Slashdot Mirror

If you haven't read the book, take a couple of hours. It's short, a quick read, and I promise it's worth it. The full text is even online, if you have no money. But you never know when they're watching the telescreens, though, so you might want to just buy a copy in paperback and read it on a nice park bench. ;-)

If you haven't read the book, take a couple of hours. It's short, a quick read, and I promise it's worth it. The full text is even online, if you have no money. But you never know when they're watching the telescreens, though, so you might want to just buy a copy in paperback and read it on a nice park bench. ;-)

I actually went and looked at the New York penal code for a situation like this.

http://wings.buffalo.edu/law/bclc/web/NewYork/ny3( a)(1)-.htm

It appears that if the person responsible bought the Sidekick and found out it was stolen, they are guilty of criminal possession of stolen property in the fifth degree, which is a class A misdemeanor. By withholding the Sidekick and using it for unlawful telephone access, they could be found guilty of larceny in the fourth degree, which is a class E felony.

Hey, cwcowell: I got my PhD in philosophy from Berkeley also, worked with Davidson and Vermazen and Searle and Dreyfus. Now I'm a professor of philosophy. But writing code got me through my PhD. I tell my undergraduates that the reason I was a successful programmer (I did free-lance programming on the Pick system, mostly mail-order systems) is that I asked "why" and "why should I believe that" much more than the folks around me. I also understood language and languages better than some (once a project leader suggested that we should design a programming language which wouldn't let you write bad code). So the practice of philosophy is good for the practice of computer science. Anything that helps you think structurally and abstractly has to be good for CS.

It's certainly true that most philosophy isn't directly relevant to CS in any forms. But some philosophy is directly relevant to some kinds of CS. If you are interested in cognition and AI and cognitive science, then you have to know some philosophy. If you are interested in how to think about objects and relations, then you should think about what the philosophers say -- see http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/ It's certainly true, as cwcowell says, that when philosophy gets things clear enough, they stop being philosophy (my favorite example of this is Cantor on the infinite); but there are plenty of things that aren't that clear yet.

And also get a good book about LISP and learn it. Almost every language out there is placed somewhere between C and LISP.

You can draw a line like C____C++_Java____Python___Ruby_Lisp

I suggest Common Lisp an Interactive Approach.

You wouldn't let a government agent swing by every morning and look at all the mailing addresses on letters going to/from your house, why the hell would you let them do the same to your phone records?

This got me thinking... according to this link: Handwritten address interpretation :

Handwritten address interpretation research began at CEDAR in 1987 through funding from the United States Postal Service (USPS). The objective was to automate mail sorting through a system that could read a handwritten street address and ZIP code and encode each envelope with the destination address for machine sorting.

This research ultimately led to the development and deployment of system that automates mail sorting through image analysis, digit recognition, word recognition, postal directory lookup, and a barcode assignment that designates the destination address. Since field-testing began in 1996, the Handwritten Address Interpretation System (HWAI) has been implemented at all USPS mail processing centers.

So, it's only a small step to record all that metadata for every letter sent within the USA. Just have postmasters general submit the day's scan logs to the gov't for review for possible terrorist links, and, by the way, archive all th information received. This information could include:

• Who received mail.
• Who sent it (from the return address).
• When it was sent.
• How much it weighed.
• How urgently it was sent (overnight, first class, parcel post, etc.)

So, maybe you were just joking, but from what I've seen lately, I'd have to suspect that this may already in place... can anyone corroborate this?

And of course the US *never* practises protectionism:

http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol35/vol35n40/art icles/Boeing.html
http://www.freetrade.org/issues/steel.html
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004619.php

Actually, the birds ARE too stupid to not run into them, but that's beside the point....other than that, I agree with ya.

"They finally decided that they're integrators. They buy parts from suppliers and solder them together."

So how would that problem be solved with the name change. I know a middle initial wouldn't solve that. Would we have to just battle to the death and call it good? It would really just be killing two birds with one stone. First, you'd be practicing Darwinism (population control and promoting the best fit members to continue society) and secondly, you would keep yourself from being confused with another one of your "impersonators" But then again...I wouldn't mind being confused with a Physicist, but maybe I would mind in other cases...he just throws out facts and peddles wares, them's none the coolest!

