Slashdot Mirror

All these revelations about the goings-on within Microsoft give new meaning to the term "open source". Something is certainly "open" here, now they have a percentage on the code rewrite. That's a start.

I don't want to sound mean here, I love Windows, if it were not for it, all these nice PC's would not be all over the place. Imagine, "no Windows". Classes all weekend long on "installing Gentoo Linux.
Every Joe Sixpack for miles around required to attend, he needs that, since there is "no Windows", and his PC needs a specially tailored OS so he can get on the web.

Seriously, I have several old PC's that have very small amounts of RAM by todays standards, (4MB - 32MB), and run Windows 3.1 just fine. I got one little laptop out of the Dumpster, and it had a smashed screen. I fixed up a nice Windows 3.1 installation for the hard drive, then got another little hard drive for it, and put Basic Linux on that. It's now a little dial up server, and can serve up a web page that can be viewed (Netscape) and edited as needed.
  So, I can do both OS's, but I'll always like Windows, especially since the drivers in it exactly match the video, sound and modem in the box, something I have (over the years) had an interesting and educational time getting-to-work in Linux. Here's a link to one of my legacy pages detailing my progress in working with Linux.
I started out with Redhat 6.1, and stuck with it until I had it working just right on a little IBM PS-1 with 32 MB RAM, and a 25 MHZ system bus. I gave a thrift store $5.00 for it, in perfect shape, stuck in a closet for years, then donated.

If it were not for Windows being preinstalled (and simple to use for Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack), the techies would not have cheap PC's to play with.
Those things would cost tens of thousands of dollars, just like they did before the advent of Windows.

I say keep your Windows installation, even if you only use it occasionally, (not on the web, it's virus-land for Windows) and "install" some flavor of Linux.
I have Redhat 9, Windows 98, and almost always run my livecd linux with the cheatcode "fromhd=/dev/hdd7" on this box. Do that also on an XP box.
To get my printers to work, I have to use Kanotix livecd linux on the XP box, and Kubuntu Linux live cd on the Windows 98 box. (That one takes _forever_ to boot).

The other side of the flood of Windows computers into the marketplace is that the owners have virus problems, other troubles, and tend to set them out on the curb for the trashman to pick up. No suprise that they cannot fix the box. The modem I'm using right now came from such a discarded PC. All the machines I use were discarded Windows boxes, some just given away, here you are. Some bought for a fraction of what they cost new. All will run Linux, I have a (free) HP Pavilion 6330 that does sound just fine with my livecd linux.

So, what's not to like about Windows?

Actually, I had a similar thought.

I was thinking, though, that you're in the middle of your Lord of the Rings style quest to get to Elfendale or wherever when, suddenly, an Imperial Storm Trooper and a Halo Master Chief show up in their 4x4 Evolution 2 SUVs and offer to give you a lift. Of course, during the trip, these Carmageddon guys show up...

Of course, I have weird taste in comics, too, so that probably explains these thoughts...

You know, you can just download it and play it on your PC. Start here and poke around the links. I don't know if anyone still enforces the copyright on it, but the sites that offer it for download appear to go untouched.

Or you can get a legitimate one off E-Bay, guilt-free, with box and manuals and everything (even the codewheel!).

It runs in CGA graphics, so you might install DOS in a Virtual PC just to run it. The nice thing is you can just suspend the virtual machine and pop right back in where you left off.

It doesn't quite hold one's attention like it did back in the day, but it reminds you of those aspects that made it such a great experience for the imagination.

I got my account a couple days ago, and it actually pretty nice. Unlike Geocities/Angelfire, The Google Page Creator is fully wysiwyg (actually, I'm not certain you even can insert HTML), and your domain is slightly cooler. I much prefer: http://eric.redmond.googlepages.com/ to http://geocities.com/athena/eredmond

Funny, I could've sworn GeoCities and Angelfire had something like this many many years ago. Complete with page building tools and wizards...

The only true advantage I see to this is that Google gives you a LOT more disk space for free, wheras you have to pay for more with G&A... but perhaps that's why we're seeing "Sorry, we are unable to offer new accounts today. We appreciate your interest and invite you to add your Gmail address to our wait list. We'll let you know when we've enabled your account."

