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Slashback: Pop-Ups, Books, Qmail
What's your idea of feel-good literature? A few weeks ago, an Ask Slashdot question was posed about the greatest dystopic novels, and quite a few people weighed in with their choices for visions of the post-nuclear, post-germ-warfare, post-natural disaster or otherwise blighted future.
Now reader itwerx wants the other side: "That "Dystopic novels?" Ask Slashdot was so darn depressing we need a counter balance! Let's hear what novels of utopia may not be widely known."
It's certainly widely known, but I'll start the bidding with Atlas Shrugged.
The best revenge is living well, and gluing spammers end-to-end. RealDhar writes "Hey, just thought I'd let folks know that, inspired by the recent article about Paul Graham's Bayesian spam filter work, I went and wrote one for qmail. Please check it out!"
What took so long? Pop-up ads are no fun. iVillage cut them out, AOL swears they're cutting back, and even Netscape 7 can be wrangled to block them. An anonymous reader writes "From the Associated Press (via Salon): EarthLink Inc. said Monday it plans to offer its subscribers software to block Internet pop-up advertisements as part of a wider campaign to set itself apart from competitors. The full story is here.."
Penguins and picnics go well together. ArtEnvironment writes "Besides today's 2nd California Linux Anniversary Picnic previously mentioned, there will also be PLUS, the Philadelphia Linux/Unix Symposium which is the 2nd annual East-Coast Linux anniversary picnic and more, including a bar night kicking off Friday the 23rd, a free computer/electronics swap meet and giveaway on Saturday the 24th, and of course the picnic on Sunday the 25th. Also included is one of the well-known PLUG GPG Keysigning parties. PLUS will be an annual grass-roots event, but it 'won't be big and professional like' ALS or LWCE. ;)"
I look forward to the final, triumphant mention of this :) Qbertino writes "The Blender Fund, established a month ago in order to buy the IP of the 3D Pakage Blender and, at last, GPL it, has accumulated 90K Euro (90K$) of the required 100K in less than 4 weeks. As it indicates on the Website, Ton Roosendahl, father of Blender, is preparing to release the sources which should happen within the next week or so. Time for a Blender icon on /."
Version of what I call the "James P. Hogan Utopia" show up in a number of his novels. Among them are: Paths to Otherwhere, The Multiplex Man, Return to Tomorrow.
-Rob
... with strict anti-spam laws. Here we dcan sue spammers for a good amount of money. Some people win literally thousnads of dollars IF they can catch em but i know the geeks on slashdot can figure some way to find em.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I vote for "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace -- but that's because I think giant hurds of free-roaming hamsters would rule. --MM
Sorry, but I find Utopian Novels much more depressing than end of the world, apocolypse novels. Any book about Utopia is a work of fiction, something that will never be achieved as long as humans are involved. Where as apocoplypse is where we are going, regardless of your opinion. I'd rather not read more and more lies about how "great" humanity could do it if worked together. This isn't a troll and this isn't flamebait. I'm just stating how I feel.
A story about ISPs blocking pop-ups that has a pop-ups? Is Salon.com charging Earthlink for the additional enticement?
Really, is Atlas Shrugged suggested as a utopia or dystopia? What a nightmare, a world full of objectivists.
I'm an IE6.0 windows user, and I stumbled across Pop-Up Stopper by panic ware. It just displays a little icon in the system tray, which can be turned on and off by double clicking. It has been almost foolproof so far, and it's completely free. They also have retail products that provide even more services (though I haven't tested any myself).
Free pop-up stopper download page here.
Try The Proxomitron. I works 95% of the time and it's free. Kills both pop-ups and on-page ads. It even stops Flash and gif animations if you want. More options than you can shake a checkbox at. Try it, you'll like it.
>> Practice Safe Hex
To merge the topic of Blender with that of another recent subject, has anyone started a fund for creating Free fonts to eliminate Free software's dependence upon Microsoft's fonts? From the discussion that has already occured, it seems as though the only sane and reasonable way to get high-quality, consistant fonts is to scrap some money together and pay a professional to do so.
:Peter
People, if a _rendering_ program, that is probably used by a relatively small amount of people, can reach 90% of its goal in four weeks, what can we do about raising funds for fonts, which everyone has an interest in? What we need now is for someone or some organization well-respected within the community to speak up and say, "The pot is open! Come chip in!"
Ceci n'est pas un post
He's a damn Objectivist.
Ceci n'est pas un post
What is the point? There are many pop-up blocker software out there already. Why must Earthlink try to reinvent the wheel? Some browsers already has the support for this feature too. In fact you can stop this and all other annoyances by just disabling JavaScript... not that hard now is it, Earthlink?
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Becuase frankly, utopias are fucking boring. Novels that tell a story of triumph against all odds, winning out against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune... those are the stories that speak to the real human condition of fighting adversity. As evidence, consider Dante's writing series. Paradiso is pages and pages of crap about how wonderful heaven is. Boooooring. Inferno is much more interesting reading. (I guess you could say that Inferno is a contra-example to my thesis since the focus of the story is really more on the suffering of the damned than the travel of the main character, but otoh the narrator does travel through the bowels of hell, no doubt a frightening journey, only to return unharmed.)
So in the field of uplifting stories, stories that, like Shawshank Redemption, are of people crawling through a river of shit to come out clean on the other side, I'll toss in Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One . I read it when I was 14, and honestly I think it's had more of a lasting impact on me than any other written work, Bible included. When the times get tough (and I've had my share of tough times in the decade since then), I think it's that books message of self-reliance and determination that carried me through. (Or at least, like a boxer, I would have gone down swinging if I had...)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Pop Ups pay for the content you read on certain sites. Yep, the internet isn't free nor is the content. It costs to generate content and one way of paying for that is, shudder, advertising.
Someone has to pay. If it's not pop ups it'll be something else.
Why do people continue to believe that the internet is free and always will be free?
We don't have a micropayment system in place, so web site operators need to generate revenue somewhere.
Maybe a giant spoon, or a yellow dot on a purple background?
I have two procmail rules which work wonders in stopping spam. the first one is a fairly uninventive but nevertheless effective check of a really great RBL. The second is a bit more inventive. By pulling the 'Recieved' headers from the message and comparing the countries the mail was routed through using 'GeoIP' you can make some assumptions about the route. For example. if the sending machine is in the US, relays the mail through Korea, then the mail comes back to the US such an inefficent route can be safely assumed as intended to take advantage of an open SMTP relay... Enjoy!
procmailrc.antispam.txt
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Seriousuly, her utopia is not only deeply flawed, but her writing sucks. I mean, come on, did anyone really buy into those 20-minute long monologues that folks like D'Anconia have at dinner parties while everyone stands in silence and listens to his tedious diatribes?
