No, this sort of architecture is a general trend towards paralellization. It is smart, and it is known to work, and I would expect some bright Sparc wise people to chime in and say "u-huh" and some SGI wise people to chime in and say "I've seen some of this before." The OS people are starting to move things in this direction, and I've heard that Darwin has had the asynchronous messaging type threading model for a while (RTFA: the article explicitly mentions Tiger's GPU leveraging techniques). If you have the head for it, try reading up on NUMA and compare that with SMP.
The math is simple. CPUs are CPUs, and anyone can make one that is the same speed as the competition, and if they do it second they can do it cheaper. The guy that can make 20 CPUs work like one CPU that does 20 times the work in a given time will win because he can always just throw more hardware at the problem. The SMP guys have to go back to the drawing board. In this case, the only way to beat-em is to join-em. Maybe doing the specific "Cell" computing design isn't it, but the ol' PC is dead. If these things start hitting the commodity price-points.
That's a big, fat IF. So, don't bet on it (yet), but it's even worse to ignore it.
I've seen this somewhere on TV. I think it was a 60 Minutes or something, and farmers who have fields adjacent to frankenfields are suing Monsanto for polluting their land with dangerous pollen. After a season or two, they can spray a herbicide on their field and what's left is the resistant genetically modified offspring plants grown from seed produced on their land, by non-monsanto seeded plants, but pollenized by neighboring monsanto fields.
I disagree with you in that you seem to be saying it isn't because women lack sufficient talent, but that they lack the backbone to pioneer where there isn't already a copacetic culture.
The short of it is that you refute the aptitude argument and explain the phenomenon with a preference argument, and then you proceed to speak to those preferences. The preferences you suggest are that an affirmative (or at least neutral) environment is more important to these female scientists than advancing science. I'm going to need to see some data to back that up.
I'm not familliar with the term Kerygma, and I think it would be best to qualify any specialized expressions of a term (like Dogma, in the Kerygma sense) which means something significantly different in common American English. I don't feel that I understand your point entirely, and I think you may be in the same position regarding my explanation of Dharma.
I found this definition of Kerygma which gives a greek etmology for the "preaching" definition you give. I'm not sure why it is useful to use a greek term which is so easily represented by an equivalent english word. Even more befuddling, it seems that you (and the Christian Theological academic corpus) have an even more specialized meaning for Kerygma, as a proper noun, titling a selection of biblical texts. In order to understand the difference (and common ground) between your interperetation of "dogma" and mine, I think I may need a little help understanding the link between Kerygma and "dogma." Read on and decide for yourself.
In Buddhism, there are three institutions, collectively called the "triple jewel". One is the Buddha, or the abstraction of an enligtened being. Anyone can be a Buddha. Buddhists strive to be buddhas. All beings are buddhas. The second is the Dharma, or the teachings of the buddhas. Whatever a buddha transmits to any other being that helps them towards enlightenment is Dharma, but originally it is the Suttas (the Buddhist equivalent to the Bible), and minimally it is the Four Noble Truths. The third jewel is the Sangha, which means the community of all living beings, but more specifically those that are on their way to enlightenment.
The first jewel is the only thing that a buddhist must accept without actual experience: that there are, and have been, and will be enlightened beings that will help another to become enlightened. The Dharma is formally the traditional Buddhist teachings, and informally can be almost any teaching. It does not require faith or assumption of its truth. Dharma is self-apparent the way any normal experience is apparent (not dogma). The Sangha is also apparent, in that participating in practical buddhist activities in the presence of others creates a community, and the potential to experience Sangha is always present when there are other beings present (not dogma).
If you followed me this far, maybe there isn't enough difference in our uses of the word "dogma" to make an issue. Attempting to put what I have to say in your words: the only "preaching" to accept in Buddhism is the actuality of enlightened beings, if one has never actually met or experienced the eminent peace and benevolence of such an individual. If one meets a buddha, or if one becomes enlightened, then the facticity of enlightenment is apparent, and there is no more dogma in Buddhism. The ethical system, and its imperatives however, survive this transcendence--which (returning to my original reply) is how I arrive at Buddhism as an example of a cohesive ethics without dogma or 'given' truths.
I (somewhat) agree with "A dogma is an expression or a formulation of a revealed truth," but what I claim is that 90% of Buddhism can be communicated and argued, the same way you and I are exchanging ideas, without direct revelation or experience or faith.