I'm not trying to advertise for G&A, I just don't see how this is something to jump up and down about. Search engine, Email, webpages, online stores/auctions... they're just becoming the next Yahoo.

--
"Man Bites Dog
Then Bites Self"

It was Salvage 1

Salvage 1 !!! w00t!!

I want that series, bad! Anyone know where to get it?

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/9 782/salvage1.html

What's going on is actually warfare. Zombie money is being killed. Unfortunately, there is a lot of zombie money being created all the time because of the way the tax system subsidizes property rights. So the zombie money can kill a lot of people before it finally dies, and if the death rate of the zombie money isn't higher than the rate the government creates it, it can keep killing the people for a very very long time.

Wisdom from the Native Americans, my ass. It was written by a white guy named Ted Perry in 1970.

Did you scroll down to the bottom of the page, where the author noted that "I have found that the text above is not historically accurate, nor even something that Chief Seattle said. I am not going to change the text above because of its impact"?

In other words, Ward Churchill meets Dan Rather. Who cares if it's authentic; let's just keep it out there for its "impact". Feelings and intentions always trump reality in the Red-Green cloud-cuckoo land.

-ccm

Short Article to the heart of the subject by a former muslim: Can Islam, Koran and Muhammad Command Unqualified Respect from the Westerners?
http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/MAKhan60207.htm
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t= 12658&highlight= http://www.faithfreedom.org/ http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t= 16317 http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p= 269251#269251
The following
http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?i dx=516 should be the object of protest NOT Cartoons.
You should familiarize yourself with what the koran has in store for you:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t= 12658&highlight=
koran 09:29 orders believers to fight non-believers until they pay tribute tax called jizya and feel themselves subdued: http://www.geocities.com/realitywithbite/islamandu nbelievers.htm "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." Qur'an 9:29. Under Islam, Jews and Christians had three choices: convert to Islam, retain their religion and pay tax or fight. Pagans and atheists had two choices Islam or the sword.
Narrated 'Ikrima: Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas who said: "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him'." Sahih Bukhari Vol. 9, Book 84, Num. 57. Also Vol. 9, Book 83 Num.17. Narrated Abu Musa: A man embraced Islam and then reverted back to Judaism. Mu'adh bin Jabal came and saw the man with Abu Musa. Mu'adh asked, "What is wrong with this (man)?" Abu Musa replied, "He embraced Islam and then reverted back to Judaism." Mu'adh said, "I will not sit down unless you kill him ( as it is ) the verdict of Allah and his Apostle." Bukhari Vol .9, Book 89, Num. 271. I heard the Prophet saying, "In the last days (of the world) there will appear young people with foolish thoughts and ideas. They will give good talks, but they will go out of Islam as an arrow goes out of its game, their faith will not exceed their throats. So wherever you find them, kill them, for there will be a reward for their killers on the Day of Resurrection." Sahih Bukhari Vol.6, Book 61, Num. 577. islam is offensive. also, koran says if you obey Mo, you obey god and Mo is perfect and a model for humans for all times. Mo ordered the assassination of at least 2 people whose only guilt is they criticized him: Asmat bint Marwan and Kaab ibn Ashraf He ordered the execution of 600 jews from the tribe of banu qureiza (all males above 12) check also http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t= 12658&highlight= http://www.sudanactivism.com/speakers.html

These guys will go up and bring the rovers back before Mars colonists get around to building a museum.

http://geocities.com/mypaljohn

I have Opera 8.52 and Flock 0.5.12 set up to _delete_ their ~/.opera or ~/.flock directories in ramdisk when these browsers are closed by the user. Done for security and to reclaim /ramdisk space.

Also, I have a preconfigured GuardDog firewall, allowing web surfing and email protocols by default, requiring no action or setup by the user, just boot the CD, and the firewall is up and doing what it does.

Tests on older computers with 128 MB of ram show that the livecd linux works just fine. I use a dual 200 mmx all the time, even for remastering.

