Slashdot Mirror

In "The demon haunted world: science as a candle in the wind", Carl Sagan outlines many good reasons why governments and politics should not dictate where and how money is spent in research

One of the most pertinent was that we do not know what discoveries we make today, however innocuous, will be vitally important tomorrow.

We would actually be better off spending more money on science education, or at least courses in critical thinking though as there are not enough people who are qualified to make anything more than a knee-jerk decision about most research.

And that goes for both politicians and the general public. Good scientific thinking is a necessary safeguard we will require in the coming years!

Look out for the movie(s) based on Greg Bear's Forge of God and Anvil of Stars books.

They might not suck, even if I can think of 10 much better books-that-should-be-films off the top of my head.

Look out for the movie(s) based on Greg Bear's Forge of God and Anvil of Stars books.

They might not suck, even if I can think of 10 much better books-that-should-be-films off the top of my head.

There's been a series of stories about oil wells refilling themselves lately. One of the ideas is that our current source of oil is from methane that was trapped beneath the Earth's surface at the big bang, and from fosilized animals. This story could actually be further evidence of that idea.

An alternate theory is that their is a biomass layer bacteria below the surface of the Earth that is producing methane. That methane is then changed into oil by heat, preasure, and the filtration to the surface of the. Haven't you noticed that most oil well are dug where there is a large amount of sandstone and other porous rock?

<Useful links>
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/gold_pr.ht ml
http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/recharging/
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Energy.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/origins.h tml
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/038798546 8/202-8329969-5193459
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/margins/seeps_worksho p.html

- The Turning Point (Fritjof Capra),
- Einstein's Dreams (Alan P. Lightman),
- Flatland (Edwin A. Abbott ),
- The Mechanical Turk (Tom Standage).

- The Turning Point (Fritjof Capra),
- Einstein's Dreams (Alan P. Lightman),
- Flatland (Edwin A. Abbott ),
- The Mechanical Turk (Tom Standage).

- The Turning Point (Fritjof Capra),
- Einstein's Dreams (Alan P. Lightman),
- Flatland (Edwin A. Abbott ),
- The Mechanical Turk (Tom Standage).

- The Turning Point (Fritjof Capra),
- Einstein's Dreams (Alan P. Lightman),
- Flatland (Edwin A. Abbott ),
- The Mechanical Turk (Tom Standage).

Amazon UK; £239.99, not including postage.

eBuyer; £257.17, inc postage.

Oh, at Scam they do OEM copies for £115.74, which is rather more sane, but still about £30 more than your quoted figure, and legally questionable.

It might be a new world order but what ever gave them the idea to use such a screwy extension?

Laying on his deathbed King Brak of the Oggs called for his military advisors to warn them that his two enemies were sure to attack all Ogg islands once he passed away. Brak and his advisors came up with a plan to organize and train the Ogg tribesmen to use weapons for the defense of thier villages.

Meanwhile Nanny Ogg can tell us whether MP3's are best served at weddings, Dinner or Audio Compression Victory parties in her cookbook.

I mean there's nothing like launching a new world order when it comes to audio compression using an extension whose browsing can find you great Poinsettias at www.ogg.com

You shouldn't go looking... remember, If you can't see the fnords, they can't eat you!

A troll, surely, if you post a message saying "Bill Gates sucks"... /.ers are going to jump on that.

I see your point, but while I do think Gaiman's books are more in touch with popular culture, and therefore a better choice than Harry Potter (I liked the book, didn't think it was worth a prize), I personally think his work in the art+literature (I'd say graphic novel, but the last one was ...wonderful...and not comic-like at all).

Not even Gaiman-like. Not what I'd expected, anyway. But a lovely portrayal of Japanese folk-lore.

