Slashdot Mirror

Will the young Kirk wear a "The Enemies Gate is Down" T-Shirt? And will each episode feature the Star Trek
fight music from the original series?

"Publish or perish" produces precisely the explosion of words that creates the lack of understanding between people/disciplines. Academia just doesn't have the right incentives.

The real problem with intellectual property is that no one but the acquisitive can afford the lawyers that it takes to defend the royalty stream that should arise from it -- so we're beig inundated by pseudo-"inventors" who are really just tax collectors --thus destroying technological civilization's foundation.

I had a legislative proposal to fix that problem back in 1992 when I was doing technology politics, but the lock-down by acquisitors on politics is so tremendous I gave up on a "free market" approach, as well as academic approach to these problems. The only way around this stuff is creating new tools -- prize awards for technology is a good approach.

You're right that in the case of the X-Prize criterion, it was set up to favor simply throwing money at a reasonable technician -- but if the altitude goal had been set to 200km instead of 100km, John Carmack's team would likely have beat Paul Allen's team and done so on about 10% of Allen's investment.

"Publish or perish" produces precisely the explosion of words that creates the lack of understanding between people/disciplines. Academia just doesn't have the right incentives.

The real problem with intellectual property is that no one but the acquisitive can afford the lawyers that it takes to defend the royalty stream that should arise from it -- so we're beig inundated by pseudo-"inventors" who are really just tax collectors --thus destroying technological civilization's foundation.

I had a legislative proposal to fix that problem back in 1992 when I was doing technology politics, but the lock-down by acquisitors on politics is so tremendous I gave up on a "free market" approach, as well as academic approach to these problems. The only way around this stuff is creating new tools -- prize awards for technology is a good approach.

You're right that in the case of the X-Prize criterion, it was set up to favor simply throwing money at a reasonable technician -- but if the altitude goal had been set to 200km instead of 100km, John Carmack's team would likely have beat Paul Allen's team and done so on about 10% of Allen's investment.

militia (m-lsh') pronunciation
n.

1. An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers.
2. A military force that is not part of a regular army and is subject to call for service in an emergency.
3. The whole body of physically fit civilians eligible by law for military service.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I always liked this one.

I am quite excited by the confluence of advances in prize awards for technology advancement, and advances with the theory of compression. I'm convinced that if a substantial prize award can be created for dramatic advances in natural language text compression, it will lead directly to a solution to the most critical aspect of the "AI problem" -- that being the problem of the explosion of words without concomitant understanding. I had high hopes for the Internet being the new Gutenberg press leading to a new enlightenment but I'm concerned that without dramatic advances in AI to correlate the huge corpus being generated, the benefits of the new enlightenment may be too long in coming to save us from ourselves.

My work on a legislative proposal for fusion technology prizes was picked up by one of the founders of the Tokamak program. The more recent X-Prize award has a renewed the popularity of such prizes.

As a consequence I've been suggesting the creation of a new prize based on Kolmogorov complexity. As argued by Mahoney in "Text Compression as a Test for Artificial Intelligence":

"The Turing test for artificial intelligence is widely accepted, but is subjective, qualitative, non-repeatable, and difficult to implement. An alternative test without these drawbacks is to insert a machine's language model into a predictive encoder and compress a corpus of natural language text. A ratio of 1.3 bits per character or less indicates that the machine has AI."

A simple prize criterion would be for the first program producing a major natural language text corpus, with the size of the program being less than 1.3 bits per character of the produced corpus. Smaller intermediate prizes would help spur broader interest.

I've heard/read of estimates that a xenon gas rocket, fired by a nuclear light bulb heat source (circa 30,000 degrees C) making a plasma out of the gas, could go to Alpha Centari in just a few years, as it would accelerate at a steady .05G's to the halfway point, then turn around and decelerate at that same rate.

You probably saw it here.

Unlike Microsoft, who has billions in cash, I have no revenue on my livecd distro. Sad, but true. I enjoy working with it, anyway. And, I wouldn't use anything else.

Makes me wonder, sometimes, if there are those at Microsoft who are "closet linux" people.