The Fountainhead was much better (Rand was able to resist her temptation to "tell" not "show" a bit better), but even that work was deeply flawed, both from a literary perspective and from a philosophical one. Still inspiring in many ways, but seriously flawed.
She was rejected by 40 publishers for a reason.
I have no problem subscribing to the "less government" view of the world, but Objectivism is strictly out.
Seriously, why all the big hoo-haa about the removal of popups when it's easy to install some unobtrusive trustworthy software which destroys them without you even noticing?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Even though I knew I wouldn't get the t-shirt... oh well. I'll also probably never really use Blender, though I have been considering just downloading it to fiddle with it. Regardless, I pitched in $5, because I felt it was a good cause. I like the idea of free software... especially the "free" part... but the people who put all the work into projects like this have to eat, and I'm ok with contributing to something that will provide a substantial benefit to the community and world as a whole. Good luck Blender Team, and to all of you fledgling artists, put my $5 to good use.
Just like the argument for bayesian analysis of SPAM, reason-based analyis of trolls is fundamentally flawed, as can be seen by the broken "lameness" filters. A neural network/bayesian approach would probably work much better at finding the features trolls have in common. Slashdot could mark likely trolls automatically after they are analyzed by the system, and users could filter "likely troll" in their user preferences page. But mostly, this would be a cool project to do, and I wish CmdrTaco would be more willing to allow direct database access for academic projects. Screen-scraping is not an attractive prospect.
Ceci n'est pas un post
Hey,
The Bayesian filtering method seems very promising to me. However, I am a person who gets a lot of spam and relatively little "real" email (I used to use email all the time before IM prorgams).
Now if I were to give it thousands of spam a week to learn from, and maybe 1 real email or so to learn from, won't the spam language eventually just outweigh all the good language?
Either way, it seems spammers can just tack enough "goodie" words at the end of their email to outweigh the marketing speak they had in the original. Or just use JPEGS for HTML enabled clients..
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy was very cool, if implausible. A ninteenth-century author's vision of a twentieth century utopia is bound to be chock full of accidental anachronisms.
IN TEH FUCHAR, LITERSY WLIL EB OPSHANAL!!!!!111
...Satan himself announced his plans to upscale the use of popup ads in Hell, as a way to torture people without the costs of hiring demons...
Repeal the DMCA!
This is the 42nd post in this discussion.
Oh, and I hate pop-ups.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Plato's Republic is, perhaps, the original Utopian work. It's not a novel, but it does lay out what Plato believes it would take to form an ideal society.
It's no where near as long as a modern novel and well worth reading just to see the genesis of Utopian thought
.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
Leto
It's good to know that there's an xpi for netscape that allows you to block popup ads. Mozilla does it out of the box though..
Inc. said Monday it plans to offer its subscribers software to block Internet pop-up advertisements as part of a wider campaign to set itself apart from competitors.
Wonder how they are going to advertise this to the general internet, pop-ups? spam?
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Timothy and Michael are clones btw.
the best utopian literature I ever read. Can you just imagine a fellowship consisting of a few halflings, humans, an elf, a dwarf and an old wizard defeating an almighty sorceror?
Forget the fact that Sauron has virtually an infinite number of minions to implement his evil plans... not to mention that the fate of the world as they know it lies in the hands of a hobbit barely the height of my waist.
And in the end... they succeeded, nevermind the fact that to reach this conclusion I had to go through THREE tomes the size of phone directories.
Well, at least I need not wait for three years like those lazy people who prefer to wait for the movie... heh!
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
If anyone's interested, I'll be combining them in a bound volume for only $19.95 a copy, per year, per seat.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Unfortunately utopian novels tend not to make very good novels.
Compare Aldous Huxley's dystopian Brave New World to his later utopia, Island. Moral ambiguity is replaced by self-righteousness, the bitter irony of the "savage" who represents an alternative world-vision in BNW is replaced by the one-sided Theosophists who form the opposition in Island. And the soul-killing drug, "soma," is replaced by the enlightening "moksha medicine," without any very convincing explanation of what makes one drug better than another.
Or compare H.G. Wells's classic early works, starting with the speculative dystopia of The Time Machine, with his preachy late utopia, The Shape of Things to Come.
Or read some of the classic socialist utopias of the late nineteenth century, Morris's News From Nowhere or Bellamy's Looking Backward. No plot, no conflict, just the slow exposition of the author's vision for a new world, along with castigation of the stupidity or greed of those among the author's contemporaries who did not share his vision.
Books about the process of creating utopia tend to be somewhat better; I enjoyed Wells's In the Days of the Comet, and Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is something of a classic, describing the fight to create a libertarian society on the moon. But that class of books allows for direction and struggle in a way that pure utopian novels do not.
I don't see how blowing up the Golden Gate Bridge constitutes "ending well". The book was a long and trite "if everyone did things my way, look how great it would be". The protagonists were terrorists by every meaning of the word. They attacked civilian targets, killed innocent people, and we rewarded for it. The bad guys won.
By the end of the book, I was deeply saddened that their plans weren't foiled, that the thinly-veiled United-Nations-cum-Fascist-Overlords didn't blow the colony to smithereens, that they got away with such atrocities, and that Heinlein had the nerve to try and justify it all!
I really hated that book. It sickened me and left me with a very foul impression of its author. Perhaps it was a bad Heinlein book to start off with, because now I refuse to read any of his others, no matter how well recommended they are.
... from the blender3d website...
NaN Holding recognizes that, giving all circumstances and the current economic situation, moving on with Blender to this next stage will be the most beneficial thing to do, to protect past investments, but also to respect everything that has been realized until now by the NaN companies and the world-wide user community.
NaN Holding being the current owner of blender, and supposedly seeing open source as the way to go... then what am I missing here? Why does the blender fund exist for the purpose of purchasing a development license from NaN?? Bueller?
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Firstly, all his arguments are against today's common resolutions. When viewed at a half-metre away a 6000x6000 resolution screen would be as detailed as most people can perceive, so there you start to see the limits of his complaint. Now we don't have those types of screens yet, and that should be his complaint. Anti-aliasing itself is perfectly valid, it's the combination of low-resolution and static images that should be blamed, but Joel always uses a wide brush.
Secondly he writes saying that those who like anti-aliasing don't realise how it's blurry. That they're the blind zealot. He creates a weak person and then victoriously knocks them down. The nature of anti-aliasing is blurring. Everyone knows this. More accurately however it's the averaging of detail - as if the scene was rendered at many times the resolution and then scaled down to fit.