I have a fully automated remastering script built in, and a script to copy the CD as a master copy, to a hard drive partition, for your use in remastering my CD. Both of these are very easy to use, just tell it where you want the "master copy" to be placed, and when you are ready to make an iso, tell it where to find the "master copy". These scripts are accessable via the IceWM or Fluxbox menus. Other included Window Managers are twm and KDE. Based on Knoppix 3.4, extensive changes have been made, including a choice of several mouse cursor themes on the fly. Very easy to try all of them, about 20 seconds for each. I have 12 built-in RSS feeds in Opera, they load in seconds after about 2 minutes of dial up online time, and provide an excellent preview of nearly 200 current news stories in Opera's Mail system, updated as long as the browser is open. Firefox 1.5.0.1 has 7 RSS feeds, handled as drop down lists from the bookmarks toolbar. Feel free to dig through the Getting Started Guide, link above for more unique features.

What moron... No no. What asshat came up with that title? This has to be the most assinine, misleading, and trollish title I've seen yet. Where to start. Let's start with the Three Laws of Robotics. They come from works of fiction. Well, I could go on, but I think pointing out that the poster blurs the distinction between fiction and reality is sufficient.

If I were to blur that distinction, I'd have to say that brain parasites have taken control of slashdot.

Apple introduces iRobot

Nothing is impossible!

It came to me in a dream... The engines don't move the ship at all. The ship stays where it is and the engines move the universe around it!

My ramdisk useage is then returned to normal after Flock is closed. So, memory leak problems do not accumulate.

A side advantage is the obvious security feature, all traces of web surfing activity stored in ~/.flock are gone. I have Opera set up to do this also. Neither one of these browsers has a ~/.flock or ~/.opera installed in /ramdisk at startup, so the /ramdisk is spared until the user wants to use either browser.

The ~/.flock and ~/.opera setups are preconfigured to use a built-in startup home page, and other preferences are preset.

I notice that Flock uses a lot of the shared memory, when I do "top" I get 4 "flock-bin" items, each using 16.6% of my 256 MB of RAM. So Firefox/Flock is a big problem, I'm just glad I'm using it on a livecd linux.

I run Firefox without the small script, so the ~/.mozilla ramdisk directory remains intact after the browser is closed, but of course will disappear when the livecd linux is halted, unless I have "saved my configuration", and created a restorable "configs.tbz".

I am running Flock now, and "df" shows my /ramdisk at 7%, this drops to 4% when Flock is closed.

Windows XP is a hard drive installation, so if an upgrade of software goes bad, it can be complicated to downgrade, the point of this topic.
What I do with my livecd linux, is "back up" one build or so, if the current build, with all software included, turns out bad. So, I am only a few minutes away from getting my old stuff back, and up and running.
I am constantly looking ahead, however, so going back is not for long, I want to fix things, and build again. The details are in my Getting Started Guide, now getting quite long, but at least has a "What's New" section to "cut to the chase".
To bad we livecd linux folks don't have all the wonderful applications in Windows XP, but what we do have, is useful to say the least.

god has five fingers

Common lore...
What a shame about Ballmer and his chair-throwing rap, and the rest of Microsoft's people have to endure those stories.

I imagine they cannot even visit a neighborhood kid's lemonade stand without getting asked an embarrassing question about that story.

So do we need an alternative OS at this point in Microsoft's history?

Before I go out on a limb, and say that livecd linux distros like Knoppix do not have a "back door", and therefore are a safe alternative to tainted windows installations that may have been rigged with all sorts of built-in spyware forced upon Microsoft by various governments, let me ask this:
Does anyone know if there are "back doors" in Knoppix, Kanotix, Slax or other popular live cd linux?
I have my own knoppix remaster, and I have not stumbled upon any such thing in the filesystem.
It is a shame that most of the PC's have Windows preinstalled on them, and that there is this pressure on Microsoft to rig them up to spy on people. I know a PC is not a PC unless you turn it on, and it boots up to a desktop.
But the Windows problems are all the more reason to "bring your own OS".
You know you are a geek when you want to take a Kanotix 64 cd to Office Depot and try it out on those new AMD 64-bit cpu based computers with a 2000 MHZ FSB!
Having insulted Microsoft, let me be fair and do the same to Office Depot:
Ever notice that they hire ex-wrestlers as "managers". Apparently more concerned with frightening would-be "shoplifters" than providing assistance to IT shoppers wanting to "take a roll in the hay with a Gateway".

I've been waiting several minutes now and have yet to be connected. Could you look into this for me? Also, I might suggest that you update your music-on-hold. I can only listen to "Rhinestone Cowboy" just so many times.