He spells out how bacteria acquire their antibiotic resistance: The runoff of tainted feedlot manure, containing millions of pounds of diluted antibiotics, enters rivers and watersheds where the world's free bacteria dwell. In cities, municipal sewage systems are giant petri-dishes of diluted antibiotics and human-dwelling bacteria. Bacteria are restless. They will try again, every twenty minutes. And they never sleep.

If you haven't read it already, click the link - it is well worth it. It still scares the hell out of me, and it looks like his dark vision is coming true...

I found PCL useful to get that "ohh this sh*t is powerful" feeling, but very confusing to learn lisp.

In contrast, this book takes your hand and teaches you in a very beginner friendly way, so you have better and long lasting foundations when you reach the end of the book:

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/WWW/faculty/shapiro /Commonlisp/

Speaking of lawsuits, hunting around google for the various laws for my own state, I came across A list of all states' legal codes. Looking at the legal definition of libel and slander (and defamation in general) there is nothing that says that the defamation must target a specific person.

Does anyone know of any case law regarding general defamation, such as stating that all gamers are idiots, etc? Surely something must have come up from various racist statements.

Bio-CAD is an interesting field. You can use modeling or reconstruction of what you think an organism was like, and you can sometimes come to a conclusion that doesn't support the currently accepted theory of how something worked. The dromaeosaurs (velociraptor and friends) were among the smartest dinosaurs (as determined by the brain cavity's size). So if they were also capable of taking down larger dinosaurs by means of disembowelment (ant waiting for them to die), this means they have less reason to hunt in packs. But if they can't take down a big game as individuals, they may have had reason to work together. Now, I'm not a paleontologist, so I may have the story wrong here. But the basic idea is that you can use modeling and replication as a way to support or contradict other theories (which we can't directly measure).

No, but the CS curriculum varies quite a bit from university to university. Many recognize that most CS undergrads will be going directly into industry, so they'll put some emphasis on software engineering. A required course at my university ensures that no one graduates without experience in a real project. But there's also a ton of theory; some courses are almost purely math.

It's a good balance, and I think a lot of people who bash CS degrees don't realize that many universities are teaching the practical aspects of software development, even though they don't hold your hand through learning new languages and XML and all that crap.

No, but the CS curriculum varies quite a bit from university to university. Many recognize that most CS undergrads will be going directly into industry, so they'll put some emphasis on software engineering. A required course at my university ensures that no one graduates without experience in a real project. But there's also a ton of theory; some courses are almost purely math.

It's a good balance, and I think a lot of people who bash CS degrees don't realize that many universities are teaching the practical aspects of software development, even though they don't hold your hand through learning new languages and XML and all that crap.

No, but the CS curriculum varies quite a bit from university to university. Many recognize that most CS undergrads will be going directly into industry, so they'll put some emphasis on software engineering. A required course at my university ensures that no one graduates without experience in a real project. But there's also a ton of theory; some courses are almost purely math.

It's a good balance, and I think a lot of people who bash CS degrees don't realize that many universities are teaching the practical aspects of software development, even though they don't hold your hand through learning new languages and XML and all that crap.

However I cannot get a copy of my own information from my univerity without paying them, so I find it hard to believe they would just hand it out to a company without any incentive.

He hasn't heard of a lot of things. Nobody ever has before

The TRUTH is that this post is in-fact a terrorist transmission, using their technology I have decoded it:

"The FAA and researchers at the University at Buffalo are developing an anti-terrorism search engine that will hunt for 'hidden' information -- like how to take down an airliner -- that can be puzzled together by grabbing bits and pieces from unrelated documents. Eventually, they say, the technique can be commercialized to improve search results on more mundane matters.`"

And I didn't have to spend 10 quadrillion dollars to find that hidden message ;-)

One search the UB researchers used to test their prototype involved exploring the chapters in the 9/11 Commission Report for connections between the three terms that they knew had a connection: "Hamburg," "San Diego" and "imam" (a Muslim leader).