He heaps praise on the Microsoft Typography group for 'noticing' that pixels are the units to build fonts out of. In saying so he either ignores or is ignorant of fonts that don't anti-alias at lower resolutions because of their rendering, and the concept of font-hinting which existed long before Microsoft existed.
Northern California secedes from the union. A journalist from the US travels in after a few years. It's realistically portrayed, but it's a matter of debate how possible such a society is. Still, interesting read for those that dabble in utopianism.
Do I think it's a possible society... would it work? Parts were quite interesting in that way. More likely than Atlas Shrugged's world working out to it's promise. Of course, I'm biased because looking at history it's clear we've already tried Ayn's system, and it ended up in Feudalism and falling apart.
-pyrrho
The Songs of the Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke.
The story chronicles the happenings of two human civilisations: One, founded in the remote planet of Thalassa, colonized by humans in a distant past. The Thalassans live in peace and harmony, thought their lives are a bit dull. The other civilisation is a group of people from Earth who are just "passing by". The conflict arises when these two civilisations meet one another and...
Here is the link at Amazon -- check out the reviews.
Cheers!
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
For non-novels, More's "Utopia" would be the other big classic utopia, since it's the source of the word. Meaning either "the good place," eu-topos, or "nowhere," ou-topos. Or, pessimistically but most likely, both.
Neither's a real good read, though. Glaucon's such a yes-man.
I think you have a good idea that does not go far enough. Let's not just free the fonts, let's free all of Microsoft and buy them out! I wonder what would happen if we (opensource community) all gained a majority control in Microsoft. Couldn't we just force them to become open/free/libre?
The movie version, directed by Frank Darabont, is, in my opinion, the only movie ever made from a book that is better than the book. And considering it's a darn good book to begin with, that's saying a lot. (Okay, yeah, so it's my favorite movie of all time. I'm just a sucker for triumph-over-adversity movies.)
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
What any given reader finds boring depends on many factors outside the author's control. The fact that you find the Paradiso boring says more about you than about the Paradiso.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
I've been reading the various rants about Ayn Rand, objectivism, capitalism, Ken Lay and so on. A few have described Ken Lay as the ultimate capitalist in an attempt to discredit capitalism, Ayn Rand and objectivism. The problem with this association is that Ken Lay was a crook, not a capitalist, and certainly not typical of the protagonists in Atlas Shrugged. If anything, he is probably more similar to the antagonists of that book, for example James Taggert, with his treachery, greed, dishonesty, and manipulation. There is a vast difference between trying to make a lot of money (capitalism) and trying to make a lot of money by stealing it (Ken Lay). Nowhere in Atlas Shrugged did Ayn Rand suggest that deception should be used as a tool of a capitalist. As a matter of fact, there were many instances in the novel where the protagonists of the novel were taken advantage of because they did adhere to a higher moral code than the dishonest and manipulating government. In the novel, the government was the one stealing. The conflict was that the owners of industry wouldn't just hand everything over. They wanted to make it perfectly clear that the government was stealing. If it's not already clear, I really liked Atlas Shrugged.
Ursula K. LeGuin's _The_Dispossessed_ is IMHO one of the best Utopian novels in print; especially since it avoids the flaws so many have already pointed out, namely, vociferous self-righteousness and non-existent human struggle.
In a nutshell: physics genius from ascetic, cooperative anarchy on a quasi-prison planet travels to hedonistic, fragmented neighbor planet to revolutionize science across the galaxy.
That summary is just SO inadequate...
-ELfSi tibi te corpus pulchrum habere narrem, habeasne id contra me?
Clive Barker does not usualy come to mind when thinking of nice feel good lit, but his book Imagica was pretty good if not a bit long.
Lest we never forget Doulas Adams... no need to title the books.
flinging poop since 1969
If you haven't read it, run, don't walk to Amazon and buy it now. Now that's my kind of "utopia". Government is a dirty word and everyone carries guns. They invented the internet in the 1800's.
Seriously, Smith has written over 20 books with libertarian themes carried to their logical conclusions. They aren't preachy, but darn good plots and good characters you can actually like.
Second place goes to anything by Heinlein.
Read about it here.
White Mars (at least this is the German title translated back :-) by Roger Penrose (for those who do not know: he worked a lot together with Stephen Hawking) and a well known SF author whose name I don't remember now (book is lended).
Story goes about how the first martian colony, which depends on earth's support, has to survive on its own when the earth's economy and nearly everything else breaks down.
Very realistic from technology's view and an amazing picturing of human behaviour in such extreme situations.
Before anyone here says that fonts are easy to make, you're probably forgetting the non-western character sets and the thousands of unicode characters.
Just as there are fonts that specialize in "CJK" (Chinese Japanese Korean) glyphs, there can also be "LGC" fonts for Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic. A good font editor will have the user draw a bunch of glyphs representing A-Z in Latin, the Greek, Cyrillic, and IPA glyphs that do not match the Latin glyphs, and then some diacritics. Then from that data, it'll "compose" glyphs for the first 1500 or so characters in Unicode.
Another optimization: when creating a new glyph, copy parts from similar glyphs and present them to the font designer for further work. For example, from b and p, you get (thorn). From D, you get Ð (edh). From l and n, you get h. From n, you can infer most of m. From f, you get long s, and from long s and normal s, you get ß.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Voltaire's Utopia is a memorable one. It serves as an example as to why such a place will never exist.
Good grief, how could anyone recommend inflicting that tome on another human being? It's nothing but boring plot used to tie together Objectivist monologues on the evils of supporting the non-productive members of a society! Not that I disagree, in principle, but there's a 40'page monologue in that thing! 40 damn pages of objectivism! That's too much to be healthy.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Since many of the more slimey ones like to use open relays, perhaps that could be used to our advantage. A simple script which smelled like an open relay to anyone connecting to it, but in reality only placed messages in a queue for manual confirmation or something, could be used. Make it log everything anyone does to it, including full message contents, source address, traceroute info, whatever would prove useful in the court case. Its a simple variation on the honeypot theme, really.
In fact, I think such a script may actually be worth writing. Hmmm. Does anyone have snort logs or something of the mechanism their probes use, or am I gonna have to write a full SMTP implementation?
Paranoid
Bwaahahahahaa.
People don't believe that the Internet is free and always will be. What they believe is that they should be able to pay a reasonable price to an ISP for access to a worldwide network.
So they have an access to a network. But what use is a network with nothing good on it? Writers have to eat somehow. That's the whole cable TV model: pay the cable company for access to the network; watch the ads for access to the content.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"What a nightmare, a world full of objectivists."
