Anyway, my point is that Microsoft really should just license Webster's or the OED or something and stop making these kinds of decisions.
Except that M$ is too big and has too deep of pockets to do the right thing, so they have to do the safe thing, which is to dumb down the language so that offensive terminology is not supported by the tools they produce. Unlike you, they no longer have the geek's right to be free-thinking because there are way too many idiots and morons with more lawyers than sense, and most of them have all the humor of a D.C. Liberal on a talk show. Theparasites make far too much money of off companies like M$ by playing the victim card, and M$ is probably sick of buying them off like this, but, like most large bureaucracies, they become quite risk averse as they have to deal with more and more of these parasitic leeches.
Recividism is rampant - I just visited Alcatraz and listened to some of the prisoners (taped) talk about their lives. These people were mentally ill (sociopaths with no empathy/sympathy circuits in their brains). Modern criminals are often much worse because they have even worse starting points (most Alcatrazies were probably simple abuse and fetal-alcohol types, now we add heroin, coke and other goodies).
You cannot rewire this type by teaching them to "be on time" and "call in sick". I doubt you can rewire them with any form of behavior modification. The trick is to identify the true incurables and keep them locked up with food, warm beds and working TVs till they die. I suppose we could start with simple profiling - "white, young, male, sex-offender" == "sexual predator" == "keep 'em till there aren't any 6 yr olds for them to predate".
Clearly you do not understand what the purpose of HTML or the Web is
Au contraire, mon ami...
All I am saying is that if a subset of the Web wants to use totally proprietary programs and data, as long as they pay the costs from their own client base, they should be free to do so.
I think you are thinking of the old ARPANET days, when this all started. HTML is supposed to be universal, so why do I have to use a javascript-enabled browser to see stuff? I will admit that personally, I prefer HTML3 just because I am interested much more in content than bells and whistles.
If the developer of IE wants people viewing their content to use IE to see the content they control, that is their right. Quitcherbitchin.
Its like crying foul if Channel 3 starts requiring HDTV and stop supporting old-style broadcasting.
Even free content (not ad-supported, not grant supported) has the right to discriminate on the basis of browser. Only content supported with tax monies should be subject to "lowest common denominator, HTML V3, any browser" requirements. (Yeah, I know V3 is old, so what!).
How is this any worse than a site that requires me to use QuickTime to view something? I repeat, quitcherbitchin.
Never did all the supporting calculations (lamer), but I designed a cyclotron-like accelerator that used magnets to accelerate a BB-sized steel ball in a circle, I figured once I got the BB running in a circle I could just increase the frequency on the magnets to slowly work up to mach 2 or so (on a two-foot circumference circle this would take four magnets running 225Hz) , then divert the BB out a door or pop open a door on the track. Even bought the solenoids that were to provide the impulses.
My main concerns were whether the BB would melt from the friction on the track (even rolling, it would experience some), and whether I could build this without wrecking something (about a year before I had nearly burned the house down while drying a sugar-based high-temperature ignitor I built to start magnesium strips on fire, so I was real safety conscious).
I am really getting quite tired of the apologists saying that we are hypocrits because "Osama bin Laden" was trained by USA, or "USA has killed thousands through its policies".
The facts are, I don't give a fek.
Most of these complaints reflect the fact that as a republic, we often attempt to let people "settle their problems themselves" (sort of a political prime directive). When we do decide to help, we try by all sorts of feeble, non-bullying means (Peace Corps, advisors, limited action, yadi yadi yadi). We try to give the gift of freedom, peace and rationality without dealing with the reality that such things are earned by centuries of cultural preparation. Where's the Moslem equivalent of the Magna Carta, in which
King John of England agreed, in 1215, to the demands of his barons and authorized that handwritten copies of Magna Carta be prepared on
parchment, affixed with his seal, and publicly read throughout the realm. Thus he bound not only himself but his "heirs, for ever" to grant "to
all freemen of our kingdom" the rights and liberties the great charter described. With Magna Carta, King John placed himself and England's
future sovereigns and magistrates within the rule of law.