If you want to play old boardgames / wargames PBEM style, check out Cyberboard. It has an OGRE / GEV module, as well as modules for many other games (ASL, 18xx, Columbia block games etc.).

http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisti cTerms/WhatIsIrony.htm
http://www.geocities.com/eirig/

There are plenty of examples. Yes, irony has colloquially changed meaning, but this does not negate the prescriptivist mantra that you are incorrectly using the word.

• Why did I say that BSP's were used for rotation? Well, I didn't. I was referring to depth sorting.
• I never said that MS Flight Simulator was *more* impressive, only on par. My point being that non-texturemapped 3D code had been around for over a decade. A10 was just another flight simulator and was nothing special in that respect.
• The fact that 16 colors was less that 256 was the point that I was trying to make.

• You're still thinking that approximations of anti-aliasing is the same thing as anti-aliasing. The end result is similar, but not the same thing.
• Magic Carpet was no more 3D than Doom was. It used a special case of Ray Casting commonly referred to as a Voxel Engine. (Which is actually a misnomer. There's no Voxels in such Terrain Engines.) The Magic Carpet Engine was probably the most advanced Terrain Engine ever produced.
• The PCjr used an 8086, and was the least powerful machine in IBM's lineup.
• The 80286 was released by Intel in 1982, but the IBM PC-AT didn't come out until 1984.
• Games didn't fake Phong shading, Demos did.
• Taken from the Wolf3D Source code:

  #define MaxX 320
  #define MaxY 200

• "Many computer games have used [Mode 13h] such as DOOM and DOOM2, the original C&C the DOS version of C&C-RedAlert. It's also Quake's standard resolution, and QuakeII's non 3d excelerated standard resolution."[ref]
• "full directional, unlimited scrolling like this should be possible in 320x200, I did it back in 1994 with Jazz Jackrabbit 1"[ ref] -Arjan Brussee
• The impressive demos you saw from the Demo Scene used a lot of tricks that relied on the fact that the scene would always be the same. They were never turned into games because their technology made it impossible.

Have you done this comparison double-blind fashion ? With 320kbps MP3s ?

I believe you with 128kbps MP3s, but for anything above 256 VBR encoded by Lame, you should try to find a job at Deutsche Gramophon.

The result of that famous test is that even for trained listeners using top of the line audiophile equipment, there isn't any significant difference between 256kbps MP3 and WAV.

The church attempting to suppress ideas? Why, whatever could you mean?

That is the power of Advertising. We want it if we see nice ads for it.
My knoppix remaster does do a lot of the things that Windows does, so it takes care of the
average user as well as the techie. Take a look at my Getting Started Guide to see what this livecd linux offers.
Just this morning, when looking at an article on Mac worms, they said Windows has perhaps 200,000 pests, where Mac only has a few.
Live CD linux, such as Kanotix, and others, are worth looking into if one is concerned about viruses, worms, etc. on a Windows installation.
The worse one I heard about was the e-mail spammer that got into a server, partitioned the hard drive, and set his own "hidden" partition up to send out e-mails, and use up a good portion of the available bandwidth. The business "IT" person did not have a clue, and this problem was only discovered when they had an outside expert look over their system. I suppose he popped in a tomsrtbt floppy, and looked around.
Naturally, there is no advertising about this possibility on a windows server.

Right now, I am using my livecd, with dial-up (wvdial), and Flock 0.5.12.
Machine has 256 MB of RAM, and dual 200 mhz processors. Yes, I do run off the hard drive, a 160 GB 7200 rpm drive, having done "tohd=/dev/hdd7" the first time around. My CDROM drive is only used for booting.
Wish I could get some "equal time" on a Windows commercial!

.

The fact that earthquakes happen under the ocean is nothing new, we just don't know the overall "scale" of how many or how intense they are. It is recently known that earthquakes are on the rise in more and more places where they have not normally occurred before, and I think we will see (hear? sense? record?) even more occurrences of volcanic and magmatic activity the more we listen to the "gut reactions" of Earth's core so close to the sea floor, an area which, like the article said, usually has not been listened to much before.