I've met a few who call themselves objectivists because they've read a chapter or two and think they've confirmed their Nietzchean views. If you've met any of these people and thought "this is objectivism," I can understand your opinion. I trust that it is subject to your ongoing appraisal.
Atlas Shrugged presents neither dystopia nor utopia. Both notions are about the last irrevocable note a culture strikes. It shows the worst in men's spirits and the best -- two cultures. The last note of one isn't irrevocable and the note struck by the other isn't it's last.
Pop Up stopper does the job of killing pop up ads while allowing me to surf sites that actually "need" to pop up a new window.
No Zen is good zen
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Laugh if you want, but as a member of this society you would likely be very happy and want for little.
Terry Pratchett is the most clever author I've ever ingested. (Well, I suppose I ingested his work, not him, just to make things clear.) And his novels all seem to have happy-everything-worked-out endings without seeming trite. His subtile and not so subtile satire might even make you a better person. Go ahead and pick up one of his discworld novels.
And now, I'll mention Neal Stephenson. Not for any good reason, just so I'll get moderated up.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Don't forget that whale that crushed our Jimmy
Wasn't Moon just a riff on the American Revolution, updated for the space age? Admittedly, the Founding Fathers didn't attack Britain directly, but that was probably due to lack of opportunity given the technology of the time.
I read it in that sense because it seemed to fit with Heinlein's weird libertarian-fascist love of pioneers, and it seemed to be pretty thickly laid on, even down to using the Fourth of July etc.
deus does not exist but if he does
"Dispossessed," by Ursula Le Guin. A lot of her work could be called utopian/dystopian, but this book is the one that really changed my personal views of what our world should be like.
Ironic that the Soviet socialist regime would produce canonical utopian writing while simultaneously providing creative material for truly disturbing stories like Nabokov's Bend Sinister.
Is it too late to weigh in with Bend Siniter as my vote for a distopian novel? It is the sort of book you read exactly once.
. Penguins Surely Ca
"Ken Lay is a supreme capitalist."
..."
... can be easily painted into logical corners."
..."
That remains to be seen. But because your antipathy to him is palpable, that statement looks a lot like an attempt at erecting a straw man. In a mixed economy two sorts of men may become successful. One depends upon the voluntary cooperation of his partners and customers. The other depends on deception and political connections. Naturally, men exist who can attribute their success to some combination of these two factors. But only the first is capitalist.
"Isn't capitalism supposed to lead to a perfect universe if everyone just is allowed to be as greedy as they want?"
Interesting premise. But false. The universe is already "perfect" so to speak. Man cannot change the laws of nature. A man can only change himself (how he rules himself) -- and defend himself. Your use of the word "allowed" reveals a lot, though. Precisely who is "booted and spurred" to decide who may not benefit himself and in what way? And why?
The student who called a student activities fee a form of taxation is no objectivist. Sounds more like what I'd call an "idiot". A little perspective: when purchasing an education, "fees" are part of the ongoing agreement between the student and the institution. There are many schools to choose from. Only governments tax. What a maroon.
However, it *is* true that information is not necessary to make a free decision. It won't be a very good decision -- a better word would be "whim" or "caprice" -- but it will be a free decision.
Information *is* necessary to make -- surprise -- an *informed* decision. Establishing a personal policy of gathering relevant information is a good idea. How much information does that take?
"In general, absolutists are dangerous
Interesting assertion. To whom? In my experience, the only dangerous people (to me) are irrational. If you disagree with that perhaps you can tell me how rational people can be dangerous to each other. I'll cede the point that -- when provoked -- rational people can (and should) be dangerous to irrational people.
"In general, absolutists
Relativists can escape any constraints. But they can't bring their principles with them.
"They refuse to bend a principle"
Principles stand or break. Anything that bends is a sorry excuse for a principle. What happens when principles break depends on whether the person is honest or dishonest. An honest person scuttles a lesser principle when he learns that it contradicts a greater principle. A dishonest person deludes himself into believing he actually had any principles.
"... to bend a principle leading to interesting contradictions
How does "bending" a "principle" produce anything other than contradictions?
-B...
Utopia by Sir Thomas More. He did, after all, come up with the word. (translated literally from Latin means "no place")
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Here are my favorites, with political viewpoints that range from conservative to libertarian to anarchist to socialist:
Utopias are becoming more important as people become more powerful (e.g., computers, genetics, potential global prosperity), since the future is going to be largely be something we create rather than just witness. This makes dystopias more important too, but as cautionary tales rather than defeatist predictions.
Another novel I like that contains all the elements -- a utopia, a dystopia, and our present time (that will determine which path is taken) -- is Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Pearcy
The only thing I can find that is a (happy) Utopian novel is B.F. Skinner's Walden II, which is honestly a very interesting read. The book interested largely in the mechanics and psychology required for such a society, with just enough plot to keep Skinner's ideas moving.
I have been told that it was the basis for Brave New World in some form or another, but it might just be Skinner's ideas that Huxley was borrowing from/parodying.
I suppose you could count the original Walden (which has no relation to Walden II beyond the idea of utopia), but living alone doesn't qualify as Utopia...after all, the reasons that Utopias fall apart are...other people.
Sartre was right, after all.
Also, the concept of "Utopia" is usually written about for the sense of irony...reference 1984...plus we can find lots of stories like Animal Farm: good intentions turned to mud by human flaws. The point of Utopia, from a writers view, is to trample on it, generally. Take that for what it's worth.
--ryan.
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
You'd better of donating your money to the blender fundation to have a free 3D modeler than paying his craps.
Is there a copyright for fonts the same way as there is for prose?
Many fonts (the 'classics') were first laid hundreds of years ago, perhaps we don't need to start with paid, original works, but rather focus on the standards (Times Roman, Courier, etc.).
Just a thought.
I'm halfway through Atlas Shrugged and didn't know it was a utopian novel. It seems pretty dystopic so far to me. Thanks for ruining it! Hmph!
Novels that tell a story of triumph against all odds, winning out against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune... those are the stories that speak to the real human condition of fighting adversity
This is qoute from a book "Pawns of Chaos" that I read recently, and seems to be a good fit here.
Nothing stands in the way of the ultimate annihilation of everything,' the god Gulzacandra told him through Hycilla. 'In the end, everything possessed of life returns to air and ash and dust, and everything returns to listlessness. All that matters is how things burn. Not how quickly, but how. How could one delight in taking the side of Chaos, in being Chaos, if there were no Order to make a game of it? Where is the spice in easy victory? Where is the pride, the job, the sense of achievement, the triumph? I need enemies, Dathan, even more than I need allies. There is nothing quite so precious to me as a traitor. But it does work the other way around. Remember that, Dathan, when you begin to feel again. Order cannot tolerate traitors, or weaklings, or maladjustment, or creativity. Order needs nothing but order, and calm of mind. You can have that if that's what you decide to want, when you become capable of wanting anything at all, but you might do better to choose otherwise.
