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came across this on everything2. Might be worth perusing.

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned this yet, but there's an excellent node at Everything2 with books liable to give you a mind-job:

It's got Iain Banks, Henlein, Stephen King, and loads of good authors.

I thought it was already settled that the only thing Blue Planet Software/The Tetris Company actually owned was the trademark on the word TETRIS, not a patent or copyright on the game of falling tetraminoes. If you disagree, and you represent BPS/TTC, please send cease and desist letters to the address listed on this page.

Oh, and Tetris Worlds is shit.

If you people keep publicly posting ways to circumvent Apple's attempts to secure files from being pirated then it won't be long before they're do a Software Update containing an "updated" version of SSHd. STFU .

Can anyone explain to me what a "real-time OS" is?

real-time OS

I'll be teaching remedial googling later.

It's satire. Probably stolen from E2. Check out these other examples:
Dangerous chemicals: absurd liberal myth and my favorite: The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth

It's satire. Probably stolen from E2. Check out these other examples:
Dangerous chemicals: absurd liberal myth and my favorite: The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth

Trust in E2, and you shall find the way.

First of all if you want to parody an Intitialism such as BSoD you want to keep it the same amount of letters. Beachball is actually two words according to Dictionary.com beach ball is the correct spelling. So SBBoD just doesn't work, it looks and sounds stupid.

Next up the Pizza, it in no way looks like any pizza I have seen under any state of mind. So you can just quit it with that. How many blue and purple pizza slices have you seen not counting Japanese Squid Ink Pizza? Even that's more black than either color.

In its most general form the spinning "Beach Ball" or "Pizza" cursor is really just a Disc.

I've been calling it a Spinning Disc of Death for as long as I can remember but someone made a good point in a post to this /. article that unlike the Blue Screen of Death, the cursor doesn't mean an imminent and uncertain end, i.e. a crash.

So I'd like to maybe switch the D of Death to maybe be the D of Doom, because to most of us having to wait makes it feel more like we're doomed when we're in a hurry more than it makes us feel like we're going to die.

My Spinning Disc of Death will now be known as a Spinning Disc of Doom. :)

I also like what user jo_ham called it "The Beach Ball of Rumination"

In addition, the colorful cursor isn't one of a kind, it has an older brother that you sometimes see when using Classic or Carbon apps like Mozilla. It is made up of four quarter slices alternating black and white. When you use the term SDoD you cover all the bases...

First of all if you want to parody an Intitialism such as BSoD you want to keep it the same amount of letters. Beachball is actually two words according to Dictionary.com beach ball is the correct spelling. So SBBoD just doesn't work, it looks and sounds stupid.

Next up the Pizza, it in no way looks like any pizza I have seen under any state of mind. So you can just quit it with that. How many blue and purple pizza slices have you seen not counting Japanese Squid Ink Pizza? Even that's more black than either color.

In its most general form the spinning "Beach Ball" or "Pizza" cursor is really just a Disc.

I've been calling it a Spinning Disc of Death for as long as I can remember but someone made a good point in a post to this /. article that unlike the Blue Screen of Death, the cursor doesn't mean an imminent and uncertain end, i.e. a crash.

So I'd like to maybe switch the D of Death to maybe be the D of Doom, because to most of us having to wait makes it feel more like we're doomed when we're in a hurry more than it makes us feel like we're going to die.

My Spinning Disc of Death will now be known as a Spinning Disc of Doom. :)

I also like what user jo_ham called it "The Beach Ball of Rumination"

In addition, the colorful cursor isn't one of a kind, it has an older brother that you sometimes see when using Classic or Carbon apps like Mozilla. It is made up of four quarter slices alternating black and white. When you use the term SDoD you cover all the bases...

Unfortunately, i don't have the time to give you the full length reply that this deserves, but i'll say this:

I'm legally an adult, and i certainly agree with you that "kids are not the most reputable sources of what is good for themselves," but in reality, i think they're no worse than humanity's average. If i restricted the speech of every person who squanders their right, or uses it poorly, there'd be a hell of a lot less talking around, and a much better signal to noise ratio. However, i know that i'm no exception to the rule, and i nor anyone else deserves the power to make that descision. Let the parents parent their kids-- not the government. A child disobeying his or her parents should NOT be the business of the law, but of the parents themselves.

