Slashdot Mirror

Yes, that was David Hahn who used quite a bit of social engineering to get information and equipment to build his own little breeder reactor in his mothers garden shed. A very interesting story. Lots of writeups all over the web.

It's why I want to shoot anybody who actually buys this sort of phrasing, such as what the RIAA is giving us.

Better shoot those that use such language to achieve their goals - those buying it can still be educated.

How about "We Will Prevail" (by now a whole book full of Newspeak instead of just another rallying cry - read the user reviews at amazon!) or "Islamic Fascism"? Would you shoot?

Naftule Brandwein, the Klezmer clarinet virtuoso, turned his back on the audience in order to keep the secret of the finger he used to achieve certain effects.

Of course, we're talking "trade secret," not "copyright" here.

I wonder whether he ever considered patenting his fingerings? I wonder whether that's possible. It seems to me that it might be.

Just look at his profile and wish list on Amazon. He apparently likes Darth Vader a lot and has dressed up as Austin Powers for Halloween.

(Yes, that's really him)

Just look at his profile and wish list on Amazon. He apparently likes Darth Vader a lot and has dressed up as Austin Powers for Halloween.

(Yes, that's really him)

As usual, Brazil is ahead of the rest of the world in social things. Ricardo Semler has been doing open source business for 20 years, as Chief Happiness Officer. Here's a review of his book, The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works. Some people are extremely enthusiastic about Semler's ideas: He's my idol.

Normal CEO's are Chief Unhappiness Officers. They steal everything they can, and act out their anger toward everyone they can.

One of the most important examples of a business run in an adversarial way is Microsoft, of course. After all this time, major media outlets are starting to get it right. Here are quotes from the CNN article Microsoft security--no more second chances?:

"By now, Chertoff's people must be thoroughly frustrated that Microsoft still turns out poorly designed products."

"Here's something to consider: If bridge builders or airplane designers applied the same standards to their labors, do you believe that the public would so easily forgive the regularity with which bridges would collapse and airliners fall out of the sky?"

If you like the CNN article, don't forget to D I G G it.

What has the OS community brought into the mainstream?

What has the OS community brought to the mainstream? Let's see, much of the software that runs the net is or originates from OS software. We wouldn't have the PCs and other personal or business computers we have now if OS hardware and software hackers hadn't been there. A big hand is deserved for those hackers who were part of the Railroad club at MIT in the '60s and '70s. Amoung other things they inspired those like the Woz, Steve Wozniac to create the original Apple. If you really want to know some of what open source has been responsible for reading Steven Levy's "Hackers: Heros of the Computer Revolution" will give you an idea.

As I have said, the problem is with Islam itself. Enough political correctness, please. Islam is a religion that exhorts its followers to violence.

• You should get out more and meet more diverse people.
• You should buy this book and meditate its teachings on the violent background of every religion.

Now, with the exception of radical Hinduism and unorthodox strains of pseudo-Christian religions, almost all modern religion outside of Islam considers peace to be a virtue.

And just as a warning to those who want to cite a few violent verses in the Bible to me as "proof" that Judaism and Christianity are as bad as Islam, I can cite just as many direct commands from God that override any "general" interpretation of those.

As I have said, the problem is with Islam itself. Enough political correctness, please. Islam is a religion that exhorts its followers to violence.

• You should get out more and meet more diverse people.
• You should buy this book and meditate its teachings on the violent background of every religion.

Now, with the exception of radical Hinduism and unorthodox strains of pseudo-Christian religions, almost all modern religion outside of Islam considers peace to be a virtue.

And just as a warning to those who want to cite a few violent verses in the Bible to me as "proof" that Judaism and Christianity are as bad as Islam, I can cite just as many direct commands from God that override any "general" interpretation of those.

As I have said, the problem is with Islam itself. Enough political correctness, please. Islam is a religion that exhorts its followers to violence.

• You should get out more and meet more diverse people.
• You should buy this book and meditate its teachings on the violent background of every religion.

Now, with the exception of radical Hinduism and unorthodox strains of pseudo-Christian religions, almost all modern religion outside of Islam considers peace to be a virtue.

And just as a warning to those who want to cite a few violent verses in the Bible to me as "proof" that Judaism and Christianity are as bad as Islam, I can cite just as many direct commands from God that override any "general" interpretation of those.

They seem to be working on that problem:
Gift Organizer
But, I don't know if it ties back into recomendations yet.

