other wonderful stuffs. There are reserved places in heaven for people who can make these kind of analogies. Millions of clueless joes will tell you so.
It's just that the digital age is so bent on speed - Taco's point was that the bodies are still warm. Very funny post, but show some respect for the unburied dead.
Regulation for firearm possession is not meant to stop criminals - it can't. The point, as others have said, is to limit the effect of impulsive usage of weapons in everyday quarrels between non-criminal elements of society. It's better to have a fist fight which people can break up, than to have 5 dead people every time something happens.
It would be interesting to see figures of gun-related violence in places like Texas, say, from an unbiased source. Even if you can prove what you're saying for Texans, there is still the deeper issue of "cultural maturity" with gun-carrying. You cannot equate someplace like New York with rural areas where fathers teach their sons about these things and give them a good whuppin for misuse at an early age. This subject is as complicated as turbulence in physics.
Please do not overreact. Your points are all valid, but google is NOT big brothering you so far - they're keeping track of you through simple cookies that are stored on your side, not theirs. Clear your cookies, Google has never seen you before.
If we do begin to find evidence that google is somehow storing things server-side for users who are logged in, then I agree we should start the torches-and-hay-forks thing ASAP.
Good point. I'm not exactly blasted away by "news" that "informs" me the Liberals are fighting against DRM, any more than if it the article was about how the boys and girls at PETA were against skinning seals alive. These "resolutions" are not at all important until they actually become part of legislation. This is not even remotely interesting except that the slashdotters in Norway can entertain us with their speculations on how likely this "resolution" is to pass, and we can take a look at the wording and legal approach of these attempts.
Apart from that, it's just another day on./. Wake me up when RMS, or the Swedish piracy party, or anybody with views considered radical by the corporate powers has a half-serious chance at getting some sane law approved by a Western government.
You dont think that some muslim that blows himself up in a car bomb cares about collateral damage? Hell, that is his main intent... Pure flamebait. Just what does that have to do with the parent's argument? Not only have you equated all Muslims (including the ones in our armed forces) with terrorists, you've also suggested that the behavior of the terrorists somehow serves as a premise for our own battefield ethics. Yes, war is ruthless and savage, but being a human being requires you to have some measure of..humanity.
The only purpose REMOTELY possible by US military activity at the moment, is to (forcefully) create states that are NOT dangerous enemies to western civilization. If we followed your logic, even that last hope will be lost.
that energy is doing something right now: mixing the atmosphere, generating heat, etc., and chances are that whatever it is doing is probably important for keeping the atmosphere the way we know and like it. Somebody in the global-warming-doomsday-tomorrow camp probably wants you to die right now.
I thought all you had to do to reboot was shut off the valves for a while. It's a damn good thing the internet isn't a big truck - we woulda had to close down the superhighway and put up signs for traffic!
You are 100% right, but I also wanted to show the stark contrast between the mathematical and physical paradigms today. Despite Godel's efforts, mathematics goes on in the same way..the incompleteness of any theorem has become accepted. It is physical reality that is truly shocking because it's not just a contradiction to self-referential statements that bothers us, but in fact the very nature of fundamental physics. None of the founding fathers of QM truly accepted this, or it's ramifications.
But that's just it - philosophers should stay out of the realm of cognitive psychology and neurology. Your consciousness is a LOT more than a mechanical response to stimuli. In fact, the different parts of your neural system responsible for such responses are well known and mapped. Higher functions however are incredibly more complex, and are not perfectly understood at all. There may not be anything mystical about cognition, but our knowledge of it puts us somewhere in the dark ages compared to other areas in biology.
I'm sorry, please clarify: did you actually say anthing in that post? Maybe he did. The philosophical problems raised by the fact that your mental activity, at the lowest "unobserved" level, is the product of a naturally probabilistic (yet determined upon observation)state, is not good. The idea posits that the concept of free will is actually achievable, if your recognition of that will can somehow be excluded from the entanglement process which renders macro-scales like Schroedingers cat irrelevant.
how are you going to stop the Chinese from blowing the damn thing into a shmazillion pieces with a laser? I'd hate to get a HTTP 404 in the middle of a battlefield. It would be an absolute killer of a moment.