"People tend to forget we get our freedoms in small doses until we are able to handle them all." Look into the phrase, "human rights." I'm not saying that this proves you wrong, but if you really want to argue that "we get our freedoms in small doeses until we are able to handle them all," you'd better be ready to address hundreds of years of philosophy on the subject.

b.c

• Barney the Dinosaur theme song
• Bananaman theme song
• Minimum Wage (They Might Be Giants)
• Harvey The Wonder Hamster (Weird Al)
• Countdown theme song
• Takin' Retards To The Zoo (Dead Milkmen)
• Working Class Hero (John Lennon)
• I Wupped Batman's Ass (Wesley Willis)
• Toddler Hiway (They Might Be Giants)

Duct tape your victim to a chair, pick one of the songs at random and play it over...and over...and over...

• Barney the Dinosaur theme song
• Bananaman theme song
• Minimum Wage (They Might Be Giants)
• Harvey The Wonder Hamster (Weird Al)
• Countdown theme song
• Takin' Retards To The Zoo (Dead Milkmen)
• Working Class Hero (John Lennon)
• I Wupped Batman's Ass (Wesley Willis)
• Toddler Hiway (They Might Be Giants)

Duct tape your victim to a chair, pick one of the songs at random and play it over...and over...and over...

• Barney the Dinosaur theme song
• Bananaman theme song
• Minimum Wage (They Might Be Giants)
• Harvey The Wonder Hamster (Weird Al)
• Countdown theme song
• Takin' Retards To The Zoo (Dead Milkmen)
• Working Class Hero (John Lennon)
• I Wupped Batman's Ass (Wesley Willis)
• Toddler Hiway (They Might Be Giants)

Duct tape your victim to a chair, pick one of the songs at random and play it over...and over...and over...

• Barney the Dinosaur theme song
• Bananaman theme song
• Minimum Wage (They Might Be Giants)
• Harvey The Wonder Hamster (Weird Al)
• Countdown theme song
• Takin' Retards To The Zoo (Dead Milkmen)
• Working Class Hero (John Lennon)
• I Wupped Batman's Ass (Wesley Willis)
• Toddler Hiway (They Might Be Giants)

Duct tape your victim to a chair, pick one of the songs at random and play it over...and over...and over...

• Barney the Dinosaur theme song
• Bananaman theme song
• Minimum Wage (They Might Be Giants)
• Harvey The Wonder Hamster (Weird Al)
• Countdown theme song
• Takin' Retards To The Zoo (Dead Milkmen)
• Working Class Hero (John Lennon)
• I Wupped Batman's Ass (Wesley Willis)
• Toddler Hiway (They Might Be Giants)

Duct tape your victim to a chair, pick one of the songs at random and play it over...and over...and over...

• Barney the Dinosaur theme song
• Bananaman theme song
• Minimum Wage (They Might Be Giants)
• Harvey The Wonder Hamster (Weird Al)
• Countdown theme song
• Takin' Retards To The Zoo (Dead Milkmen)
• Working Class Hero (John Lennon)
• I Wupped Batman's Ass (Wesley Willis)
• Toddler Hiway (They Might Be Giants)

Duct tape your victim to a chair, pick one of the songs at random and play it over...and over...and over...

Aix is a microkernel design, At the time I started using it ('93 / aix 3.1) this was 'common knowlege' and the basis was Mach. I beleive that's with extensive IBM mods. Yes I also remember the time when 'Workplace shell' was going to sit on a microkernel under aix, os/2 ... That was also the days of IBM's SAA :-).

You may also remember that the (ca) '96 timeframe was when IBM was offering it's microkernel investment to competitors. I (still) beleive that this was on the basis that they had migrated os/400 off of it's mini-platform onto RISC and DEC and HP were looking at the same problem with a need to move VMS and MPE respectively onto their RISC platforms.