I disagree with the statement "the ethics it[Buddhism] advocates are found in the form of dogmas. This means they're based on revealed truths regardless of the source of the revelation." The ethics in Buddhism are based on moral ambiguity. Buddhism assumes that choices, by default, are not subjected to moral scrutiny, and that mental culture must be applied to have knowledge of one's own morality. The essential imperative in Buddhist ethics is based on the assumption of a whole spectrum of moral awareness from oblivity to enlightenment, and that the general quality of one's moral decisions is directly proportional to one's moral awareness. In the purest, and most abstract sense, most Buddhist imperatives are derived from this position. The question of whether morality is even relevant (and one's authentic moral effect) is, IMHO, such a 'first principle'.
Zen Buddhists believe, rather than contemplating hypothetical moral choices, discovering one's own authenticity (being in the present) has priority to all else in one's ability to make moral choices. Thus, priority is given to developing one's own mental discipline towards understanding one's own opportunity and volition. Once one understands that one is making choices, then and only then can morality become reality. Otherwise one's morality (and ethical system) is hypothetical, and largely moot. The principles, to which you attribute Buddhism's dogmatic ethical foundations, are explicitly denounced in Buddhist texts as crutches that will eventually prevent one from walking on one's own if not discarded at the right time. The reasoned set of 'First Principles' is the Buddhist 'Four Noble Truths'. There is one first principle in Buddhism, but it takes a swipe at the foundations of Western Philosophy since Aristotle, and is therefore a pretty involved topic in itself.
The problem with this is that Western Philosophy is taught as an objective discipline, with cartesian objectivity (and duality) as an implied cardinal tenet. What cannot be objectively discussed is objectively dismissed. If you only got to Sartre and Wittgenstein, then you missed out on the last great thrust from Hegel to Husserl to Heidegger. Sartre hints at a way of discussing subjective reality (existens) with his dichotomy of por soi (for-itself) versus en soi (in-itself) entities. To really begin to be able to discuss objective Philosophy and subjective Philosophy in the same conversation
(productively), one must use or surpass the (obtusely presented and seldom understood) methods proposed by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). The reason (IMHO) "There was little agreement among them as to even what 'the good' is, let alone how to achieve it" is that they had not established a good enough epistemology (What is Knowledge and Truth?) to provide adequate foundation for cohesive ethics. Taking this discussion further is a venture onto the bleeding edge of Philosophy.
I've questioned a number of atheists over the years about the reasoned or philosophical grounds for their moral code and not one of them could give me a coherent answer. Can you?
Let me pose an example for you because I believe you are asking for it:) I am Buddhist. That means that I have dogmatically accepted that enlightenment is possible, or that I have actually had such a mystic experience and no longer require the dogma. Besides that, the religion is, AFAICT, devoid of any dogma. In Buddhism, God is a possibility, but to quote Wayne and Garth (and remind us how little meaning there is in the bare possibility of something) "monkeys might fly out of my butt."
Some would say that is Atheist, or Agnosticism, but I say it is indifference. In any case, there is no theological basis for the highly reasoned and philosophical grounds for Buddhist morality. Therefore, I think that I can pose Buddhism as an actual example of an atheistic (meaning the absence of belief in God) reasoned and philosophical morality.
I will not attempt to post the whole dharma here, but I will provide you with a list of the elemental concepts in Buddhist morality.
Anicca (impermanence)
Anatta (no-soul)
The 5 Skandhas (reality as aggregation)
The Four Noble Truths (essential Buddhism)
Dukkha (suffering)
Samudaya (suffering arising)
Nirodha (suffering passing)
Magga (the Noble Eightfold Path)
The Noble Eightfold Path
Samma Ditti (right view/mood, beginner's mind)
Samma Sankappa (right intention)
Samma Vaca (right speech)
Samma Kammanta (right action)
Samma ajiva (right livelihood)
Samma Vayama (right effort)
Samma Sati (right mindfulness)
Samma Samadhi (right concentration)
There is no God in any of this, however you can tell with a cursory look at these lists, that it at least attempts to be comprehensive. With more research, the connections between these and other concepts of Buddhist cosomology become apparent. Again, no God, but highly reasoned and philosophical. If God wanted people to become enlightened, but his appearance would inhibit human enlightenment, then God would become non-apparent. Even accepting the ultimate verity of God, enlightenment requires a Buddhist to let go of any attatchment to God. Equally, disbelief in God is also a stumbling block to enlightenment.
Besides Buddhism, which I (obviously) think is a beautiful system, there are western systems of ethics based ultimately on pleasure and pain and moralities that come out of their contemplation are reasoned, and not necessarily theistic.
I should not have posted those nasty things. Just because they may be true, does not make them better said than unsaid. Thinking back, ajservo did not ask for that.