It seems to me that the most benefit of blocking spam is going to be during the SMTP exchange. Once my mail server has accepted the mail message, there's (typically) no way for me to push back at the spammer.
How can I get my qmail to run this statistical thing during the SMTP and then abort the SMTP exchange so that it remains in the relays queue?
For a fantastic utopian, hedonistic society, go and pick up any of Ian M Banks' Culture Novels.
Any of them are good starting points, they may mention parts of other novels in passing, however not knowing the novel in question doesn't lessen the enjoyment.
Excession is a classic space opera based around the Culture universe, if you can't decide which one to pick up, get this one
-- k
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Its a bit too dreamy, but definitely highlights some brilliant ideas. Ecotopia is a VERY nice vision of the future.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
"Let it just be said that this Romantic tried to call her poor justifications objectivity for a good reason... to hide the lack of any internal coherency."
You're on. Name the lapses in coherency.
"At least half the people that "like" her simply don't understand her and buy the surface level rhetoric of libertarean objectivity."
You're right about that. I've met them. But you're a reasonable chap, right? So you won't call "objectivist" one who claims it for himself falsely, then, will you?
"She hated Libertarians,"
Yes, she did. Her political philosophy was grounded in her ethics and more deeply in her epistemology. It's evident that she believed serious political reform was untenable without a major philosophical evolution. How can a government protect rights they don't believe in? The Libertarians believe there are political solutions to philosophical problems (actually they don't acknowledge the problems are philosophical in nature -- it'd undermine their ringquest). And they don't care to ground their political notions in sound philosophy. As a result they're just shifting dogma like those of the other parties. The LP is well on its way to becoming yet another party (albeit a tiny one) awash in moral pragmatism.
That said, I've voted for their candidate on occasion, when I think it's the best of the available choices. And because the two major parties no longer offset each other as well as they have in the past.
""Objectivity" for her refers to the cold hard outlook, the ability to step over a homeless person, not in the scientific sense of subjecting one's hypothesis to doubt and test."
This is nonsense. A.) When does she step over a homeless person? In what book of hers? In what historical account? As I recall, in Atlas Shrugged, she has Dagny enjoy dinner with a tramp on her train. While it was not for charity, she was aware of the value of the meal to the tramp -- and she treated him respectfully. What would you have preferred? A kiss? Jeez. B.) In science, hypotheses are not "subjected" to "doubt", just to test. Courageous scientists enjoy subjecting hypotheses to the strictest tests because they marvel at those which remain standing. They maintain no affection toward false hypotheses. Because Rand shares none of her own personal introspection with you, you assume there'd been none? Read more. Objectivism isn't about spouting fiat and watching the world morph into spires of glass and steel. It's about determining and stating one's desire, finding out what it takes to accomplish it, and then doing it.
"Nietzsche is a much better way to spend your youthful rebellion against the herd."
Rebellions against herds are for the so-called non-conformists. They're blind to the irony that their ideals are determined by others -- that they've evaded the task of selecting their ideals. What happens when their "enemies" change their ideals? Do they lose the enemy or swap ideals? It's not about what you're against. It's about what you're *for*.
"She [...] was justifying why men that rise to the top of the capitalist world, like Ken Lay, are a better sort of people, period."
There are characters in Atlas Shrugged who "rose to the top" of their world who were most assuredly not capitalists. They were, in fact, villains. Perhaps you should consider reading the book.
"Rand is actually quite dangerous, I think."
Not really. She was short and out of shape. And now she's dead. But perhaps you mean to say that her ideas are quite dangerous. In the sense that they arm rational people against an irrational era, you're right.
"She represents an anti-rationalism which is always a key ingredient in fascism."
The "key ingredient" in fascism is the belief that the State is the creator/grantor of all rights. One would have to be anti-Reason to take this view. Please demonstrate how Ayn Rand supported this view. Take your time.
-B...
[could a moderator please bump this up? this book hasn't been mentioned yet, and i doubt many folks have heard of it. anyway, i suspect most people would be greatful to find out about it. thanks.]
."
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You
here's an excerpt from an amusing review at amazon:
". . . I have just been blown away by The Kin of Ata. . . . I am not easily swayed by words.I am a Marine,a Harvard MBA, a CPA, a spouse of some years, a parent of four children, an awesome dude. . .
none of the reviews give a very good summary of the book, and there's no way for me to construct a concise description. give it a chance, i doubt you'll regret it.
So far, WebWasher has removed 270,110 banner ads for me. Including the ones on Slashdot. WebWasher can double the speed of page loads on dialup connections, just by eliminating the ad traffic. Yes, a few sites detect WebWasher, but you probably don't want to look at them anyway.
WebWasher needs some work; the individual version isn't being updated. But it's still ahead of the competitive products.
After using WebWasher for a year, I've almost forgotten that the Web used to have advertising.
Under the category of utopian novels, I nominate Pacific Edge, the third of the Three California's trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Each of the three books tells an alternative future of Orange County California. The first is post-apocalyptic, the second is dystopian, and the third is eco-utopian. In Pacific Edge he tells a story of the struggles of a 2065 community fifty years after the US collectively decided to abandon heavy industry, outlaw large corporations, and replace concrete metropolis cities with small sustainable interconnected communities. Without preaching, Robinson draws the reader into the story of his characters' lives in this naturally beautiful could-be world. Another gem from the author of the Red-Green-Blue Mars trilogy.
Given the premise that the cycle of mining water, growing wheat, and shipping said wheat to Earth constituted a continual bleeding of resources of the moon, I don't see how the Lunies had any choice but to revolt.
Luna gave the Earth plenty of time to come to terms, work out a reasonable settlement (ship us your waste, we'll processs it and send it back pound for pound of wheat).
And (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) but the only time the civilian populace was hurt was when a group of them camped out to watch the rock fall, right under the announced target site.
The spaceport at Dallas, and SF, were military targets. Many times, they threatened to hit the Tak Mahal, but always declined to take the shot, not wanting to destroy a priceless peice of history / architecture.
Pretty reasonable for terrorists, if you ask me.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
Does the Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson count as Utopia or the building of one?
It isn't peachy keen all the time, but it did have: an alternative economy, longevity treatment (up to a few hundred years), a large focus on ecology of the planet.
Rather whimpsical towards the ending, and two characters at odds with each other for a couple of hundred years got finally hitched up... I guess that would qualify as "feel good" if you haven't fallen asleep at that point!
