Can you guys quit the high-fiving and general atmosphere of butt-massage therapy so we can get back to businness and have a decent f*cking flamewar? What the hell are you people doing on slashdot? Were you not told it was mean to ruin the fun for everyone else? Jesus H Christ in a Tesla. We're trrying to have a having automobile piss contest here. WTF?

And happy independence day, doo-doo heads.

You need a stable muon first.

You need a stable first, then you can get all the horses and subsequent horseshit you want.

*sigh*

Sorry, but that's rubbish. I don't follow organized religion, and I am not defending these guys here, I am defending science.

The Greeks did not 'do' anything with Philosophy. Einstein did not 'do' anything with relativity, compared to the people who came after him (they didn't exactly have an aerospace industry in 1902). Gauss and Euler and the others did not 'do' anything with the wonders of mathematics that they discovered and wrote down for us to come upon and build miraculous civilization with, many decades later. For science to be notable, it must be written down. That is all. Otherwise you are throwing away all of pure mathematics and theoretical physics, and they are the foundations of human knowledge.

The most important things are those that will be around when human beings will be gone - the things that are universally true, not true because they happen to be useful to us in some way. We, the humans, are not really very important. Unless you follow some religion or other. You're not one of those guys, are you?

Good point. Google's answer to academia was supposedly the 'scholar' domain which focuses entirely on academic texts and related stuff. Unfortunately google did not hit the required niche, which is how to come up with answers that may not necessarily require an entire digitized book or paper reference. Google still works well because pagerank 'hitchhikes' on the findings of users and the popularity of certain query results, so the first page of google results usually includes 'interesting' things. But it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The popularity of google's results skew the results themselves. Also, if you ask certain people in information retrieval, they will tell you that the overall accuracy (precision, recall..etc) of Google results is around 10%.

What I am hoping for is that Wolfram manage to bridge the gap. Given the amount of money and excellent thinking the G-folks have put into things, it's quite the task.

Good points. Note however that among poorer classes of people (where religious following is at a higher rate in some ME nations) the performing of rituals like washing for prayer (which they do 5 times a day) can keep things like this pretty low, compared to the poor in other cultures that don't use as much water/as frequently.

I just thought I'd clarify that this is not some standard theory but rather something I cam up with while washing dishes at home :)

And for everybody who is about to jump out of their chair to tell me that evolution doesn't mean to do things, it just happens to do so: I know.

It's called collective ego, or group ego. It's not about nationalism or religion, although with bigger groups it tends to get worse. It is part of your evolution, just like your individual ego, and serves almost the same purpose.

>My question is, since when is 1.9 million PCs a megabotnet?

Look sonny, in my day, we had to carry our megabotnets uphill both ways, in the snow, and we didn't complain, and the master nodes sent out instructions with punch cards that were sent via carrier pigeon. A million computers was something we doubted any deity could create, but we were wrong. I don't think I have to tell you to get off my lawn. Wait, you're still there? GET OFF MY F*CKING LAWN. Damn kids.

I'm writing code and my Master's thesis together now.

Conditions are not pleasant, and sanity is brittle, and summer is so so close.

Well you've clearly had too much of it, so it must be as in beer, innit?

Gah, I was so not focused on the word that I forgot I even mentioned it. I guess that makes my stance clear enough. And yes I was suggesting that if you shackle a man to the floor, tie his head back to the wall, open his eyelids (no significant physical injury) and force him to watch replays of a movie, then you are torturing him. I hope, I honestly hope, that someone talking about legalizing drugs does not think otherwise.

I support most of your views, but I also support the right of town councils/states to decide on their own do's and don't based on their common opinions, even though I would disagree with most of them. And yeah you are right about healthcare, but healthcare is a topic for people in governemnt not people on slashdot, because it is very extensive. Which illnesses of the public should the rich be forced to pay for with their tax?

Have a great Sunday. Don't think too much :)

-A

Read my post again. Do you find the word "torture" in there, anywhere? It is not about a term, it about the values and strengths this country was built upon.

You were trying to argue about grey areas, and the GP was making out of context comparisons about human duress in civilian situations - I argue that both of you are missing the point. It is not about gut wrenching physical torture, it is about the fact that when you imprison your enemies, they must fall for your values, not your barbarism.

Our military should not be the said bar underneath the old apartment. We are not embodied by federal prison arrangements, even though they are pretty sad. We are the beacon of the free fucking world. Do you understand? We do not abide by history, we make history. We are the nation that is supposed to communicate to the rest of humanity the values of freedom, and liberty, and justice; and the world sees it in the way we treat our most loathsome enemies, not in the impeccable look of fresh paint in the oval office.

Now let's move on to nicer topics, OK? Nobody is going to look at this, anyway.

You are right, although I suppose for a target of such high 'value' (for some value of 'value') we might have put in a couple of officers to keep things in check so we don't get this kind of nonsense in the news.

I didn't think the day would come when I'd talk back on behalf of the likes of Saddam (I was in Kuwait in '91), but you are being sumdumass, today.

Not all torture is alike, and not all our respect for our marines' conduct stems from their lack of engaging in such barbarism as physical torture. Forcing a man -actually forcing him - to repeatedly watch a movie is far worse than forcing him to stand naked in the snow. The humiliation of complete control is a lot more... stark. The more petty the forced action, the worse it is for the actor, not the man being lightly insulted. What animals have we become that our vengeance on foreign tyrants is put in the hands of frat boys like these?

We're not a 'strong race', in the sense you meant, but I'd rather be civilized and strong, than just strong.

What exactly is your definition of a 'nice' girl??

Sweet, smart, and sexy ;)