You write like you want everything you say to be the last word. Your style is barely aware that your text will probably outlive you. Twenty years later, people who know you will search the Slashdot archives and you will be judged by your attitude today. You want to be right so bad, that (like I alluded to before) you don't seem to care whether or not you are well understood. When it's all added up, you didn't contribute anything to this discussion. You came and tried to take some credibility from it (using the depreciating "last word" technique). That is because you thought that was easier than making your own credibility for yourself (by saying something that adds perspective to the discussion).
You want to think that you are a critic, but you are just a punk in the peanut gallery. My status doesn't come from my Slashdot number, my Slashdot number comes from my status. It is a clue.
I am really sorry if what I wrote is obtuse. I really have no idea who you really are. Therefore I do not know how to write at your reading level. If you want to know what I mean, and you ask politely, I will make the effort to help you understand.
On changing the subject: How well does this discussion fit the topic or the parent thread?
As for my "lack of style" or you wanting to "coach" me on whatever it is I seem to lack in your opinion, please... When "Aphor's Finishing School" opens for business in my neighboorhood, I'll drop by in my prettiest pink dress just for you to give me free lessons on how to be a proper slashdot poster.
You are a curmudgeon with a straw-man wearing a pink dress, arguing for lack of style or bad style. This comment is not unqualified. The points you choose to make ironic are my qualifications to teach style, the importance of style, and the relevance of style to Slashdot posts.
It isn't that I disagree with anything you say, per se. It is your lack of style. The Slashdot number has value. Maybe you douubt my suggestion that the Slashdot number is relevant to this discussion? I don't know. You keep trying to change the subject like I want to argue about the point of my life.
You should feel blessed that I even make this effort to coach you. The problem here is that I'm not convinced that you care whether or not I misunderstand you. Blabbity blabbity, and I don't feel like reading your reply has added anything at all to my life. Help me out here. I'm going down the ajservo rat-hole. Why? Why should I care? I think you may be an accidental troll. If I give you a chance, some joy may come of this. If not, I just call-em like I see em.
We both have noticed that Apple provides DRM in ACC, for the industry, and allows it to be defeated, for the rip-mix-burn crowd. This is the way Apple believes DRM should work. Get it?
Take your Slashdot ID. Subtract mine from that number. The number you get is a relative indication of how long it takes you to realize WTF is going on.
What's to keep someone from grabbing frames from the player's digital TV/monitor/screen output, scrubbing and re-encoding them in any other format, and doing what data does best: copy copy copy download download download?
What nobody seems to realize is that Apple wants to take on the role of 'the [music/show/media] business' by providing next generation tools and services to link artists with consumers. They BELIEVE in DRM, but they believe they can mediate the degree and kind of DRM better than the music/film giants.
If you look at how the puzzle is taking shape, an artist will be able to create art using Apple tools (Garage Band to Logic), market them using Apple services (iTMS), and sell them to Apple customers (which is just about EVERYONE when it comes to music and iPods). This is all planned to be COMPLETELY independent from the music industry. What works for music now will work for video later. Apple is a product development company via VERTICAL INTEGRATION. They find basic components that aren't being fully exploited (like DSPs), and they cobble together whatever else is available to force that component to serve user experience in (hopefully) some life-altering way. That is what "Insanely Great" means to Apple in practical terms.
DRM is a tool to incite artists to want to put their work out through iTMS instead of the traditional routes.
In 802.11 and other Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum radio equipment, ALL frequencies in a broad spectrum are used simultaneously at lower power. The "Channel" is really a virtual channel, and not like the narrow band of Citizens Band spectrum that CB each radio channel uses. Instead, DSSS channels are different Spreading codes governing how the broad spectrum is encoded by the transmitter and then decoded by the reciever to distinguish signal from noise. The signal profile at different frequencies reinforce each other after decoding. Thus, baseband interference has a low statistical impact on the total S/N ratio.
When one 802.11 radio transmits, it uses ALL of the analog bandwidth that other radios on different spreading "channels" are listening to. When a listening radio is on a different channel from the DSSS transmitter, the resulting decoded signal is part of the background static called the "noise floor". Thus, the only thing you gain from operating an 802.11 radio outside of FCC defined channels is obscurity. 2.4GHz digital spread-spectrum phones do this.
More importantly, the 802.11 radio standard operates in a band of frequencies called the ISM band. It is UNREGULATED below certain transmission power levels. Screw with your spreading channels to your heart's content. However, if your firmware allows you to increase the output gain of the radio transmitter, then you may be able to run afoul of the ISM unlicensed operation specs, especially if ytou built your own yagi antenna...
Google offers their service to the general public as a peer-weighted ranking of all of the web pages indexed by their spiders. If they do less, then they are operating under false pretenses, and the advertisers and users by proxy are owed the difference.
