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Not much to ask for at all. Or everyone you need to talk to could sign up for MSN or Yahoo Messenger. The new one has audio that sounds like a phone. http://www.geocities.com/paramendra

Anyway, now I have to abstain from sex before they've destroyed all the zombies. Thanks a lot, guys!

Some zombie survival tips

Cessna 152 Specs:
Vne (never exceed) 145 knots = 166.86302 mph
Vno (normal operating) 105 knots = 120.831842 mph

The Cessna 152 is representative of a basic entry level aircraft that travels (cruise/normal operation) at about 51% of the Bullet Train's reported speed on a calm day.

232 mph = 201.602488 knots

So an airplane needs to break 201 knots to be considered "faster than the Bullet plane".

This plane is far from being "entry" level... but comes close to the same speed. It only has space for four passengers. It is a single engine plane.

This plane is two engine and fast, but I'm not sure how many passengers it can carry.

The GeeBee R-2 is an exceptionaly fast prop aircraft. 296mph flat-out top speed.

The P-51 Mustang is well known as a fast prop aircraft. I don't know if many modern props are made to go this fast today.

I just wanted to follow up the pp and talk about the speeds of planes. The speed of this train is attainable to the more serious (and speed minded) of private aviators. Most private aviators are more motivated by fun or ease of use.

For some "fun" is fast. For others it is being able to pack the whole family down to a grass-strip by the beach. For others it is neat tricks or an open cockpit. Depends on the pilot.

In the US a private pilot can pretty much exclusively choose his own spots to land as long as his plane can land at the smaller strips. Almost every town (even if you don't know it) has either a Municipal airport or a small grass strip. You'd be suprised at the size of a plane (that Mooney for instance, it may be able to) that can land at some of these places. This is the advantage in either smaller or slower aircraft (or at least aircraft that can slow for a slower landing).

Take a favorite of mine The Piper Cub for example. One of these can land on what amounts to a postage stamp, getting in and out of tight bush locations. Also reliable and solid. They have a short range and slow speed, but high utility out in the middle of nowhere. They're also very docile.

In any case... planes are for the win! I'm not too sure about trains. You certainly can't hire one for yourself easily or buy one.

Although some American companies are completely unethical, the overwhelming majority abide by some minimal standards of decency. Back in the days of apartheid in South Africa, all American companies (except one) doing business there agreed to abide by the Sullivan Principles, which pledged fair treatment to South Africa's blacks.

We need to take the same moral fortitude in dealing with both Iran and China (including Taiwan province). When we slap sanctions against he Beijing government, we should also slap sanctions against the Taipei government. Taiwan and mainland China are one in the same, as far as morality is concerned. When American companies curtailed investments in China just after the Tiananmen Square Incident, Taiwanese companies actually accelerated investments into mainland China, leading to today's massive cumulative Taiwanese investment of $100 billion into mainland China.

One of the more interesting non-computer games I've seen lately is 1000 Blank White Cards.

Finally, the Taiwanese voluntarily invested more than $100 billion into more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China. More than 1 million Taiwanese have emigrated to China to live and work.

Note that even immediately after the Tiananmen Square Incident (when Washington was slapping sanctions against mainland China), the mercenary Taiwanese scum actually accelerated investments into the mainland. The Taiwanese eagerly seized any business opportunity that American companies surrendered when they (the Americans) tried to punish Beijing.

...about the great spacecruiser Yamamoto from Star Blazers and its killer beam?

...about the great spacecruiser Yamamoto from Star Blazers and its killer beam?

Marcus Hutter's AIXI paper provides a proof that if an agent is a good model for human behavior, and the universe is computable, that the most intelligent program is the smallest program that losslessly compresses the set of observations of the universe.

I've formalized a prize competition based on this criterion as the C-Prize, modeled after the Methusela Mouse Prize. The big difference is that instead of lifespan the metric is intelligence. Here is the currently published C-Prize criteria:

Since all technology prize awards are geared toward solving crucial problems, the most crucial technology prize award of them all would be one that solves the rest of them:

The C-Prize -- A prize that solves the artificial intelligence problem.

The C-Prize award criterion is as follows:

Let anyone submit a 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 A very severe meta-problem with artificial intelligence is the question of how one can define the quality of an artificial intelligence.

Fortunately there is an objective technique for ranking the quality of artificial intelligence:

Kolmogorov Complexity

Kolmogorov Complexity is a mathematically precise formulation of Ockham's Razor, which basically just says "Don't over-simplify or over-complicate things." More formally, the Kolmogorov Complexity of a given bit string is the minimum size of a Turing machine program required to output, with no inputs, the given bit string.