FTFA:
"However, Steve Jobs is the master of being your best buddy while planning to stab you in the back. His biographies are filled with stories that do more than suggest that if he wants what you have, you'd better grab it and run for the hills."

Please. History is littered with the corpses of companies with which Microsoft formed a "strategic partnership"-- The MS people stick around and play nice for a while, then one day the other company gets notified that Microsoft wants to go in another direction so the partnership is over. Then a couple months later Microsoft unveils a competing product and kills the company with which they partnered.

The best historical example I can think of is Go Corp in the late 80s/early 90s-- Microsoft partnered with them, stole their stuff and created Pen Windows to crush them. You can get accounts of it from both sides if you read these two books. However, Microsoft is doing the exact same thing right now: They are desperate to take marketshare from iPod/iTunes. To that end, their partnerships to make portable players and sell music under the "PlaysForSure" moniker have been miserable failures-- so now, they are screwing their partners and rolling their own solution in-house, Zune, which is stated incompatible with all the PlaysForSure stuff.

~Philly

FTFA:
"However, Steve Jobs is the master of being your best buddy while planning to stab you in the back. His biographies are filled with stories that do more than suggest that if he wants what you have, you'd better grab it and run for the hills."

Please. History is littered with the corpses of companies with which Microsoft formed a "strategic partnership"-- The MS people stick around and play nice for a while, then one day the other company gets notified that Microsoft wants to go in another direction so the partnership is over. Then a couple months later Microsoft unveils a competing product and kills the company with which they partnered.

The best historical example I can think of is Go Corp in the late 80s/early 90s-- Microsoft partnered with them, stole their stuff and created Pen Windows to crush them. You can get accounts of it from both sides if you read these two books. However, Microsoft is doing the exact same thing right now: They are desperate to take marketshare from iPod/iTunes. To that end, their partnerships to make portable players and sell music under the "PlaysForSure" moniker have been miserable failures-- so now, they are screwing their partners and rolling their own solution in-house, Zune, which is stated incompatible with all the PlaysForSure stuff.

~Philly

Big jets are very efficient iff they're filled. When you're flying half-full jets you're wasting a lot of fuel. To the best of my knowledge, Martin Hollman's Super Stallion, a six-passenger fast piston airplane, is nearly twice as efficient as a 747 if both have all their seats full. Not just a little: almost twice as efficient.
I question the use of VLJ's for efficient mass transport, but a large fleet of comparatively inexpensive, well-designed piston aircraft could do a good job of replacing a lot of domestic air travel. Given that the FAA estimates it's faster to drive than fly via big commercial airlines for flights under 500 miles (variable distance, depending on how long security takes: it's probably more like 700 miles currently) being able to drive to a local/regional airport and go through security with the other four people on your flight, might be both more efficient *and* faster, and has lower security/danger implications for the country as a whole. An 1800 pound plane isn't even going to get through a brick wall if it were crashed purposely.
James Fallows wrote a (slightly date) book about this called "Free Flight". It's an interesting read.

Serial killers are *not* "all clinically insane"

Carpe Jugulum

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0061 020397?v=glance

There's a book that has tons of interviews with people about how they answered this very question...

What Should I Do with My Life? (Hardcover)

It explores this question from different angles to see how people answered it for themselves.

The short answer: You're never too old to start living your dream.

--
When Hiliary was president in 2012, it sounded like a good idea at the time, but unfortunately she was not prepared to handle the 1st wave of the collapse of America via the Civil War.

...in his album, 5150: Home 4 Tha Sick

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/20 06/08/08/MNGGTKD03A1.DTL

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375725806/002-89 62410-6073658?v=glance&n=283155

but that out of the way, the scale of the US makes it a bit less than feasible. For instance, here in California we've been arguing on and off for several years about a high-speed rail between SF and LA. It's only 500 miles, and it could follow the course of the old El Camino Real (now Highway 101)... only that's through mountainous territory all the way. Okay, so it could follow Highway 5... but now it's a 600 or 700 mile journey, and it still crosses a mountain range (the Grapevine). Either route is sparsely populated between the suburban outreaches, reducing the pull-through... and before you claim that the new transit corridor will produce new cities, bear in mind that the highways have been there for 40 years (or 300 if you're counting El Camino Real). There also won't be a train stop every where that there's a freeway on ramp.