If they censor their content, then they have pre-weighted the results, and this is not what people expect. They have a right to do this, but they have prior obligations to the people they serve.
I would think most modern apps consume most of their memory storing images, which aren't affected by the 32->64 change.
You may forget that a bitblit, or a bulk memory copy operation can be accomplished in half of the time using the same number of 64 bit registers as 32 bit registers. How do you think common operations like scaling and color transformation will be affected by the increased register size and memory IO path? In my experience (Ultrasparc real world apps like GIMP and OpenSSL) most bulk integer compute operations complete in 10-20% less time when run in 64 bit mode vs 32 bit mode on the same computer (probably potentiated by L1-L2 cache performance differences in each mode), and they consistently consume about 1/2 the userland CPU cycles during that time. The biggest payout in 64 bit computing I have found is using OpenSSL with the 64 bit assembly code for encryption routines and having the 'bn' (big number) math library in 64 bit mode: I could scp database dumps across the network at full speed without dipping into enough cpu cycles to affect normal operation.
First you say that biased media editorially "...doesn't cover things..." that are counter-bias, and then you say "... they can be truthful without leaving out information." You can't have it both ways.
If you editorially choose to omit certain facts because it does not fit your agenda, then you are presenting a misleading picture of the world. Isuppose there is a necessary element of truth in every lie, but one would not, in good faith, call a lie truthful. A lie is a lie because it is misleading. You can lie by representing a fiction as fact, or by omission. When it is specifically your duty to present a complete and accurate factual account of a situation, a lie by omission is just as damning as an outright falsehood. This is the reason censorship is an important issue, and it is also an American cornerstone (the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America).
I'm going to pull patriotic rank on you, and say that two wrongs do not make a right. When the leftist media errs, it does not permit the right-wing media to err. It is your duty and mine to cry "foul" whenever (any member of) the media fails to live up to that duty!
Obviously being un-biased is in the eye in of the beholder. If all the network news, MSNBC, and CNN are biased towards Liberalism, then somebody in the middle is going to seem Right wing in comparison.
No, bias, and conversely un-bias, are not in the eye of the beholder. Bias means a slant at the expense of logic or truth. If you draw false inferences in your logic in order to support a prescribed conclusion, or if you omit, censor, or ignore facts that mitigate your position, then you are biased. Worse, you are a fool, hypothetically of course:). Even worse, you encourage others to be a fool, hypothetically, again:)
I really don't mean "you" in particular, but rather anyone who is biased as I described.
It's funny that you use a realtivistic argument to cop out of your bias (which may or may not mean the same thing to me). Most of the hyperconservative ethics arguments I've heard from people in my circle are against "liberalism" because it has no dogma or absolutes and once you have no absolutes anything goes: because they use relativistic ethics! I'm so tired of these "liberal vs. conservative" arguments. They are too vague and nobody agrees on their meanings as labels. I wish people would just say what they really think (assuming they think).
To be totally fair here, you call the President "Bush," while you call John Kerry "Flipper." This comes directly after suggesting the Drudge Retort is bad because it is partisan. Pardon me if I doubt you have much to say about "the whole truth."
To be totally nonpartisan, let me uncover my political bias. I don't like John Kerry. He has personally co-sponsored or supported most of the big-brother cryptography restricting, wiretap expansion, and surveillance database bills to come from the senate. I would say he has personally been involved in things like the Patriot Act since before Bush was done wiping the blow off his upper lip. For this I do not like him. However, because Kerry DOES flip-flop, I feel that he is accountable and responsive to the popular opinion when it is strong enough to be compelling. Flip-flop yes, but spineless no.
I don't really care for Bush, personally, either. I'm not really voting for the MAN. I'm voting for the machine behind the candidate. Which machine do you prefer? Or do you say "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" It's the agenda of the supporters behind the candidate that counts. This is not a high-school prom king and queen election. The more people know it, the better of we all are. Any reporting on the personal popularity factor is crap and irresponsible journalism.
Maybe you're not talking about the same thing that.NET detractors dislike. It might not be the.NET itself, but rather the unwillingness to throw any additional support towards the already-unmanageable 800 pound gorilla. Maybe it isn't the OSS software people really like, but rather the freedom that they have to deal with what they don't like.
Lesson for Slashdot readers in filtering the subtle troll:
Either you really don't understand the people you're talking about, or you're just an astroturfer. Discrediting your post only requires a little good discussion. The suggestion "flame away" that you are inviting people to flame you in response doesn't mean that every response is a flame. Just because you get flames does not mean your opinion holds water. It only means you have failed to reach an audience capable of responding with meaningful criticism. Inviting flames is tantamount to a request for people to pollute any discussion or criticism that may follow. You post your crap in bad faith that it can stand up to open discussion. You are a troll.