I did hear that a lot of them have ipods, and have to use different colored earpieces to disguise the fact that they are using an Apple product.

Here's a quote from JH Prynne's poem "Acrylic Tips", one of many to invigorate meaning, context & words. Prynne is the greatest living English language poet, according to quite a few people, me included. The entire poem can be seen at http://www.geocities.com/barque_press/acrylic.html .

Over the seam flux penult dissension cries going apart
to panel strip on first insert, to nurse a flint
terrace cut away, they glimpse the line torn in order
antagonist ducted retention. The ordinate now set

Of the influence line my honey at due rain down partly
on useful toil, the ratio of he for living hurt cheeks
to the concentrated reply curtain.
...

The English language is growing. Put the effort in, grow with it, or you'll become lost.

If someone told you that the PSP is a portable gaming device, shoot these people. The PSP is not a portable gaming device, it is really a convergent portable entertainment device.

Right, because the history of convergent entertainment devices is long and illustrious. They would be fools to not want some of this action.

And going with a brand new disk standard that nobody has and nobody sells as a medium for selling movies? It's a brilliant maneuver from some of the industry's best minds.

I should say that the Sony reps I've worked with about other things have been completely with it and didn't lose sight of reality. So what happened to this guy?

At this site, you can find updated Adblock definitions that you can easily import. Just scroll down to the most recent update, download, and install.

Ever since I installed these, I've had to manually block something only a couple of times. They work great!

Indeed... it wont hit them until it's too late

{just a joke, mod fairly}

Yes, it was borrowed like many things. Just like the Romans "borrowed" the works and ideas of the Greeks. It's funny how everyone always tries to portray Muslims as invaders. I'll assume your Indian since you are labeled "Anonymous Coward", but there was a lot of culture brought by Muslims to that part of the world, and it's no surprise that one of the key symbols of India , the Taj Mahal, was made by the Muslims who lived in what is present day India, and still do. But getting back to the base-10 system. It was the Muslims who made extensive use of it after adopting it from the Indians, and according to some it was the Muslims who actually introduced the idea of zero. And like the previous poster said the Islamic world was the strongest empire in those times and because of the trade with Europe and later the crusades, Westerners came to believe that the base-10 was a Muslim invention. In fact, in present day Baghdad, there was a place called the "House of Wisdom" , (bait-al-hikma) it was a place where scholars from all over the world (literally) came and translated texts as far back as from the Greeks. Then more knowledge was created and expanded upon. This is where a lot of the Muslim contributions to medicine, math, astronomy, and astrology came from. Here's a fun trivia, we're all pretty much computer people, well the word "Algorithm" is derived from Al-Khwarizmi , an Uzbeck(?) Muslim who did a lot of work in Algebra. And the word Algebra comes from Al-Jabar.

Muslims and Math

The reason that this (the spread of knowledge throughout Muslim lands) happened was due to the abolishing of all the old works, as far back as the Greeks from Byzantium, and those people who were persecuted by the New Holy Roman Empire fled eastwards only to find a thriving civilization that greeted them in open arms. The European Rennianssance, which came about centuries later, began as the work of re-translating all the old texts, (the work of Ptolemy, Aristotle, etc..) from Arabic and Syriac, into Latin (the work of re-translating into Latin was done mainly by European Jews). In fact, if it wasn't for the Muslims and their translation efforts in the 8th century most of the old Greek works would have disappeared from existence. If you are interested in learning more about how Muslims have actually benefited the world then a great book is:

Greek Thought, Arabic Culture

I hope you see now that there is a lot more to Muslims than what most people think and get a feel for from the Media.

I've got about 3 VHS tapes filled with Beakman episodes.

I stumbled upon the show during an all-night marathon one year and was instantly hooked. Unfortunately, the damn show aired WAAAAY to f'ing early in the morning. That's probably why it didn't get the viewers the network hoped for and why it was ultimately cancelled... or so the FAQ suggests.

Taping it was the only way I got to enjoy it.

What I'd really like though is a complete DVD collection of Beakman's World. The Best of Beakman's World DVD just isn't enough.

In the meantime, I guess I'll digitize my VHS tapes :/

Dr. Julius Sumner Miller

Beakman's world was a much better science show.