- Islandia (Austin Tappan Wright)
- The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin)
- Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy)
Be warned, however, that some of these are reasonably depressing, despite being about utopias...Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
I think there's a club for people who can't finish reading Infinite Jest. It includes me and another guy I know. We discuss the first 100 pages every now and again. I haven't had so much trouble reading a book since that 5th book in the Foundation trilogy, and that was 15 years ago.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Chasing! If you look at the eyelids, during REM sleep they're moving like mad. Sometimes you see the legs twitching, I think this is a reaction to seeing something like a "prey" in the dream.
Of course, they might dream of different things too. If you go to a new house and new surroundings during the day, he might see the house in sleep. Kind of like humans. Of course, the dog can't explain to us, as we don't understand the language.
"Momo" by Michael Ende. Not only poetic and beautiful, but also subversive.
***i watched you change into a fly***
Yes Atlas Shrugged and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Both books (and their authors) have flaws but are really quite good.
But you know I am so damned tired of whiney communists/'greens' and their ilk. Yea, the planet can get fucked up by messy idiots. However, they seem to revel in picking on western civilization, especially the US, in its contribution to the problem. There's a lot of GOOD that's come out of science and technology relating to fixing the mess, yet these luddites cast their eyes longingly at the 'simple tribal societies' of the third world, while damning technological progress! The same people who can't explain to me what food is 'organic' and what is not, seem to think that they can somehow use their 'love of mother earth' as a substitute for rational thought in molding environmental policy.
If you really want to see the world become cleaner, figure stop hugging trees and start driving a GreaseCar, or find out about the advantages and disadvantages of a Tesla Turbine, etc.
If all there had ever been were her jacked-up laissez-faire free-market bulldogs, solely in pursuit of a profit and freely pursuing their 'rights' to wealth and property, most of us would be dirt poor peasants, licking the feet of dirty fucking despots and warlords. No thank you. Ayn can live in the might-makes-right Utopia of her mind. (Assuming there's an afterlife. Maybe hell is getting what you wished for in life.) Personally, I don't think a little altruism is a very bad thing at all.
I can kind of see why she might react so violently against altruism. She came from the early 1900s Russia which was just finishing up going through a revolution and much corruption was already being seen. Communism was meant to be, basically, the ultimate form of altruism, but it failed (and continues to fail, even to this day). However, flying directly to the other end of the spectrum and saying anything goes is not the answer either. Letting free markets decide what is best for people is as stupid as letting an oligarchic government decide what is best for people. It's just letting one minority (the richest 1%) replace another minority (a fascistic, or possibly communistic government) in making decisions for everyone.
It's inexcusable, short-sighted, anti-dogmatic-turned-dogmatic drivel. Rand's 'philosophy' may have a few good grains of worth in it, but overall it's crawling with mealbugs and needs to be tossed aside for a better harvest. If you want rational people to be armed, they're going to have to read a lot more than a few Ayn Rand books.
www.sonsorol.org
The easiest (and only guaranteed way) to block popup adds is to DISABLE javascript. Sure, you may lose some functionality, but many sites have versions that work with and without javascript. Disabling this also removes many vulnerabilites, as most of the ie/netscape/mozilla exploits use scripting to get the job done, and if scripting isn't enabled, they won't run.
The book that best describes Nerd-utopia (nerdtopia?) must be Neuromancer. Imagine what the internet looks like in that book. Space stations around the earth, filled with decadent and filthy rich people or ganja-smoking rasta-people. AIs in the loose, wanting to take over. Definately utopia in my mind. :)
Well, I read all five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy and I watched all five movies in the Star Wars trilogy...
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Similarly, a Distopia describes a place which is run on lines which you would dislike.
Beyond a cherished few classics (1984, A Brave New World, The Matrix) your choice of [U|Dis]topia says more about you than it does about how human nature is likely to allow circumstances to evolve and develop.
Personal view: Atlas Shrugged... [shudder]. I prefer Robert Anton Wilson's parody 'Telemachus Sneezed' in the Illuminatus! trilogy.
Hmm, Illuminatus!... Now there was a [U|Dis]topia! I'm not sure which yet, though. Let me read it a few dozen more times, and I'll get back to you.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
BS. I've never read a single paper on the Divine Comedy (for the general readership) that failed to point out that the Inferno is, and always has been, far and away the most popular of the three books. So, it doesn't say more about him, it says more about the book. When a reaction to something is nearly universal in character, then it is reasonable to think that the cause is in the thing, and not in the audience.
Not so far fetched. Do the unexpected. Sauron never considered that someone would try to destroy his ring, rather than try to use it.
Post-scarcity galactic civilisation. Yum. Scares both capitalists and communists silly - both are obsolete if we eliminate physical and energy scarcity. Which is what scientific progress is doing, little by little.
Great, free TrueType Japanese fonts are available via:
/usr/ports/japanese/kochi-ttfonts && make install clean
/usr/ports/print be converted to TrueType? Or the Adobe fonts?
# cd
or
# portinstall -R ja-kochi-ttfonts
Can's some of the TeX fonts in
You'll see that the bar of the f is connected to the i, and that the dot above the i is absent.
In my technique, the program would copy parts from 'f' and 'Turkish dotless i' glyphs and have the font designer stitch them together by editing the splines.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Plato's Republic, although written in the utopian style, is deeply flawed. Unless of course, segragation is a good thing and having everything including the stories (plays) and music you hear dictated by those in power. Sounds like the RIAA/MPAA might like it though. I wish I could suggest something as utopian but the dysutopian novels seem more realistic.
As a college senior I did an independent study course on Utopias. Here's the ones I remember referencing off the top of my head:
Utopia - Thomas Moore
Dispossessed - Ursula K. LeGuin
Ecotopia - Ernest Callenbech (sp?)
Looking Backward - Edward Bellamy
City of God - St. Augustine
The Republic - Plato
State and Republic - V.I. Lenin (not a utopia per se, but an example of someone trying to implement one in the real world...).
There are a lot of utopias that are not central the book they're in, but are there nonetheless. An obvious one that spring to mind is the Lotus-Eaters in Homer's Odyssey. Mythology has an abundance of them: Shangri-La? Xanadu? Atlantis?
