Slashdot Mirror

There's a massive flaw in Kurzweil's Argument:

He assumes that Increased Processing Power (Quantitative Change) will somehow, automatically translate into a Qualitative Change (Logic will become Consciousness).

but it seems he doesn't understand that an increase in processor speed doesn't automatically get you a MIND.

What happens when the clock-speed slows down?
Consciousness is what persists BETWEEN clock cycles.

regards,
john

It is clear that the Brain is not equivalent of the Mind.

But it is not clear that the Mind is a Product of the Brain.

People were here.

Then they Invented Computers,

Then, based on the thing they invented, they
assume that the Brain is the equivalent of something
they dreamed up.

Why do so many people assume that the brain is a Computer?

Just like the Eyeball is a sensory organ for Light,
The Brain is a sensory organ for CONCEPTS.

regards,
john

i've done quite a bit of travelling around the U.S. and have *always* been able to access a local EarthLink dial-up number. Their coverage is quite good and offers great, dependable service that stays out of your face and never attempts to take-over your networking stack.

hi - i'm ken.

and i'm barbie,

and we like windows better... really really.

everyone else uses it,

so should you.

--

ignore that man behind the curtain
(the wizard of oz)

I'll not dwell too long on this; Your analogy to Esperanto is flawed. Mozilla speak's the Queen's HTML/CSS/DOM/etc, while IE speaks a slang popularlized by MTV & friends. Those who understand the slang might not understand all your fancy words or be confused when you respond positively to a double negative, but you're speaking pure English.

I see you don't claim to be a web designer. A casual speaker of English wouldn't care at the misuse of a semicolon. A professional writer wishing to write to a casual audience might curse that he can't convey the exact meaning a semicolon would bring, because the causal audience wouldn't pick up on it. So he curses and writes longer sentences that everyone will grasp.

Web designers writing for the causal, apathetic, audience have to write so that IE understands. IE is the 7th-grade English level that novels need to be written for. IE doesn't understand what a comma splice is, but it understands "UR K-KOOL DUDE", even though "UR" should be "U R".

I see many pages that IE renders blatantly wrongly, but then, like most web designers, I've usually written those pages: The next 75% of my job is getting IE to display it the way my other 7-10 browsers do. Successful web designs are done this way because it is impossible to start with an IE-specific design and go to a design everyone can use.

Your last paragraph is curious. The standards are set, and people build implimentations off those standards. Because I impliment the standard in a sub-par way, but I market well, should the quality of the standard be lowered and invalidate the work of dozens of higher quality projects?

It has been a long time since I saw a web site Mozilla does not render properly, by the way. css/edge is one I usually point out when arguing for standards acceptance. These designs are beautiful and elegant, but fail in IE and old versions of Opera. These are simple things. This copy of the OGF's SRD demonstrates one of the simpler things IE just can't grasp.

Anyhow, I understand your run-with-mob perspective, but I don't believe it can apply rationally in this case. It's a quick step to communication lockdown if we allow our method of communication to be controlled entirely by a single corporate entity, whoever the hell they are.

Atttach a nozzle on the OUTPUT of a vacuum cleaner so it aims Upwards into the Air at a 45 degree angle, place a BEACH-BALL in the stream of out-blowing air about a foot away, and Watch It Just SUSPEND there - since the air moving around the ball creates LIFT enough to keep it up.

sorry about the AC post, but i'm away from my CPU, and forgot my password (having to remember umpteen gazillion passwords is a #%# pain!), so here's a URL to my site (which means its not actually an 'anonymous' post anymore... ;-)

best regards,
john

but really AOL is always going to try to fight reverse-engineering attempts of their proprietary protocols. face it, they suck.

With all the alternative ISPs out there, why would anyone subject themselves to AOL for connectivity? My guess is many families have had their AOL accounts for a while now, and more educated children of those households attempt to cope with the lameness by using this cool dialer.

I'd say there will come a time when people will have to bite the bullet and give up those AOL screennames. They suck at broadband, they're heavily tied into dial-up, they spam the crap out of you, and shove content down your throat all the while confining you to their obnoxious sandbox and screwing-up your network settings. They do everything in their power to abstract the Internet back into AOL. I find that eeevuuuhl.

I for one have been using EarthLink for years on a slew of operating systems, starting from dial-up up to DSL (over 2 1/2 years now), and it's always been a breeze. They'll send you a CD that'll handle the whole sign-up and installation process, or you can just get an account on-line within minutes, and at the end of the web-based process they'll show you a secure page with your username, password, dial-up number, mail and dns settings with which you can manually configure your OS. And BAM you're done. That's $22/month vs $25/month. And if you are craving spoon-fed content, you can always access your account's "start page". Note that each earthlink account actually comes with uhh i think 7 additional accounts or was it 8 additional? forgot. Each account has its own e-mail box, home page address (10MB quota, not bad) (http://home.earthlink.net/~youraccount), and start page. Oh, also the EarthLink DSL account also gives you .. uh .. i think 20 hours of free modem dial-up access, so you can get on-line while travelling through hotels and what-not. They *will* bill your ass if you go over 20 hours though. careful.