Why is this flaimbait? I didn't bash MS enough? Or is it the typo (Update shouldve been "patcher").. maybe I need to clarify: XP is manageable in terms of security if you can update your system via patch accumulators such as this one. It is convenient to use, has software compatible with most desktop needs and is no longer the main target for worm creators (the next Slammer/Blaster will target Vista).
There is absolutely no incentive to move to Vista as everyone has noted, save perhaps the DirectX10 games if you're into that kind of thing. The "security" measures in Vista do not appeal to the decent "power user" who manages to avoid downloading malware, and definitely not to a CS graduate student, such as myself, who has a hardened Fedora setup on another partition.
When I get new hardware, I will make sure XP drivers exist for each and every component. If they don't, I'm not going to buy it.
This is because I, for one, am not switching to Vista unless there is some serious software related compelling such a move. After years and years, XP has finally become reasonably secure enough to use if (and only if) you can apply 5 years worth of patches via Auto Update or something of the sort. I use Windows for its convenience. Switching to new bloatware is a lack of convenience, and being bloatware, the probability of 0days targetting it are far greater than boring old XP. No real reason to switch before 3-4 years if not more.
There are probably thousands of other ways as well. Many power consuming activities that involve some kind of motion could be designed so that the motion is oscillatory or somehow related to vibrations. You do not need an earthquake, although what you suggested is one hell of an idea. If these things can charge cells, the entirety of our ground transport systems can be utilized to make incredible amounts of power. Your food mixer at home could almost charge itself. List is endless, but the tech is probably going to be hard to make effecient enough for use.
From AC:
I have spent many a night evacuating in Marriott executive suite bathrooms, and dug holes in the ground five hundred miles from nowhere, and let me tell you, they're all thrones. I agree that when you're sufficiently high/intoxicated, sitting in a hole you dug 500 miles into the wilderness feels like a darn throne:)
That is a great point, but they would argue that it is the effort put into the work that makes it "theirs". Same with an encyclopedia - you can use (and cite) it, but you sure as hell can't produce a carbon copy under a different name with zero recognition. Recognition of authorship, among free(beer) work at least, is a courtesy we have no need to abandon.
Which brings me to the GP issue: why don't you want your name on things you've done? Recognition is a "nice" thing. If all of maathematics was written down in nameless books with mystery authors, we would live in a crappy world indeed. The people who are both capable and willing to produce knowledge should be valued for it, because therein lies the worth of the human race. Or something.
I have stood on the great pyramid and have been in Alexander's room of enlightenment, and Saladin's wall of Cairo, and the scenes of many great battles where tens of thousands died. Let me tell you: it's all a dinky fruit stand. Chirping crickets, blowing sand. We just like to fool ourselves.
I for one look forward to the day when some big shot physicists hold a press conference and..
It will not happen. Physics is based on axioms(postulates) and mathematics. The axioms cannot be proved, unless they mathematically follow from other axioms, in which case the former become theories and only the latter are axiomatic. They can only be disproved, reducto ad absurdum, when their implications contradict(or seem to contradict) reality i.e experimental result. It can be argued that this way of doing physics (which hasn't really changed from Newton's day) combined with what we know of mathematical incompleteness (Kurt Godel) leads to the disturbing thought that even if we have a perfect self-sustaining model, we will not be able to prove it. The physicists you talk about will only be able to show the lack of evidence against it, and they will have to live with that sad realization.
Did you expect me to RTFA or something? An article about Chinese characters?! You are definitely new here:)
That said, I was responding to a particular point made by the parent. You are probably right, this seems to be an issue of indexing, but since mapping roman characters to others is generally not possible through 1-to-1 transformations alone(i.e there is a small amount of additional logic), it is possible that there is a little code involved. Even if it was purely an index, you cannot make claims without evidence. We are still arguing over nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you saying monkeys are feeling smug because of all that poo flinging?