I know for a fact that the AIX VM has the same design (benefits and limitations) that Hurd has been dealing with in their Mach underpinning. IT's an approach to the VM which to my knowlege is unique to Mach/osf1.

I'll offer the following assertions that AIX is based on Mach.

AIX/ESA, runs native on S/370 and S/390 mainframes, based on OSF/1. AIX [rs/6k] was to have been base for OSF/1 until Mach was chosen instead. I hope this subsection is converging : ref

The Mach microkernel technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University serves as the basis for IBM's microkernel work. On the Mach base IBM is experimenting with new ways of implementing low-end environments, developing stand-alone file servers, integrating multiple operating system personalities on a single computer, ... For instance, the low-end AIX implementation on Mach currently runs as a dominant personality and supports an environment for running DOS programs as a secondary personality. ref

MACH isn't a UNIX system either but is the basis for interesting UNIX kernel dev elopments. The DEC UNIX kernel is build on MACH (as well as the GNU Hurd, NextSt ep/OpenStep, Apple's forthcoming Rhapsody and IBM's OS/2 for the RS/6000). ref

IBM's own AIX operating system is based on a different Unix kernel, called the Mach kernel, which was created at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, but many of the layers of Unix functions that ride on top of this kernel are apparen tly based on Unix System V ref

See also e2[microkernel]

Posted by Hemos on 15:00 19 May 2003
from the like-ma-no-extra-wires dept.

Must mean that ma is high strung enough as it is, what with the dot com crash, 9/11 and everything.
Or that we like "ma" with no extra wires, i.e. nekkid.

"How do I look pop?"
"Perf'ek, ma!"

[OT RANT]
I wouldn't have cared to post anything if it wasn't for M1 on parent. The FAQ says "Karma is not your dick size." Huh? Right now I have "Karma: Excellent", so I guess the FAQ needs updating.
[/OT RANT]

Just as the subject says: our current GPUs can (easily) simulate any turing machine, and thus any other CPU, and in turn run all programs you may imagine.

It is done via fragment (pixel) programs (for the arithmetic instructions) and multiple 'rendering' passes (for program control). Ask Göögle if you want to know more about this interesting subject. :-)

Just my 2 cc.

Best regards,
Daniel

If you're into the whole anime thing, like I am, Bit Torrent is a godsend. BitTorrent is the biggest thing to happen to digital fansubs since DivX.

It is a big thing to happen to digital fansubs, but it isn't a godsend. Fansubs were supposed to be only available to fanboys/girls, that have watched most commercially available anime and want to watch other anime that is unlikely to get commercially available. Now most anime are licensed (but not announce) before they air in Japan. So most fansubs now are just an excuse for piracy.

Bittorrent is pushing into same direction. Bittorrent works really well for really popular stuff, that is very likely to get a US DVD release in the next year. But it works only mediocre for stuff that isn't that popular like very old anime or stuff like Mermaid Melody. Old shows or shows for childern are where fansubbing still makes some sense. So Bittorrent only helps fansubs where they aren't needed anymore and are contraproductive.

If you don't know about fansubs and the ideas behind it, read this very nice writeup on everything2

The "Third World" was originally used to describe commoners (1st and 2nd world being nobility and clergy).

But the "Third World" as in "Third World Country" was originally used to describe countries that were not capitalist or communist. (basicly countries that had not developed enough to get to that turning point). So certainly there were major issues with living conditions in many communist countries, and still are, the second world is not dead yet by far.

some info
and also some stuff on everything2

Turn on; Tune in; and Drop out

Cheers,
W00t

it's just big and complicated (like a Hummer?)
A Hummer isn't really complicated, neither this nor that

it's just big and complicated (like a Hummer?)
A Hummer isn't really complicated, neither this nor that

A lot of people seem to be able to fathom the moneyless society in Star Trek, but that's only because its "fantasy" technology is so advanced that there's not much scarcity to worry about. People see "Earl grey tea. Hot", and think, "Damn! I'd never have to work again if I could copy food like mp3s! Too bad it's a fantasy."