"The concept chains show you what may be of interest, but the real intelligence here is gleaned from looking for patterns of interest," said Srihari. "Once a pattern of interest is identified, then you can ask, 'Are there more patterns like this?'"

One search the UB researchers used to test their prototype involved exploring the chapters in the 9/11 Commission Report for connections between the three terms that they knew had a connection: "Hamburg," "San Diego" and "imam" (a Muslim leader).

"The concept chains show you what may be of interest, but the real intelligence here is gleaned from looking for patterns of interest," said Srihari. "Once a pattern of interest is identified, then you can ask, 'Are there more patterns like this?'"

This explains everything. http://www.buffalo.edu/news/hires/SrihariSearchGra phic.jpg Wow such advanced tech.

Well, a quick web search away, and we have your answer.

Read through a history of libraries and you'll notice that the vast majority of the earliest ones are private, not public. They record great private libraries being around for over a thousand years before the first public library in most places.

The Library of Alexandria is noted as the first "research" library, about a thousand years after the first known libraries.

Little definite is actually known about the library itself (not even it's exact location in the city) and it was most likely a private library with a very restricted set of rules for scholars being able to access it. It certainly wasn't "public" in the sense that anyone could walk in off the street and use it. It's noted for the breadth of it's collection, not being as regional as previous libraries.

I'm no library expert (despite having worked as a volunteer in several and having read tens of thousands of books), but since a simple couple of minutes with a web browser and a search engine demonstrates your lack of knowledge, apparently neither are you.

Since you insist on putting words in my mouth (for-profit), I'll clarify that I was talking mostly about past private libraries that typically didn't run as a profit-making endevour, but were mainly charitable or a break-even service that went along with a print-shop (in the time of great masses of people beginning to learn to read and frequent print-shops, the new technology of the time) or with a club with specific needs, like a group of lawyers.

Yes, charity predates government-enforced theft.

of Google -vs- MSN here. Just another datapoint in the continuing saga. Got your popcorn ready?

In a few public labs at the University at Buffalo, we have been replacing the Solaris workstations, and in some cases Windows PCs, with PCs running UBLinux . UBLinux is our own desktop distro based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We also make this distribution available in CD format for students, faculty and staff to install on their own machines. It has also replaced Solaris in our technology classrooms.

In a few public labs at the University at Buffalo, we have been replacing the Solaris workstations, and in some cases Windows PCs, with PCs running UBLinux . UBLinux is our own desktop distro based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We also make this distribution available in CD format for students, faculty and staff to install on their own machines. It has also replaced Solaris in our technology classrooms.

In a few public labs at the University at Buffalo, we have been replacing the Solaris workstations, and in some cases Windows PCs, with PCs running UBLinux . UBLinux is our own desktop distro based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We also make this distribution available in CD format for students, faculty and staff to install on their own machines. It has also replaced Solaris in our technology classrooms.

In a few public labs at the University at Buffalo, we have been replacing the Solaris workstations, and in some cases Windows PCs, with PCs running UBLinux . UBLinux is our own desktop distro based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We also make this distribution available in CD format for students, faculty and staff to install on their own machines. It has also replaced Solaris in our technology classrooms.

In a few public labs at the University at Buffalo, we have been replacing the Solaris workstations, and in some cases Windows PCs, with PCs running UBLinux . UBLinux is our own desktop distro based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We also make this distribution available in CD format for students, faculty and staff to install on their own machines. It has also replaced Solaris in our technology classrooms.

A link to the document where this came from would be nice.

Seems like you Canadians are pretty lucky to have a fairly 'well-behaved' border with the US.

Imagine what would happen when you had a border like the community of Baarle, where the post office determines the citizenship of a house by the country its *front door* is in. Corners of fields, streets and even houses can all be in different countries. A farmer can plough across three borders all in the same field.

Map: http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/baarle.htm
Pics: http://grenzen.150m.com/baarleGB.htm

Here's a comparison of MSN Search and Google, done in excruciating detail: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~ajay/secompare.html

Study! High school was a breeze compared to what you're about to get put through.

And when you're not studying, please remember that the purpose of college is to exchange ideas... don't sit in your dorm all day playing video games, get out there and meet people!