On the other hand, you can fly down for a day trip for about $100, and on some days it's actually faster than driving to the other side of LA or the Bay Area. The fact is that trains are great for 9-5 commuting where people have 9-5 office jobs, but they kind of suck at flexibility.

Worse, the hub-and-spoke model that gives air travel its flexibility is not replicable with rail because the rail has to be built and maintained, which takes a lot longer than upgrading or building an airport terminal. Even if that problem were overcome, say by a massive government building program that connected all the major and minor cities of the country, it still wouldn't be successful because of the economic requirement to put lots of passengers onto each train and stop relatively infrequently. Greyhound buses on Interstate highways are the proof.

An excerpt from a bit longer essay I wrote:

In August 1980, Byte magazine published its issue on the Forth programming language

At that time, I was working with Control Data Corporation's PLATO project, pursuing a mass market version of that system using the Intelligent Student Terminal (IST). The IST's were Z80 processor terminals sporting 512*512 bit mapped displays with touch sensitive screens and 1200bps modems that went for about $1500. We were shooting for, and actually successfully tested, a system that could support almost 8,000 simultaneous users on 7600-derived Cybers (the last machine designed by Seymour Cray to be marketed by CDC --with 60 bits per word, 6 bits per character, no virtual memory, but very big and very fast) with under 1/4 second response time (all keys and touch inputs went straight to the central processor) for $40/month flat rate including terminal rental. Ray Ozzie had been working at the University of Illinois on offloading the PLATO central system to the Z80 terminal through downloaded assembly language programming, doing exotic things like "local key echo" and such functions.

I was interested in extending Ray's work to offload the mass-market version of the PLATO central system. In particular I was looking at a UCSD Pascal-based approach to download p-code versions of terminal functions -- and even more in particular the advanced scalable vector graphics commands of TUTOR (the "relative/rotatable" commands like rdraw, rat, rcircle, rcircleb, etc.) if not entire programs, to be executed offline. Pascal was an attractive choice for us at the time because CDC's new series of computers, the Cyber 180 (aka Cyber 800) was to have virtual memory, 64 bit words, 8 bit characters and be programmed in a version of the University of Minnesota Pascal called CYBIL (which stood for Cyber Implementation Language). Although this was a radically different architecture than that upon which PLATO was then running, I thought it worthwhile to investigate an architecture in which a reasonable language (you should have seen what we were used to!) could be made to operate on both the server and the terminal so that load could be dynamically redistributed. This idea of dynamic load balancing would, later, contribute to the genesis of Postscript.

Over one weekend a group of us junior programmers managed to implement a good portion of TUTOR's (PLATO's authoring language) advanced graphics commands in CYBIL. Our little hunting pack at CDC 's Arden Hills Operations was in a race against the impending visit of Dave Anderson of the University of Illinois' PLATO project who was promoting what he called "MicroTUTOR". Anderson was going to take the TUTOR programming language and implement a modified version of it for execution in the terminal -- possibly in a stand-alone mode. Many of us didn't like TUTOR, itself, much. Indeed, I had to pull teeth to get the authorization to put local variables into TUTOR -- and we were determined to select a better board from our quiver with which to surf Moore's Shockwave into the Network Revolution. CDC management wasn't convinced that such a radical departure from TUTOR would be wise, and we hoped to demonstrate that a p-code Pascal approach could accomplish what microTUTOR purported to -- and more. We quickly ported a TUTOR central sy

I believe that the US military were experimenting with the idea of creating a (hopefully temporary) layer of trapped radiation in the upper atmosphere in order to destroy/disable ICBM missiles aimed at the USA. There were quite a number of tests leading up to Starfish Prime (particularly Operation Argus in the South Atlantic ). One of the key drivers from a military point of view for these tests was to observe the effect of the trapped radiation in the upper atmosphere on incoming dummy missles.

I don't think that the experiments led to any breakthroughs regarding ballistic missile defence, but there were some interesting discoveries in the science. The effects of EMP from high altitude nuclear detonations weren't fully expected in the first tests (EMP from low altitude tests had been observed before, but in mid altitude testing the EMP was negligable - so significant EMP effect was not expected from high level detonations). The scientists involved in the tests were surprised that Starfish and the other Johnston Island high atmosphere detonations disrupted communications and electronic equipment as much as they did. It turns out that there are two different mechanisms for generating EMP after a nuclear detonation - the one that takes effect at high altitude is the one that causes widespread damage, whereas the low altitude one causes local damage to electronics, but no widespread damage.