But the thing is that StarTrek-like replicators won't be fantasy much longer. Molecular manufacturing will be in the common mans hands in only a few decades; with all the social/political/economic upheaval that brings. It's like open source on a whole new level, and like open source, there will be a selfish few trying to stomp it out. It's genetic.

Oh, and there will always be a need for money btw (since there's ALWAYS scarcity that you'd want to trade it for), but I prefer to think of it terms of whuffies rather than cold, hard, cash.

--

Yeah I was gonna say. What in the hell happened in that timeframe? All of a sudden T&J are collaborating against common foes!?

Low budget reasons and the fear over the violence of the cartoon. I'm a *huge* Tom and Jerry fan, but every time I glimpse "The Calypso Cat" I feel like drinking poison. A quick cure for that is, another re-run of "Texas Tom".

For an excellent article on the subject, head over to this article.

The definition of "public performance" includes broadcasting.

http://everything2.com/?node_id=1029506

I saw this mentioned elsewhere on the thread too. A melody does not have a "keyspace" of all 88 keys on the keyboard. No melody uses a range that wide. The vast majority of melodies you hear fit in one octave. (12 notes)
And the vast majority of the rest fit in 2.

Go read the link. Be enlightened.

This good line of argument sounds familiar, but are you sure it wasn't Dr James Lovelock who said that Mars is barren.

OK. But there was no sample. It was a replayed bass line. Now, if they had made up a bassline of their own, and someone found a song which played the same six notes, could they sue as well?

The atmosphere around a DDR machine is something you simply can't get at home.

Perhaps not in a single-family residence, but at the school I went to, there was a weekly meeting of the DDR club, complete with region-modded PS1 systems, and that was full of atmosphere.

DDR had the first new control scheme (used in more than a couple of games) since the light gun.

Sorry, but Nintendo beat Konami to it: Power Pad. (This cartridge is fake.)

What would really be nice would be if the DVD spec included a way for the studios encode the movie in widescreen, and then include a script that let the player convert it to pan-and-scan on the fly, so J. Random Videophile and his granny could watch whichever version they prefer, without worrying about different physical versions of the disc.

But, of course, that would make sense.

Hey, it was marked as libel by lots of people, secular and religious, all over the world, Muslim and otherwise. You are practically ready to worhip The Satanic Verses and elevate it above all else, though you haven't even read it. And I didn't say it deserved a death penalty, I'm not a Shia.

No worries, I see where you're coming from, mate. (-:

*I* vote for a form of meritocracy in a gift economy where those who still produce more wealth (in its many forms) than they consume earn a kind of karma (or "whuffie") that can be traded like money for things that are still truly scarce, such as beachfront realestate, or priority seating at the restaurant nobody goes to anymore because it's too crowded... :)

Just because everyone could live a luxurious life of mediocrity with their "StarTrek replicators" and "AI-helpers" doesn't mean society should penalize those minds (real or AI) who strive above and beyond.

--

Maybe so, but it remains quite infortunate. Language is the means with which we think. If that deteriorates, thought deteriorates. Where would we be if programming errors were taken as lightly as grammar errors?

http://everything2.com/?node_id=969638

...the current makers of Tom and Jerry for everything.

Not to mention the out-of-ideas makers of every cartoon today. Why is there a "kids" version of cartoon classics that pretty much recycles the old plots?

There's Tom and Jerry Kids, Flinstones Kids, A Pup named Scooby, Tiny Toons and so on. They are far too cute and unfunny.

I positively adored Tom and Jerry. The original version. Then the producers decided that it was too violent and watered it down to hell. For an excelent article on T&J check this out.

Just a guess, but I'd bet most of them prefer the romantic soap-operatic stuff (eg: another post mentions Maison Ikkoku) rather than the giant transforming space robots and sailor suited magical teens attacked by tentacle-things.

I'm male, but personally I can't stand most anime fans because they're just in it for the multifaceted over-the-topness that many animes feature. I used to go to a club movie day, watch the Gunsmith Cats and go home...