Anyway this was just an example of what i find to be a really good nationwide alternative to AOL, but there are other local ISPs all over the place. I'd stay away from local phone companies for DSL service, and go thru a re-seller of their service instead. Phone companies might give you connectivity but they won't give you nearly as many "on-line" perks as other true ISPs will, make sure you comparison-shop. For example verizon assigns you some obnoxious cryptic email address when you get their DSL package. *lame*.

Also keep in mind that any time a local phone company advertises their DSL service to you, i'm pretty sure there has to be at least one other company that offers you similar service, typically with more features for about the same price albeit potentially slightly different service terms. I know EarthLink is pretty-much everywhere, but you have other companies such as speakeasy dsl or something that offer cool plans for gamers.

DSLReports.com is always a good place to look for competitive offerings from various providers in your area.

but really AOL is always going to try to fight reverse-engineering attempts of their proprietary protocols. face it, they suck.

With all the alternative ISPs out there, why would anyone subject themselves to AOL for connectivity? My guess is many families have had their AOL accounts for a while now, and more educated children of those households attempt to cope with the lameness by using this cool dialer.

I'd say there will come a time when people will have to bite the bullet and give up those AOL screennames. They suck at broadband, they're heavily tied into dial-up, they spam the crap out of you, and shove content down your throat all the while confining you to their obnoxious sandbox and screwing-up your network settings. They do everything in their power to abstract the Internet back into AOL. I find that eeevuuuhl.

I for one have been using EarthLink for years on a slew of operating systems, starting from dial-up up to DSL (over 2 1/2 years now), and it's always been a breeze. They'll send you a CD that'll handle the whole sign-up and installation process, or you can just get an account on-line within minutes, and at the end of the web-based process they'll show you a secure page with your username, password, dial-up number, mail and dns settings with which you can manually configure your OS. And BAM you're done. That's $22/month vs $25/month. And if you are craving spoon-fed content, you can always access your account's "start page". Note that each earthlink account actually comes with uhh i think 7 additional accounts or was it 8 additional? forgot. Each account has its own e-mail box, home page address (10MB quota, not bad) (http://home.earthlink.net/~youraccount), and start page. Oh, also the EarthLink DSL account also gives you .. uh .. i think 20 hours of free modem dial-up access, so you can get on-line while travelling through hotels and what-not. They *will* bill your ass if you go over 20 hours though. careful.

Anyway this was just an example of what i find to be a really good nationwide alternative to AOL, but there are other local ISPs all over the place. I'd stay away from local phone companies for DSL service, and go thru a re-seller of their service instead. Phone companies might give you connectivity but they won't give you nearly as many "on-line" perks as other true ISPs will, make sure you comparison-shop. For example verizon assigns you some obnoxious cryptic email address when you get their DSL package. *lame*.

Also keep in mind that any time a local phone company advertises their DSL service to you, i'm pretty sure there has to be at least one other company that offers you similar service, typically with more features for about the same price albeit potentially slightly different service terms. I know EarthLink is pretty-much everywhere, but you have other companies such as speakeasy dsl or something that offer cool plans for gamers.

DSLReports.com is always a good place to look for competitive offerings from various providers in your area.

• OS Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
• Editors Sucks-Rules-o-Meter
• Vegetarion Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
• What [Programming] Languages Rule (alternative)
• Linux Distribution Comparison

ALR-2002-003-paper.pdf

I wasn't trying to make a spoof banner ad that nailed the ethics of the legal profession, but there ya go.

According to DirecWay's FAQ bot thingie, they will be selling the DW4020 to consumers "fall of 2002" (read: "any day now").

The DW4020 is pretty much the standard DW4000 satellite modem boxen they currently sell, except it includes a third boxen that eliminates the need for a USB connection and presents 4 Fast Ethernet ports. Supposedly you'll also be able to buy this box separately to upgrade your existing DW4000.

Now the only question is when EarthLink will lower their monthly satellite service fees to match DirecWay through DirecTV. I just dropped BellSouth in favor of EarthLink this past June and I'm not interested in changing ISPs yet again so soon.

First, OS X supports two-button-mice *natively*. You can buy any non-apple off-the-shelf two-button USB laser mouse for ultra cheap and plug it in any not-too-old mac laptop's *two* USB ports. If there is a 3-button USB mouse out there, i bet you it'll just work on a mac laptop (or desktop), in the worst case you might have to install a vendor-supplied driver.

Apple hardware has *for years* supported USB peripherals, and that includes mice AND keyboards.