Actually, human beings are far more intelligent than all life-forms discovered so far, in terms of the mathematical depth of their cognitive ability. Douglas Adams is sweet on the ears, but I don't think your average dolphin could understand probability densities in Quantum Mechanics if it wanted to.
And we have a *very* distinctive feature in our genetic makeup - the ability to abstract, document, and communicate information, particularly to next generations. No other species has ever done this, and it is why we regard knowledge so highly in our societies.
Come on, people. There are plans to have free w-lan access across entire states for chrissake..how the hell is some crackhead with a laptop supposed to know the difference between a free "Linksys" and a neighbour's "Linksys" if the two are open for usage? If you want to protect your network then at least show an effort that would require technical skill to overcome. At least then you have a case that a sane court can judge upon, because your effort is then analogous to warning against trespassing.
I can't believe they charged the guy $1000 for something his adapter's Windows client probably did on it's own. Hell, my *Linux* wrapper drivers catch on to the open network with the best signal automatically. I have had to intervene manually several times to stop this piggybacking, or humping as I prefer to call it. And not many people know enough to do this. In particular, you can't expect people to click cancel on an OS that requires a confirmation every time you want to scratch your balls. Wake up, Britain.
I was about to submit this BBC article, then saw the embarrassment over the wording would be too much and decided otherwise :)
But I find simplifying matters this way a very noble way of getting knowledge about the universe across to the layman. Without the balls-on-rubber-sheets, we would have to be talking about Riemann geometry and differentiable manifolds and other wonderful stuffs. There are reserved places in heaven for people who can make these kind of analogies. Millions of clueless joes will tell you so.
It's just that the digital age is so bent on speed - Taco's point was that the bodies are still warm. Very funny post, but show some respect for the unburied dead.
Regulation for firearm possession is not meant to stop criminals - it can't. The point, as others have said, is to limit the effect of impulsive usage of weapons in everyday quarrels between non-criminal elements of society. It's better to have a fist fight which people can break up, than to have 5 dead people every time something happens.
It would be interesting to see figures of gun-related violence in places like Texas, say, from an unbiased source. Even if you can prove what you're saying for Texans, there is still the deeper issue of "cultural maturity" with gun-carrying. You cannot equate someplace like New York with rural areas where fathers teach their sons about these things and give them a good whuppin for misuse at an early age. This subject is as complicated as turbulence in physics.
Please do not overreact. Your points are all valid, but google is NOT big brothering you so far - they're keeping track of you through simple cookies that are stored on your side, not theirs. Clear your cookies, Google has never seen you before.
If we do begin to find evidence that google is somehow storing things server-side for users who are logged in, then I agree we should start the torches-and-hay-forks thing ASAP.
Good point. I'm not exactly blasted away by "news" that "informs" me the Liberals are fighting against DRM, any more than if it the article was about how the boys and girls at PETA were against skinning seals alive. These "resolutions" are not at all important until they actually become part of legislation. This is not even remotely interesting except that the slashdotters in Norway can entertain us with their speculations on how likely this "resolution" is to pass, and we can take a look at the wording and legal approach of these attempts.
./. Wake me up when RMS, or the Swedish piracy party, or anybody with views considered radical by the corporate powers has a half-serious chance at getting some sane law approved by a Western government.
Apart from that, it's just another day on
The only purpose REMOTELY possible by US military activity at the moment, is to (forcefully) create states that are NOT dangerous enemies to western civilization. If we followed your logic, even that last hope will be lost.
I thought all you had to do to reboot was shut off the valves for a while. It's a damn good thing the internet isn't a big truck - we woulda had to close down the superhighway and put up signs for traffic!
You are 100% right, but I also wanted to show the stark contrast between the mathematical and physical paradigms today. Despite Godel's efforts, mathematics goes on in the same way..the incompleteness of any theorem has become accepted. It is physical reality that is truly shocking because it's not just a contradiction to self-referential statements that bothers us, but in fact the very nature of fundamental physics. None of the founding fathers of QM truly accepted this, or it's ramifications.