This post states that postmodern, metawriting is hard to read. This sentence referes the reader to "This is the title of the story, which is also found several times in the story itself."

I'd say a decent salary would be about 30,000. This is heavily dependant on where you live, of course.

I live in the Rockford, IL, area. The industrial based economy around here is notoriously sensitive to economic issues around the country. I've had machinist friends laid off, I've been laid off, teachers have been laid off, graphic designers have been laid off, etc. etc. My skill base is wide and relatively in depth, but still, places can name their price, and demand excessive qualifications for miniscule salaries. Examples? See FuckthatJob.com for a few in preferred line of work (web/graphic design). I have a degree, etc. etc., and a decent amount of experience for someone who recently graduated (actually about 2 years ago now).

I am currently underemployed as a line operator for a nationally known food maker/distributer. (Trust me, you've probably eaten their products before.) I make a little under 20,000 a year, without overtime. I've worked up to 20 hours extra (making about 60 a week) just to make ends meet. Now, because of the fiscal year's imminent demise, earnings at my plant, as all other places it seems, are being inflated by line shut-downs, lay-offs, etc. etc. Not only has my overtime been discontinued, but my line has been closed as well.

I've been without income for a couple weeks. Luckily, these weeks are the ones without the bills coming in. I think. I've applied for unemployment, but I honestly don't think I qualify. I still send out resumes and applications and so on, and I've gotten two interviews in six months since I've started at my current employer, and those are for internal positions at my plant. I have looked near Chicago and Madison,(WI) and even thought about heading back to school, but my grades the first time around were . . . explainably inconsistant. :-) I had an epiphany, where I suddenly found out that it was important to have a good time with the papers I had to write, and my grades improved, too. Law school was the thought, until I couldn't even afford to take the LSAT.

I'm glad I have a job, considering, but I haven't been able to pay rent regularly in months, it's been as much as I can for a while. This month doesn't look good either.

A decent salary is heavily dependant on where you live. There are jobs, yes, but some of them are appalling (telemarketing) or the employers are wanting way overqualified applicants for low-paying jobs because those applicants are desparate. Even after 60 hours a week, I was thinking of getting a second job. My wife won't work because because she wants to stay home with our first child. Obviously, this decision is something I'm against, but I can't force her to get a job.

In any case, the economy sucks. Tax Cuts might help for now, but who knows in a few years . . . fundimental changes are needed, and the longer I go underemployed, the more radical my politics become about the economy and large corporations. I know I'm not the only one that this is happening to. Being treated like a resource instead of a human is disheartening.

It's analogous the plural used by the hacker community for DEC's Vax computers: Vaxen.

Well, provided it is in the right part of the spectrum, the human body might have a relatively low absorbtion rate. Certainly, when we think microwaves, we think microwave oven, but that's only a small part of the microwave spectrum.

The more important point, though is that this may actually cause far less ambient electromagnetic radiation than normal power lines. Ordinary power lines carrying AC current are basically like large antennae (though if properly designed, they are hopefully not very good antennae). They generate radio frequency signals that go off in every direction (actually primarily perpendicular to the lines), which you know if you try to listen to AM radio underneath them. Depending on how they do it, a microwave beam could actually be quite well columnated, so that virtually all energy is sent directly toward the reciever. Certainly, if they used a maser this would be the case, but they probably won't. Remember, too, that they have an interest it making it very well columnated, because that increases the efficienty of the mechanism.

Since you should be able to columnate the beam pretty well, the main issue would seem to be stuff that might get in the way and scatter the beam: air (obviously), dust, flying animals (like cows from a catapult), and perhaps most importantly, water vapor. If you're worried about getting cooked, think about this: The human body is mostly water, as are most other animal bodies. In order to cook well, a microwave oven must be in the right range of the spectrum to heat water efficiently, which they do (efficient being a relative term). This beam must go through air that has water vapor in it and even rain. It must be designed so all that water is not a problem, meaning it probably must be designed so that it would not really "cook" an animal very well.

