One remarkable facet of the campaign so far, especially given how the anti-war left has demonized President Bush ("warmongering idiot usurper" being one of the milder epithets from the Peace at Any Price crowd) is the great lengths to which coalition forces have gone to avoid civilian casualties and other collateral damage. As of this writing, despite the fierce pounding of JDAM and cruise missile attacks on Iraqi command and control assets, the lights of Baghdad are still burning. Given that an enemy country's electrical grid has long been a legitimate war target even under the most stringent interpretation of Just War theory, this represents enormous caution and restraint on the part of coalition forces. Compare this with the Bath regime's long history of oppressing, gassing, and torturing it's own people, of using the country's wealth to build Saddam opulent palaces and pay for his war machine rather than meeting his people's pressing needs, and their willingness to use their own people as human shields and blighting their future prospects via destruction of the country's oil wealth, and the contrast couldn't be more stark. Never before in the history of warfare has so much overwhelming military force been used so carefully.
Will the advent of quantum computing render even current, state-of-the-art cryptography obsolete? Is there any way that cryptography can overcome the challenge presented by quantum computing? And how long will it be, if ever, until quantum computer's can break current, state-of-the-art cryptography?
The Locus database covers SF/F/H/etc. from 1984 on fairly comprehensively, while the ISFDB covers a wider timeframe, but isn't (yet) nearly as comprehensive. ISFDB was also suffering under some badwidth caps earlier in the year, but expects their problems to be solved (via hosting through the Texas A&M library system) very shortly. Both are well worth bookmarking and using.
Use Bookfinder.com, not ABE.
on
An IMDb for Books
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· Score: 2, Interesting
ABE used to be the online bookselling venue of choice, but that's before the new idiot management decided to impose a new commission fee structure on top of what their dealers were already paying, and kicking off those dealers who refused to sign the new agreement.
Information on ABE's new policies can be found here.
roght now, the best service to look for books online is bookfinder.com, which searches not only ABE (and Amazon & B&N if you want it to), but also more than a dozen other independent book-listing sites, including TomFolio.com, the site I currently list my science fiction books on (in addition to my own site.
I posted much the same message on the OC Systems thread yesterday, but it also applies here. There seem to be a lot of "Yeah, I got ripped off, but eBay wouldn't do anything about it so now I'm hosed" responses. If you've been ripped off, COMPLAIN. Complain to the company first, but if they don't give you any satisfaction, have the charge blocked on your credit card. If that isn't enough, or that isn't an option, then you need to bring out the big guns and rat them out to the feds! And here are just the websites to do it on:
http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/MailFra udComplaint.htm: The US Postal Inspector's Mail Fraud Report Form. I've used this for a few small value (less than $50) items I've returned to ebay merchants who then didn't send the refund despite repeated e-mails and phone calls. After complaining to the USPS, the rip-off artist got a letter from them and paid up darn quick. And you CAN follow up if no action is taken. I have a lot of criticisms of the U.S. Snail, but this is one area where government action actually seems to work.
https://www.ifccfbi.gov/cf1.asp : The FBI's Fraud Complaint Form. The FBI seems a lot less active in prosecuting small cases than USPS, but i get the impression that if they get a LOT of complaints from people on the same company, they start to look in on it. Worth a try.
Remember: Every time you let someone rip you off without calling them on it, it makes it that much easier for them to rip off other people down the line.
A lot of comments on this thread (and pages linked from same) seem to indicate that OC Systems are rip-off artists. While I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, I am rather disheartened by the "Yeah, I got ripped off, but I'm just going to suck up and take it and never buy anything from them again" responses I've seen. If you've been ripped off, COMPLAIN. Complain to the company first, but if they don't give you any satisfaction, have the charge blocked on your credit card. If that isn't enough, or that isn't an option, then you need to bring out the big guns and rat them out to the feds! And here are just the websites to do it on:
http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/MailFra udComplaint.htm: The US Postal Inspector's Mail Fraud Report Form. I've used this for a few small value (less than $50) items I've returned to ebay merchants who then didn't send the refund despite repeated e-mails and phone calls. After complaining to the USPS, the rip-off artist got a letter from them and paid up darn quick. And you CAN follow up if no action is taken. I have a lot of criticisms of the U.S. Snail, but this is one area where government action actually seems to work.
https://www.ifccfbi.gov/cf1.asp: The FBI's Fraud Complaint Form. The FBI seems a lot less active in prosecuting small cases than USPS, but i get the impression that if they get a LOT of complaints from people on the same company, they start to look in on it. Worth a try.
Remember: Every time you let someone rip you off without calling them on it, it makes it that much easier for them to rip off other people down the line.
"Apparently we are just as likely to die by asteroid impact as in a plane crash."
Since some 3000 people died as the result of airplane crashes in 2001, I don't find this terribly reassuring.
Well, if Bin laden is capable of hijacking an asteroid, then he must have gottten the rocket from somewhere. Yet another bit of missile technology Iraq failed to declare...
Its easy to understand why Sci-Fi would make a miniseries of Dune, since it's a great book. Were it not for Hollywood's sequel mentality, it would be a lot harder to understand why they're making a miniseries of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune (which Sci-Fi is mashing together for the Children of Dune miniseries), which are not great books by any stretch of the imagination.
Here's some advice for those who haven't read any of Herbert's many Dune sequels yet: Don't. Not only were they not as good as the original, they weren't even in the same league. If you ask just about any serious science fiction reader, they'll tell you the same thing: Read Dune, then STOP! Dune Messiah sucks, Children of Dune sucks less than Dune Messiah, but still isn't a tenth as good as the original, and God-Emperor of Dune sucks the farts out of dead cats.
If you can just pretend that Herbert never wrote anything after Dune, you'll avoid wasting your time reading inferior sequels and tarnishing your memories of the original.
To my my mind, the Hank Scorpio episode ("You Only Move Twice"), where Homer goes to work for a supervillan, has to rank as one of the best, right up there with "Cape Feare". (It's also one of the few episodes were Homer is actually successful at his job.) And I also love The Prisoner parody episode ("The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"). I suppose you have to be a fan of The Prisoner to really apprecaite it, but really, what self-respecting geek isn't?;-)
Worst episode: Homer and Burns go up a mountain on a team-bulding exercise, which is almost completely devoid of laughs. It was so bad I suspected had it in the can for years and only used it as an "emergency" episode when the Korean animators were unable to complete the latest one on time. Runner up: The episode where Bart shoots a bird and feels all bad about it, which is totally false to his character.
Dear Dave,
Once you characterized Miami's endemic corruption (and here I would like to note that Endemic Corruption is a good name for a rock band) was so pervasive that Miami would benefit by being taken over by the Mafia, since then at least COMPETENT criminals would be running the city. In light of that, I'd like to ask you: What's the strangest thing you've ever lit on fire?
Whoops, sorry, that was the FBI Carnovore guys monitoring my computer who slipped that last one in. (Motto: "You're Not Authorized to Know Our Motto.") No, the real question is, has Miami's corruption gotten better or worse since you wrote that, and what would you and Carl Hiaasen do if Miami eliminated its Supersized Corruption and merely went with the Small Corruption with Fries enjoyed by other large American cities?
"We are happy that it broke up," government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi said. "God wants to show that his might is greater than the Americans. They have encroached on our country. God is avenging us," he said."
It may not have made the article because: A.) It was primarily sold in Japan, and B.) It was more of a premature "digital convergance" box than a pure game machine per se. A co-production with Bandai, the Pippin used a PowerPC 603 processor and a slimmed-down version of Apple OS.
Information on this system is surprisingly hard to come by for a machine released in the mid-1990s, but here's an ancient page listing the specshttp://karx.narod.ru/tmegames/pippin.html.
I know this is going to be way offbeam for most people, but one of the first things I was struck with is the fact that guy lives on Norris Drive here on Austin, Texas, which is on the same street the guy who runs Adventures in Crime & Space science fiction bookstore lives. (In fact, I've occasionally gone over there to pick up some books.)
This is where I would cue up "It's a Small World After All," were it not for the fact that Disney would sue me if I did so...
I AM OUTRAGED THAT Slashdot IS QUESTIONING MICROSOFT'S COMMITMENT TO not faking letters to the editor. MICROSOFT HAS LONG SUPPORTED not faking letters to the editor, AND CURRENT ACCUSATIONS OTHERWISE ARE MERELY OPPORTUNISTIC PROPOGANDA BY COMPETITORS LIKE Sun, Apple, IBM, Linux, the United States Government, WHO, HAVING BEEN BEATEN IN THE MARKETPLACE, ARE TRYING TO CURTAIL MICROSOFT'S FREEDOM TO INNOVATE. YOU SHOULD SEE Slashdot's BASELESS CHARGES FOR WHAT THEY ARE: OPPORTUNISTIC LIES BY A KNOWN MICROSOFT-BASHER, SUPPORTED BY MICROSOFT'S COMPETITORS. IN THE FUTURE, PLEASE REFRAIM FROM LETTING Slashdot USE Slashdot AS A FORUM FOR UNFOUNDED PROPAGANDA.
SINCERELY,
John Smith
johnsmith@microsoft.com
P.S. PLEASE NOTE THAT I, John Smith, HAVE NO RELTIONSHIP WITH THE MICROSOFT CORPORATION, CREATORS OF WINDOWS(R), MS OFFICE(R), INTERNET EXPLORER(R), AND OTHER FINE SOFTWARE PRODUCTS.
"Production on the Mac version of MOO3 has been proceeding closely with the PC version, so the game should make it to shelves for Mac users very soon via distributor MacSoft."
What are the ten worst Windows vulnerabilities?
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
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· Score: 1, Interesting
What are the ten worst Windows vulnerabilities to hacking, how would you attack such systems, and what has to be done with Windows to prevent such vulnerabilities?
Answering the Question: What's a Roomba
on
Dissecting the Roomba
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· Score: 3, Informative
It seems to be some sort of robot vacuum cleaner. Detailas at http://roombavac.com/.
I do like the name of the company manufacturing it: iRobot. I bet Asimov would get a kick out of it, were he still alive.
Now back to selling some science fiction first editions...
Seriously, one wonders what Mr. Torvalds thinks about working for a company who's implamenting a policy that's anathama to most of Open Source community.
"US Military Budget this year is something like $780 billion US dollars."
BEEEP! I'm sorry, crack monkey, you don't win the microwave!
I know actually spending 90 seconds to bother searching for the information on the Internet is much more labor intensive than your tried and true "smoke some rock and pull the numbers out of my ass" method, but if you had bothered to do any research, you would see that the President's budget for FY2003 tops out at $379 billion."
From: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2003/bud1 2. html
"To address these needs the President's Budget proposes $369 billion in 2003 for DoD and an additional $10 billion, if needed, to fight the war on terrorism."
With this correction and my handy research tips in hand, I'll let you get back to trying to pull those invisible ants off your face. And remember: Drug abuse and Slashdot just don't mix!
Oddly enough, just last night I was thinking of similarities between H. P. Lovecraft and J.R.R. Tolkien. (No, really.) Though much of their work seems diametrically opposed, there are a number of similarities in their life and their approach to fiction:
Both looked longingly back on what they considered idyllic childhoods.
Both were antiquarians who looked to an era in the past as a golden age, disdaining the present, the idea of progress, and the industrial revolution.
Both had fathers die at a young age.
Both were fascinated what most (non-geeks) think of as dry academic areas: Philology for Tolkien, Astronomy for Lovecraft.
Both were political conservatives of aristocratic temperment.
Both became leading figures in long-lasting, all-male affinity groups of fantastic fiction writers (Lovecraft with Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belkamp Long, August Derleth, etc., Tolkien with The Inklings (C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, etc.).
Both wrote tales in which the enormous and complex freight of their backstories was generally unknown to most of their protagonists, and only imperfectly revealed (if at all) throughout the tale.
Both wrote works deeply tinged with pessimism and melancholy. Their protagonists might or might not survive, but even in the best of outcomes the world they knew would be forever changed due to events set in motion long before their birth.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, both used the tremendously powerful technique of salting their richly imagined secret histories with tidbits of real cultural, myth and history, which that gave their stories a resonance, depth and verisimilitude that their legions of imitators could never match. Lovecraft stole from dozens of arcane sources, while Tolkien delved into the roots of language to imaginatively reconstruct what he felt were "true myths" about the world.
Now what I need is for someone who's both a Tolkien and a Lovecraft fanatic to write a critical essay on this topic...
Since this is essentially a repeat story (albeit from a while back), I feel no compunction about merely posting a link to my previous commentary.
For The Complete Star Wars Obsessive...
on
Star Wars Origami
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· Score: 5, Funny
...someone should get these guys together with the Japanese guy who's doing the one frame at a time ASCII remake of Star Wars. Instead of ASCII, they should do an entire frame-by-frame, stop-motion-animation remake of Star Wars using nothing but origami! Origami figures, origami props, origami backgrounds, origami spaceships...
This would have the virtues of combining two deranged, inexplicable geek activitives into one, AND keep those obsessives off the streets for years to come!
Slashdot Mirror
Will the advent of quantum computing render even current, state-of-the-art cryptography obsolete? Is there any way that cryptography can overcome the challenge presented by quantum computing? And how long will it be, if ever, until quantum computer's can break current, state-of-the-art cryptography?
You decide which is more appropriate:
The Gluetrain Manifesto.
>I would much rather research a book or series without being unindated with adds and guesses as to what I want
People who posted to Slashdot also bought nice clean underware!
Science Fiction already has two sites (though not with rankings) with tens of thousands of book and story titles already listed. They are:
The Locus Index; and
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
The Locus database covers SF/F/H/etc. from 1984 on fairly comprehensively, while the ISFDB covers a wider timeframe, but isn't (yet) nearly as comprehensive. ISFDB was also suffering under some badwidth caps earlier in the year, but expects their problems to be solved (via hosting through the Texas A&M library system) very shortly. Both are well worth bookmarking and using.
ABE used to be the online bookselling venue of choice, but that's before the new idiot management decided to impose a new commission fee structure on top of what their dealers were already paying, and kicking off those dealers who refused to sign the new agreement.
Information on ABE's new policies can be found here.
roght now, the best service to look for books online is bookfinder.com, which searches not only ABE (and Amazon & B&N if you want it to), but also more than a dozen other independent book-listing sites, including TomFolio.com, the site I currently list my science fiction books on (in addition to my own site.
I posted much the same message on the OC Systems thread yesterday, but it also applies here. There seem to be a lot of "Yeah, I got ripped off, but eBay wouldn't do anything about it so now I'm hosed" responses. If you've been ripped off, COMPLAIN. Complain to the company first, but if they don't give you any satisfaction, have the charge blocked on your credit card. If that isn't enough, or that isn't an option, then you need to bring out the big guns and rat them out to the feds! And here are just the websites to do it on:
a udComplaint.htm: The US Postal Inspector's Mail Fraud Report Form. I've used this for a few small value (less than $50) items I've returned to ebay merchants who then didn't send the refund despite repeated e-mails and phone calls. After complaining to the USPS, the rip-off artist got a letter from them and paid up darn quick. And you CAN follow up if no action is taken. I have a lot of criticisms of the U.S. Snail, but this is one area where government action actually seems to work.
http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/MailFr
https://www.ifccfbi.gov/cf1.asp : The FBI's Fraud Complaint Form. The FBI seems a lot less active in prosecuting small cases than USPS, but i get the impression that if they get a LOT of complaints from people on the same company, they start to look in on it. Worth a try.
Remember: Every time you let someone rip you off without calling them on it, it makes it that much easier for them to rip off other people down the line.
A lot of comments on this thread (and pages linked from same) seem to indicate that OC Systems are rip-off artists. While I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, I am rather disheartened by the "Yeah, I got ripped off, but I'm just going to suck up and take it and never buy anything from them again" responses I've seen. If you've been ripped off, COMPLAIN. Complain to the company first, but if they don't give you any satisfaction, have the charge blocked on your credit card. If that isn't enough, or that isn't an option, then you need to bring out the big guns and rat them out to the feds! And here are just the websites to do it on:
a udComplaint.htm: The US Postal Inspector's Mail Fraud Report Form. I've used this for a few small value (less than $50) items I've returned to ebay merchants who then didn't send the refund despite repeated e-mails and phone calls. After complaining to the USPS, the rip-off artist got a letter from them and paid up darn quick. And you CAN follow up if no action is taken. I have a lot of criticisms of the U.S. Snail, but this is one area where government action actually seems to work.
http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/MailFr
https://www.ifccfbi.gov/cf1.asp: The FBI's Fraud Complaint Form. The FBI seems a lot less active in prosecuting small cases than USPS, but i get the impression that if they get a LOT of complaints from people on the same company, they start to look in on it. Worth a try.
Remember: Every time you let someone rip you off without calling them on it, it makes it that much easier for them to rip off other people down the line.
"Apparently we are just as likely to die by asteroid impact as in a plane crash."
Since some 3000 people died as the result of airplane crashes in 2001, I don't find this terribly reassuring.
Well, if Bin laden is capable of hijacking an asteroid, then he must have gottten the rocket from somewhere. Yet another bit of missile technology Iraq failed to declare...
> why doesn't EuroDisney have fireworks? because every time they launch them the French try to surrender! (rim-shot)
3 373
1 699.html
One good bout of French-basing deserves another two (or three, or four...)
Going to war without the French is like a hunter going into the woods without his accordian.
Why did the French plant trees along the Champs Elysees? So Germans can march in the shade.
Some more jabs at the froggies:
http://www.brokennewz.com/worldnews/surrender.asp
http://www.vodkapundit.com/archives/003373.php#00
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg04
Its easy to understand why Sci-Fi would make a miniseries of Dune, since it's a great book. Were it not for Hollywood's sequel mentality, it would be a lot harder to understand why they're making a miniseries of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune (which Sci-Fi is mashing together for the Children of Dune miniseries), which are not great books by any stretch of the imagination.