Until the flamebaiting "we are to blame as much as them" trolls understand the complete historical perspective, they should fek off. Sure, we are still trying to perfect the applications of these sorts of principles, but at least we have a foundation and a long history of evolutionary and revolutionary implementation. Of course, the effort to spread through example rather than force is a recent development. Until recently we kind of colonized and converted by the rules of empires, which, if the target country is lucky, means (1) "keep your mosques, synagogues, temples, giant budda statues, weird eating habits and marriage customs, but you gotta have property, courts and a legal system that provides for domestic tranquility resolving conflict", or,(2) fine, live here in the boonies with your animistic 10,000 year old ways, and we'll just hang loose over there, or (3) we'll kill you.
Now, we are confronting an enemy who does not want option (1), and has rejected it in a way that makes (2) no longer an option. They make
Peace Corps, advisors, limited action, yadi yadi yadi sort of like kneeling and praying in front of a fire ant nest.
Slashdotters like to think we are analytically astute, so I challenge us all to do the hard history study required to speak to the issues intelligently. I follow that with a challenge to figure out how technlogies that we are all so good with can be used to ensure that the world still has a place for freedom in 100 years.
Remember, if you climb up on a soapbox, and stretch out your neck - it's that much easier for them to slip a noose around your neck and kick away the box.
I agree. I often wish that I could move to a subset that was "by invitation-only" so I would not have to put up with immature script kiddies and ignorant slobs. Sort of the electronic version of NOT going to professional wrestling because I think they are just "bread-and-circuses" for idiots. In the internet environment I seem to spend a lot of time ducking and running from these sorts (well, at least using wetware to skim the material presented looking for the gems.
There might be an argument for making the information "read-only" for the rest of us, so we could at least track the daily musing of, say, the Dept. of Ag. This would be consistent with what I think is one of the things the gov is trying to do -- make it harder for employees to surf for pr0n on the taxpayers clock.
Several organizations in the medical community already have a process for online peer review and eventual publishing. It is funded by advertisements from the pharmaceutical companies (unrestricted educational grants). The money is (in some instances) to pay a private contractor (e.g.,)who wrote softare and manages the online site and data (I was the person who developed processes for the company's original product (as a naive and stupid subcontractor) and drove development in the direction of online submissions - but that's another story).
The results, however, still end up in paper form for the reasons cited - "publish or perish" tenure tracks, permanancy (a paper isn't a PAPER till it's on paper).
This business model won't work unless you have a lot of money that can't directly pay for scientific research - the pharmaceuticals are heavily constrained as to how they can fund and advertise. There really is no equivalent in, for example, physics of low energy systems, primarily because there is no constraining government agency like the FDA.
That was a great post, we need a site that like the "It was a dark and stormy night" Bulwer-Lytton site that lets us post our favorite title-synopsis skits for Seinfeld.
Using an ordinary encryption method, you'd just hook the HD up to a
different machine and be back in business.
Not to rain on your parade of objections but the biometric systems we build would let you get a new sensor, since the algorithms are designed to work with a non-image form of the biometric data anyway. We can even enroll you with one sensor and use a second type of sensor to match with the enrolled print biokey.
To say that child porn causes people to molest
children is like saying that gay porn causes people to be gay
or straight porn causes one to be straight. It just doesn't
work that way, because you're mistaking cause for effect.
No, you are confusing cause and effect with de-sensitizing and
behavior conditioning. No rational person thinks that viewing
deviant pr0n (e.g., with children)
causes the behavior, but it certainly legitimizes and de-sensitizes the
viewers by re-inforcing their warped view of the world. Even if the
works are clearly "anime"-like productions they serve to
modify behavior. For an example from real life (duh, novel idea), the military
found that soldiers were much more likely to shoot at the enemy if they practiced with
silhouettes rather than simple circular bullseye targets.
Conditioning and the legitimizing effect are the things to fear here.
We should not make our "free speech" arguments based on bad science, because then
we become vulnerable to others using bad science on us to take away our freedoms.
We must be prepared to make our arguments based on sound principles and logical arguments derived therefrom.
I'm beginning to wonder if the majority might not
eventually want to live in a police state. And if that's what the majority wants, who are we, I wonder, to stop them?
We are a
republic, if we were a real-time democracy the nukes would already be flying. As a republic, we can use the Constitution and the legal system to eventually stop them.
Think of the legal system as moderators in a nuclear reactor, slowng down those nasty knee-jerk jerks until reason and rationality can bring some order back to the system.
On the other hand, if we are not diligent in defending our rights (e.g., Bill of Rights, I, II, IV, V) because we have become complacent, then we will lose everything worth having.