One of the other points about Amiga icons apart from their animation and arbitrary size that several other posts have mentioned, was that people produced themed icon sets in the 80s and 90s, mainly because the default out-of-box theme was, uh, functional at best (it was designed to be clear on a crappy TV, though).

MagicWB was probably the most popular in the Amiga european heyday of the early 90s and widely imitated by third parties. Yeah, it looks kinda crappy now. But boy could it piss off a PC/AtariST/Mac owner back in the day (NeXT users presumably went "meh", not that cognitive dissonance would let them ever admit an amiga 1/10th the price of a NeXT box could hold a candle to their machines)

The later 90s NewIcons set was more about function than prettiness (they expanded icon images to a 256-color palette), but the "newicons style" (colorful isometric, think old KDE only drawn by artists with talent :-) ) had the most clearly distinguishable icons and wasn't bad looking anyway, and it was designed for long term use, not just initial wow factor. Countless icons were 2-style, with MagicWB native images and NewIcons style images embedded in the .info files (which stored icons for the associated applicats) where only OSes with newicons patches could see them.

NewIcons could still hold their own against some iconsets I see today, anyway, especially in the clarity stakes.

Exoticons were NewIcons popular with gamers for obvious reasons when you see the screenshot...

GlowIcons were a NewIcons set and characteristic style third-parties imitated that appeared in the sunset of Amiga era.

NewIcons and GlowIcons inspired clean, elegant default look of later niche-market AmigaOS releases in the zombie-living-death of Amiga era.

"Just like the Monte Carlo method has nothing to do with the city"

Apart from being named after Monte Carlo, due to the association with roulette.

the original client was pc geos. it was pretty sophisticated for the time (i remember a lot of bbs's used it because it was pretty good at multitasking multiple lines and multiple door programs). had a decent gui right from the start. i remember getting win3.0 (i don't think 3.1 was out yet) and wondering when they were going to finally release the windows client...

It shows the firefox shagging an IE icon instead of the world. :)

I've looked at a lot of the posts about Mac OS, wondering if I should one day get a new Mac when my ship comes in. I doubt that the current machines are getting infected, I hope not, especially with viruses that somehow could get ahold of passwords, etc. like they do on unprotected Windows machines.
Now, I use my remaster of Knoppix Linux, and I wonder how the LiveCD thing fits into the increasing virus threat, with disturbing talk about Mac viruses appearing on Slashdot today. I have always assumed that the LiveCD Knoppix can be run without much worry about viruses, etc. I have one box with a GB of RAM, and I can load the entire CD into that, and do ok, as long as I don't overdo it, such as using k3b, for instance. Are we Knoppix users still home free?

A core list of commonly used words is a useful thing to have for a new language. Most language courses seem to have around 2000 words that they focus on, although these lists are usually proprietary. The only public-domain list (in English) I could find is here that could be a starting point for anyone interested in assembling a list for their favorite language.

It is called MDQ55 (another dealer call it "Fuel Shock"), it is a magnetic tube you put in a specific place on the engine and you will save gas. It "works" by aligning particles before entering in the combustion chamber. You should save up to 30% of fuel. Here is a report (in Spanish) about this fraudulent stuff:
mdq55 (PDF). I wonder if it is only an Argentiean scam or it is worldwide.

I think I got an injection recently that wasn't a needle - I didn't feel anything.... but maybe that was because I fainted! Andrew Gretton www.geocities.com/andigretton

This is getting childish guys. It was an analogy, it was even in quotes ("copyright terrorist"). Going into detailed semantics on strict definitions misses the point of an analogy. The point is that Senator Hatch is using extreme tactics, including the use of fear, to force people to conform to an ideal that they disagree with but that he believes in strongly. There is an analogy to terrorism in there, but of course it does not fit a strict definition of the meaning. Just like the Monte Carlo method has nothing to do with the city, a seahorse is not related to a horse, and neural networks don't actually use neurons.

Don't forget about the X-Files episode.
Ghost In The Machine

Maybe Sen. Hatch should watch the tech companies that are using techs to train their replacments so they can send the jobs overseas if he wants to protect American innovation and economic growth.