ADB serial ports for keyboards have been gone for a WHILE. As far as keyboard remapping, there is a slew of 3rd party OSX shareware and "how-to's" out there that'll help you do just that. Keep in mind that the Alpha Geek Community is switching in *strides* over to OS X, thereby building a very strong support-base. Check out a couple of my switching experience stories to give you a small idea of *some* of the slew of cool things you can do with OS X.

Futhermore, Apple hardware has been increasingly following mainstream peripheral and other device specifications: VGA monitor ports, ATA drive controllers, PCI extension slots. You can pretty-much buy a mac, gut it out, and fill-it up with non-apple components. But at least you have a base system that *just works*, and works well at that.

Please define "Unix Look and Feel". Are you talking about Solaris CDE? Are you talking about GNOME? KDE? I've got X11 and a slew of window managers and other X11 apps installed and running on OS X, using Fink. I would highly recommend that you get used to OS X's Aqua interface which is quite intuitive and powerful.

First, OS X supports two-button-mice *natively*. You can buy any non-apple off-the-shelf two-button USB laser mouse for ultra cheap and plug it in any not-too-old mac laptop's *two* USB ports. If there is a 3-button USB mouse out there, i bet you it'll just work on a mac laptop (or desktop), in the worst case you might have to install a vendor-supplied driver.

Apple hardware has *for years* supported USB peripherals, and that includes mice AND keyboards.

ADB serial ports for keyboards have been gone for a WHILE. As far as keyboard remapping, there is a slew of 3rd party OSX shareware and "how-to's" out there that'll help you do just that. Keep in mind that the Alpha Geek Community is switching in *strides* over to OS X, thereby building a very strong support-base. Check out a couple of my switching experience stories to give you a small idea of *some* of the slew of cool things you can do with OS X.

Futhermore, Apple hardware has been increasingly following mainstream peripheral and other device specifications: VGA monitor ports, ATA drive controllers, PCI extension slots. You can pretty-much buy a mac, gut it out, and fill-it up with non-apple components. But at least you have a base system that *just works*, and works well at that.

Please define "Unix Look and Feel". Are you talking about Solaris CDE? Are you talking about GNOME? KDE? I've got X11 and a slew of window managers and other X11 apps installed and running on OS X, using Fink. I would highly recommend that you get used to OS X's Aqua interface which is quite intuitive and powerful.

"After the last deep ice age, (about 10,720 years ago) an enormous lake (Lake Agassiz) remaining from melting glaciers in central Canada burst through, and dumped an enormous quantity of water through the St. Lawrence River and out into the north Atlantic. This fresh water diluted the Gulf Stream and literally stopped it, because the diluted water was not dense enough to sink. All of this took place in a short period of some 70 years. The effect was to chill the northern regions considerably; in fact, the event was discovered only because seeds of some Canadian flowers that favor extreme cold were found in abundance in the Antarctic ice formed at the time. It was well after the ice age was supposed to be over."
- Burke's delusion: After the Warming

Burke then goes on to say that we are currently having the same drastic effect on the environment today with our polution and pumping out greenhouse gasses way too fast for the environement to cope. His prediction, is that global warming is going to come upon us hard here soon. Unfortunately, he leaves this same scenario out to off-set global warming. This makes his presentation somewhat lacking. However, I found his video-essay very enjoyable anyways. And yes, this is the same James Burke that did the 'Connections' series you may have seen on the Learning Channel.

• Other James Burke Information
• Palmer's James Burke Fan Companion
• Connections Summaries

Excuse my French but this is just a load of crap.

Just take a look at their website for a start...

Not only do they have a totally sadistic site that insists on reloading a lame 288K flash animation every time you sneeze, but the home-page link titled "Check "Validation" page for information on the Tilley Electric Vehicle" takes you to the Nashville Speedway (Detail? Detail? We don't need no steenken attention to detail!).

Did Delorean build the site as well as the original car?

I suspect the shonky state of the website is just a small window into the attitudes and abilities that are behind the Delorean "Scammobile" they're ranting about.

Anyone with a few minutes of spare time can trawl through Google and find half a dozen or more similar scams that are supposedly based around systems that cause electric motors to also act as a generator that can recharge the battery.

Not a single one has ever been proven to work by a certified independent testing authority -- and I don't see the oil companies trembling in their boots either.

But hey, if you believe this Delorean works as advertised then you probably already have one of these stainless steel supercars in your garage -- having believed GM's claims too.

And, if you've got more money than sense, why not visit these sites for some similarly great investment "opportunities":

Free Electricity

Psitronics

Ain't it a shame that so many really clever people just never seem to get an even break eh?

ROTFL

Yeah, but what about Windows?

A quick Google Images search popped up a nice visualization of the Windows kernel.

And I believe this is their development model.