You pay a FUSF on your DSL that pays for the "free" 911-only portion of the line. You pay this into a pool that intends to make such 911 service universal. Federal Universal Service Fee. Call your congressman and say you want the universal service upped to include 911 over DSL. DONE.
How does the Neuros compare to the iPod on usability? I mean, if you could charge the manufacturer for your hours of grief, how would the vendors compare on your accounts recievable?
Not that I am a DSP guru or anything, but I would appreciate if you would provide a link.. assuming you can find the post about the differences between DSPs. I'm interested in following the issue to learn about DSPs.
Slashdot Mirror
No, this sort of architecture is a general trend towards paralellization. It is smart, and it is known to work, and I would expect some bright Sparc wise people to chime in and say "u-huh" and some SGI wise people to chime in and say "I've seen some of this before." The OS people are starting to move things in this direction, and I've heard that Darwin has had the asynchronous messaging type threading model for a while (RTFA: the article explicitly mentions Tiger's GPU leveraging techniques). If you have the head for it, try reading up on NUMA and compare that with SMP.
The math is simple. CPUs are CPUs, and anyone can make one that is the same speed as the competition, and if they do it second they can do it cheaper. The guy that can make 20 CPUs work like one CPU that does 20 times the work in a given time will win because he can always just throw more hardware at the problem. The SMP guys have to go back to the drawing board. In this case, the only way to beat-em is to join-em. Maybe doing the specific "Cell" computing design isn't it, but the ol' PC is dead. If these things start hitting the commodity price-points.
That's a big, fat IF. So, don't bet on it (yet), but it's even worse to ignore it.
I've seen this somewhere on TV. I think it was a 60 Minutes or something, and farmers who have fields adjacent to frankenfields are suing Monsanto for polluting their land with dangerous pollen. After a season or two, they can spray a herbicide on their field and what's left is the resistant genetically modified offspring plants grown from seed produced on their land, by non-monsanto seeded plants, but pollenized by neighboring monsanto fields.
I disagree with you in that you seem to be saying it isn't because women lack sufficient talent, but that they lack the backbone to pioneer where there isn't already a copacetic culture.
The short of it is that you refute the aptitude argument and explain the phenomenon with a preference argument, and then you proceed to speak to those preferences. The preferences you suggest are that an affirmative (or at least neutral) environment is more important to these female scientists than advancing science. I'm going to need to see some data to back that up.
I'm not familliar with the term Kerygma, and I think it would be best to qualify any specialized expressions of a term (like Dogma, in the Kerygma sense) which means something significantly different in common American English. I don't feel that I understand your point entirely, and I think you may be in the same position regarding my explanation of Dharma.
I found this definition of Kerygma which gives a greek etmology for the "preaching" definition you give. I'm not sure why it is useful to use a greek term which is so easily represented by an equivalent english word. Even more befuddling, it seems that you (and the Christian Theological academic corpus) have an even more specialized meaning for Kerygma, as a proper noun, titling a selection of biblical texts. In order to understand the difference (and common ground) between your interperetation of "dogma" and mine, I think I may need a little help understanding the link between Kerygma and "dogma." Read on and decide for yourself.
In Buddhism, there are three institutions, collectively called the "triple jewel". One is the Buddha, or the abstraction of an enligtened being. Anyone can be a Buddha. Buddhists strive to be buddhas. All beings are buddhas. The second is the Dharma, or the teachings of the buddhas. Whatever a buddha transmits to any other being that helps them towards enlightenment is Dharma, but originally it is the Suttas (the Buddhist equivalent to the Bible), and minimally it is the Four Noble Truths. The third jewel is the Sangha, which means the community of all living beings, but more specifically those that are on their way to enlightenment.
The first jewel is the only thing that a buddhist must accept without actual experience: that there are, and have been, and will be enlightened beings that will help another to become enlightened. The Dharma is formally the traditional Buddhist teachings, and informally can be almost any teaching. It does not require faith or assumption of its truth. Dharma is self-apparent the way any normal experience is apparent (not dogma). The Sangha is also apparent, in that participating in practical buddhist activities in the presence of others creates a community, and the potential to experience Sangha is always present when there are other beings present (not dogma).
If you followed me this far, maybe there isn't enough difference in our uses of the word "dogma" to make an issue. Attempting to put what I have to say in your words: the only "preaching" to accept in Buddhism is the actuality of enlightened beings, if one has never actually met or experienced the eminent peace and benevolence of such an individual. If one meets a buddha, or if one becomes enlightened, then the facticity of enlightenment is apparent, and there is no more dogma in Buddhism. The ethical system, and its imperatives however, survive this transcendence--which (returning to my original reply) is how I arrive at Buddhism as an example of a cohesive ethics without dogma or 'given' truths.