_I_ think Neil Gaiman's contribution to the world of sci-fi, fantasy, mythology, whatever you want to call it, has been exceptional, and best expressed in <opinion>the story telling realm of graphic novels.</opinion>

<-- echo $newOpinion -->

Troll 1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames

Lotsa people have read or seen his work - I'm guessing there's as many opinions here as there are people, about whether he deserves it or not, or what his best work is.

Predictable responses? Good luck. I reckon there are as many responses here as there are people.

"Overtime doesn't help. Although in the very short term it does speed up the team, if you do it for any length of time you will get bitten badly. The big killer is motivation. It's much better to have a motivated programmer work seven hours a day than a tired, distracted programmer work ten. Even if the programmers want to work long hours it's not a good idea. Long hours make people tired, tired people make mistakes, and mistakes take time to fix. [...] If they [the programmers] really have no life, get them to play computer games in the evening instead. It's much more productive to have castles mown down by trebuchets than it is to slip bugs into complicated software."

I will also add my humble argument: even if the team was able to cope with the 15 hours day work, they will become used to it. Then demands on the team will rise accordingly. Then when you have a hard deadline, because you will still, how to you cope with the increasing demand?

• 18 hours / day? No way
• bring more people in? I advice you (or your boss) to read 'Mythical Man Month'

PS: sorry for the typos, it's 6 am, and I'm just tired ;)

Books containing every- day ways to save the planet might of use to you...

If we need something tangible (perhaps to hit over the USPTO's head) then how about Andrew Leonard's book "Bots, The Origin Of New Species", which I have here in front of me.

It talks about all kinds of bots, on systems including instant messaging systems such as IRC, and the book itself is classified thus:

1.Intelligent Agents (Computer software)
2.Human-computer Interaction

First Edition 1997.

ISBN 1-888869-05-4

At Amazon.

Er, pardon my ignorance, but who is Wil Wheaton?

He's a songwriter on Not That Kind by Anastacia. No, really he is.

The BBC already made a couple of movies of the Narnia series - quite good, but it's been a while since i've seen them.

Try this link.

Using small nukes is a really nice idea, on paper, for launching large masses into orbit and beyond.

For large mass read "modern office building".

The idea itself dates back to 1957, at least. See this interview at Amazon. here

AC is a fine book if you're reading around to be able to implement protocols and cryptographic algorithms, but if I had to pick one book on cryptology it would be David Kahn's The Code-Breakers. A fantastic book on the history of cryptology. I can't even begin to phantom the amount of research that went into this tome, it's just unbelievable.

Don't get the abridged version, and don't expect this one to be up to date on things happening after WW2 -- but understand that this is not a failing, it's a strength.

It 1100+ pages of pure goodness, and I couldn't put it down.

For everything (well, almost) C++, you need the C++ in depth series. Get it, it's a great package.

Contains More Exceptional C++, Exceptional C++, Essential C++, Accelerated C++ and Modern C++ Design.

Accelerated C++ is the best book teaching C++ from the ground up that I have ever seen. It's worth getting and reading even if you think you already know the basics. Really.

For more of this kind of thing, I recomend a book called The Chicken from Minsk. It has some pretty tough questions, and they are posed in such a way that they often make you giggle.

If you have to work on only a few features, wouldn't you do those which scratch your own itch rather than those you were paid for?

I wrote and maintain GNUMP3d a streaming server for MP3's/OGG's. I originally wrote it because nothing was available which met my needs. After using it myself for a while I decided to make it available to others.

To be honest the last few releases have only happened because of the users. It does everything I set out to do. The features contained in the last few releases were almost exclusively requested by users.

Granted they didn't pay - but that's a good example of programming which wasn't explicitly scratching my itch.

OTOH I have had a couple of people buy stuff from my wishlist in exchange for features, or to persuade me to implement a feature before I'd planned to. So I can see it from both sides.

Personally I think a directory like this is a good idea - if there's somebody out there who wants to support OS work, but not donate to a faceless company like RedHat they can choose an application from the list there which they like and appreciate and easily find contact details.