1) obtain, and take apart a $5 calculator.

2) look at the LCD - there's a little piece of polarizing plastic in front of it - hey!

3) when i take this out, i can't see the screen.

4) stick the little piece of polarizing plastic that was taped in front of the LCD, and tape it to my glasses instead.

5) apply for New Scientist Story, and claim we invented something unique, and get slashdotted.

duh!

j

> Einsteins "religiosity" was far more about aesthetic
> sensibility than about doctrine. He is talking
> about a feeling of wonder, not about belief.

agreed - its not about 'belief in doctrine'.
einstein's views on religion (as can be seen by reading
his essay) was much profounder than mere dogma.

because of all the BS of dogma, people often throw out
any sense of 'religious wonder' out the window along
with it - einstein nicely deliniates between that
sort of religiosity and what he calls 'cosmic religious feeling'.

regards,
john

if you want an essay written by EINSTEIN HIMSELF on his religious views, try here:

Einstein on Cosmic Religious Feeling

"In my view, it is the most important function
of art and science to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling
and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
(Albert Einstein)

i've always felt it is better to go back to the ORIGINAL documents
than to read commentary ABOUT them. in addition to Darwin, there was
also Haeckel, Kant, and Steiner -- who were certainly some of darwin's
most significant fellow researchers in the area. here's a experpted chapter from
one of Darwins contemporaries circa 1886:

The TYPUS in Organic Nature

Above all, one has committed a serious error in this. One believed that the method of inorganic science should simply be taken over into the realm of organisms. One considered the method employed here to be altogether the only scientific one, and thought that for "organics" to be scientifically possible, it would have to be so in exactly the same sense in which physics is, for example. The possibility was forgotten, however, that perhaps the concept of what is scientific is much broader than "the explanation of the world according to the laws of the physical world." Even today one has not yet penetrated through to this knowledge. Instead of investigating what it is that makes the approach of the inorganic sciences scientific, and of then seeing a method that can be applied to the world of living things while adhering to the requirements that result from this investigation, one simply declared that the laws gained upon this lower stage of existence are universal.

Above all, however, one should investigate what the basis is for any scientific thinking. We have done this in our study. In the preceding chapter we have also recognized that inorganic lawfulness is not the only one in existence but is only a special case of all possible lawfulness in general. The method of physics is simply one particular case of a general scientific way of investigation in which the nature of the pertinent objects and the region this science serves are taken into consideration. If this method is extended into the organic, one obliterates the specific nature of the organic. Instead of investigating the organic in accordance with its nature, one forces upon it a lawfulness alien to it. In this way, however, by denying the organic, one will never come to know it. Such scientific conduct simply repeats, upon a higher level, what it has gained upon a lower one; and although it believes that it is bringing the higher form of existence under laws established elsewhere, this form slips away from it in its efforts, -because such scientific conduct does not know how to grasp and deal with this form in its particular nature.

All this comes from the erroneous view that the method of a science is extraneous to its objects of study, that it is not determined by these objects but rather by our own nature. It is believed that one must think in a particular way about objects, that one must indeed think about all objects -- throughout the entire universe -- in the same way. Investigations are undertaken that are supposed to show that, due to the nature of our spirit, we can think only inductively or deductively, etc.

In doing so, however, one overlooks the fact that the objects perhaps will not tolerate the way of looking at them that we want to apply to them.

A look at the views of Haeckel, who is certainly the most significant of the natural-scientific theoreticians of the present day, shows us that the objection we are making to the organic natural science of our day is entirely justified: namely, that it does not carry over into organic nature the principle of scientific contemplation in the absolute sense, but only the principle of inorganic nature.

When he demands of all scientific striving that "the causal interconnections of phenomena become recognized everywhere," when he says that "if psychic mechanics were not so infinitely complex, if we were also able to have a complete overview of the historical development of psychic functions, we would then be able to bring them all into a mathematical soul formula," then one can see clearly from this what he wants: to treat the whole world according to the stereotype of the method of the physical sciences.

This demand, however, does not underlie Darwinism in its original form but only in its present-day interpretation. We have seen that to explain a process in inorganic nature means to show its lawful emergence out of other sense-perceptible realities, to trace it back to objects that, like itself, belong to the sense world. But how does modern organic science employ the principles of adaptation and the struggle for existence (both of which we certainly do not doubt are the expression of facts)? It is believed that one can trace the character of a particular species directly back to the outer conditions in which it lived, in somewhat the same way as the heating of an object is traced back to the rays of the sun falling upon it. One forgets completely that one can never show a species' character, with all its qualities that are full of content, to be the result of these conditions. The conditions may have a determining influence, but they are not a creating cause. We can definitely say that under the influence of certain circumstances a species had to evolve in such a way that one or another organ became particularly developed; what is there as content, however, the specifically organic, cannot be derived from outer conditions. Let us say that an organic entity has the essential characteristics a b c; then, under the influence of certain outer conditions, it has evolved. Through this, its characteristics have taken on the particular form a'b'c'. When we take these influences into account we will then understand that a has evolved into the form of a', b into b', c into c'. But the specific nature of a, b, and c can never arise as the outcome of external conditions.