"So, shouldn't media be required to publish a little disclaimer somewhere,"
People who believe the media blindly deserve to be as stupid as they want them to be, after all, they are in the business of entertainment, since that sells product, which makes money, which lets them produce more entertainment.
And the imprecision about them and they is deliberate. The industry wants you to be maleable and stupid so they can sell more, and the people want to be able to be stupid and maleable because that is easier than being introspective and learned.
Disclamer: I am a rapid believer in freedom, free markets and the right of people to be this stupid, I just wish they wouldn't vote.
My question is in two parts. The answer to the first does not invalidate the second, though it may make it moot. The second question is a technology question.
Analogy to search warrants: Do you think that it would be reasonable to "force" (meaning threaten with contempt of court) people to reveal their key under a search warrant so that encrypted emails could be unencrypted long enough to determine if they support the prosecutions case? Using standard rules for search warrants, if you were being charged with feloneous RICO stuff, and all they found was kiddie pr0n, wouldn't the evidence of the latter be suppressed as having been outside the intent of the warrant? This would be similar to forcing someone to open a physical safe as part of a normal exercise of a legal warrant. The main difference is that the safe can be cracked by force, while the encryption cannot (since at least we don't believe in torture, unlike some of our enemies).
A responsive strategy: Couldn't an encryption method be defined such that it could take two keys and two messages and the unencryption method would be unable to decode or even detect the second message based on the first key? Combines steganography-like "in open sight" with regular encryption such that under pressure you could reveal the "safe" password and your message would seem to be innocuous. Of course, this upsets (1) and we are back to where we started. (See analogies to "arms race".)
As a user, I have avoided all these by a combination of luck and choice. I use an old Netscape email client so I can control when attachments are opened. Sometimes I even snoop at the byte level before I open them.
So, when we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki that was spiffy?
And when we use deep penetrating nukes to collapse caves in Afghanistan that will be kewl?
That said, yes, it is rather amazing how well the attack worked, though I doubt that they knew the towers would collapse the way they did, especially since the Empire State building took a direct hit from a WW II bomber (no bombs, and addmittedly much less fuel). Nevertheless, I have this vision of the terrorists huddled around one of the 50 legal TVs in Afghanistan, saying "whoa, DUDE, we are in a lot of trouble".
Well, not really, but I did play with RS232 serial protocols trying to set up a two-computer system.
By coincidence, I had just sent the following to
robotcombat.com
In the early 80's I wrote a program I called ROBOTWARS ((C) 1985) for
the Osborne I - it was a BASIC language interpreter of a second
programming language I called BATTLECODE ((C) 1985). Players wrote
little AI programs that controlled the behavior of their robots, then
the robots (up to 10) would compete with each other in an arena,
searching and destroying each other under full, independent control of
the AI programs (no human intervention). Of course, I did not market this
game, and it was based (loosely) on COREWARS as described in a
Scientific American article (1984).
It looks like that little SciAm article spawned quite a legacy.
I had also heard of a (and found) a non-discriminatory EXE that let you code your robot in any language, the master control program then played the EXEs against each other. Pascal, C, VB - any EXE-producing compiler worked.
Write/distribure free code because someone else (Mom/Dad or our real jobs) are paying for the food and shelter we need. We are like 60's hippie women at a free love party. We don't care that by giving it away for free we are keeping the pro's from making a living because we believe that everyone should get it for free. (am I showing my age here?)
The darker side would be that by promoting OpenSource we are creating a market for our skills as consultants - especially since it appears that OS requires more highly skilled techs to use it. That makes us like the crack dealer who gives free samples then, once you're hooked, starts charging.
These are both pretty cynical, but, as people who follow politics know, you got to follow the money
Sorry, black holes do not have zero volume, since the event horizon has a diameter that can be measured from outside, they actually have a well-defined volume (certainly better defined that that of a star, where the boundary is poorly defined).
The singularity does have infinite density though.
If the black hole is large enough, the tidal forces at the boundary should let you fall in without being turned into x-rays (actually, gamma or harder that have been gravitationally reduced to mere x-rays). At that point, the black hole should become much harder to find because it no longer creates these bursts. How long it takes you to reach the singularity from the boundary is a different "matter".
Well, if the DB is correctly designed it should detect an attempt to enter a new record with a duplicate SSN and kick it out. In this situation either
one of the two was entered incorrectly and needs to be corrected
or
the government issued the same number twice
In case (1), it is a valid error detection at the client level.