Any set of programs which purport to be the standards of artificial intelligence can be compared by simply comparing their Artificial Intelligence Quality. Their AIQs can be precisely measured as follows:

Take an arbitrarily large corpus of writings sampled from the world wide web. This corpus will establish the equivalent of an IQ test. Give the AIs the task of compressing this corpus into the smallest representation. This representation must be a program that, taking no outside inputs, produces the exact sample it compressed. The AIQ of an AI is simply the ratio of the size of the uncompressed writings to the size of the program that, when executed, produces the uncompressed writings.

In other words, the AIQ is the compression ratio achieved by the AI on the AIQ test.

The reason this works as an AI quality test is that compression requires predictive modeling. If you can predict what someone is going to say, you have modeled their mental processes and by inference have a superset of their mental faculties.

Mechanics The C-Prize is to be modeled after the Methusela Mouse Prize or M-Prize where people make pledges of money to the prize fund. If you would like to help with the set up and/or administration of this prize award similar to the M-Prize let me know by email.

I believe it was Quest For Glory 3 that made me thing about drugs and videogames. In particular when you go and hit that bong with the Apothocary. Good times.

you know I would totally agree with you untill I read this:

http://www.geocities.com/eadvocate/issues/harm-reg ister.html

I was flored by the crazy things these children where convicted of, you want to really distroy the life of a 15 year old before they even have a chance to create a life??

Just think about the situation someone of these kids will be in when they are adults and have to disclose they are registered sex offenders, "Boss, really I was 15 having sex with another 15 year old...", "Sorry you peice of shit sex offender, your fired (nor not hired)"

I have to agree with the paret about sex offenders living in the slums of soceity (after conviction) and are really at higher risk then before... the legal system just puts everyone into a box.. weahter you are a rage filled rapist or had sex with a 15 year old while you where 15..

Things that can get you on a registered sexual offender list:

public urination, exhibitionism, nudism, streaking, flashing, mooning, outdoor consensual sex, lewd behaviour.

Dont believe me?

utah law book says:

(d) "Sex offender" means any person convicted by this state or who enters a plea in abeyance for violating Section 76-7-102, 76-9-702.5, 76-5a-3, 76-10-1306, or 76-5-301.1

and all of those are for lewd behaviour that specifically includes public urination, streaking, and mooning.

LAW LINK

"The study found that people charged with crimes such as public urination, flashing, consensual sex between teenagers, possession of child pornography and adult prostitution are all classified as sex offenders in some states."

Link to source

"Plaistow Deputy Chief Kathleen Jones also said that not every person on the sex offender list has necessarily committed an egregious crime such as rape or molestation because a conviction of indecent exposure, even in cases such as public urination, can land someone on the list."
Link

"According to Michigan State Police Sgt. Troy Fellows, urinating in public is classified as indecent exposure, and requires sex offender registration after three convictions...[And] Judges [can] to order registration after any number of convictions..."

Link

http://www.freep.com/news/metro/dicker20_20031020. htm

This mentions people on the michigan sex offender list, without names.. but states a woman is there for public urination, and some guys are there for consensual sex with underage girlfriends.

Both are examples given by the grandparent.

Have a look here to:

http://www.geocities.com/eadvocate/issues/harm-reg ister.html

Oh yeah, that's what you Americans need, people like these interpreting the Constitution for you.

Hey Everyone it's Crazy Jim! World-class game player and "inventor" of the Tekken-rpg! Full of great ideas although he's never managed to actually implement any of them! Check out his creds at his glorious website, http://www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA/! Be Seeing you!

Why the second bomb?

because we had two different bomb designs to test - meet fat man and little boy.

http://www.geocities.com/athens/agora/4526/picture s/fatlittle.gif

Microsauft will address the security problem through a variety of changes to the Longtooth codebase. First, as I mentioned in the past, Longtooth will no longer be based on the NT design philosophy, as were previous versions. Instead, Microsauft plans to release DOS 9.0 2003, an 8-bit multithreaded DOS written in VB Server.NOT. Longtooth will run somewhere on top of that, above several hundred layers of abstraction and a thunking mechanism to convert 64-bit calls to 32-bit calls to 16-bit calls to 8-bit calls to 4-bit calls and then back to the 8-bit calls required by DOS 9.0 2003. The DOS syntax will be completely changed into a format significantly more complicated than the bash, csh, sed, awk, perl, m4, and makefile formats used in Linux and UNIX operating systems. These changes will add significant complexity to the command line, providing Microsauft a basis to claim that the Longtooth command line is more powerful than its Linux counterparts. It will also intimidate most users, giving Microsauft ample reasons to tout its Microsauft User Simplicity and Security Manager 2003 as the most innovative thing since sliced cucumber.