Get to know your professors, if you can't find a summer internship, maybe you can do research for one of them.

IAAP (I am a physicist), and much of what you say is, unfortunately, "not even wrong".

Electrons in Cooper pairs do obey Pauli exclusion. In fact, without Pauli exclusion, the whole theory of superconductivity fails.

Regarding broad distributions of energies for diffusing H and D in palladium, bear in mind that the Coulomb repulsion between the nuclei that must be overcome for fusion to occur is huge. Much larger than the eV or so energy scales required to break the chemical bonds of the Pd atoms. Basically, H and D atoms in solids can never acquire that much kinetic energy without destroying the solid. Add to that the fact that the thermal distribution at room temperature is centered around ~ 1/40 of an eV, and you quickly realize that this cold fusion explanation is hogwash.

It is interesting to see that Microsoft earlier supported Xen, but then later pulled support. Their (Xen's) homepage still mentions having received support from Microsoft Research.

--
Does MSN censor search results?

DON'T LISTEN TO THIS MORAN!

If the INS (BCS) finds out that she LIED to them (as this guy is obviously suggesting), then they will bar her from the US for 10 years or something.

Do not, under any circumstances, lie to the INS (BCS). You will regret it for the rest of your life if you get caught.

First: chances are, as a Japanese citizen, she can enter the US without a visa. Second: if you married her in Japan, her marriage will be recognized in the US. I know, because I was married in a foreign country.

Do you think you're the first servicemember to marry a foreigner? Of course not! Service men and women have been marrying locals in Korea, Japan, Germany, etc. for decades. The INS (BCS) knows how to deal with this. It will not be a problem; just go to the US embassy and talk to them. They'll set you up just fine.

--
Does MSN censor search results?

Still, looks like a nice box.

--
Does MSN censor search results?

How come? Suppose you invest $1MM each in 10 companies. 9 of them fail; your loss is $9MM. If you make 3x on your $1MM that succeeded, your gain ($3MM) would not cover your $9MM loss now, would it?

--
Does MSN censor search results?

There can be multiple reasons.

• Your investors want their 10x (or whatever factor the VCs expect) money back. VCs expect a huge multiple return on their initial investment, not just their money back. Remember that only 1/10 VC-funded companies are successful; therefore, on average, a VC expects 10x from whichever company does succeed.
• Your initial employees, whose sweat went into the company in the early stages, now want a big payoff; the IPO does that.
• You want to grow your company fast and need a large chunk of cash (this was the traditional reason for IPOs). This cash can be used for acquisitions, equipment (huge data center near Portland?), etc.

---
Does MSN censor search results?

MSN censors Scientology search results?

MSN censors Scientology search results

this is a test
Please ignore.. just testing something. I know, OT. Sosumi! ;)

And I too wish we didn't. Unfortunately, we have to start somewhere. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are, for now, necessary alliances. The day will come when they have to answer to their people.

Where is your plan? All you (and liberals in general) are offering is criticism without solutions or, at best, idealistic isolationism.

How's this for a plan: Don't invade and occupy nations in the middle east. This makes the problem 100 times worse. After decades of mistreating the people of this region, we're in a bad starting point in dealing with terrorism, but that is not a reason to exacerbate the problem. This is like dealing with a swarm of angry bees by sticking your head inside the bees nest.

My personal suggestion would be to stop supporting the royal families and dictators in the middle east that we rely on for oil deals. Pull our troops out of Saudi Arabia. Deal more evenhandedly with the Palestinian/Israeli situation. Lastly, pour money into promoting progressive causes in the middle east like women's suffrage and human rights.

Our invasion of Iraq was the logical step in combating the cause of terrorism. While it turns out that Iraq wasn't as much of a threat as we thought it was originally (their nuclear and ICBM programs were not what our allies' and our own intelligence expected), the invasion of Iraq was done with the ultimate goal of providing United States security.