In a statement, Hatch declared that the panel would have an "aggressive agenda" and highlighted the issue of patent reform, saying, "We need strong patent protection to give incentives for innovation and economic growth."

Senator Hatch Introduces Bill to Burn People's Eyes Out Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) today introduced legislation authorizing the use of high-powered microwave lasers to burn out the eyes of non-paying viewers of copyrighted material. "If we could develop technology which just burned out the parts of their brains where the illegal memories are stored, that'd be fine with me--but we can burn their eyes out right now!" said Hatch, while introducing the Hatch/Hollywood Eyeball Evisceration Act.

Bookburning on the Internet If you say "If you must smoke marijuana, filter the smoke with a water pipe and don't even think of driving afterwards." or "...don't use dirty needles. Clean them with bleach or find a syringe exchange program."

I think these statements are good advice. But if U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Dianne Feinstein have their way, it will soon be a felony to publish these statements in any book, newspaper, magazine, web site, or even to utter them or link to a web site containing them. The Hatch/Feinstein Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999 makes these statements illegal because they "pertain" to an act that violates federal controlled-substance laws

Nobel Laureates Denounce Hatch's Patent Bill

Orrin Hatch's Glass House Has Bin Laden's Name on It Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch told Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. It was worth it, he said.

Hatch support for converting our interstate highways into toll roads.

Collections of Information Antipiracy Act This bill makes it legal to get the goods on you.
American database providers render an invaluable service by collecting, organizing, and disseminating billions of bits of information from myriad sources of every possible sector of our economy.

I could do a bit more research on the good Senator, but then I'd be post 387 and no one would ever read this.

Knoppix 3.4, for instance, defaults to KDE. When I remastered it, I used IceWM as default, and it comes up quicker on older machines. I have some KDE apps, such as k3b on my icewm menu, so it has to load some kde stuff to get going, but generally this is not a problem. I have the icewm toolbar set up with an icon to switch window managers, and there is fluxbox in addition to KDE, and Icewm. I took the others out, but did leave in twm (just in case).

I run a knoppix remaster. I would suppose that Knoppix already entertained ideas along this line to protect the system, and that they are, if required, in the distro. I am not sure.

If you will look at this page, you will see from the html how I managed to get this page listed in Google at the top of the results simply by entering the keyword "rankin animal clinic". Look at the table html under the comment "top of page immediate appearance page identifier". That term means nothing to Google, I just made it up, but the information in the table at the very top of the page is picked up by googlebot, and then you have your page listed where you want it. Nothing wrong with that, or the method. Google stopped using meta tags long ago, so something else had to be used. I just wanted the clients of this clinic to be able to find the site. There is, btw, an online patient form that can be downloaded and filled out, faxed, or brought in with the animal, and save a lot of time. You can imagine having to fill out one of these forms in the office, with your animal in your arms.

However, It is noteworthy to point out the greatest feature of the Opera browser...."delete all private information".. I don't know a single person who surfs for (whatever) with anything else!
Here is an OS, running Mozilla Firefox, which can also clear all private information. Then, once the computer is powered down, there is no private information anywhere on the box. Perfect for your banking or online stock transactions.

You should actually go here:
http://www.geocities.com/pierceive/adblock/
and obtain the latest adblock file from there.

I accidentally left the screensaver setting at "random" once, on Debian 2.2, KDE, so I got quiet a shock when the BSOD-type screensaver kicked in. I never previewed or saw it before, so I got taken.
Anyway, see if they can Zombie-fy this OS.

People have a right to be annoying in their own home, or office, or even in many public spaces. But when someone intrudes into my personal space (physical, email, phone, or otherwise) to be annoying, they better be prepared for a LARTing mallet.

Who controls these "keys"?

...and it is not a native programming language...

Actually there are native compilers available for Java: Gcj, J2exe,
Excelsior JET and Manta.