Additionally data regarding the Van Allen belts, trapped radiation from man-made detonations and SAMA (the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly ) came in large part from the Starfish Prime and Argus experiments.

Today the idea of setting off nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, let alone in the high atmosphere, seems crazy, but these experiments (along with the experiments done by the other countries involved) should be viewed in the context of the era. In the late 50s and early 60s when these tests were performed by the US the fear of nuclear attack was reaching a peak. Experiments of this sort were tolerated because of the potential benefit that could be had by the side carrying them out. If, for example, the US military had found a way to disable ICBMs with high level detonations of nuclear bombs they could have disabled most of the threat to the USA in one stroke. As it was the US military discovered that high altitude detonations caused a long range EMP effect, and that knowledge allowed them to adjust their strategy for nuclear attack/defence.

For anyone who's interesting in seeing more about these exeriments I would certainly recommend the film The Rainbow Bombs by Peter Kuran. His other films Trinity & Beyond and Atomic Journeys are excellent as well.

I believe that the US military were experimenting with the idea of creating a (hopefully temporary) layer of trapped radiation in the upper atmosphere in order to destroy/disable ICBM missiles aimed at the USA. There were quite a number of tests leading up to Starfish Prime (particularly Operation Argus in the South Atlantic ). One of the key drivers from a military point of view for these tests was to observe the effect of the trapped radiation in the upper atmosphere on incoming dummy missles.

I don't think that the experiments led to any breakthroughs regarding ballistic missile defence, but there were some interesting discoveries in the science. The effects of EMP from high altitude nuclear detonations weren't fully expected in the first tests (EMP from low altitude tests had been observed before, but in mid altitude testing the EMP was negligable - so significant EMP effect was not expected from high level detonations). The scientists involved in the tests were surprised that Starfish and the other Johnston Island high atmosphere detonations disrupted communications and electronic equipment as much as they did. It turns out that there are two different mechanisms for generating EMP after a nuclear detonation - the one that takes effect at high altitude is the one that causes widespread damage, whereas the low altitude one causes local damage to electronics, but no widespread damage.

Additionally data regarding the Van Allen belts, trapped radiation from man-made detonations and SAMA (the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly ) came in large part from the Starfish Prime and Argus experiments.

Today the idea of setting off nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, let alone in the high atmosphere, seems crazy, but these experiments (along with the experiments done by the other countries involved) should be viewed in the context of the era. In the late 50s and early 60s when these tests were performed by the US the fear of nuclear attack was reaching a peak. Experiments of this sort were tolerated because of the potential benefit that could be had by the side carrying them out. If, for example, the US military had found a way to disable ICBMs with high level detonations of nuclear bombs they could have disabled most of the threat to the USA in one stroke. As it was the US military discovered that high altitude detonations caused a long range EMP effect, and that knowledge allowed them to adjust their strategy for nuclear attack/defence.

For anyone who's interesting in seeing more about these exeriments I would certainly recommend the film The Rainbow Bombs by Peter Kuran. His other films Trinity & Beyond and Atomic Journeys are excellent as well.

I believe that the US military were experimenting with the idea of creating a (hopefully temporary) layer of trapped radiation in the upper atmosphere in order to destroy/disable ICBM missiles aimed at the USA. There were quite a number of tests leading up to Starfish Prime (particularly Operation Argus in the South Atlantic ). One of the key drivers from a military point of view for these tests was to observe the effect of the trapped radiation in the upper atmosphere on incoming dummy missles.

I don't think that the experiments led to any breakthroughs regarding ballistic missile defence, but there were some interesting discoveries in the science. The effects of EMP from high altitude nuclear detonations weren't fully expected in the first tests (EMP from low altitude tests had been observed before, but in mid altitude testing the EMP was negligable - so significant EMP effect was not expected from high level detonations). The scientists involved in the tests were surprised that Starfish and the other Johnston Island high atmosphere detonations disrupted communications and electronic equipment as much as they did. It turns out that there are two different mechanisms for generating EMP after a nuclear detonation - the one that takes effect at high altitude is the one that causes widespread damage, whereas the low altitude one causes local damage to electronics, but no widespread damage.

Additionally data regarding the Van Allen belts, trapped radiation from man-made detonations and SAMA (the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly ) came in large part from the Starfish Prime and Argus experiments.