Ziggy's reissue actually fell to earth on 8th July, in the UK anyway - see: here for info - Slashdot is over a week late with the story :-( There was a good interview Bowie did with Jonathan Ross a few weeks ago on BBC 1, BTW, but it wasn't all promoting the Ziggy reissue.

Two of the most seminal albums of the last 10 years that people seem to have missed:

Orbital - Orbital 2 (The Brown Album)
Amazon UK

and

Leftfield - Leftism
Amazon UK

They are probably a little bit slower than the stuff you heard from Sasha and Digweed (average bpm for electronic music has been rising slowly over time) but they are both absolutely incredible albums.

Two of the most seminal albums of the last 10 years that people seem to have missed:

Orbital - Orbital 2 (The Brown Album)
Amazon UK

and

Leftfield - Leftism
Amazon UK

They are probably a little bit slower than the stuff you heard from Sasha and Digweed (average bpm for electronic music has been rising slowly over time) but they are both absolutely incredible albums.

i really enjoyed murakami's "sputnik sweetheart", and "norwegian wood"...

however, my favourite japanese author is actually banana yoshimoto; "kitchen" and "lizard" are both beautiful books that i would recommend without reservation to everyone. if you have not read anything by her, or are wondering whether you would like contemporary japanese literature then "lizard" would be the perfect book to test the water, as it is actually six short stories.

finally, shusako endo's "silence" is well worth reading, but would never qualify as a light afternoon's read ;)

as an aside... anyone based in london, uk, and know of a good course that teaches japanese? anything sponsored by the embassy perhaps? i've been looking to learn for some time. started teaching myself a while ago, but had too much work going on to pursue it properly. thx...

i really enjoyed murakami's "sputnik sweetheart", and "norwegian wood"...

however, my favourite japanese author is actually banana yoshimoto; "kitchen" and "lizard" are both beautiful books that i would recommend without reservation to everyone. if you have not read anything by her, or are wondering whether you would like contemporary japanese literature then "lizard" would be the perfect book to test the water, as it is actually six short stories.

finally, shusako endo's "silence" is well worth reading, but would never qualify as a light afternoon's read ;)

as an aside... anyone based in london, uk, and know of a good course that teaches japanese? anything sponsored by the embassy perhaps? i've been looking to learn for some time. started teaching myself a while ago, but had too much work going on to pursue it properly. thx...

i really enjoyed murakami's "sputnik sweetheart", and "norwegian wood"...

however, my favourite japanese author is actually banana yoshimoto; "kitchen" and "lizard" are both beautiful books that i would recommend without reservation to everyone. if you have not read anything by her, or are wondering whether you would like contemporary japanese literature then "lizard" would be the perfect book to test the water, as it is actually six short stories.

finally, shusako endo's "silence" is well worth reading, but would never qualify as a light afternoon's read ;)

as an aside... anyone based in london, uk, and know of a good course that teaches japanese? anything sponsored by the embassy perhaps? i've been looking to learn for some time. started teaching myself a while ago, but had too much work going on to pursue it properly. thx...

i really enjoyed murakami's "sputnik sweetheart", and "norwegian wood"...

however, my favourite japanese author is actually banana yoshimoto; "kitchen" and "lizard" are both beautiful books that i would recommend without reservation to everyone. if you have not read anything by her, or are wondering whether you would like contemporary japanese literature then "lizard" would be the perfect book to test the water, as it is actually six short stories.

finally, shusako endo's "silence" is well worth reading, but would never qualify as a light afternoon's read ;)

as an aside... anyone based in london, uk, and know of a good course that teaches japanese? anything sponsored by the embassy perhaps? i've been looking to learn for some time. started teaching myself a while ago, but had too much work going on to pursue it properly. thx...

i really enjoyed murakami's "sputnik sweetheart", and "norwegian wood"...

however, my favourite japanese author is actually banana yoshimoto; "kitchen" and "lizard" are both beautiful books that i would recommend without reservation to everyone. if you have not read anything by her, or are wondering whether you would like contemporary japanese literature then "lizard" would be the perfect book to test the water, as it is actually six short stories.

finally, shusako endo's "silence" is well worth reading, but would never qualify as a light afternoon's read ;)

as an aside... anyone based in london, uk, and know of a good course that teaches japanese? anything sponsored by the embassy perhaps? i've been looking to learn for some time. started teaching myself a while ago, but had too much work going on to pursue it properly. thx...