I (somewhat) agree with "A dogma is an expression or a formulation of a revealed truth," but what I claim is that 90% of Buddhism can be communicated and argued, the same way you and I are exchanging ideas, without direct revelation or experience or faith.
I disagree with the statement "the ethics it[Buddhism] advocates are found in the form of dogmas. This means they're based on revealed truths regardless of the source of the revelation." The ethics in Buddhism are based on moral ambiguity. Buddhism assumes that choices, by default, are not subjected to moral scrutiny, and that mental culture must be applied to have knowledge of one's own morality. The essential imperative in Buddhist ethics is based on the assumption of a whole spectrum of moral awareness from oblivity to enlightenment, and that the general quality of one's moral decisions is directly proportional to one's moral awareness. In the purest, and most abstract sense, most Buddhist imperatives are derived from this position. The question of whether morality is even relevant (and one's authentic moral effect) is, IMHO, such a 'first principle'.
Zen Buddhists believe, rather than contemplating hypothetical moral choices, discovering one's own authenticity (being in the present) has priority to all else in one's ability to make moral choices. Thus, priority is given to developing one's own mental discipline towards understanding one's own opportunity and volition. Once one understands that one is making choices, then and only then can morality become reality. Otherwise one's morality (and ethical system) is hypothetical, and largely moot. The principles, to which you attribute Buddhism's dogmatic ethical foundations, are explicitly denounced in Buddhist texts as crutches that will eventually prevent one from walking on one's own if not discarded at the right time. The reasoned set of 'First Principles' is the Buddhist 'Four Noble Truths'. There is one first principle in Buddhism, but it takes a swipe at the foundations of Western Philosophy since Aristotle, and is therefore a pretty involved topic in itself.
The problem with this is that Western Philosophy is taught as an objective discipline, with cartesian objectivity (and duality) as an implied cardinal tenet. What cannot be objectively discussed is objectively dismissed. If you only got to Sartre and Wittgenstein, then you missed out on the last great thrust from Hegel to Husserl to Heidegger. Sartre hints at a way of discussing subjective reality (existens) with his dichotomy of por soi (for-itself) versus en soi (in-itself) entities. To really begin to be able to discuss objective Philosophy and subjective Philosophy in the same conversation (productively), one must use or surpass the (obtusely presented and seldom understood) methods proposed by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). The reason (IMHO) "There was little agreement among them as to even what 'the good' is, let alone how to achieve it" is that they had not established a good enough epistemology (What is Knowledge and Truth?) to provide adequate foundation for cohesive ethics. Taking this discussion further is a venture onto the bleeding edge of Philosophy.
Let me pose an example for you because I believe you are asking for it :) I am Buddhist. That means that I have dogmatically accepted that enlightenment is possible, or that I have actually had such a mystic experience and no longer require the dogma. Besides that, the religion is, AFAICT, devoid of any dogma. In Buddhism, God is a possibility, but to quote Wayne and Garth (and remind us how little meaning there is in the bare possibility of something) "monkeys might fly out of my butt."
Some would say that is Atheist, or Agnosticism, but I say it is indifference. In any case, there is no theological basis for the highly reasoned and philosophical grounds for Buddhist morality. Therefore, I think that I can pose Buddhism as an actual example of an atheistic (meaning the absence of belief in God) reasoned and philosophical morality.
I will not attempt to post the whole dharma here, but I will provide you with a list of the elemental concepts in Buddhist morality.
There is no God in any of this, however you can tell with a cursory look at these lists, that it at least attempts to be comprehensive. With more research, the connections between these and other concepts of Buddhist cosomology become apparent. Again, no God, but highly reasoned and philosophical. If God wanted people to become enlightened, but his appearance would inhibit human enlightenment, then God would become non-apparent. Even accepting the ultimate verity of God, enlightenment requires a Buddhist to let go of any attatchment to God. Equally, disbelief in God is also a stumbling block to enlightenment.
Besides Buddhism, which I (obviously) think is a beautiful system, there are western systems of ethics based ultimately on pleasure and pain and moralities that come out of their contemplation are reasoned, and not necessarily theistic.
I should not have posted those nasty things. Just because they may be true, does not make them better said than unsaid. Thinking back, ajservo did not ask for that.
You write like you want everything you say to be the last word. Your style is barely aware that your text will probably outlive you. Twenty years later, people who know you will search the Slashdot archives and you will be judged by your attitude today. You want to be right so bad, that (like I alluded to before) you don't seem to care whether or not you are well understood. When it's all added up, you didn't contribute anything to this discussion. You came and tried to take some credibility from it (using the depreciating "last word" technique). That is because you thought that was easier than making your own credibility for yourself (by saying something that adds perspective to the discussion).