There are downsides to using native compilers though, including a) the need to maintain separate platform versions of your app, and b) the loss of the ability to decompile back to Java source. But some developers don't mind a), and the more proprietary ones positively love b). :)

Kaffe, on the other hand, isn't a native compiler in the sense that the compilers above actually cough up an executable for you at the command line. But it has a just-in-time (JIT) compilation system which translates the bytecode to native machine code on a method-by-method basis as the application is executed. This really boosts Java app performance a lot.

...and it is not a native programming language...

Actually there are native compilers available for Java: Gcj, J2exe,
Excelsior JET and Manta.

There are downsides to using native compilers though, including a) the need to maintain separate platform versions of your app, and b) the loss of the ability to decompile back to Java source. But some developers don't mind a), and the more proprietary ones positively love b). :)

Kaffe, on the other hand, isn't a native compiler in the sense that the compilers above actually cough up an executable for you at the command line. But it has a just-in-time (JIT) compilation system which translates the bytecode to native machine code on a method-by-method basis as the application is executed. This really boosts Java app performance a lot.

As I mentioned earlier a Zip with all the files is located at http://www.geocities.com/googlexmirror/

pushing through legislation mandating that manufacturers sell electric cars.

Actually, it was that 3% of the fleet be Zero Emissions, which effectively required automakers to turn to electric cars, as that was the only technology available at the time that could meet the zero-emissions requirement.

The only manufacturer who actually sold cars to the general public, that I know of, was Toyota. Their RAV4EV cost upwards of 40k, list price, and very few were available, as they were all conversions done under contract by a 3rd party. All the other manufacturers leased their vehicles to commercial and governmental fleets. As part of the negotiations to get the carmakers to put EVs on the roads, the State of California financed a network of EV recharge stations throughout the state. Unfortunately, the car manufacturers couldn't agree on what kind of charging standard there should be - GM advocated using the inductive paddle system (Magnacharge), Honda and Toyota and Ford produced cars using a conductive charging system (someone correct me if I'm getting my facts wrong.)

This is why when you see an electric charging spot in California, there are usually two chargers - one Magnacharge paddle, one conductive charge jack. As a consequence, mucho dinero was spent by taxpayers to establish a charging infrastructure for vehicles which have largely disappeared from the landscape.

From the very beginning auto manufacturers argued that the battery technology just wasn't there yet to make a decent all-electric vehicle.

"It can't be done", or "it's going to cost us a lot of money." I think this has been their running argument for a lot of things - against seatbelts, airbags, lower emissions, etc. Sure, batteries are not going to deliver the same energy density as gasoline. You're not going to be driving a Suburban very far on batteries. However, as a second car, especially an in-town commuter car, electricity is IDEAL. The market for NEVs is fairly decent, and these are nothing more than glorified golf carts. Hobbyists have built very capable electric commuter cars for decades. And Chrysler, Honda, and Toyota, came up with very effective electric cars, which have served for years as part of commercial and governmental fleets. Then of course, you have the EV-1.

Keep in mind, the automakers didn't HAVE to comply with the CARB mandate. Hell, they spent millions of dollars over a number of years lobbying and suing to ease the compliance schedule, and in the case of ZEVs, discard that requirement completely. But California is a big market for them, big enough such that being forced to stop selling other autos was reason enough to subsidize the ultra-low volumes needed to meet the minimum requirements of the ZEV legislation. Even with the subsidies, due to the limited production runs, the EVs ended up costing a bundle, as opposed to their gasoline cousins, whose engines and drivetrains are built in volume and shared across platforms.

Of course, that was the same problem with the electric/gas hybrid, which looked even more impractical to build and sell, because the engineering costs were higher, at least initially. Toyota had the guts to actually build one and sell it to the public (again, because of the same mandated low-emissions schedule that the ZEV legislation was part of), and now they can't keep the damn things in stock.

KDE translucency as to the menu resulted in the menu being almost unreadable on some of my boxes, so I had to cut that out in my remaster of Knoppix linux, and do with an opaque menu in KDE. It was so unuseable that it was difficult to get into the control panel to change it, so I had to change it as a default. Although one can easily switch to KDE in my remaster, I start with IceWM as default, as it boots quicker than KDE, and I found it easier to work with.

Alright, I checked and it was the "Tom Swift IV" series, Book 4 of 13 "The DNA Disaster," published in 1991.