...if they revived 'The Tripods'. I never liked 'Doctor Who' anyway and 'The Tripods' (although short and never finished) was one of the best series in the eighties. Lately, lots of people have been trying to get the BBC (or the other stations that aired the series back then, like germany's ZDF ) to re-air it but they won't due to some legal conflict. God, I hate lawyers =P At least Season 1 got released on DVD. Season two seems to be stuck because of another legal issue...one will has to ask the Donkey. Still, there's a petition (in german) to get it back on the screen. I doubt it'll help much but if you liked the series GO SIGN IT.

Ooh. 3 years. Long-timer, eh? I've had "real" jobs in the IT industry for 15 years (from developer to enterprise architect), and I can tell you from experience that working long (50+) hours for any length of time is going to lower your productivity drastically. You may produce more lines of code, but they will be much lower quality lines of code, and in the long run won't get your project done any quicker. I've seen the results of youngsters (including myself, many moons ago) working 15+ hour days to get stuff out. You can often tell what time of day a particular piece of code is written by the deteriorating quality of it, and the amount of bugs that the test team (or users, if you skip testing to meet your deadlines) find in it.

We've all had to work ridiculous hours on projects to meet stupid deadlines, but doing it for more than a couple of weeks at a time is going to numb your brain.

Read up on things like Extreme Programming, for a more detailed discussion on why overtime is counter productive - you'll have time to read this kind of stuff if you're not working the entire day.

As the advert used to say "Work Smarter, Not Harder", and become an IT professional.

I take it you've read Douglas Adams' "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" where Arthur and Ford get dumped by a Golgrinchen (sp?) 'B ark' (all the 'usual' people who don't actually do the thinking and the working - i.e. telephone sanitairs etc) on a certain blue-green planet and actually 'take over' from the Cavemen?

Region 2 is still in print

Region 1 is harder to find

Region 0 is out there

Good series. Oooh, look, you can buy it on DVD.

That's "Little Lost Robot" :) Again I can place it because it appeared in I, Robot which I only read a couple of months back...Worrying that I can name and place the stories though *gulp*.

You are remembering 'Runaround' which appeared in Asimov's "I,Robot" book (available to read online).

I think the MPAA is (slightly) smarter than the RIAA as the retail/cost ratio of DVDs is not as insane as CDs. Many DVDs can be found for under $10.

Over here in the UK, most new releases are around £20 - £25. If you are very lucky and buy from a place like Amazon you might beable to get a new release for £18. Older DVDs have started to come down to around £10 - £16 though, and when I say old.. I'm meaning films such as 'Batman'. Although HMV recently did a 'buy one get one free on selected titles' which was excellent.

I'd still like to beable to buy new releases for £10, but I'm just a cheapskate I guess! What is the retail/cost ratio of a DVD btw?

MySQL/PHP4 Database Applications, by Jay Greenspan and Brad Bulger, Hungry Minds, ISBN 0764535374 .

Welling and Thomson's book is a good reference for those who want to get to grips with practical projects straight off the bat. It includes webmail, shopping cart, session control, and web-forum/weblog applications as a matter of course, and begins with a sturdy look at PHP first, moving to MySQL once the basics are covered.

Greenspan and Bulger's text is perhaps more traditionally concerned with constructing databases and the programming that surrounds them. Both books cover the material equally well, though I found some nuisances in the first book.