In case (2), you have "debugged" the government's data base for them. Hasn't anyone besides me ever been a paying beta tester (you pay for honor of beta testing someone else's stuff).
Since OpenSource appears to the novice to be free (since implementation and support costs are hidden in the HR department records), it should not surprise anyone that poor countries would embrace it for their government offices.
And, given China's abysmal record of using slave labor it is not surprising that they would view OpenSource as yet another chance to not pay people for their labor...
I predict that eventually people like us will eventually revert to a trusted sub-net that does not easily link to high-bandwidth ad-space. Sort of a Web-NPR/PBS model that lives on the edge of academia, counting on the fact that what interests us most is the sort of stuff that shows up on highly academic sites anyway. (How many of us watch E! religiously?)
We will leave the ad-space and its whiners to choke and suffocate in the information space they have created. Just as we ignore most popular TV culture at a social price, we will find ourselves increasingly isolated from the mainstream webdroid as well. Eventually, due to a lack of reproductive success, we will disappear from the planet.
It should never have been large enough to ignite nuclear fusion, i.e., a planet is not a star or a stellar remnant.
I like this one as is
It should not be orbiting another planet, i.e., a planet is not a moon.
Oooh - this is tougher - define "orbiting". Asimov once made a very nifty argument based on the fact that the Moon's orbit is convex everywhere with respect to the Sun, so it is it's own planet (so we, Earth/Moon) are a double planet.
And finally, it should be large enough for its gravity to crush it into a spherical shape.
Short of a nuetron star that is not spinning, and maybe not even then, spherical is way too restrictive. Just use a mass requirement and let gravity and rotation do the rest.
Now, to the real driving force for these sorts of discussions -- too many graduate students with too few thesis topics.
Slashdot Mirror
You cannot rewire this type by teaching them to "be on time" and "call in sick". I doubt you can rewire them with any form of behavior modification. The trick is to identify the true incurables and keep them locked up with food, warm beds and working TVs till they die. I suppose we could start with simple profiling - "white, young, male, sex-offender" == "sexual predator" == "keep 'em till there aren't any 6 yr olds for them to predate".
Au contraire, mon ami ...
All I am saying is that if a subset of the Web wants to use totally proprietary programs and data, as long as they pay the costs from their own client base, they should be free to do so.
I think you are thinking of the old ARPANET days, when this all started. HTML is supposed to be universal, so why do I have to use a javascript-enabled browser to see stuff? I will admit that personally, I prefer HTML3 just because I am interested much more in content than bells and whistles.
Its like crying foul if Channel 3 starts requiring HDTV and stop supporting old-style broadcasting.
Even free content (not ad-supported, not grant supported) has the right to discriminate on the basis of browser. Only content supported with tax monies should be subject to "lowest common denominator, HTML V3, any browser" requirements. (Yeah, I know V3 is old, so what!).
How is this any worse than a site that requires me to use QuickTime to view something? I repeat, quitcherbitchin.
My main concerns were whether the BB would melt from the friction on the track (even rolling, it would experience some), and whether I could build this without wrecking something (about a year before I had nearly burned the house down while drying a sugar-based high-temperature ignitor I built to start magnesium strips on fire, so I was real safety conscious).
Anyone else ever try this at home?
The facts are, I don't give a fek.
Most of these complaints reflect the fact that as a republic, we often attempt to let people "settle their problems themselves" (sort of a political prime directive). When we do decide to help, we try by all sorts of feeble, non-bullying means (Peace Corps, advisors, limited action, yadi yadi yadi). We try to give the gift of freedom, peace and rationality without dealing with the reality that such things are earned by centuries of cultural preparation. Where's the Moslem equivalent of the Magna Carta, in which
Until the flamebaiting "we are to blame as much as them" trolls understand the complete historical perspective, they should fek off. Sure, we are still trying to perfect the applications of these sorts of principles, but at least we have a foundation and a long history of evolutionary and revolutionary implementation. Of course, the effort to spread through example rather than force is a recent development. Until recently we kind of colonized and converted by the rules of empires, which, if the target country is lucky, means (1) "keep your mosques, synagogues, temples, giant budda statues, weird eating habits and marriage customs, but you gotta have property, courts and a legal system that provides for domestic tranquility resolving conflict", or,(2) fine, live here in the boonies with your animistic 10,000 year old ways, and we'll just hang loose over there, or (3) we'll kill you.Now, we are confronting an enemy who does not want option (1), and has rejected it in a way that makes (2) no longer an option. They make Peace Corps, advisors, limited action, yadi yadi yadi sort of like kneeling and praying in front of a fire ant nest.