One must, above all, focus one's thinking on the question: From what do we then derive the content of that general "something" of which we consider the individual organic entity to be a specialized case? We know very well that the specialization comes from external influences. But we must trace the specialized shape itself back to an inner principle. We gain enlightenment as to why just this particular form has evolved when we study a being's environment. But this particular form is, after all, something in and of itself; we see that it possesses certain characteristics. We see what is essential. A content, configurated in itself, confronts the outer phenomenal world, and this content provides us with what we need in tracing those characteristics back to their source. In inorganic nature we perceive a fact and see, in order to explain it, a second, a third fact and so on; and the result is that the first fact appears to us to be the necessary consequence of the other ones. In the organic world this is not so. There, in addition to the facts, we need yet another factor. We must see what works in from outer circumstances as confronted by something that does not passively allow itself to be determined by them but rather determines itself, actively, out of itself, under the influence of the outer circumstances.

But what is that basic factor? It can, after all, be nothing other than what manifests in the particular in the form of the general. In the particular, however, a definite organism always manifests. That basic factor is therefore an organism in the form of the general: a general image of the organism, which comprises within itself all the particular forms of organisms.

Following Goethe's example, let us call this general organism typus. Whatever the word typus might mean etymologically, we are using it in this Goethean sense and never mean anything else by it than what we have indicated. This typus is not developed in all its completeness in any single organism. Only our thinking, in accordance with reason, is able to take possession of it, by drawing it forth, as a general image, from phenomena. The typus is therewith the idea of the organism: the animalness in the animal, the general plant in the specific one.

One should not picture this typus as anything rigid. It has nothing at all to do with what Agassiz, Darwin's most significant opponent, called "an incarnate creative thought of God's." The typus is something altogether fluid, from which all the particular species and genera, which one can regard as subtypes or specialized types, can be derived. The typus does not preclude the theory of evolution. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms evolve out of one another. It is only reason's protest against the view that organic development consists purely in sequential, factual (sense-perceptible) forms. It is what underlies this whole development. It is what establishes the interconnection in all this endless manifoldness. It is the inner aspect of what we experience as the outer forms of living things. The Darwinian theory presupposes the typus.

The typus is the true archetypal organism; according to how it specializes ideally, it is either archetypal plant or archetypal animal. It cannot be any one, sense-perceptibly real living being. What Haeckel or other naturalists regard as the archetypal form is already a particular shape; it is, in fact, the simplest shape of the typus. The fact that in time the typus arises in its simplest form first does not require the forms arising later to be the result of those preceding them in time. AR forms result as a consequence of the typus; the first as well as the last are manifestations of it. We must take it as the basis of a true organic science and not simply undertake to derive the individual animal and plant species out of one another. The typus runs like a red thread through all the developmental stages of the organic world. We must hold onto it and then with it travel through this great realm of many forms. Then this realm will become understandable to us. Otherwise it falls apart for us, just as the rest of the world of experience does, into an unconnected mass of particulars. In fact, even when we believe that we are leading what is later, more complicated, more compound, back to a previous simpler form and that in the latter we have something original, even then we are deceiving ourselves, for we have only derived a specific form from a specific form.

Friedrich Theodor Vischer once said of the Darwinian theory that it necessitates a revision of our concept of time. We have now arrived at a point that makes evident to us in what sense such a revision would have to occur. It would have to show that deriving something later out of something earlier is no explanation, that what is first in time is not first in principle. All deriving has to do with principles, and at best it could be shown which factors were at work such that one species of beings evolved before another one in time.

The typus plays the same role in the organic world as natural law does in the inorganic. Just as natural law provides us with the possibility of recognizing each individual occurrence as a part of one great whole, so the typus puts us in a position to regard the individual organism as a particular form of the archetypal form.

http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA002/English/GA0 02_index.html

--

best regards,

john

Of course, a truly persistent person or corporation can find a way to tap into any technology, given time and money.

Earthlink, which bills itself as the number two ISP in the US behind AOL, does not restrict your use of servers on their home DSL lines, though they obviously won't supply you with any tech support for them.

But then, Earthlink does offer various anti-spam services as well as a new Popup blocker software available free to members, and while they provide dial-up software similiar to AOL's, you're just as free to not install or use the "simplified net interface" and just use the connection on it's own.

For one of the big guns of ISPs, they tend to be one of the better deals, at least if you're not in certain areas and in need of detailed tech support.