Many of these are a little more historical than the ones I've seen posted so far. In many of them what you're reading is the author trying to tell you that they've figured out what society should be like, and postulating that if we all ran out and implemented their proposed society we'd have heaven on earth. Half the fun of reading them is figuring out whether they will work, or why they won't.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
My impression was that a large portion of Atlas Shrugged served as a warning against corporate welfare. The idea that too much legislation was a dangerous thing that, when taken to its logical end, could have dire consequences on a nation's economy. While the book centered around the characters' obstinate attitude that "we will do it our way or no way", they at least had taken the initiative to follow through on that threat. Rather than contribute to a socio-political environment that they did not support and that was viewed as dangerous, they abandoned what was considered to be a failing and corrupt system to start their own - hence the utopian view for those unfamiliar with the story.
Too many people are quick to respond to Rand's points without understanding them. Her message was not that it was ok to walk over homeless people, as was suggested before. Certainly, the [brother] would have done that, but he was not portrayed in a heroic light. In fact, he was blamed for having contributed to a large part of the country's misguided economic policies - in it for his own good. Dagny was the person to take your lesson from and that lesson was quite simply this: don't apologize for being good at what you do. Throughtout the book she was persecuted for being dedicated, working hard, achieving her goals, and taking pride in her accomplishments. And for that, she was ostracized. If nothing else, her main fault was that she was too much of an idealist. She was the last to resist giving up on the dying world around her, instead trying to nurture and aid it back to health. In fact, the book's catchphrase, "Who is John Gault?", is representative of the one thing that she despises the most: apathy. Only when she had exhausted all possible avenues of changing the system from within did she abandon it. And then, only with a tremendous amount of guilt.
[SPOILER]
It's not until the end of the book that we learn who and what John Gault is and the catchphrase becomes a call to question misguided governmental
dictums, not blindly accept them. Something, interestingly enough, that is done here on a daily basis.
[/SPOILER]
The warnings found within Atlas Shrugged are just as important today as it was when it was published. The lesson in the book was that anytime the government gets involved with regulating business, it inadvertantly harms that industy. Now, it's much too early in the morning for me to present this argument correctly, and I am certainly not a monopolist, but the government does have a history of mucking up business and economy with its interference. While I'm not a big fan of Microsoft and their predatory practices, they have managed to enforce a consistent platform with near total industry acceptance. For a software developer like myself, that has helped to create a much wider customer base with deeper saturation to individual companies and has benefited me as an individual. This is because corporations are much more willing to standardize on something that is a standard itself. Equally beneficial is the strong support for non-MS platforms suck as Solaris and *nix. I benefit from those as well as many companies are ferverently interested in alternative platforms.
I find it interesting that so many people rail against Rand's writing. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have only read Atlas Shrugged and perhaps I'm missing something from the other books that has so many people getting their underwear in a wad, but I suspect that a large portion of the dissentors have only read it as well - provided, of course that they even got that far. Too many people seem to be inhibited by its length (1074 pages) and often only read as far as the reviews posted here and on Amazon. After all, not many people talk about the Fountainhead here - they talk about Atlas Shrugged. It was the repeated references to that book that motivated me to read it and, I suspect,
it is the same for many others.
Lastly, if you don't feel that Rand's warnings against corporate welfare were warranted (and you're certainly welcome to your opinion), just remember that the complaints and call-to-actions presented in these forums against the RIAA/MPAA seeking favorable (for them) legistlation is a cry against corporate welfare. Companies can't compete on their own merits, so they turn the the government to enforce the consumption of their products. It may not be the same as the corporate equality laws (and I'm not about to kick off a debate on equal opportunity and affirmative action legislation here either - I know better than that) presented in Atlas Shrugged, but it does not take much imagination to see how things could progress to that point. Given that we will not be able to watch/listen to any "non-MPAA/RIAA sactioned" content in their near future due to DRM controls (some of which have already been mandated), no, it doesn't take much imagination at all.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
by CS Lewis was one of the best utopian sci-fi trilogies to be forgotten by almost everyone. It consists of "Out of the Silent Planet", "Perelandra", and "That Hideous Strength". Pure allegory at parts, but funny and inspiring through and through (other than a bit at the end of Perelandra where Lewis lapsed into his philosophical style).
If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer and you don't have the Google toolbar, get it immediately!
Once you do have it, click the Google toolbar and select the options page. Click the link for experimental features. You will see the following quite useful feature:
The onUnload JavaScript event is most often used to open pop-up windows as you leave a page, which can be an annoyance. The following feature will clear the onUnload event after loading each page.
I've found it is rather effective. It doesn't block all popups, only the ones that try to appear as you exit a web page.
Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
Here's a bit of an email exchange with Ton of the Free Blender Fund:
:)
;) but I was thinking that the process you are going through now with the Free Blender project could be formalized as a software application similar to how SourceForge formalized open source development, or maybe even as an added feature of SourceForge.
/. discussion.
--- Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> > Any knowledge of such efforts out there?
>
> You mean of other projects getting open sourced this
> way?
> Nope, I guess it's the first.
>
> -Ton-
Sorry to bug you via email, as I know you may be a little busy with tasks right now
Donators want to know that their donations are going to a good cause and are being used properly and honestly. The Free Blender site convinced me that it was a good cause and that it was run by honest people who meant well. Also, I assumed the financial records are open to peer review, so I felt safe in donating funds.
For specific, well-defined causes such as the Free Blender project, it was easy to see how my donating a few bucks, along with thousands of others doing the same, accomplishes a good thing. There are many other good open source projects out there that could really benefit from a similar funding model.
Any thoughts?
I'm going to post this to the relevant
More thoughts:
The free and open source software communities can take advantage of the scale of the communities to easily fund worthy projects. Though I can't always help directly with development for interesting projects, I can easily spare $5 for a good cause.
Anyone else out there thinking along the same lines?
"Classic UFO's
How about "Antarctica", by Kim Stanley Robinson?
Speaking of utopias, I highly recommend Culture from the books of Ian M. Banks (e.g. Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, The Use of Weapons, etc.)
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I don't like Utopian novels much and never read about a world I'd like to live in in one of them. Having said that, Starship Troopers qualifies as a sort of Utopian novel, and Heinlein's ideas are more convincing than most.
The basic premise in his world is that only retired soldiers can vote. Those who are currently soldiers and those who have never been soldiers cannot. Anybody can volunteer for a term of duty and nobody can be rejected for any reason, not even the disabled. The idea is that to be allowed to vote you have to prove that you can put the greater good ahead of your own self interest, and military service is the way you do that.
The director of the movie called the novel a "Fascist Utopia" but in fact there is nothing Fascist about it.
"Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy, published in 1887, is about a man who wakes up in the future, year 2000, to find that working conditions in America have improved greatly...
Probably the best utopia I've ever seen is in James Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear".
In it a group of "seeded" space colonists grow from birth outside the influence of Earth, and create an economy that is based on respect rather than slips of green paper. The interesting thing is that it's *STILL* capitalist, but it's based on scarcity of respect rather than scarcity of resources (everyone has access to resources but not everyone is respected).