Today the idea of setting off nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, let alone in the high atmosphere, seems crazy, but these experiments (along with the experiments done by the other countries involved) should be viewed in the context of the era. In the late 50s and early 60s when these tests were performed by the US the fear of nuclear attack was reaching a peak. Experiments of this sort were tolerated because of the potential benefit that could be had by the side carrying them out. If, for example, the US military had found a way to disable ICBMs with high level detonations of nuclear bombs they could have disabled most of the threat to the USA in one stroke. As it was the US military discovered that high altitude detonations caused a long range EMP effect, and that knowledge allowed them to adjust their strategy for nuclear attack/defence.

For anyone who's interesting in seeing more about these exeriments I would certainly recommend the film The Rainbow Bombs by Peter Kuran. His other films Trinity & Beyond and Atomic Journeys are excellent as well.

The game of Diplomacy, except 80 years in the future. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005EBA0

You can play it over e-mail as well. www.diplom.org is a good place to start.

The game of Diplomacy, except 80 years in the future. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005EBA0

AI is bogus.

See The Jargon File entry for micro-Lenat
http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/microLenat.html

For a more literary perspective on the attempt
to imbue machine intelligence with common sense,
see _Galatea_2.2_ by Richard Powers,
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312423136/sr=1-1 /qid=1155242163/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4246079-1703018?i e=UTF8&s=books
---
He's no fun; he fell right over.

The first rule of chess is this:

Learn to think like your opponent, or you will be defeated every time.

I suggest reading What computers still cant do.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262540673/103-50 82900-3367853?v=glance&n=283155

Cyc is indeed a very interesting take on NLP but it still has a human element involved and until we can eliminate that from the equation the internet will continue to grow faster than we can process it.

Hmm, didn't mean to have any FUD... but I think at least DUI is a significant topic when it comes to drug use. It's true that there are plenty of bad drivers, intentionally reckless drivers, and people who are falling asleep, and they can cause accidents, too.. but I still think DUI is a bit different than other impairments (maybe too much exposure to MADD has brainwashed me *grin*)

I think a good goal would be to move toward general legalization; the idea of a license isn't intended to let the DEA keep drugs generally illegal---it's supposed to demonstrate that Americans can be responsible and don't need the DEA to babysit them.. it could be a first step toward more liberties. I don't want more bureaucracy nor control; I want the DEA to become less controlling, and eventually not even be necessary.

I agree that drug testing should be banned for most jobs. It just seems ethically wrong to me. The point about other countries where alcohol is treated differently is also well-made; I'm still not sure how to change the cultural attitudes toward alcohol here in the USA, though.

Good point about the Native American Church needing permission. Catholic churches don't have to get permission to serve communion wine to minors...

THC should have never been illegalized. I've heard theories that suggest that "good white folk" were scared by Mexican immigrants smoking it, or something. It used to be prescribed to treat asthma, and it's probably one of the best anti-nausea substances known to man... It has a lot of potential to be medically helpful (in addition to being recreational) but it's treated like a poison.

Out of curiosity, have you read Aleister Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend? If you haven't, you should. It's a really interesting story about a man learning how to use drugs to his benefit, instead of letting an addiction control his life.

the CIA that also created Osama bin Laden?

One hears this tossed around a lot, but never with concrete evidence, only with the vague idea that since the CIA was spending a great deal of money in the area, some of that most have been given to Bin Laden, etc., etc.

Yet there's no evidence to support a direct link, and the fact is that money was funnelled into Afghanistan by many groups with goals that were quite distinct from each other and, from time to time, fought each other more than the Soviets, including targeted assassinations against other groups' leaders.

Bin Laden was in Afghanistan as a funder himself - remember that vast family fortune we always hear about him having? He was pushing his own side with different goals. The U.S. policy was, without a doubt, short-sighted - the goal was to get the Soviets and their puppet government out of Afghanistant, but little to no planning went into what to do with the vacuum we hoped to create. But to claim that the U.S. "created" bin Laden is quite ridiculous - he had been "created" long before then in the Jihadi sense, only the Soviets helped create a battlefield for him and the U.S. threw its weight behind the resistance to the Soviet occupation.

Don't believe me? Educate yourself. Put down the mouse, get off the conspiracy sites, and pick up a copy of Steve Coll's Pulitzer-winning book Ghost Wars. Do some serious research before simply repeating conspiracy theorist talking points.

Now, mod me down like you know you want to.