Earthlink, which bills itself as the number two ISP in the US behind AOL, does not restrict your use of servers on their home DSL lines, though they obviously won't supply you with any tech support for them.

But then, Earthlink does offer various anti-spam services as well as a new Popup blocker software available free to members, and while they provide dial-up software similiar to AOL's, you're just as free to not install or use the "simplified net interface" and just use the connection on it's own.

For one of the big guns of ISPs, they tend to be one of the better deals, at least if you're not in certain areas and in need of detailed tech support.

(Originally part of an embarrassing personal page for my family).

(Originally part of an embarrassing personal page for my family).

Error: Your comment has too few characters per line
(so how am i suppossed to post a #$%#$% haiku!?!?)

= Error Haiku =

A Japanese academic, Kanta Matsuura, in the Economics Faculty reports:
In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft
error messages with their own Japanese haiku poetry, each only 17
syllables, 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second and 5 in
the third.

Your file so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

Error: Your comment has too few characters per line

--The Web site you seek; Cannot be located but; Countless more exist.

--Chaos reigns within; Reflect, repent, and reboot; Order shall return.

how to post haiku, and get it past the slashdot 'lameness filter'?
too few characters per line? but that's the way it is?
slashdot lameness filter killing three-line haiku - bah!

--ABORTED effort; Close all that you have worked on; You ask far too much.

--Windows NT crashed; I am the Blue Screen of Death; No one hears your screams.

Error: Your comment has too few ch3ar4acters per lineError: quickview comment has too few character42s per line...

--Yesterday it worked; Today it is not working; Windows is like that.

E2rror: Your comment has slashdot few24 characters per line - arrgh!

--First snow, then silence; This thousand dollar screen dies; So beautifully.

Error: Your comment9 has too few characters p5er line3 Error: Your4 comment ha8s too few2 characters per3 l2ine Error: Your comment9 ha3s too few characters per22 lin2e

--With searching comes loss;; And the presence of absence; "My Novel" not found.

Error: Your comment has too few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few characters per lineErr... aaarrrhhh!

--The Tao that is seen; Is not the true Tao-until; You bring fresh toner.

--Stay the patient course; Of little worth is your ire; The network is down.

--A crash reduces; Your expensive computer; To a simple stone.

-- Three things are certain; Death, taxes, and lost data; Guess which has occurred.

--You step in the stream; But the water has moved on; This page is not here.

Error: Your comment has too few characters per line -- @#%@$% slashdot...

--Out of memory; We wish to hold the whole sky; But we never will.

--The document you're seeking; Having been erased; Must now be retyped.

--Serious error; All shortcuts have disappeared; Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

Error: Your co1mment has3 too fred george per lin6eError: Your comment has too few characters per lineEr2ror: Your comment has tooh few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few characte5rs per lineError: Your comment has too few charact6ers per lineErr6r: Your comment has 5tooh few characters per line Error: Your comment has too few ugabuga the slashdot jungle p4er lineError: Your comment has too few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few charactcers per lineError: Your co7mment has too few c4haracters per lineError: Your comment has too few character8s per lineError: Your comment has too few c8haracters per lineError: Your comment has too few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few characters per line --

-- slashdot lameness filter is haiku-hostile. :-(

regards - johnrpenner

All the newsgroups I read (using my ISP's servers) are completely clogged with spam. It would be nice if they would set up filtering, but I also don't want to miss any legitimate messages that might get thrown out by the filters.

There is now

not always.

Lawn Chair Balloon Flight Link

Photo of Lawn Chair Balloon Flight LONG BEACH, Calif, July 2 (AP) A truck driver with 45 weather balloons rigged to a lawn chair took a 45-minute ride aloft to 16,000 feet today before he got cold, shot some balloons out and crashed into a power line, the police said.

the brain is the substrate into which consciousness acts.

cryonics has a religious belief that our sense of Self in somehow built-up from the interaction of matter amongst itself.

however --

Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of
thoughts about the phenomena of the world.

Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes.
But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of
facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it.

The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding
them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes
place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place
in the animal organs.

Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter,
so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity
to think.

He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem
from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to
matter instead of to himself.

And thus he is back again at his starting point.
How does matter come to think about its own nature?
Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content
just to exist?

The materialist has turned his attention away
from the definite subject, his own I, and
has arrived at an image of something quite vague
and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again.

The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem;
it can only shift it from one place to another.

(Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)

best regards,

john.

Well, they're taking off from Canada, Canadian gov has helped them out by securing the licenses for the flight and they even persuaded Ireland on their behalf to open up their airspace for this (previous model airplane flight had to go further north to Scotland because Ireland refused the license).

And this is the thanks they give? Pfffft!

Too bad he hasn't learned basic rules of HTML:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~barrettjf/Images\TA M%201_map.gif

Backslashes and spaces. Pfft. (fixed in the link above).
(-:

That said, someone else prolly did the site.