Of course then a bunch of people from Earth show up and tell them why they should charge money for goods, why they should worship a god,why extramarital/teen/non-missionary sex was bad, why they shouldn't let people listen to their music, etc.
Naturally this doesn't go over well. It's interesting watching the people from Earth behaving like asses... It's kind of like someone walking into a buffet who doesn't understand the concept and winds up trying to eat so much food that they die from a ruptured stomach.
Letter forms are not generated algorithmically. A "b" is not an upside-down "p."
I knew that, and that's why I didn't suggest combining "b" and "p". However, in every roman (serif or sans) or oblique sans font I've seen, a "" is the top of a "b" and the bottom of a "p" stuck together.
These things have to be drawn by hand by people with talent-- more talent than I have, to be sure-- and refined at a level of detail that you wouldn't believe.
And that's why I explicitly stated that each generated glyph would be presented to the font designer for tweaking: "when creating a new glyph, copy parts from similar glyphs and present them to the font designer for further work" and "have the font designer stitch them together by editing the splines." (I should have said "editing the splines by hand.")
Will I retire or break 10K?
But the real advantage of the Bayesian approach, of course, is that you know what you're measuring. Feature-recognizing filters like SpamAssassin assign a spam "score" to email. The Bayesian approach assigns an actual probability. The problem with a "score" is that no one knows what it means.
The score for feature X in spamasassin is equivalent to log-likelihood ratio p (X | SPAM) / p (X | not SPAM). The scores are added together, which is equivalent to a conditional independence assumption. The spam threshold is equivalent to a certain prior probability ratio p (SPAM) / p (not SPAM) combined with a certain cost ratio cost (false positive) / cost (incorrect rejection).
In short, spamassassin is the classic naive bayesian classifier, although I admit the spamassassin designers might not know this.
Having said that, single word frequencies are clearly another important feature that could also be incorporated into spamassassin's framework.
-- p
"AynRand.org [aynrand.org] does not specifiy that it is non-profit. Simply because it is an organization created to spread Objectivism, and which collects contributions to that end, does not classify it as non-profit."
True, but the fact that ARI is tax exempt,and accepts "charitable donations" which would also reduce your tax burden leads me to believe that they are, in fact, a non-profit organization. Do you have another explanation?
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
It's been a few years since I read it, but I seem to recall counting 40 pages? Are we talking about the same monologue? I'm thinking about the radio broadcast.
I'm the stranger...posting to
That's the problem. You appear to just be spouting out your own technique. You're not actually a font designer, are you?
I'll confess. I've only designed bitmap fonts for video games. I've written tools to help me do that, and the techniques I have described match what my tools do.
Fact: In the United States, you cannot copyright a bitmap font. However, you can copyright a program (in the Metafont, PostScript, or TrueType hinting language) that generates a font. To circumvent this, start by running an autotracer on a large L/G/C Unicode chart written in that font, but note that you do lose kernpairs in the process.
Will I retire or break 10K?
here is a list of utopia books (for all not willing/wanting to wade through at -1) recommended by slashdotters as of august 20th @ 1pm PST.
[all the extra " - this is an author/a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass" bullshit was required to get the list posted. sheesh. isn't there a way to prevent crap posts without making life hell for everyone else?]
by Dorothy Bryant - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You
my post about it
by Ursula K. LeGuin - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
The Dispossessed (5 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Robert A. Heinlein - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (4 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Iain M. Banks - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
all of his Culture books (4 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Thomas Moore - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Utopia (3 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Robert A. Heinlein - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"The Number of the Beast" (2 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Stranger in a Strange Land" (2 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Atlas Shrugged (2 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Aldous Huxley - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Brave New World (2 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Ernest Callenbach - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Ecotopia (2 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Wright - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Islandia (2 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Marge Pearcy - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Woman on the Edge of Time (2 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by CS Lewis - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Out of the Silent Planet" (2 votes) - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by James Patrick Hogan - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Paths to Otherwhere - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
The Multiplex Man - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Return to Tomorrow - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Ender's Game - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Robert A. Heinlein - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Time Enough for Love" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Starship Troopers" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
all of his books - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Theodore Sturgeon - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
The Cosmic Rape - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
and many of his shorter stories - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by David Foster Wallace - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Infinite Jest" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Edward Bellamy - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
'Looking Backwards' - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
'Equality' - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Ralph Williams - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Business as Usual During Alterations" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Edward Bellamy - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Looking Backward - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Plato - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
The Republic - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Lord of the Rings - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Wells - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
In the Days of the Comet - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Arthur C. Clarke - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
The Songs of the Distant Earth - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Stephen King - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption
by L. Neil Smith - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"The Probability Broach" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Roger Penrose - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
White Mars - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Voltaire - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Candide - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Cement and How the Steel Was Forged" (is this a book?)
by Kim Stanley Robinson - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Red Mars - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Green Mars - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Blue Mars - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Pacific Edge - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Antarctica - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by B.F. Skinner - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Walden II - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Eve Forward - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Villains by Necessity - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Michael Ende - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Momo" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Anonymous - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Visit Port Watson!" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
http://www.sonsorol.org/port_watson.html
Neuromancer - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Robert Anton Wilson - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
'Telemachus Sneezed' - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
http://www.rawilson.com/
by St. Augustine - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
City of God - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by V.I. Lenin - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
State and Republic - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by CS Lewis - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Perelandra" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"That Hideous Strength" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by James Hogan - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Voyage from Yesteryear" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Feel good" books:
"Shawshank Redemption" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Bryce Courtenay - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
The Power of One - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Pawns of Chaos" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Clive Barker - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
"Imagica" - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Douglas Adams - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
all of his books - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
by Terry Pratchett - this is an author - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
all of his books - this is a book - increasing line length - what a pain in the ass
Rather than the obligatory Rand bashing I'm going to suggest as an alternative the Queen of Angels series by Greg Bear (Queen of Angels, "/" (Slant), Heads, and Moving Mars) as a somewhat believable utopic future and the believable problems it engenders. There's somewhat less of a sales pitch going on in these books, anyway.
The series covers about 150 years presently (they're listed above in story-chronological order rather than by date published) and deals kind of nicely with the social issues which could result from the maturing of technologies like AI, cosmetic surgery, nano and quantum physics. It's science fiction (at times "hard" science fiction) but I'd argue that all of these utopic/dystopic books are to one extent or another.
Heads is an out of print novella I had to hit half.com to get, but the rest should be available from your choice of privacy-impeding online book merchants.
"fight global cooling"
I love it!