I know this might seem like flamebait, but I assure everyone that I do NOT intend to start any kind of conflict or argument here. Just my opinion and I see this in the news of the world, more and more: always about more earthquakes going on than ever before. So, in light of the recent 30 years or more, mostly from what I have studied, I DO believe that the "End of the Age" eons ago foretold by Jesus the Christ, is even swifter approaching ...

Matthew 24:1-8 (King James Version)

24:1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

24:2 And Jesus said unto them, 'See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.'

24:3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, 'Take heed that no man deceive you.'

24:5 'For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

24:6 'And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.'

24:7 'For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.'

24:8 'All these are the beginning of sorrows.'

Luke 21:5-11 (King James Version)

21:5 And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, He [Jesus] said,

21:6 'As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

21:7 And they asked him, saying, Master, but when shall these things be? and what sign will there be when these things shall come to pass?

21:8 And he said, 'Take heed that ye be not deceived: for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near: go ye not therefore after them.

21:9 'But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by.

21:10 Then said he unto them, 'Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:

21:11 'And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.'

Read this page about Earthquakes by Century 7.0 and Higher

Signs of the End of the Age: Earthquakes on the increase!

What happened with the Earthquake near Indonesia that caused the Tsunami?

Earthquakes occurring in divverse places PREDICTED

They could fund a prize competition such as the following:

Let anyone submit an open source program that produces, with no inputs, one of the major natural language corpora as output.

S = size of uncompressed corpus
P = size of program outputting the uncompressed corpus
R = S/P (the compression ratio).

Award monies in a manner similar to the M-Prize:

Previous record ratio: R0
New record ratio: R1=R0+X
Fund contains: $Z at noon GMT on day of new record
Winner receives: $Z * (X/(R0+X))

Compression program and decompression program are made open source.

Explanation For an idea of why the C-Prize can solve the AI problem, if it is solvable, see Matthew Mahoney's comment on it:

Matt Mahoney
Jun 17, 7:18 pm show options
Newsgroups: comp.compression
From: "Matt Mahoney"
Date: 17 Jun 2005 20:18:59 -0700
Local: Fri, Jun 17 2005 7:18 pm
Subject: Re: The C-Prize

Hutter's AIXI, http://www.idsia.ch/~marcus/ai/paixi.htm makes another argument for the connection between compression and AI that is more general than the Turing test. He proves that the optimal behavior of an agent (an interactive system that receives a reward signal from an unknown environment) is to guess that the environement is most likely computed by the shortest possible program that is consistent with the behavior observed so far. In other words, the most likely outcome for any experiment is the one with the simplest explanation, where "simplest" means the smallest program that could model what you currently know about the universe.

He gives a formal proof, but it basically says that the only possible distribution of the infinite set of programs (or strings) with nonzero probability is one which favors shorter programs over longer ones. Given any string of length n with probability p > 0, there are an infinite set of strings longer than n, but only a finite number of these can have probability higher than p.

-- Matt Mahoney

It is shown that optimal text compression is a harder problem thanartificial intelligence as defined by Turing's (1950) imitation game; thus compression ratio on a standard benchmark corpuscould be used as an objective and quantitative alternative test for AI (Mahoney, 1999).

I was thinking of this incident when I wrote my comment. There's always the Roman Senators who killed Caeser. Politics is always more interesting when blood is flying.

"Or if the Republican positions on the ballot weren't at the top (enum 0)"

Well, I would imagine that's because they do it alphabetically. 'Bush' is pretty high, alphabetically.

That was the democrats mistake in 2004! They shouldn't have nominated John Kerry. They should have nominated Carol Moseley Braun. Or Willie Aames.

-FL

Not my estimate, but Nick Pine's, whose philly house is 100% solar heated. He also points to Norman Saunders:

http://www.ece.villanova.edu/~nick/solar/solar.htm l
http://www.geocities.com/~dmdelaney/Solar-thermal- energy-for-housing.html

I lived in Norway for a year, I am quite aware of black ice ;) I also rode or skied 3km to work (but I'm crazy).