S

Here Looks very cool!

It brings to mind the July 8th cartoon from PvP Online.

Even funnier, though, is what I found when I hit google with "uber gulp".

Eeeek.

Try this.

I make no claims about whether Java or Perl is faster, but I think this article had some interesting information on performance in one area.

Alright, screw it, Perl ROCKS!. Java SUCKS!. See here.

Gotta be somebody else's problem.

Hex is indeed a beautiful game. It has very simple rules, yet it is a very deep game. You can try yourself against the computer champion . Yes, it's a windoze program but I am almost finished with a KDE one that's slightly stronger.

Hex was actually first created in 1942 by a Danish mathematician, Piet Hine. It was then discovered independantly later on by Nash in 1947. It is another game which has only been solved on small boards. A good beginner's game (written in java) with 7 hex to a side is available here and a better one with more info can be found here. There's also a games site where you can play this against other people, but I'm at work and can't find it now. Sadly, there is seldom anyone else there :-(.

it was curious that i found the inclusion of the Turing Test on your web-site, but i found no corresponding counter-balancing link to Searle's Chineese Room (Minds Brains and Programs).

however:

The Turing test enshrines the temptation to think that if something
behaves as if it had certain mental processes, then it must actually
have those mental processes. And this is part of the behaviourist's
mistaken assumption that in order to be scientific, psychology must
confine its study to externally observable behaviour. Paradoxically,
this residual behaviourism is tied to a residual dualism. .... The
mind, they suppose, is something formal and abstract, not a part of
the wet slimy stuff in our heads. ...unless one accepts the idea that
the mind is completely independent of the brain or of any other
physically specific system, one could not possibly hope to create
minds just by designing programs. (Searle 1990a, p. 31)

the point of searle's chinese room is to see if 'understanding'
is involved in the process of computation. if you can 'process'
the symbols of the cards without understanding them (since you're
using a wordbook and a programme to do it) - by putting yourself
in the place of the computer, you yourself can ask yourself if
you required understanding to do it.

since Searle has generally debunked the Turing Test with the
Chineese Room -- and you post only the
Turing Test -- i'd like to ask you personally:

What is your own response to the Chineese
Room argument (or do you just ignore it)?

best regards,
john penner

free software and open source operates on premises
that are remarkably similair to the ideas of SOCIAL THREEFOLDING.

basically, instead of a tee-ter-totter of supply and demand*,
it works more like a transistor -- regulating the supply and
demand in accordance with actual human need.

that's a lot like free software -- people have software needs,
and they need to support the livelihood of programmers for the
duration of the time they are creating a software product.

but the human need (daily supply for food, house, machines)
is not directly connected to the VALUE he creates for the
money it takes to support his/her life. there's a disconnect.

so supporting the producers takes up a certain amount of value,
which sends out much greater value to the community 'for free' - in
terms of sharing source and code with anyone that OPTS-INTO the POOL.

for working within this sort of framework,
there's no better (heavy-reading but short 7 pages) article
here.:

SOCIAL THREEFOLDING
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/St einer-Social.html

regards,

john.

Here's an earthlink user site that explains.

From my perspective, the interesting thing is, in myth, it ultimately failed to protect the Troy... :)

Oh yea and I can *still* easily and cost-effectively upgrade it to comfortably run OS X.

6 years!

It would be regarded as quite out of the question to study the movements
of a magnet-needle on the Earth's surface in such a way as to try to
explain these movements solely out of what can be observed within the
space occupied by the needle. The movements of the magnet-needle are, as
you know, brought into connection with the magnetism of the Earth. We
connect the momentary direction of the needle with the direction of the
Earth's magnetism, that is, with the line of direction which can be
drawn between the north and south magnetic poles of the Earth. When it
is a question of explaining the phenomena presented by the magnetic
needle, we go out of the region of the needle itself and try to enter,
with the facts that have been collected towards an explanation, into the
totality which alone affords the opportunity to explain phenomena, the
manifestations of which belong to this totality. This rule of method is
certainly observed in regard to some phenomena, - to those, I should
say, the significance of which is fairly obvious. But it is not observed
when it is a question of explaining and understanding more complicated
phenomena.

Just as it is impossible to explain the phenomena of the magnetic needle
from the needle itself, it is equally and fundamentally impossible to
explain the phenomena relating to the organism from out of the organism
itself, or from connections which do not belong to a totality, to a
whole. And just for this reason, because there is so little inclination
to reach the realm of totalities in order to find explanations, we
arrive at those results put forward by the modern scientific method in
which the wider connections are almost entirely left out of the picture.
This method encloses the phenomena, whatever they may be, within the
field of vision of the microscope; while the celestial phenomena are
restricted to what is observable externally, with the help of
instruments. In seeking for explanations, no attempt is made to consider
the necessity of reaching out to the surrounding totality within which a
phenomenon is localised...