You want to think that you are a critic, but you are just a punk in the peanut gallery. My status doesn't come from my Slashdot number, my Slashdot number comes from my status. It is a clue.
I am really sorry if what I wrote is obtuse. I really have no idea who you really are. Therefore I do not know how to write at your reading level. If you want to know what I mean, and you ask politely, I will make the effort to help you understand.
On changing the subject: How well does this discussion fit the topic or the parent thread?
You are a curmudgeon with a straw-man wearing a pink dress, arguing for lack of style or bad style. This comment is not unqualified. The points you choose to make ironic are my qualifications to teach style, the importance of style, and the relevance of style to Slashdot posts.
It isn't that I disagree with anything you say, per se. It is your lack of style. The Slashdot number has value. Maybe you douubt my suggestion that the Slashdot number is relevant to this discussion? I don't know. You keep trying to change the subject like I want to argue about the point of my life.
You should feel blessed that I even make this effort to coach you. The problem here is that I'm not convinced that you care whether or not I misunderstand you. Blabbity blabbity, and I don't feel like reading your reply has added anything at all to my life. Help me out here. I'm going down the ajservo rat-hole. Why? Why should I care? I think you may be an accidental troll. If I give you a chance, some joy may come of this. If not, I just call-em like I see em.
We both have noticed that Apple provides DRM in ACC, for the industry, and allows it to be defeated, for the rip-mix-burn crowd. This is the way Apple believes DRM should work. Get it?
Take your Slashdot ID. Subtract mine from that number. The number you get is a relative indication of how long it takes you to realize WTF is going on.
Troll.
What's to keep someone from grabbing frames from the player's digital TV/monitor/screen output, scrubbing and re-encoding them in any other format, and doing what data does best: copy copy copy download download download?
What nobody seems to realize is that Apple wants to take on the role of 'the [music/show/media] business' by providing next generation tools and services to link artists with consumers. They BELIEVE in DRM, but they believe they can mediate the degree and kind of DRM better than the music/film giants.
If you look at how the puzzle is taking shape, an artist will be able to create art using Apple tools (Garage Band to Logic), market them using Apple services (iTMS), and sell them to Apple customers (which is just about EVERYONE when it comes to music and iPods). This is all planned to be COMPLETELY independent from the music industry. What works for music now will work for video later. Apple is a product development company via VERTICAL INTEGRATION. They find basic components that aren't being fully exploited (like DSPs), and they cobble together whatever else is available to force that component to serve user experience in (hopefully) some life-altering way. That is what "Insanely Great" means to Apple in practical terms.
DRM is a tool to incite artists to want to put their work out through iTMS instead of the traditional routes.
In 802.11 and other Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum radio equipment, ALL frequencies in a broad spectrum are used simultaneously at lower power. The "Channel" is really a virtual channel, and not like the narrow band of Citizens Band spectrum that CB each radio channel uses. Instead, DSSS channels are different Spreading codes governing how the broad spectrum is encoded by the transmitter and then decoded by the reciever to distinguish signal from noise. The signal profile at different frequencies reinforce each other after decoding. Thus, baseband interference has a low statistical impact on the total S/N ratio.
When one 802.11 radio transmits, it uses ALL of the analog bandwidth that other radios on different spreading "channels" are listening to. When a listening radio is on a different channel from the DSSS transmitter, the resulting decoded signal is part of the background static called the "noise floor". Thus, the only thing you gain from operating an 802.11 radio outside of FCC defined channels is obscurity. 2.4GHz digital spread-spectrum phones do this.
More importantly, the 802.11 radio standard operates in a band of frequencies called the ISM band. It is UNREGULATED below certain transmission power levels. Screw with your spreading channels to your heart's content. However, if your firmware allows you to increase the output gain of the radio transmitter, then you may be able to run afoul of the ISM unlicensed operation specs, especially if ytou built your own yagi antenna...
Google offers their service to the general public as a peer-weighted ranking of all of the web pages indexed by their spiders. If they do less, then they are operating under false pretenses, and the advertisers and users by proxy are owed the difference.
If they censor their content, then they have pre-weighted the results, and this is not what people expect. They have a right to do this, but they have prior obligations to the people they serve.