As an example of the new syntax, suppose you wish to view the contents of a directory. In the old DOS, you would use the terse and ineffective "DIR" command. With Longtooth, you will be able to use the much more capable command, "DIR-print (sed /e:++ : a--$ C$$ awk | lesstif (+, +, +, +) at 0900+W+ $ while (w--- O- M+ V-- S++$) { P++>$ x++ }) >>display | formatTabulated".

If I disable Adblock, it works.

Make sure you read the instructions, though. Adblock settings matter.

If I disable Adblock, it works.

Make sure you read the instructions, though. Adblock settings matter.

This: http://adblock.mozdev.org/dev.html is also useful :)

Along with this adblock filterset :)

<morbo>We sysadmins have a vastly bigger intelligence than you, puny humans, so it is no wonder your puny little human brains cannot understand what we do. </morbo>

This is amazingly similiar to a cheesemaking recipe for Queso Blanco.

This is by far the easiest cheese to make. Called Queso Blanco in the Spanish speaking (it means "white cheese") world it is used throughout the world by different names. It can be eaten strait or mixed in with various dishes. Try it in your lasagna recipes instead of Ricotta or in addition to it. Yum!

INGREDIENTS
.
1 Gallon Whole Milk
1/4 Cup White Vinegar**
.

1. Heat milk to 180 F (82 C) stirring constantly. Be careful not to burn the milk.
2. While mixing with a whisk, slowly add the white vinegar. You will notice the milk begins to curdle.
3. Keep stirring for 10-15 minutes.
4. Line a colander with a fine cheesecloth.
5. Pour the curdled milk through the colander.
6. Allow the curds to cool for about 20 minutes.
7. Tie the four corners of the cheese cloth together and hang it to drain for about 5 - 7 hours (until it stops dripping).
8. The solidified cheese can be broken apart and salted to taste or kept unsalted.

** The juice of 3-5 lemons may also be used in substitute or addition to the vinegar. The resulting cheese will have a much more tangy flavor.

"to extrapolate from individual characteristics (even culturally shared ones) to political/military outcomes, or even aggregate behaviour, is a fallacy."

Since when? I'm getting plain tired of this ever-expanding and ever-fuzzier list of "fallacies".

Of course, any absolutist treatment of one factor as being the sole determinant of complex chains of events is not to be advised.

Still, that doesn't mean that a single fact cannot be illuminating.

The fact that there was a long-standing hypermilitarism and fanaticism ingrained not only into the common soldier of the IJN/IJA, but into the military leadership as well certainly should be part of the equation when you try to figure out the chances of Japanese surrender. This is especially so as it was largely the military that controlled the government of Japan.

Hell, when the government tried to surrender *after* Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the military launched an all-out coup attempt, seizing the imperial palace and launching a wave of assassination attempts on government officials.

For more information on Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan scheduled for November 1, 1945, there are many sites on the net, such as this one:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8141/dow nfall.html

Fuck you.

http://www.geocities.com/japanfaq/FAQ-Prices.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4075536.stm

http://www.japanwindow.com/archives/2005/02/

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GE17Ad01.html

http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/95/0818/biz1.html

I strongly disagree to your disagreement. So, here we go: http://www.geocities.com/japanfaq/FAQ-Prices.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4075536.stm http://www.japanwindow.com/archives/2005/02/ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GE17Ad01.html http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/95/0818/biz1.html Ah, geez. Whatta ya know. Nothing like a bibiolography to bring a house of cards down.

Back at'cha dog.

Baldrson writes "Peter Diamandis, originator of the Ansari X-Prize is now claiming private companies may beat NASA back to the Moon: "In the next five to eight years we will have the first private orbital flights occurring. When you're in orbit you are two-thirds of the way to anywhere. I predict that within about three years of private human orbital flights...you'll have the first private teams of people stockpiling fuel on orbit and making a bee-line for the Moon." If Diamandis's math is correct and Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize is sufficient for orbit, NASA could set up an "Apollo Prize" for a lot less money than they'd spend themselves to return to the moon. Indeed, someone like Paul Allen could afford to endow such a prize if NASA gets too bogged down with funding cycle politics again."

with a Dvorak keyboard that wouldn't have happened

I seriously doubt that it could be that great, but it got me interested in it and after reading this page, I decided to give it a shot. Hopefully it will help those slight pains I'm already starting to feel every-now-and-then.

Is there any chance that Dvorak is geeky as Linux? No? Oh well.

BTW, how on earth do you pronounce "Dvorak"?