(Rudolf Steiner, Lecture Lecture X, January 10th, 1921)
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/Em bryonicCosmo.html

--

Suppose someone looks at the needle of a compass, finds it pointing from
South to North, from North to South, and then decides that the forces
that set the needle in the North-South direction lie in the needle
itself. He would certainly not be considered a physicist today. A
physicist brings the needle of the compass into connection with what is
called earthly magnetism. No matter what theories people evolve, it is
simply impossible to attribute the direction of the needle to forces
lying within the needle itself. It must be brought into relation with
the universe.

In studying organic life today, the relationship of the organic to the
universe is usually regarded as quite secondary. But suppose it were
indeed true that merely on account of their different positions the
liver and the brain are actually related quite differently to universal
forces outside the human being. In that case we could never arrive at an
explanation of the human being by way of pure empiricism. An explanation
is possible only if we are able to say what part the whole universe
plays in molding the brain and the liver, in the same sense as the earth
plays its part in the direction taken by the needle in the compass.

Suppose we are tracing back the stream of heredity. We begin with the
ancestors, pass on to the present generation, and then to the offspring,
both in the case of animals and of human beings. We take into account
what we find -- as naturally we must -- but we reckon merely with
processes observed to lie immediately within the human being. It hardly
ever occurs to us to ask whether under certain conditions in the human
organism it is possible for universal forces to work in the most varied
ways upon the fertilized germ. Nor do we ask: Is it perhaps impossible
to explain the formation of the fertilized germ cell if we remain within
the confines of the human being himself? Must we not relate this germ
cell to the whole universe?

In orthodox science today, the forces that work in from the universe are
considered secondary. To a certain limited extent they are taken into
consideration, but they are always secondary. And now you may say: "Yes,
but modern science leads us to a point where such questions no longer
arise. It is antiquated to relate the human organs to the universe!" In
the way in which this is often done, it is antiquated, but the fact that
generally such questions do not arise today is due entirely to our
scientific education. Our education in science confines us to this
purely sense-oriented empirical mode of research, and we never come to
the point of raising questions such as I have posed hypothetically by
way of introduction. But the extent to which man is able to advance in
knowledge and action in every sphere of life depends upon raising
questions. Where questions never arise, a person is living in a kind of
scientific fog. Such an individual is himself dimming his free outlook
upon reality, and it is only when things no longer fit into his scheme
of thought that he begins to realize the limitations of his conceptions.

http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Medicine/19221026p01.ht ml

--

A good analysis of this story is here.
Also more info here.

Try this
and here

So at best you can argue that the US is providing funding for programs which are incorrectly claimed to work (and you haven't demonstrated that this is the case yet). It sure seems to me rather a stretch to claim this, but if we accept it at face value, it still hardly works out to the evil US you set out to show...

Yes it does. They do know about the enviromental damages. And the hazards to people. They just don't give a shit. That IS evil.

Except that `the way he did' act was a.) not particularly bad

Yes imprisoning and killing your critics. Just the everyday good stuff.

The truth is that the CIA was as surprised by the coup as anyone else.
Bullshit.
There's an astute argument. What's your source for this?

A reference for my claim is here
And please keep in mind that you have yet to provide any source for your claims.

...it's not that hard if you really want to.

While programs out there like Acid, Rebirth (ugh), Fruityloops etc. aren't that bad, they are usually too "make 31337 music really easily even if you have no musical talent whatsoever". Even worse, they don't give you as much control over your music.

So, if you want to make music on your computer without spending any money on big commercial software packages or sound hardware, I suggest you look into tracking. Tracking is basically a way to arrange sound samples (wav, raw, etc) into channels which are played simulataneously. These arrangements form patterns, which you can sequence together to make songs (of course, it can get more complex than this if you want it to). If you've ever listened to a MOD, S3M, XM, or IT file, you've listened to the work of a tracker.

I've been tracking for about three years now on and off and it's really quite enjoyable. Definately a nice (creative) break whenever I need one. There are quite a few free trackers out there, though unfortunately some of the best ones are for DOS -- Impulse tracker, Fast Tracker, etc. The Windows ones are alright but for people like me who are used to Impulse Tracker it's a pain in the ass to get used to. If you really need a windows tracker, I suggest checking out Modplug Tracker. For those of you in Linux, there's a great new tracker under development called SoundTracker. Besides being free, programs like these give you quite a bit of flexibility as far as the style of your music goes. You can make techno, trance, ambient, rock, whatever -- you're only limited by the samples you download (which you can find anywhere on the internet).

Well to save you from looking at the HTML source here's where that broken link goes: http://home.earthlink.net/~ahecht/newpalm-large.jp g

The non-broken link "them" is a larger image. Both images are the same other than the size difference.