But that's just it - philosophers should stay out of the realm of cognitive psychology and neurology. Your consciousness is a LOT more than a mechanical response to stimuli. In fact, the different parts of your neural system responsible for such responses are well known and mapped. Higher functions however are incredibly more complex, and are not perfectly understood at all. There may not be anything mystical about cognition, but our knowledge of it puts us somewhere in the dark ages compared to other areas in biology.
Just kidding. I will leave now.
how are you going to stop the Chinese from blowing the damn thing into a shmazillion pieces with a laser? I'd hate to get a HTTP 404 in the middle of a battlefield. It would be an absolute killer of a moment.
Why is this flaimbait? I didn't bash MS enough? Or is it the typo (Update shouldve been "patcher").. maybe I need to clarify: XP is manageable in terms of security if you can update your system via patch accumulators such as this one. It is convenient to use, has software compatible with most desktop needs and is no longer the main target for worm creators (the next Slammer/Blaster will target Vista).
There is absolutely no incentive to move to Vista as everyone has noted, save perhaps the DirectX10 games if you're into that kind of thing. The "security" measures in Vista do not appeal to the decent "power user" who manages to avoid downloading malware, and definitely not to a CS graduate student, such as myself, who has a hardened Fedora setup on another partition.
When I get new hardware, I will make sure XP drivers exist for each and every component. If they don't, I'm not going to buy it.
This is because I, for one, am not switching to Vista unless there is some serious software related compelling such a move. After years and years, XP has finally become reasonably secure enough to use if (and only if) you can apply 5 years worth of patches via Auto Update or something of the sort. I use Windows for its convenience. Switching to new bloatware is a lack of convenience, and being bloatware, the probability of 0days targetting it are far greater than boring old XP. No real reason to switch before 3-4 years if not more.
There are probably thousands of other ways as well. Many power consuming activities that involve some kind of motion could be designed so that the motion is oscillatory or somehow related to vibrations. You do not need an earthquake, although what you suggested is one hell of an idea. If these things can charge cells, the entirety of our ground transport systems can be utilized to make incredible amounts of power. Your food mixer at home could almost charge itself. List is endless, but the tech is probably going to be hard to make effecient enough for use.
Cancel or allow?
That is a great point, but they would argue that it is the effort put into the work that makes it "theirs". Same with an encyclopedia - you can use (and cite) it, but you sure as hell can't produce a carbon copy under a different name with zero recognition. Recognition of authorship, among free(beer) work at least, is a courtesy we have no need to abandon.
Which brings me to the GP issue: why don't you want your name on things you've done? Recognition is a "nice" thing. If all of maathematics was written down in nameless books with mystery authors, we would live in a crappy world indeed. The people who are both capable and willing to produce knowledge should be valued for it, because therein lies the worth of the human race. Or something.
I have stood on the great pyramid and have been in Alexander's room of enlightenment, and Saladin's wall of Cairo, and the scenes of many great battles where tens of thousands died. Let me tell you: it's all a dinky fruit stand. Chirping crickets, blowing sand. We just like to fool ourselves.
I for one look forward to the day when some big shot physicists hold a press conference and..
It will not happen. Physics is based on axioms(postulates) and mathematics. The axioms cannot be proved, unless they mathematically follow from other axioms, in which case the former become theories and only the latter are axiomatic. They can only be disproved, reducto ad absurdum, when their implications contradict(or seem to contradict) reality i.e experimental result. It can be argued that this way of doing physics (which hasn't really changed from Newton's day) combined with what we know of mathematical incompleteness (Kurt Godel) leads to the disturbing thought that even if we have a perfect self-sustaining model, we will not be able to prove it. The physicists you talk about will only be able to show the lack of evidence against it, and they will have to live with that sad realization.
Hey, don't blame me.. blame Godel!
Did you expect me to RTFA or something? An article about Chinese characters?! You are definitely new here :)
That said, I was responding to a particular point made by the parent. You are probably right, this seems to be an issue of indexing, but since mapping roman characters to others is generally not possible through 1-to-1 transformations alone(i.e there is a small amount of additional logic), it is possible that there is a little code involved. Even if it was purely an index, you cannot make claims without evidence. We are still arguing over nothing.