Slashdotters like to think we are analytically astute, so I challenge us all to do the hard history study required to speak to the issues intelligently. I follow that with a challenge to figure out how technlogies that we are all so good with can be used to ensure that the world still has a place for freedom in 100 years.
Remember, if you climb up on a soapbox, and stretch out your neck - it's that much easier for them to slip a noose around your neck and kick away the box.
There might be an argument for making the information "read-only" for the rest of us, so we could at least track the daily musing of, say, the Dept. of Ag. This would be consistent with what I think is one of the things the gov is trying to do -- make it harder for employees to surf for pr0n on the taxpayers clock.
I am all for that too.
Also, it is much easier to pronounce. I never ran into an MP3 that was put online to teach me how to say "MySQL". :-)
The results, however, still end up in paper form for the reasons cited - "publish or perish" tenure tracks, permanancy (a paper isn't a PAPER till it's on paper). This business model won't work unless you have a lot of money that can't directly pay for scientific research - the pharmaceuticals are heavily constrained as to how they can fund and advertise. There really is no equivalent in, for example, physics of low energy systems, primarily because there is no constraining government agency like the FDA.
That was a great post, we need a site that like the "It was a dark and stormy night" Bulwer-Lytton site that lets us post our favorite title-synopsis skits for Seinfeld.
Conditioning and the legitimizing effect are the things to fear here. We should not make our "free speech" arguments based on bad science, because then we become vulnerable to others using bad science on us to take away our freedoms. We must be prepared to make our arguments based on sound principles and logical arguments derived therefrom.
And the imprecision about them and they is deliberate. The industry wants you to be maleable and stupid so they can sell more, and the people want to be able to be stupid and maleable because that is easier than being introspective and learned.
As a user, I have avoided all these by a combination of luck and choice. I use an old Netscape email client so I can control when attachments are opened. Sometimes I even snoop at the byte level before I open them.
And when we use deep penetrating nukes to collapse caves in Afghanistan that will be kewl?
That said, yes, it is rather amazing how well the attack worked, though I doubt that they knew the towers would collapse the way they did, especially since the Empire State building took a direct hit from a WW II bomber (no bombs, and addmittedly much less fuel). Nevertheless, I have this vision of the terrorists huddled around one of the 50 legal TVs in Afghanistan, saying "whoa, DUDE, we are in a lot of trouble".
By coincidence, I had just sent the following to robotcombat.com
It looks like that little SciAm article spawned quite a legacy.I had also heard of a (and found) a non-discriminatory EXE that let you code your robot in any language, the master control program then played the EXEs against each other. Pascal, C, VB - any EXE-producing compiler worked.
The darker side would be that by promoting OpenSource we are creating a market for our skills as consultants - especially since it appears that OS requires more highly skilled techs to use it. That makes us like the crack dealer who gives free samples then, once you're hooked, starts charging.
These are both pretty cynical, but, as people who follow politics know, you got to follow the money
The singularity does have infinite density though.
If the black hole is large enough, the tidal forces at the boundary should let you fall in without being turned into x-rays (actually, gamma or harder that have been gravitationally reduced to mere x-rays). At that point, the black hole should become much harder to find because it no longer creates these bursts. How long it takes you to reach the singularity from the boundary is a different "matter".
IANAP (physicist)
Free speech rulz!
- one of the two was entered incorrectly and needs to be corrected
- the government issued the same number twice
In case (1), it is a valid error detection at the client level.or
In case (2), you have "debugged" the government's data base for them. Hasn't anyone besides me ever been a paying beta tester (you pay for honor of beta testing someone else's stuff).
And, given China's abysmal record of using slave labor it is not surprising that they would view OpenSource as yet another chance to not pay people for their labor...
I like this one as is
Oooh - this is tougher - define "orbiting". Asimov once made a very nifty argument based on the fact that the Moon's orbit is convex everywhere with respect to the Sun, so it is it's own planet (so we, Earth/Moon) are a double planet.
Short of a nuetron star that is not spinning, and maybe not even then, spherical is way too restrictive. Just use a mass requirement and let gravity and rotation do the rest.
Now, to the real driving force for these sorts of discussions -- too many graduate students with too few thesis topics.