You would think they would have had a major release by now since it's been in development since 1913 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_reserve, http://www.relfe.com/plus_5_.html).

Thankfully for freedom however, the people in charge and the people that support them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374508844/002-53 79183-7642447?v=glance&n=283155 ) are REALLY, REALLY, STUPID.

spent some time searching for samples, here they are:

WMA SOUND SAMPLE

or like this REAL PLAYER SAMPLE

spent some time searching for samples, here they are:

WMA SOUND SAMPLE

or like this REAL PLAYER SAMPLE

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0789734044/ref=pd _sim_b_4/104-7384389-8873557?ie=UTF8 - Upgrading and Repairing PCs (Scott Mueller)

I had to buy this book for my CS pre-req "Introduction To Computer Technology" course at college. You would be surprised just how invaluable a book like this is for things like POST codes, the base 1MB memory map, peripheral IRQs and addresses, OS boot sequences, etc. If you work (as in tech) with PCs at all you should probably know this stuff.

I honestly can't think of anything that is better than experience, but this book comes very close for PC basics. As for XP specific books, I'd look at the MS Press book Windows XP Inside and Out Deluxe Edition: http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/7109.asp

P.S. just to clarify for example a Libertarian might say, well if you want to hike you ought to own the area you are hiking in, but that's clearly absurd for two reasons:

a) If I want to do say a multi-day hike into the Rocky mountains then I need to own 500 square miles of Colorado? Get real!

b) It implies that the only people with rights are property owners. Do we really want a society with restricted fundamental rights for non property owners, where an increasing amount of land is walled off and is private gated space? To me a society with endless surveillance cameras and private gated communities and no public space, is no better than Orwell's surveillance society where the government is doing the spying and controlling. In fact in many ways the ultimate Robert Nozickesque

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465097200/002-02 04872-9747219?v=glance&n=283155

Libertarian society of all private ownership is naught but a photographic negative (that's film for you young 'uns) of a completely government controlled society like Communism. Do you start to see why I say property-tarian and NOT Liber-tarian and that the word Liberty is untrue in the name?

or you can buy it here without giving the schmuck above a penny!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593271395/103-84 50387-5183860

Save yourself $5.09 by buying the book here: It's Never Done That Before. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself $5.09 by buying the book here: It's Never Done That Before. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

My address has been harvested off so many mailing list archives that I get hundreds of spams a day, so I get lots of fodder to examine this phenomenon.

Spam bots *are* now able to associate your address with your specific email gestalt if they can make a connection between it and anything you've done publicly online. For example, I get spams with the surnames or firstnames of other people on the mailing list. I also get spams containing words that are used frequently in my lists: "port" and "protocol" show up a lot in the places I go, and they are starting to show up a lot in my spams, including, frighteningly, spams sent directly to me, not to the list. That suggests that someone has started making a second-generation database that allows a bot to put my address together with the things I've done online. True, this is no more than a google search will get you, but it suggests even more heinous things are within reach using my online history.

Maybe this only affects us open source developers (googling my name gets lots of hits), but as the Internet influence on ordinary peoples' lives increases, and as more traditionally non-Internet data moves onto the Internet (accidentally or on purpose), this will soon be possible for other people as well.

I think we're moving toward a Light of Other Days society in the next few decades, and this is one of the signs.

A book I highly recommend. One may not be in a position to impliment them, but there's something to learn though.

very well, i grant you that.. if you'd done more than just read the ars technica article, you'd know what i was saying isn't bollocks.
More information on the demonstrators can be found here and here. Apologies for the Amazon link, but David is a hard man to pin down and i'm busy. ;)

Is trivial pursuit. Ab out half the time I do not even use the board and I can relax and read the cards at my leisure. With the 6th edition came out months ago I still have not gone through half of the cards.

Replying again to elaborate on my throwaway comment, that's a silly view of what makes good literature. Many great authors are extremely cold and clinical: for example, Franz Kafka or J.M. Coetzee. And even those who strive for strong feelings often achieve it through understated and superficially unemotional language --- Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day is a good example. Lyricism is neither necessary nor sufficient to make good literature.

Your answer lies within the following book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1886411840/102-63 47914-4633758?v=glance&n=283155

There are also some insights in "Chris Crawford on Game Design" as well, but I think you will find "The Art of Interactive Design" more closely relating to your question.