The real question is not will Google buy next, but who will be eaten first.

http://www.geocities.com/tribhis/cthulhutract.html

The Taiwanese are no better than mercenary animals.

We are not nearly as bad as the Taiwanese. Remember that we actually implemented economic sanctions against China in the 1990s. Numerous American groups were and are engaged in a boycott of Chinese products and have demonstrated loudly and vociferously against the occupation of Tibet.

By contrast, in Taiwan, the Taiwanese teach their kids that Tibet should rightfully be an integral part of mainland China. The Taiwanese consitution states so.

Here's some software and info, courtesy of Brian Connors.

If we cease business with China, we must also cease business with Taiwan in order for the ban to be effective. After the Tiananmen Square Incident, we Americans froze or curtailed our investments in mainland China in order to punish Beijing. Our efforts were completely thwarted by the mercenary Taiwanese. During and after the Tiananmen Square incident,Taiwanese investments in mainland China continued to grow at double-digit rates; the Taiwanese continued to give, to Beijing, any money and technology that we refused to give to Beijing.

The Taiwanese are no better than mercenary animals.

We are not nearly as bad as the Taiwanese. Remember that we actually implemented economic sanctions against China in the 1990s. Numerous American groups were and are engaged in a boycott of Chinese products and have demonstrated loudly and vociferously against the occupation of Tibet.

By contrast, in Taiwan, the Taiwanese teach their kids that Tibet should rightfully be an integral part of mainland China. The Taiwanese consitution states so.

This comparison is as close as you're going to get. It shows the various distances travelled by your fingers when typing on the Dvorak, Qwerty and Arensito layouts.

Dvorak (and Arensito) are layouts designed to minimize finger movement. At the end of the day, my hands and wrists are not tired since I use a modifed Dvorak layout. The layouts here are more convienient for programmers and are the ones I use.

This from a guy who admittedly hears voices?

As a public service, here are some facts about Culberson County, Texas.

* The county seat is Van Horn.

* As you can see by the satellite photo, the rugged Guadalupe Mountains meet the barren, flat Llano Estacado.

* Culberson County includes the highest point in Texas, part of Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

* Road geeks will appreciate the significance of this fact: Van Horn is the western terminus of U.S. Highway 90.

* Due to the lack of water, tourism and mining are the only sources of income. For details on how the county's 3,407 souls bide their time while waiting for the new spaceport to be built, see the Handbook of Texas Online.

And in the tongue-in-cheek words of singer-songwriter Brian Burns:

Welcome to Texas,
Don't anybody get me wrong;
We're glad y'all came to see us,
Just don't forget to go back home.

http://www.geocities.com/email_theguy/newportweb/p orthome.htm

If we cease business with China, we must also cease business with Taiwan in order for the ban to be effective. After the Tiananmen Square Incident, we Americans froze or curtailed our investments in mainland China in order to punish Beijing. Our efforts were completely thwarted by the mercenary Taiwanese. During and after the Tiananmen Square incident,Taiwanese investments in mainland China continued to grow at double-digit rates; the Taiwanese continued to give, to Beijing, any money and technology that we refused to give to Beijing.

The Taiwanese are no better than mercenary animals.

We are not nearly as bad as the Taiwanese. Remember that we actually implemented economic sanctions against China in the 1990s. Numerous American groups were and are engaged in a boycott of Chinese products and have demonstrated loudly and vociferously against the occupation of Tibet.

By contrast, in Taiwan, the Taiwanese teach their kids that Tibet should rightfully be an integral part of mainland China. The Taiwanese consitution states so.

The Taiwanese are no better than mercenary animals.

The Taiwanese willingly gave Beijing what we Americans refused to give because our conscience told us to defend freedom and democracy.

The end result is that our sanctions were ineffective. If we want to really hurt Chinese society and, thereby, force the necessary changes, then we must slap a comprehensive ban on commerce with the entire Chinese community: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

No one has the gumption to pursue this route because many Americans politicians are in the pockets of the Taiwanese government.

A more complex representation of non-linear ethics is within the unproduced TV scripts at http://www.geocities.com/radiomovie2002/ If you read at least the first seven episodes, you'll agree.

About seamlessly combining raster and vector image editing: It's nothing new.

I miss SuperPaint, by Silicon Beach Software, for the old black-and-white Macintosh.

It had the *perfect* combination of raster and vector painting. It also had a good balance between photo-editing features (aka Photoshop) and tools for creating a new image from scratch (aka DeluxePaint).

