Trumptor

The Ottoman Empire rounded up children as their Janissaries (and it was Janjicari, not Jagnicari - my mistake) from other places as well, like Greece, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, etc, so this wasn't something directed only at Serbs. I didn't quite make that clear in my previous post.

Whack yourself in the head with each bar really hard. Then, starting with the bar in your right hand say, "eenie meenie miney mo catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go, eenie meenie miney mo" and the one that "mo" lands on is the magnet.

I tried to find the information online and all I found was a one third policy implemented by the Fascist Croatian Ustasha movement of WWII. The information is here -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Serb_Sentiment and here -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ustase. It was a policy of killing one third of Serbs, deporting one third, and converting one third to Catholicism. A professor at UW-Madison taught us about the Ottoman Empire one third policy in a European History class back in the 90s. I'll try to locate it some more when I have time if in fact it is correct information and can be found. About the children taken by the Ottoman empire back to Istanbul and trained as elite soldiers I have learned about as well. We call them "Jagnicari" in Serbian and there are many, many stories about these soldiers coming back to their villages as Muslims and killing their moms, dads, and siblings without ever knowing they were actually Serbs themselves or that this was their homeland. There is some interesting reading on life under the Ottoman empire in Serbia here, although the source information is from back in 1972 -> http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006040609360.

I doubt that will happen, but I do hope that as AI becomes more advanced that we will be able to give up some of our decisions to a more advanced AI in regards to making economic, social, and other choices without the bias and self interests that we humans have. I think that leaving big choices to artificial intelligence with the goal of bettering humanity would result in no wars, a better distribution of food, less corruption, etc. This is obviously a scenario for the future, but I think it would be a rational one if AI passes up human intelligence, and with the HUGE advantage of no self interest or any "isms" such as nationalism, racism, etc. involved. Danijel, Do you believe that AI will actually have emotions and be sentient? I think the software will allow robots and computers to "fake" personalities and emotions, but how would a programmed machine cross the boundaries of being a programmed hunk of metal to a living, sentient being? I think this is a more philosophical question, since if you believe in a soul and life existing outside of a material body, then a bunch of electronic components being thrown together will never qualify as a living being no matter how convincing the programming or physical shell.

The Ottoman Empire had a brutal 1/3 policy towards the Serbs for about 500 years starting in 1389. Breed out 1/3 (the local Muslim overlord got to sleep with each Serbian newlywed wife the first night), covert 1/3 ( the Serb man wouldn't have to give up his wife the first night if he converted to Islam and could then own land as well), and kill 1/3. The Bosnian Muslims were a direct result of a Serb Christian population forced to convert to Islam centuries ago. I'm sure we could pick any religion and find atrocities committed in the name of it. It is the frequency of atrocities that matters, because, unfortunately, when a warmongering leader wants to go to war he will use any means available. What about Nazi Germany or Stalin? There were atrocities committed by both and neither was in the name of religion. People will always find a "reason" to go to war and religion is an easy way to rile up a population.

For question 3, the correct answer is to ask the guard what the other guard would say is the doorway to peace and freedom and then do the opposite to get through the correct door. I remember this question from a logic class I had 20 years ago, lol. It was a really tough problem so it was ingrained in my brain from looking at it over and over. If I'm asking the guard that always tells the truth, he'll tell me the other guard will say the door to the hangman is the door to peace and freedom (since that guard always lies). I go through the other door to get my freedom. If I'm asking the guard who always lies, he'll tell me the other guard will say the door to the hangman (since he's lying). Again, I go through the other door to get my freedom. It's kind of cheating since I remembered the reasoning behind it from my logic class and didn't really have to think about it too much.

Nice picture. It's funny that the baby has a red star on his or her shirt. Growing up, the red star was always associated with communism and there were popular shirts here in the US that said, "Kill a commie for your mommy." It's sad that we find all sorts of reasons to consider other human beings as undeserving of even life itself. I'm sure most of the people wearing those shirts would never kill anyone, but still, what kind of message does this kind of idiotic propaganda send to children? As a species that has invented calculus and formulas for fluid dynamics it is surprising that we can be so unbelievably stupid sometimes.