You need to do some research before giving up on our greatest energy source. My own greenhouse/solar space cost just over $100 AU, but we have a mild climate. My current roof is cement tiles, but I can replace all of them with polycarbonate on the North side (South for northern hemisphere) for $600. Based on previous experience, I could do that myself in a day (including throwing the tiles in a skip from the roof). I could also sell the tiles to a secondhand merchant for 30c a tile, making me $100. That would give me a collection area of 50m^2, and at 3kWh/m^2 in mid winter would provide 3 times as much energy as I need to heat the house. I don't even need a council permit to replace roof tiles with polycarbonate.

While the ACM or IEEE are theoretically advocates for US IT workers, they both receive a lot of money from the same companies advocating no cap on H1-B visas and so forth. Go to ACM's events and conferences web page and click on SIGCSE 2006. Who is sponsoring this in big letters on the bottom? IBM, Microsoft and Sun, the main drivers behind more H1-B visas.

There are other organizations which are not as in debt to these organizations. I did a web page of my own about this a year or two ago. Any organization like the ACM that takes massive money from these corporations which advocate no H1-B caps can not be trusted to advocate for IT workers. Only an organization that only depends on money from IT workers can be trusted. It's common sense. In fact, these corporate officers usually have more sense about these things, and who is on whose side, than many IT workers.

-FL

-FL

Years ago my girlfriend got terribly excited and bought Final Fantasy 8 because of the imagery in the commercial.

I believe she actually cried.

Let anyone submit an open source program that produces, with no inputs, one of the major natural language corpora as output.

S = size of uncompressed corpus
P = size of program outputting the uncompressed corpus
R = S/P (the compression ratio).

Award monies in a manner similar to the M-Prize:

Previous record ratio: R0
New record ratio: R1=R0+X
Fund contains: $Z at noon GMT on day of new record
Winner receives: $Z * (X/(R0+X))

Compression program and decompression program are made open source.

Explanation For an idea of why the C-Prize can solve the AI problem, if it is solvable, see Matthew Mahoney's comment [tinyurl.com] on it:

Matt Mahoney
Jun 17, 7:18 pm show options
Newsgroups: comp.compression
From: "Matt Mahoney"
Date: 17 Jun 2005 20:18:59 -0700
Local: Fri, Jun 17 2005 7:18 pm
Subject: Re: The C-Prize

Hutter's AIXI, http://www.idsia.ch/~marcus/ai/paixi.htm makes another argument for the connection between compression and AI that is more general than the Turing test. He proves that the optimal behavior of an agent (an interactive system that receives a reward signal from an unknown environment) is to guess that the environement is most likely computed by the shortest possible program that is consistent with the behavior observed so far. In other words, the most likely outcome for any experiment is the one with the simplest explanation, where "simplest" means the smallest program that could model what you currently know about the universe.

He gives a formal proof, but it basically says that the only possible distribution of the infinite set of programs (or strings) with nonzero probability is one which favors shorter programs over longer ones. Given any string of length n with probability p > 0, there are an infinite set of strings longer than n, but only a finite number of these can have probability higher than p.

-- Matt Mahoney

It is shown that optimal text compression is a harder problem thanartificial intelligence as defined by Turing's (1950) imitation game; thus compression ratio on a standard benchmark corpuscould be used as an objective and quantitative alternative test for AI (Mahoney, 1999).

Now, who might fund something like the C-Prize?

if you haven't read/seen john cleese's eulogy for graham chapman, i heartily recommend it. both touching and funny. easy to find via google, eg: http://www.geocities.com/fang_club/chapman_memoria l.html

Like this.

Anyone notice how the company logo looks a lot like those rearranging paper puzzles? Hmm.

The leading moral authority for Sunnis is the rector or Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Seminary/ University in Cairo, Egypt. Al-Azhar is perhaps the world's oldest continuous university and has been since the time of Saladin a major center of Sunni religious authority. The current incumbent is Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. So what about Tantawi and Bin Laden?

Grand Imam of Al-Azhar seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden. Here's another cached link from Washington Post reporting on the same condemnation.

What about Pakistan? Pakistani Cleric Tahir ul Qadri condemns Bin Laden.

Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi is a TV preacher, and pretty popular with a wide Arabic audience on Al-Jazeera. He absolutely despises Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaradawi has repeatedly condemned Al-Qaeda. He even gave a fatwa that it was a duty of Muslims to fight alongside the US in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda! Yusuf Qaradawi Condemns Al Qaeda.