Page about the books
Half.com to order it

For me, *NIX is an IDE.

Thanks for this definition - I was trying to explain to a Windows friend the other day why I'm so productive in *nix and it didn't occur to me to describe the whole environment as an IDE.

MyIDE = xterms + vim + grep + make + svn + man + the browser + diff + io redirection +.... ..Nods head..+ strace + ddd + ipython + glade + lyx + whatever else I need.

And besides, considering most of my time is spent manipulating text, any IDE that doesn't have vim integrated in it is useless, at least to me.

Amen to this. Or you can bring elements of an IDE into vim and use them there like TList.

You're just deliberately being a dick now, which is where pretty much every debate on /. ends up eventually, so let's just do this.

Read this and let's agree to disagree. As it turns out, we're both using somewhat skewed definitions. However, it supports my central argument that agnosticism is not an alternative between theism and atheism. By that page, I'm an agnostic atheist--I lack a belief in a god or gods because of a lack of evidence. What are you? Again atheism is NOT a belief. It's a *lack* of belief. "There is no justification for a belief in God, therefore, I do not believe in God." It doesn't pre-suppose that an atheist would never convert to theism if evidence were offered for the belief. It simply means that because there is no evidence for the belief, the atheist does not hold that belief. You are in fact an atheist if you do not actively believe in a god or gods.

-- Dave

Were the PATRIOT Act abuse complaints that the DOJ Inspector General dismissed without investigation really so unbelievable? The Inspector General's report states:

Approximately three-quarters of the 1,748 complaints made allegations that did not warrant an investigation. For example, some of the complaints alleged that government agents were broadcasting signals that interfere with a person's thoughts or dreams or that prison officials had laced the prison food with hallucinogenic drugs.
-- Report to Congress on Implementation of Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act
-- U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
-- March 11, 2005, page 5
-- http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0503/final.pdf

Judge for yourself:
A current US program of involuntary human experimentation
New Technologies Threaten Human Rights
Electromagnetics and the Mind
http://www.geocities.com/mrmistermicko
http://www.datafilter.com/mc
http://www.angelfire.com/or/mctrl

Were the PATRIOT Act abuse complaints that the DOJ Inspector General dismissed without investigation really so unbelievable? The Inspector General's report states:

Approximately three-quarters of the 1,748 complaints made allegations that did not warrant an investigation. For example, some of the complaints alleged that government agents were broadcasting signals that interfere with a person's thoughts or dreams or that prison officials had laced the prison food with hallucinogenic drugs.
-- Report to Congress on Implementation of Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act
-- U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
-- March 11, 2005, page 5
-- http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0503/final.pdf

Judge for yourself:
A current US program of involuntary human experimentation
New Technologies Threaten Human Rights
Electromagnetics and the Mind
http://www.geocities.com/mrmistermicko
http://www.datafilter.com/mc
http://www.angelfire.com/or/mctrl

Were the PATRIOT Act abuse complaints that the DOJ Inspector General dismissed without investigation really so unbelievable? The Inspector General's report states:

Approximately three-quarters of the 1,748 complaints made allegations that did not warrant an investigation. For example, some of the complaints alleged that government agents were broadcasting signals that interfere with a person's thoughts or dreams or that prison officials had laced the prison food with hallucinogenic drugs.
-- Report to Congress on Implementation of Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act
-- U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
-- March 11, 2005, page 5
-- http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0503/final.pdf

Judge for yourself:
A current US program of involuntary human experimentation
New Technologies Threaten Human Rights
Electromagnetics and the Mind
http://www.geocities.com/mrmistermicko
http://www.datafilter.com/mc
http://www.angelfire.com/or/mctrl

very few states that get as much or more from the Federal government as they pay

False. Most states receive more from DC than they pay to it. Here's a complete list, with reference.

Maybe, just maybe, that would get their attention.

This imagery to 3d is a primary component to artificial intelligence

Also if you could video tape a building and port it to 3d, you could make some quick FPS levels.

There's a simple solution for Firefox users:
Adblock
combined with
This
will remove any of his ads, along with a ton of others.