As for a solution, Chris has been working on that for the last 15 years or so. He has a free engine out you can play around with to create interactive stories, but it uses a new language which has kind of a steep learning curve, but it is very powerful once you know it.

For games to take the next step in interactivity we will require a complete change in mindset of what a game is, and people just aren't ready for that, yet...

Ahhh, MediEvil. As an old fart, this single game was the thing that got me back into gaming. After seeing it I went out and bought a PlayStation and a copy of MediEvil. Simply one of the best games I've ever played.

Another highly recommended one if you have an XBox (not 360) is Voodoo Vince.

The game is called, "Gotcha!" It's a clever game; except for the fact that it's highly improbable that a college campus would allow a bunch of students to run around with realistic looking pistols, firing away at one another. Nonetheless, the environment is set up for all sorts of gun play and killing.

The movie: Gotcha!.

AJAX: Javascript that connects to a server-side script to select / create / update / delete data and update the page.

Flash can do that too. It can communicate via text, xml, json, remoting, webservices and other ways that aren't coming to mind. I suggest you check out the book Flash for Server Geeks for more information

Question: With all these people's lives transparant to business and government, do you think that business/government will become MORE or LESS transparant to people in exchange?

My take is that this is a game of government and business ganging up on the rest of society in the name of security. Government is the daddy, business is the favorite trusted son, and everything else is their hunting ground. The conservative dream.

Ryan Fenton

Very savvy consumers will hack together ["PC-TV hybrid"] setups themselves.

Yes, we are indeed building them ourselves. However, we are doing so primarily because we can't find what we want on sale anywhere for any price. The below is an adapted version of a recent Usenet post of mine describing what I have come to daily take for granted with my high-definition MythTV setup:
------------
. . . MythTV works, and works well, for those who are interested in a "HD TiVo" without any of TiVo's limitations. I must admit to chuckling whenever I see a question in alt.tv.tech.hdtv or elsewhere asking how to record from a HD video source with a computer in terms that make it clear the poster and the respondents view the task as something akin to cavemen discovering fire.

I work long, long hours and, when I get home, often don't have any more energy left to do more than want to just relax in front of the tube. When I do so, I want to have as much choice in what to watch as possible. Let me tell one and all of what I with 100% reliability do with my MythTV setup every day:

• Push a button on the remote[1] to wake the 47" 1080p[2] LCD panel[3] from its DPMS slumber.
• Pick from a gigantic library[4] of high-definition programs that MythTV constantly adds to[5] based on my choices.[6]
• While playing the program, rewind, fast-forward, and jump to arbitrary points as desired. I can also adjust the playback speed anywhere from 0.5X to 2X without affecting audio pitch.[7]
• I can push a button to instantly and accurately skip over commercials.[8] If I've gone too far, another button will skip me back to the previous spot.
• If I exit a recording, the next time I watch it the playback will continue where I left off.[9]
• If I ever need to restart MythTV, pushing a button on my remote twice within three seconds will cause it to do so.[10]
• If I want, I can run MythTV on my MacBook and watch the exact same programs[11] with the exact same elegant and attractive user interface.[12]
• All this time, MythTV is silently recording yet more for me to watch.[13]

If any of this intrigues you, I recommend visiting:

• The MythTV Wiki and the mythtv-users mailing list archive, the two largest repositories of MythTV knowledge.
• The terrific Fedora Core-based installation guide I used.
• A well-regarded MythTV reference design for those who want to either buy it off the shelf from the vendor or build it themselves. I'm neither a customer nor an employee; all I did for my own setup was buy a Sony Pentium 4 system on sale at Fry's then add the video card, ATSC capture card, gigabit Ethernet card, remote, and NAS. However, in retrospect, there's something to be said for buying at once all the parts except the NAS in one convenient, already-integrated form.

[1] Home Theater Master MX-500 universal remote. I programmed it using a $30 infrared keyboard/mouse combo.

[2] MythTV does an *excellent* job of deinterlacing 1080i recordings into 1080p for those displays that can handle it. Any Nvidia video card from the FX5200 to the present will work.

[3] Westinghouse LVM-47W1. Under $2500 from Crutchfield for 1080p LCD goodness.

[4] MythTV tells me that I have "242 programs, using 1.7 TB (427 hrs 33 mins) out of 1.8 TB (54 GB fr

You mean like this?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786916184/102-35 01590-8272147?v=glance&n=283155

Unfortunately it's well and truly out of print, but you might still be able to find a copy somewhere.