Hamza Yusuf is a sheikh, what about the Shi'ites? Most fatwas of that sort are in arabic, but here's one reported: Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon condemns Osama Bin Laden

Don't forget the West!> There are 250,000 Muslims in Spain: Spanish Muslim Clerical authorities Issue Fatwa against Osamah Bin Laden. Russia is 15% Muslim, with 20 Million Muslims. High Mufti of Russian Muslims calls for Extradition of Bin Laden. And they're not saying that to please Putin or anything.

If you're looking for someone to make a fatwa that says so-and-so is in Hell right now, you're not going to find that, as Muslims aren't allowed to judge people, only God can. They can say that murder and suicide are both hell-worthy sins, and they all said that. This isn't like Catholicism where you can just excommunicate people either. You can label Bin Laden a sinner (and believe me, there's quite a lot of people who did), but in Islam you can't say whether he's an atheist or not. That's just semantics, everyone knows Bin Laden is a wrongdoer, and have said so.

Here's the problem with the Koran, vs. the Bible.

In the bible, you can always find an opposing quotation, and therefore, it's a book that spurs discussion and investigation into faith.

In the Koran, the more relaxed and peaceful parts are in the beginning, as Mohammad (pbuh) continued on, he began his wars against Jews and Christians and Polytheists, and the surahs became more and more violent and uncompromising.

Islamic scholars have ruled for some time, that the later surahs abrogate the earlier ones... so when a fundamentalist wants you to agree with him, he'll quote something like:

The Cow

      1. [2.62] Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.

and;

The Pilgrimage

      1. [22.17] Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians and those who associate (others with Allah)-- surely Allah will decide between them on the day of resurrection; surely Allah is a witness over all thing

But then conversely, when they want to tell other Muslims how evil and bad the west is, they will justify their murderous rampages thusly:

Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57:

        Narrated 'Ikrima:

        Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"

Volume 9, Book 84, Number 64:

        Narrated 'Ali:

        Whenever I tell you a narration from Allah's Apostle, by Allah, I would rather fall down from the sky than ascribe a false statement to him, but if I tell you something between me and you (not a Hadith) then it was indeed a trick (i.e., I may say things just to cheat my enemy). No doubt I heard Allah's Apostle saying, "During the last days there will appear some young foolish people who will say the best words but their faith will not go beyond their throats (i.e. they will have no faith) and will go out from (leave) their religion as an arrow goes out of the game. So, where-ever you find them, kill them, for who-ever kills them shall have reward on the Day of Resurrection."

Now, with all this in mind, remember that the Koran (The recitations) are supposed to be the unbroken word of God. Interestingly, a German archaeologist found some old versions of the Koran in a Mosque:

http://www.geocities.com/islampencereleri3/queryin g_the_koran.htm
http://www.derafsh-kaviyani.com/english/quran1.htm l

Finally, what I'd like to add is that we need to find more guys like this, who are willing to challenge the "fanatical victim" and actually teach them the reality of a more moderate Islam:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0204/p01s04-wome.htm

Where are the Muslims who will stand up, and LOUDLY protest the hatred and violence amongst those claiming to represent them? Either they are complicit by failing to act - out of either intent, or fear - or they MUST stand up for humanity's sake, and for their own.

If nobody stands up to fanaticism, we will all end up living in an Islamo-fascist state, where religious/thought police monitor our lives.

"At Los Alamos he became the youngest group leader in the theoretical division of the Manhattan Project. With the head of that division, Hans Bethe, he devised the formula for predicting the energy yield of a nuclear explosive. Feynman also took charge of the project's primitive computing effort, using a hybrid of new calculating machines and human workers to try to process the vast amounts of numerical computation required by the project. He quite litrally observed the first detonation of an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, N.M. as the radios issued to warn everyone not to look didn't quite work properly, he looked up just as the bomb went off, he saw the incredible flash and formation of the now very familiar mushroom cloud Although his initial reaction was euphoric, he later felt anxiety about the force he and his colleagues had helped unleash on the world.

While Feynman was working in Los Alamos, it became clear that he was at the level with the intellectual giants of his day. Whilst here he made the patent for an atomic submarine and an atomic airplane, although at the time he was only suggesting ideas for applications of the work being done to a patent officer, only some time later did he discover that the patents were actually attributed to him."