Yea, the British with their crazy foreign accent, spelling words wrong like theater (theatre) and liter (litre), eating fish and chips, and calling elevators lifts?!!!?! How dare they! It seems that we differ from our ancient ancestors by technology alone and are ethically and morally no richer for it.

I was just having some fun:) Actually, I remember one of these creationists coming to our university when I was going for my undergrad. Our awesome Biology Professor wanted us to hear from the "other" side, so invited a creationist to give a lecture during one class period. It was almost laughable at the reasoning he gave for many things. Predictably, someone asked about dinosaurs fossils, and his "logical" explanation of dinosaur fossils was that God put them in the Earth to test our faith. Somebody much more knowledgeable than me needs to chime in on why we share so many genes with fruit flies. I heard that we also share a ridiculous amount of similar genes with yeast. I only had a couple biology classes and this question never came up. I think most living things will share genes to some level or other and that fruit flies are usually chosen for research because of their short life spans so many generations can be studied in short periods of time.

I don't see why you'd say it's necessary to declare a variable at the beginning. If it's a global variable, then yes, you'd want to declare it outside of a certain method or class, so the scope covers where it's appropriate, but if you need to use a variable in a "for" loop for example, you declare the variable right there (e.g. for(int x=0; x<10; x++)). If a variable is only used in a particular method, you wouldn't need to declare it anywhere else except within that method. I agree with the poster that said it isn't as important to understand a particular language as it is to understand the concepts since they are used across languages. In object oriented programming (OOP) languages it is important to know what a class, object, instances, inheritance, etc. are, and it doesn't matter much if you are programming in C#, Java, or any other OOP language, the idea is mostly the same and it comes down to mostly syntax differences.

Oh, thanks:) Well still, is it worth 2.5 GigaEuros?

Well, the result wouldn't be the same species as the ducks we see today, but over time, why wouldn't a chicken's legs, beak, and everything else be able to be naturally selected over and over and over until it looks like a duck? It may take centuries, but still. Look at all the different dog breeds that were created from the grey wolf in such a short period of time.

You take a couple of chickens and put one with a team of 10 creationists and one with a group of 10 evolutionists. If the evolutionists can evolve their chicken into a duck before the creationists create a duck out of their chicken then they win, otherwise if the creationists can create a duck out of their chicken before the evolutionists can evolve their chicken into a duck, then they win.

I think Java and C# are pretty cool languages.

Is preventing sea level rise of 2 cm in 50 years worth 2.5 Gazillion Euros?

Wow arc, from glossing over this thread I think you've written more in this thread than all the writing I did combined in my undergraduate and graduate studies. That's some dedication. P.S. I'm expecting a ten paragraph reply and some graphs. If not, I'm going to feel left out.

Also, a positive is that whatever language you pick, the basic concepts translate pretty well to other ones if you decide that another language is more accommodating for the type of game you'd like to design. C#, Java, and other object oriented languages have many commonalities, so switching from one to the other is mostly the learning of syntax. There are some deeper differences, such as passing by value and passing by reference, but generally they're very similar.

I don't know, I think the simplest answer is still always the best. What is simpler than cables connecting the Earth's north and south poles to the Sun's north and south poles and as the gears on the Sun's poles turn, they turn the cable, in turn making the Earth turn. I always thought this the easiest explanation and everyone is overthinking it all. All the planets are connected to the Sun and all the moons are connected to their planets. Viola, removes all the unnecessary complexity and math mumbo jumbo.

I don't think that at any time in the history of America have people been fed so much propaganda, lies, and been manipulated as today. I think the founding fathers are turning in their graves because of what sheep the regular citizens have been turned into and the amount of real knowledge held from ordinary citizens by those in power.