You may forget that a bitblit, or a bulk memory copy operation can be accomplished in half of the time using the same number of 64 bit registers as 32 bit registers. How do you think common operations like scaling and color transformation will be affected by the increased register size and memory IO path? In my experience (Ultrasparc real world apps like GIMP and OpenSSL) most bulk integer compute operations complete in 10-20% less time when run in 64 bit mode vs 32 bit mode on the same computer (probably potentiated by L1-L2 cache performance differences in each mode), and they consistently consume about 1/2 the userland CPU cycles during that time. The biggest payout in 64 bit computing I have found is using OpenSSL with the 64 bit assembly code for encryption routines and having the 'bn' (big number) math library in 64 bit mode: I could scp database dumps across the network at full speed without dipping into enough cpu cycles to affect normal operation.
First you say that biased media editorially "...doesn't cover things..." that are counter-bias, and then you say "... they can be truthful without leaving out information." You can't have it both ways.
If you editorially choose to omit certain facts because it does not fit your agenda, then you are presenting a misleading picture of the world. Isuppose there is a necessary element of truth in every lie, but one would not, in good faith, call a lie truthful. A lie is a lie because it is misleading. You can lie by representing a fiction as fact, or by omission. When it is specifically your duty to present a complete and accurate factual account of a situation, a lie by omission is just as damning as an outright falsehood. This is the reason censorship is an important issue, and it is also an American cornerstone (the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America).
I'm going to pull patriotic rank on you, and say that two wrongs do not make a right. When the leftist media errs, it does not permit the right-wing media to err. It is your duty and mine to cry "foul" whenever (any member of) the media fails to live up to that duty!
No, bias, and conversely un-bias, are not in the eye of the beholder. Bias means a slant at the expense of logic or truth. If you draw false inferences in your logic in order to support a prescribed conclusion, or if you omit, censor, or ignore facts that mitigate your position, then you are biased. Worse, you are a fool, hypothetically of course :). Even worse, you encourage others to be a fool, hypothetically, again :)
I really don't mean "you" in particular, but rather anyone who is biased as I described.
It's funny that you use a realtivistic argument to cop out of your bias (which may or may not mean the same thing to me). Most of the hyperconservative ethics arguments I've heard from people in my circle are against "liberalism" because it has no dogma or absolutes and once you have no absolutes anything goes: because they use relativistic ethics! I'm so tired of these "liberal vs. conservative" arguments. They are too vague and nobody agrees on their meanings as labels. I wish people would just say what they really think (assuming they think).
To be totally fair here, you call the President "Bush," while you call John Kerry "Flipper." This comes directly after suggesting the Drudge Retort is bad because it is partisan. Pardon me if I doubt you have much to say about "the whole truth."
To be totally nonpartisan, let me uncover my political bias. I don't like John Kerry. He has personally co-sponsored or supported most of the big-brother cryptography restricting, wiretap expansion, and surveillance database bills to come from the senate. I would say he has personally been involved in things like the Patriot Act since before Bush was done wiping the blow off his upper lip. For this I do not like him. However, because Kerry DOES flip-flop, I feel that he is accountable and responsive to the popular opinion when it is strong enough to be compelling. Flip-flop yes, but spineless no.
I don't really care for Bush, personally, either. I'm not really voting for the MAN. I'm voting for the machine behind the candidate. Which machine do you prefer? Or do you say "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" It's the agenda of the supporters behind the candidate that counts. This is not a high-school prom king and queen election. The more people know it, the better of we all are. Any reporting on the personal popularity factor is crap and irresponsible journalism.
Maybe you're not talking about the same thing that .NET detractors dislike. It might not be the .NET itself, but rather the unwillingness to throw any additional support towards the already-unmanageable 800 pound gorilla. Maybe it isn't the OSS software people really like, but rather the freedom that they have to deal with what they don't like.
Lesson for Slashdot readers in filtering the subtle troll:
Either you really don't understand the people you're talking about, or you're just an astroturfer. Discrediting your post only requires a little good discussion. The suggestion "flame away" that you are inviting people to flame you in response doesn't mean that every response is a flame. Just because you get flames does not mean your opinion holds water. It only means you have failed to reach an audience capable of responding with meaningful criticism. Inviting flames is tantamount to a request for people to pollute any discussion or criticism that may follow. You post your crap in bad faith that it can stand up to open discussion. You are a troll.
You pay a FUSF on your DSL that pays for the "free" 911-only portion of the line. You pay this into a pool that intends to make such 911 service universal. Federal Universal Service Fee. Call your congressman and say you want the universal service upped to include 911 over DSL. DONE.
How does the Neuros compare to the iPod on usability? I mean, if you could charge the manufacturer for your hours of grief, how would the vendors compare on your accounts recievable?
Not that I am a DSP guru or anything, but I would appreciate if you would provide a link.. assuming you can find the post about the differences between DSPs. I'm interested in following the issue to learn about DSPs.