No, it wasn't a logical step. It was an idealistic neoconservative step that wasn't planned out beyond "They'll greet us with open arms!" Lets look at the results of this invasion. We removed a secular dictator and replaced him with:
50% chance - Civil war followed by, most likely a Sharia Theocracy. Iran is sucked into the civil war because of its Shia population. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria are sucked in because of their Sunni populations.
25% chance - An elected government that can only hold power with the protection of the US military, creating extreme instability in the entire middle east. The presense of the US military threatens Iraq's neighbors, creating surging nationalism and strengthens the dictators. Also a huge recruiting tool for Jihadists.
15% chance - A military strongman like Saddam takes power after we leave and rules with an Iron Fist. Note: this happened with Britain in the 20s.
10% chance - The Sunnis accept their loss of power, the jihadists accept they don't have popular support. The US keeps 14 military bases in the country, fueling Jihadist recruiting and possibily resulting in the overthrow of the secular governments surrounding Iraq.

I'm seeing lose-lose here, what realistic scenario do you think could possibly result in increased security for the US?

I don't think the neoconservatives are an imperialist movement--no more than capitalism itself is an imperialist movement, at least. Nobody wants to establish a 51st state or a colony. I implore you to find a writing or statement from the Administration that implicates that. Our occupation of Iraq is temporary--just like we've said all along. Again, the whole plan revolves around us handing the country back to the Iraqis as an example to the rest of the Middle East.

Ok, how's this? The Case for American Empire written by a leading neoconservative thinker, Max Boot, in the Weekly Standard (a leading neoconservative publication). I'll even give you a quote if you don't want to read it: "The most realistic response to terrorism is for America to embrace its imperial role."

You claim that our occupation is "temporary." You'd better tell that to the contractors building 14 military bases in Iraq. If you don' want to click on that link, its an article from the Chicago Tribune titled: 14 `enduring bases' set in Iraq:Long-term military presence planned.

Still think this is a "temporary" occupation?

I don't know if you're entirely correct about consent. Consent isn't an absolute absolution of any legal requirements. You can't consent to being murdered, for instance. (Well, you can, but it's no defense to the person who does it.) But I do concede that it's probably closer than the limited exceptions I was trying to get at.

In any case, consent isn't at play in the particular example of shining a LASER at someone.

Assault is a crime of intent. With no intent, there is no assault. Criminal Negligence, perhaps.

This isn't true. Read the laws in New York (it's the first one listed, 120.00, then 120.05 and 120.10; all three degrees of assault have provisions that don't require intent), Pennsylvania (again, both simple and aggrivated assult have provisions for at least reckless injury under some conditions), Texas, North Dakota (PDF file; simple assault has negligent assault), and New Jersey. I can't link to NJ's because it's in a subscription service (Westlaw), but the relevant portions are the same as PA.

There are jurisdictions where this isn't true (California and Georga (warning: very large and slow-loading version of the entire penal code), the latter of which doesn't even have a crime called assault), but since the Model Penal Code and subsequent revisions of most states' criminal law, they are a minority.

There's an attempted crime if you actually thought the file you were downloading was legitimate. I don't know if the federal crimes code has a generalized attempt provision or if it specifically lists crimes that can be attempted, but if it's the former, you could probably be charged with attempted copyright infringement.

(Most states I think have a general provision like New York's, but this may be a relatively modern addition with the Model Penal Code inspired revisions of the 70s. If so, the federal code might not have such a provision and might actually define each attempted crime seperately.)

Not being 733t enough to port it to Linux in one of my spare evenings, I have to ask: is anyone working on a Linux port? Is the game engineered to allow such an endeavor?

On a broader note: are there any MMORPGs for Linux? Not that I would play one; but a decent OpenSource MMORPG kernel could be used as a learning/information delivery platform in interesting ways.

--
Who's buying what... ;-)

Here's a web page where someone wrote a script to see what package numbers are coughed up by Google: enjoy! .

Here are more images of the destruction in Bam.

At the recent annual conference of the American Library Association, comics were being displayed in the exhibit hall alongside the traditional booksellers. There are serious discussions in the library world about the role of comics and graphic novels in reaching out to the reluctant reader, and similar discussions about comics in school curricula. So there are at least some folks who believe that comics can be part of a literacy program.

kc

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx