t__r

I tried Modafinil (provigil). Its effect was mild at best, and it was hard to determine whether this was a placebo effect or not. Ritalin, on the other hand, was very effective, but it gives a bit of a cocaine-like high, which scared me enough not to use it for more than a week. Luckily that was enough to get me through that seemingly insurmountable pile of work I had to do.

In Europe you get a salary for a PhD. It's not a lot but in most countries (especially western Europe) it's actually quite OK.

Pieper was not a comp sci professor. He was a professor of eCommerce. I followed some of his lectures during my CS master. The sloot story caused quite some giggles among us students. It was obviously bullshit. But nobody had the guts to ask him about it during these lectures.

Lying awake worrying about whether or not you're adding value to the human race leads to shit like this. What I'm trying to say is: people should just do what they're good at. As long as you make a decent living, you're contributing to society. What is, let's say, a cleaning lady or bus driver supposed to think of your "value for the human race" criterion?

Do you have any idea what the average scientist or artist is actually doing? I'm not talking about Einstein or Picasso...

99% of people (if not more) do nothing of significant value for the human race. The wealth they create, the value of the product they produce, and the experience they gain all dissipate or become meaningless in the medium to long term. Value for the human race is not a very good criterion to decide whether what you do is bullshit. If you need a purpose in life, get children.

I find it a bit easier to understand if I imagine similar size and shape objects with a different weight. Say, a bunch of balls with equal radius but different weights. Does a near-zero-weight ball fall with a near-zero speed? Of course not. Etcetera.

What do you mean with non-logic? I think that's hard to define. There are various approaches in logic-based AI that aim to somehow be more akin to how we handle multiple conflicting truths. A popular formalism is abstract argumentation theory, which is the study of evaluating the acceptability of multiple conflicting arguments. It has been shown that this is closely related to non-monotonic logics, such as LP with negation as failure and various types of defeasible reasoning. Proof theoretically, it replaces the notion of proof with that of a successful strategy in a two-person dialogue game.

The excitement I feel every time HeathKit is mentioned dies away when I realize it's not about HeathKit but about HealthKit.

Dont forget that the first IBM PC (8086, 16 bit) also had rom basic, as well as a cassette port.

Evidence is not on the side of ID. ID is not a scientific theory. It cannot be confirmed or falsified. It does not explain anything. Its premise is flawed (I don't know how X happened therefore Y must be true). Believe in ID if you want but don't confuse it with science.

I just don't understand it. What is it exactly that creationists argue against? What part of the theory of evolution do you disagree with? Is it the fact that there is a thing called DNA? That DNA determines traits of organisms? That DNA gets mixed up as organisms multiply? That some traits are better than others? That this process leads to evolution and natural selection?

I'm sure there are, within the field of evolutionary biology, numerous claims that will turn out to be false, as well as many phenomena not yet understood and explained.

But draw from this the conclusion that the theory of evolution is flawed and must be replaced with creationism, is absurd. The basic claims of the theory are well understood and have been confirmed in the real world over and over again.

Just stop the nonsense.

The majority of English TV on French national tv is most definitely dubbed. As far as I know it's only the Dutch. Don't know about Scandinavia and Eastern Europe though.

Quality doesnt seem to be that much different from the first ever digital camera, the cromemco cyclops (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco_CYCLOPS). Judged by the few examples that can be found via Google images, that is.

Incidentally, that camera used rather interesting technology. Its sensor was a regular CMOS ram chip with the opaque cover replaced by a transparent one. Bits would flip back from 1 to 0 due to the light projected onto it.

Agreed, and it's a common error, I.e., that someone ascribes mysticism to an object that he himself is mystified by.

The lack of spacing between the two columns makes it look odd. I would say, the words India, LaTeX and MySQL should have wrapped around to the next line.

That's not a chip.

I'm a frequent flyer, mostly within Europe, and this is true. The exception is boarding a bigger plane like the 747. But iirc the ordering is then more coarse grained (based on aisles instead of seats).

And I guess I'm not the only European who immediately thinks of low fares, blue and yellow plastic, non-reclining seats and lottery ticket sales, when reading about that damned random method.

I too started with Basic. First steps on the Acorn Electron, then got an MSX and finally switched to a PC and used Q(uick)Basic. My ambitions ran ahead of my capabilities. Being fascinated by operating systems (I vividly remember tinkering with OS/2, Windows 95 Beta, DesqView/X, Linux 1.1.18) I wanted to write one on my own. The main aim was to have that magical thing called multitasking. I wrote a "kernel" in QBasic. Upon starting a new "process" it would:

- read in the text file of the new process, which was a specially programmed QBasic program that included predefined hooks to facilitate preemptive multitasking and that was capable of saving and loading its state (i.e. values of all variables).

- merge this text file with the text files of all other running processes, including the "kernel", and saving the new "system image" to disk.

- call the "save state" of all running processes

- exit from QBasic by running a batch file that would restart QBasic with the new system image, which would initiate by calling the "load state" of all processes.

It kind of worked :-) Such a pity I lost that code...

To me the matter looks similar to taking the conjunction of the empty set, which is defined to be TRUE. This, however, starts to make sense when you see that the taking the conjunction of a set X can be interpreted as "forall x in X, x is TRUE". If X is empty then this statement is trivially true.

<!-- Created with Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) -->

I'm sure the iWatch will have a MacBook friendly strap.

Like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=li...

and this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nae9L4EdRs

It's a nautical mile (about 1.8 km). A standard unit of distance in aviation.

In Europe, virtually every brand and model of car can be bought with an automatic gearbox as well as manual. So it's not that they (the manufacturers) have not moved over yet - it is just that they (the drivers) generally prefer manual.

OK I don't know enough about quantum physics to comment further. But on the one hand you copy/past Wittgenstein to make your point (intellectual authority, you were talking about?) and on the other hand you talk about experimental metaphysics. If you're a philosopher, as you seem to imply, then you shouldn't be surprised to cause confusion.

Let me rephrase my objection to your initial post: To experiment means to test a hypothesis. Even if you can write down a hypothesis concerning the metaphysical (although I don't see how that's possible without resorting to what Wittgenstein in TLP calls "nonsense") you will not be able to test it. Therefore metaphysical experimentation is impossible.

Modal logic as a tool to analyze and elucidate philisophical problems (epistemic, doxastic, deontic etc.)? Yes. Modal logic as a tool to do `experimental metaphysics'? I don't think so. In the end a logic is a bunch of intellectually sophisticated stuff built on top of mostly set theory. It is not clear that a logic models something in the physical world. Let alone metaphysical world.

Many years ago I had a pair of Nike sneakers smelling of cat pee. I remember the shoe store saying it was not uncommon. They said it was glue.