At the time it was written, there were no color Macintoshes, but there was still some functions in the original QuickDraw API to deal with color (mostly to support multicolored ribbons in Apple ImageWriter printers). Icons for colors in SuperPaint just had words like "Orange", "Blue", etc. that would just show up black on the screen. The amazing thing is, when the first color Macintosh II came out, I tried out SuperPaint on it, and it WORKED!! It was so well written that everything on screen was now in color, even though the developers had no way of testing it before! Amazing....

SuperPaint was eventually bought out by Aldus, and after that, it just wasn't the same. Adobe eventually bought Aldus, and SuperPaint faded into obscurity. (What is with Adobe? The same thing happened in the Windows world just a few years ago, when we lost Cool Edit, essentially the only high-quality audio editing program that was within the budget of the average home user.)

http://www.geocities.com/dankoty/shades.html :-)

A hack eugenicist's review of The Mismeasure of Man? That's hardly a "throughly(sic)" debunking.

The author of that review is J. Phillipe Rushton (see also Wikipedia) who recieves much of his funding from the Pioneer Fund (Wikipedia) of which he is president. The Pioneer Fund is fairly blatanly racist and eugenicist.

As someone affected, for better and worse, by a condition very similar to Asperger's(atypical autism), I find it offensive when a neurotypical person says someone is "cursed" with Asperger's or a similar conditions, and very sad when an autistic person says they are. I don't know about you, but wishing I was not autistic is the same thing as wishing I could die, right now. I've been suicidal, and I've been wishing certain central autistic traits of mine were not traits of mine, and they feel the same - self-loathing and wanting to disappear. Also, I clearly distinguish what is inherent to being on the autism spectrum, and what is due to a clash with society, and inability to hold down a job is not inherent to autism. It is because, whether they are aware of it or not, most people are discriminatory against neurologically different people.
On a slightly different tangent, I just noticed that you said sorry for automatically doing math. I don't think you need to be sorry about it. For example, I don't automatically do math, but I do tend to "nitpick" and point out mistakes in details(such as saying "all" rather than "most") and I don't feel the need to apologise for it. We are different, and that's not always a bad thing. Someone who points out details, goes off on tangents(another trait of mine!) or automatically does math can contribute greatly to the topic, just as someone who focuses on the main point, stays well on topic and does math only with great effort can. It's nothing to be ashamed of. I know many autistic people have the message that "different is bad" drilled into them, repeatedly, but you can fight that, and if you yourself are different, fighting that is a good way to improve your life.
Ettina
http://www.geocities.com/ettinashee
PS: Look at this wonderful site: http://www.neurodiversity.com/

PCMall here in Memphis (Where I got my dad his 21" Trinitron CRT) really screwd up. Some idiot driving the forklift bumped a shelf, and from 30 feet in the air, RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX fell the same monitor I purchased. Landed front bezel (glass first) onto the hard concrete from 30 feet up. You wanna talk about durable? Not a scratch on the glass, and only the bezel plate was cracked in the lower right corner. I didn't even have to do a re-alignment (that's what those two "lines" on the screen are for, for those not in the know) and the monitor works perfectly.

Let's see an LCD fall right out of the box, and land on hard concrete from 30 feet up, and survive.

Yea, that's what I thought, too. Ain't gonna happen. LCD screens are TOO DELICATE.

Is Google laying down a good framework for mentoring?

http://www.geocities.com/totierne/FreeTuition.html
So far I have about 40 hits and 1 person in the program, and he knew me anyway, its hard to give away stuff these days!

I should join someone elses program rather than start my own. One student may be enough to keep my skills fresh, and give me a supervisory role. I will release any content we develop including but not limited to code, content that does not irritate my employer of course.

The problem is that you can't arbitrarily remove ambiguity in translation. In some cases, the ambiguity was not intended, where a word has multiple meanings, but given enough context, it is clear which one is correct. You can remove that. In other cases, ambiguity serves a legitimate purpose. There are times when you want to talk about an arbitrary member of a group hypothetically or generally.

Claude Piron talks about some of these issues from the perspective of a translator. He also points out that most source texts have errors in them as well.

"This quote you have certainly didn't come from Sagan, he would never call Secular Humanism a religion."

No, it did not... which is why I did not attribute the quoted material to him in my original post.

Here is the link... further google'ing reveals more of the same... its a mixed bag, but if you check the books he's written, he's very clear on his beliefs, including the original one I cited; Contact. Here's another source I just googled up with an even greater level of detail and diagnosis on Carl's "beliefs".

Granted, since he's dead we can't go and ask him, but his writings spell it out nicely enough.

She did:

http://www.geocities.com/angiemtg/

Here's some junk you'd want to send into space:

http://www.geocities.com/angiemtg/