Here's some advice for those who haven't read any of Herbert's many Dune sequels yet: Don't. Not only were they not as good as the original, they weren't even in the same league. If you ask just about any serious science fiction reader, they'll tell you the same thing: Read Dune, then STOP! Dune Messiah sucks, Children of Dune sucks less than Dune Messiah, but still isn't a tenth as good as the original, and God-Emperor of Dune sucks the farts out of dead cats.
If you can just pretend that Herbert never wrote anything after Dune, you'll avoid wasting your time reading inferior sequels and tarnishing your memories of the original.
To my my mind, the Hank Scorpio episode ("You Only Move Twice"), where Homer goes to work for a supervillan, has to rank as one of the best, right up there with "Cape Feare". (It's also one of the few episodes were Homer is actually successful at his job.) And I also love The Prisoner parody episode ("The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"). I suppose you have to be a fan of The Prisoner to really apprecaite it, but really, what self-respecting geek isn't? ;-)
Worst episode: Homer and Burns go up a mountain on a team-bulding exercise, which is almost completely devoid of laughs. It was so bad I suspected had it in the can for years and only used it as an "emergency" episode when the Korean animators were unable to complete the latest one on time. Runner up: The episode where Bart shoots a bird and feels all bad about it, which is totally false to his character.
Dear Dave,
Once you characterized Miami's endemic corruption (and here I would like to note that Endemic Corruption is a good name for a rock band) was so pervasive that Miami would benefit by being taken over by the Mafia, since then at least COMPETENT criminals would be running the city. In light of that, I'd like to ask you: What's the strangest thing you've ever lit on fire?
Whoops, sorry, that was the FBI Carnovore guys monitoring my computer who slipped that last one in. (Motto: "You're Not Authorized to Know Our Motto.") No, the real question is, has Miami's corruption gotten better or worse since you wrote that, and what would you and Carl Hiaasen do if Miami eliminated its Supersized Corruption and merely went with the Small Corruption with Fries enjoyed by other large American cities?
It may not have made the article because: A.) It was primarily sold in Japan, and B.) It was more of a premature "digital convergance" box than a pure game machine per se. A co-production with Bandai, the Pippin used a PowerPC 603 processor and a slimmed-down version of Apple OS.
a pple_bandai_pippin.html.
Information on this system is surprisingly hard to come by for a machine released in the mid-1990s, but here's an ancient page listing the specshttp://karx.narod.ru/tmegames/pippin.html.
And another link from a retrogaming site: http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Apple_Bandai_pippin/
This is where I would cue up "It's a Small World After All," were it not for the fact that Disney would sue me if I did so...
SINCERELY,
John Smith
johnsmith@microsoft.com
P.S. PLEASE NOTE THAT I, John Smith, HAVE NO RELTIONSHIP WITH THE MICROSOFT CORPORATION, CREATORS OF WINDOWS(R), MS OFFICE(R), INTERNET EXPLORER(R), AND OTHER FINE SOFTWARE PRODUCTS.
What are the ten worst Windows vulnerabilities to hacking, how would you attack such systems, and what has to be done with Windows to prevent such vulnerabilities?
It seems to be some sort of robot vacuum cleaner. Detailas at http://roombavac.com/.
I do like the name of the company manufacturing it: iRobot. I bet Asimov would get a kick out of it, were he still alive.
Now back to selling some science fiction first editions...
Lame Excuse Books: http://www.io.com/~lawrence/lame.html
"Then fall, Geekdom!"
Seriously, one wonders what Mr. Torvalds thinks about working for a company who's implamenting a policy that's anathama to most of Open Source community.
"US Military Budget this year is something like $780 billion US dollars."
1 2. html
BEEEP! I'm sorry, crack monkey, you don't win the microwave!
I know actually spending 90 seconds to bother searching for the information on the Internet is much more labor intensive than your tried and true "smoke some rock and pull the numbers out of my ass" method, but if you had bothered to do any research, you would see that the President's budget for FY2003 tops out at $379 billion."
From:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2003/bud
"To address these needs the President's Budget proposes $369 billion in 2003 for DoD and an additional $10 billion, if needed, to fight the war on terrorism."
With this correction and my handy research tips in hand, I'll let you get back to trying to pull those invisible ants off your face. And remember: Drug abuse and Slashdot just don't mix!
Now what I need is for someone who's both a Tolkien and a Lovecraft fanatic to write a critical essay on this topic...
This would have the virtues of combining two deranged, inexplicable geek activitives into one, AND keep those obsessives off the streets for years to come!