While I tend to lean toward the gentic algorithm-weighted neural network school of thought for AI's (think Blondie 24, I'm trying to do something somewhat similar with Go), I think it would be interesting to ask Cyc to make conclusions based on it's "truth-set". Tell it when it gets things right and when it doesn't, and see if it gets better at coming to conclusions (sounds like a new litmus test for intelligence =).

The fact that it asked if it was human or if another machine was currently being given the same task doesn't surprise me. If you provide enough bits of data and you let it patch together questions, it'll eventually ask something that seems bright. The next question is, "how many 'stupid' things has it asked?" In fact, mentioning that it inquired about it's nature in such a leading, out-of-context fashion sounds more like PR spin than quality science.

But I think it goes without saying that while it might be useful, I'm not sure this could shed much light on how thinking occurs, regardless of it's species emulation. For the $60M pricetag, I sure hope it is, anyway.

And while I'm at it, it'll scale like ****.

Anyone know if they'll be opening the database to the public? If not, anybody from that team know who should be asked? I'd be very interested in seeing that.

... but largely becuase my grandfather did some of the seminal work on it and coined the term: ;-)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/041207800 7/qid=1023537597/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_0_1/202-7462303-9 644620

But yeah, there's a lot of crap out there.

• Hasn't anyone seen the Simpsons episode where the comic store clerk goes to sleep with a life-sized Jar-Jar doll saying "Oh Jar-Jar, no one loves you but me..." .

While we're trading anecdotes, see Spaced, Series 2.

• Comic shop owner:All right, Return of the Jedi. Look at the Ewoks. They were crap!
• Tim: All right, but Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks looking like... fucking Shaft.

After the emotional assraping delivered by TPM and (to a lesser extent) AotC, my one comfort is that the funniest comedy series of recent years is only available on Region 2 DVD, and that most US citizens won't see it, or know about it, or figure out how to get their DVD players to play it even if I gave it to them. That's cold comfort, but I take it where I can get it.

Look, it's even on Amazon.co.uk, for £9.99...

Is this news? No. Please check your local record store before submitting stories like this in future.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, shame on you. Read this.

Anyone with an opinion on this, ought to read the book The Greatest SciFi Movies Never Made - a great list of films that should have happened, and details of the genesis of many familiar films, and how they could have been very different...

The Pragmatic Programmer - by Andrew Hunt & Davis Thomas

If you need to be flicking up and down the code to figure out which block you are closing, then you've probably got too big a block. Try rewriting the contents of your loop as a separate function with a name that describes what it's doing. This gives several benefits - small loops, self-documenting code (as the function name describes the content) and a function that it may be possible to reuse elsewhere in the code. See Refactoring for more details.

Naughton is also the author of A Brief History of the Future, which is an excellent read.

Stephen and David Dewaele, a.k.a. The F##king Dewaele Brothers are the guys who made the Nirvana vs. Destiny's Child mix. (FYI, the soulwax.com site seems to be down at the moment of posting...) But they couldn't publish it on their great mix album 2 Many DJ's, because of copyright issues concerning the Nirvana track. Instead, they put a mix of Independent Women by Destiny's Child vs. Dreadlock Holiday by 10cc on the cd.
Stephen and David are the founders of Soulwax, a Belgian rock band (more info can be found in the Belgian Pop & Rock Archives).
Soulwax.co.uk is an English fan site. Some of the mixes were published there, but they seem to be removed due to bandwith problems.
Stephen and David started their DJ project some years ago. Back then, they called themselves The Flying Dewaele Brothers. They can be heard regulary on the Belgian national alternative radio station, Studio Brussel.
You can listen to a lot of full-length radio broadcasts by clicking on the links on this page. Recent ones are in Windows media format, older ones are Real Media.

Seems to be available in usual places as an import, so I'd imagine you need only go somewhere with a good enough import section and Bob's yer uncle.