So, really, this beam shouldn't cook things and anyway there should really be very little leakage if designed correctly. I mean, I wouldn't go and stand in it, but it's probably not so dangerous for the reason you bring up. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's really a good idea from an engineering standpoint, and there's the other question of what happens if it gets misalligned or if somehow something does get in the beam that deflects a significant amount of it (like something metal). Anybody ever play SimCity 2000? :) I'm not saying it's not dangerous, just that this EMF stuff is probably not the main problem.

BTW, as far as I know there is no credible scientific evidence that electromagnetic radiation from power lines causes cancer (or other health effects). There were some studies that suggested it years ago, but last I heard they had all been refuted by newer, more extensive studies. I'm not aware of the scientific credentials of your "science fair experiments", nor am I a biologist, so I can't evaluate that evidence.

DNA is [like] spaghetti code because nature has been tinkering with the system for billions of years like a bad programmer.

How ignorant of you to say that. There was an article in the Feb. 2003 issue of Scientific American about genetic programming - the creation of new devices and electronic circuity by computer.

It basically involves starting out the core components (resistors, inductors, capacitors, etc) and a design (for a voltage-current converter, perhaps). A supercomputer is able to rewire the circuit through basic evolutionary processes including crossover, copying, and extinction, and come up with a much more efficient circuit.

The resulting circuitry is so effective and original that there have been designs that earned approval from the patent office. They're so complex, much like nature's genetic code.

Sure, it might look like spaghetti code - but you mean to tell me, nature is a bad programmer? Heh.

Google search on genetic programming
Everything2: Genetic programming
What is Genetic Engineering?

Ack!

A clickable link for the lazy: The moist towelette theory

Ammerican Mc Geees Alice is not based off the books

Oh thanks.

While we're on the topic of Disney and what's based on the books and what isn't, I'd claim that Disney's Pinocchio (1940) wasn't based too closely on the book either; it omitted most of the growing up the puppet had to do and felt more like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein than anything else. Disney tried to fix this by securing the USA rights to Pinocchio (2002), which followed the book nearly to the letter, but the actor cast in the leading role (Roberto Benigni) was much too old for the part. Several film critics have claimed that the boy from Life Is Beautiful would have been better as the puppet.

You're right! We can't go putting highly toxic and volatile chemicals into our vehicles!

What's funny is we have a sub-section of the WWW at Everything2 that seems to be heading in the direction of containing the sum of all human knowledge.

Or at least a summary of it.

Biggest problem is that people would rather write about themselves than node anything factual.

Did anyone think that the WWW would become so entertainment oriented?

My first website was a breath of fire 2 info-tastic spectacular (in fugly blue and black colours) so it was kinda both :)

Being a small bit of a geek, I think myself qualified to say whether a term is esoteric or not, and I must say, I've never seen FOSS in my life before. My first thought was "How is my local tourist goods shop suddenly competing with Microsoft on a global scale?".

Free Open Source Software (FOSS). Thanks, that's what I want. More adjectives. And, once more, have them all thrown into an acronym I can't recognize. That's not going to encourage cliquishness or scare away people who might otherwise be interested.

I even thought to look at E2 to see if the obscure FOSS had been noded. If it had been, a little link could have at least been provided to make this more accessible. Nope. Then again, I remember reading something in the Slash CVS which mentioned the E2 linking (with those little question marks) was broken.

No, not power; human's aren't an energy source, or even a very efficient energy transformer. Energy doesn't come from nothing. Apparently they had to dumb down the movie by calling people batteries instead of computers, and even that's a huge stetch IMO, but without humans, you're right, there's not much of a story to relate to.

Frankly, the Matrix could have been just as good without the "shocking" people-farms == energy crap.

e.g. In MY version it goes like this: The vast majority of people (including Neo) would have been unknowningly (that's important!) and forcefully uploaded into the Matrix when The Machines took over. Morpheus, and the rest of the rebels who managed to survive in the "real world" outside the Matrix are determined to either free the Minds by "downloading" them back into wasteful corporeal form, or to free the Matrix of Machine control, thereby freeing the Minds to live in a virtual world of their own choosing.

That's a much more interesting, and realistic story in my not so humble opinion.

--