Recently the Australian Government passed Anti-Sedition laws which makes it illegal to criticize the Government. Which would make doing this sort of thing now illegal:

Read it and weep: http://geocities.com/mypaljohn/

Those Canadians are a bunch of hosers, eh?

wow, I just searched the net and it is NOWHERE to be found. A 70 page paper and a bunch of (pretty bad) perl code. But I do have the code and data at home. Someone perl coder named clarkson fixed the code for me, but I think my own code worked better.

But here was the url:
http://www.geocities.com/uhdseniorproject

now gone, and no cache.

But I still think the idea is a great one...

In no order:

Starflight I & II
All the Civs
Master's of Orion
Starcraft
Warcraft
Fallout
Wizardry 1 (because I cracked the heck out of it.)

and I have a fondness for my first text based adventure on a trash80 written in Basic. I can't remember the name of it, but it taught me a lot about programing because I had to do traces in the code to figure out what I needed to do next in the adventure. The whirl of my tape player loading that game still makes me smile.

Populous and Powermonger ~ atmospheric early Peter Molyneux games. Loved the rain, the birds, the boats... Powermonger was beautiful (although not terribly entertaining in the long run).

Starflight I/II and Star Control II (as The Ur-Quan Masters) ~ they're very, very similar - except Starflight is older and technically more primitive, as well as more serious in tone than the often quite frivolous SC2. 2D space exploration games; artifacts, mysteries, diplomacy, banter, upgrading, mining *sigh*, trading, fighting, and a wee bit of strategy. Epic and very much not "on rails" - you decide on your own what to do when or whether to do it at all. Played on DOS, Amiga, Linux, Windows.

Mercenary: Escape from Targ/The Second City, Damocles, Mercenary III: The Dion Crisis ~ a series of 3D vector graphics space games (although most of the game takes place on the surface and inside buildings). Some annoyingly absurd puzzles, by hindsight (pick up cheese to fly faster). However, the sense of freedom, vastness and complexity they evoked was quite unusual by 80s standards, and there weren't many better games for the Commodore Plus/4 anyway. Played on Plus/4 (Mercenary), Amiga (others). Windows remake of the whole series.

On the less adventurous end of the space game spectrum: Elite, Freespace I/II, Freelancer, Wing Commander...

Ultima IV ~ A real world map, not just dungeons! Towns with trees and ponds and hidden nooks and crannies! Conversations! Secret islands and shrines hidden away in the mountains! Monsters that didn't just pop up out of nowhere! I liked this so much better than the maze-based "puzzle" RPGs of the time. And I really loved the cover art, at the time :). What a change from all the muscle-bound Conan-alikes and horned demons. Played on DOS. Ultima V ~ The NPCs had houses! You could harvest their crops! They really went to bed at night (though never complained if they found you sleeping in it)! Played on C 64.

Archon ~ most conveniently described as a chess-inspired strategy game with one-on-one combat and unicorns, goblins, banshees and other such mythological critters. Terribly good game, almost managed to feel more ancient-in-a-good-way than chess itself. If I ever wanted a coffee table with a built in video game, this would be it. Played on Atari 600/800XL, C 64, Amiga. Dunno if the remakes are any good.

(Net-)Hack. Played on DOS, Amiga, Windows, Linux, Psion...

Moonsweeper and Beamrider ~ I never really understood why those weren't the most popular VCS games... 3D-looking 2D shooters, one smooth and pretty, the other confined to a grid not entirely unlike Tempest and with a growing number of enemies to predict, evade or shoot. Both quite atmospheric. Played on Atari 2600 and 7800.

Many "adventures", by which I used to mean "text adventures". In fact text adventures were among the first computer games I ever saw and I was fascinated by the freedom they seemed to grant the player: you could go where you want and issue any command you could think of. Neither was the case, but I had never used a computer before, was generally impress

Logan's Run, as written, would have been a great movie. Unfortunately, I don't think the effects technology was up to it.

So, instead, they rewrote it into this "machines take over the world" story. Not bad, I suppose, but actually doing the book--even with the bad special effects of the day--would have been preferable.

Of course, they're supposedly doing a remake, so there's a chance they'll get it right...

I don't think it wil ever be ready for the desktop -- it seems to be vaporware!