In essense, I agree; the natural year is a cycle. I disagree with the idea that no two days are alike. The summer solstice happens in the same way every year and I think that qualifies as two days being alike. It comes at the same time every year as well, which gives credence to the idea that the year is a cycle.
We can also see the need for a solar year instead of a lunar year (or a year composed of an arbitrary number of days) when we consider the seasons. There are four seasons a year (or two or six, depending on where in the world you live). The seasons happen at approximatly the same time every year and are important to people like farmers whose livelyhood depends on the seasons. It is therefore useful to be able to predict when the seasons occur based on some kind of solar calendar.
I suppose it would be possible to lable each day as a seperate day to infinity and not mess with the relations of the seasons. It might even be easier to keep track of the date (day++ instead of an ugly algorithm to find the day, month, and year), but I think that this would be even more linear than the system we currently employ.
Here's my proposal (just to add to the chaos): 1) Divide the year into 12 months, each 30 days in length. 2) At the end of every year, insert the extra five days, call it a vacation or long weekend. 3) When need calls, lengthen the five days to six to accomodate a leap year (following the same rules we use now). 4) In order to make the cyclilic nature of the year more apparent, start the year on, say, the vernal equinox (this also has the nice bonus of starting the year with spring instead of winter:)
We no longer have to worry about months with 28, 29, 30 and 31 days... they all have 30!!! The extra five days could also be spread about through the year to provide long weekends at the end of a month, etc... perhaps one before the first month, one after the third, sixth, and ninth months and one after the twelth (giving two days in a row -- one at the begining of the year and one on the day before).
Not to be a jerk or anything, but can you think of a better solution?
A year on earth is equal to about 365.25 days, so an obvious solution would be to change the leangth of a day by a few seconds or minutes so that a year is exactly 365 days. The problem with this is that days would begin to drift. One might wake up to a sunrise at 6 in the evening. The same thing would happen if we were to insert.25 days at the end of every year.
The problem stems from the fact that one year (revolution about the sun) can not be evenly divided into days (rotations about Earth's axis). We are left with a calander system that either has days that are unrelated to nature , or years that are unrelated to nature.
I personally would rather be stuck with leap years than with the sun rising when the clock says 6 PM.
I really wouldn't call it a coplete failure. The missions were all part of NASA's "better, cheaper, faster" scheme. They managed to get several vessels to Mars cheaply and quickly. They just forgot that they only got to pick two:)
I think this was discussed on/. a while ago. Any one remember when?
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I agree that the idea of shareware is absent from the artice. Some of my favorite games come from (and I know I am going to be flamed to death for this) Ambrosia Software, a Mac only shareware company.
Most of their games are truely beuatiful (sp), engaging, and fun to play. They can all be downloaded from AmbrosiaSW.com, and most of them are not even crippled, allowing you to play through most games with out registering.
Another great advantage to Ambrosia's ideology is that the game engine and the other bits and peices (sprites, sound, etc) are kept in seperate files and there are generally instructions for creating new sprites etc. In some cases, this allows for players to create completely different games (check out Escape Velocity: Overide, then the Frozen Heart plug). Without knowing any programming languages at all, one can make a game that, while not completely original, can still be labled unique or "inovative."
I am sorry to plug so heavily for something that is Mac only, but Ambrosia is one of the only reasons I even try to get Mac-on-Linux working.
Okay, as long as we are talking about single unit machines (ie monitor, cpu etc. all in one box), let me tell you about my first machine. I don't remember exactly, but it had something like:
64 K RAM (more? less? I don't remember) 2 5 1/4" floppy drives a cute little 7-9" green monitor 4 Mhz processor (again, I don't really remember)
Yes, it was a KAYPRO. I used it for everything until I got a Mac II in '94. Because of this machine, I learned to write BASIC almost as soon as I learned to read! And best of all, it still works! Though I use my new G3 for just about everthing now (it's the first machine I've ever owned capable of running Linux!).
...also give schools more money in the first place. The high school I recently graduated from was in a rather unique position: all of the teachers were employees of the state university and most of our money came from the university, so we had a lot of it. We had much more money than the completely public school (we were only half public) and, while I think we spent way to much on frivilous things like football and *cough* computers (yes, you can spend to much, not every teacher needs a brand new G3, the library does not need 50 iMacs; there were only 200 students in the high school), we always had books that were only a year or two out of date. They were more than new enough to still be up to date, mostley due to the large amount of money we had.
Granted, that is not perfect, but at least we had 116 elements on our periodic tables!
I agree that to much is spent on silly things of little value, but much of the money that could be given to schools is also spent on silly things of little value (i.e. our bloated defense budget).
This and Welles' War of the Worlds are totally different. Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air needed a show to do and wrote War of the Worlds in only a few hours, with budget of nil, without any advertising beforehand. It was broadcast as a news story, and as such, could be believable.
This Y2K cr@p is being presented as "what will happen." If it were presented as a news story on, say, New Years Eve, it might have some of the style of Welles. Until then, it is worthy only of the garbage heap.
Otherwise, I agree.
Just don't compare this to a work from the Master.
...such images[morphed images], "if false, would also be a war crime." and...morphing and other video manipulation techniques can be seen everyday in TV commercials.
Now, we all know that adds can often be false or misleading, and (as the article states), they often use morphing. Does that make those adds war crimes?
I agree completely on that score. Would there be any way of "moderating" the use of Linux? ie making it hard to get linux tech support in china? As most Linux support seems to be in the form of email between users, maybe we could boycott email to China? Just an idea...
Earlier this week, there was an article on/. about Yahoo censoring their message boards. The/. community reacted with uniform distaste for this idea. We felt that Yahoo had no right to do what they were doing (even though they did) and we all seemed to hope that they would fall into leagal hot water when challenged.
In general, whenever a free speach issue appears on/., we all react in the most liberal manner. We don't want our rights taken away; we don't want anyone's rights taken away. We agree that people have the right to say just about whatever they want as long as it is not slanderous or libellous. We also all seemed to feel that the moderation system here on/. was a good way of keeping offensive comments from being to much a part of the community without violating the rights of induviduals to make those comments.
Yet now, the/. community has turned around. Many people are taking offence at the idea that China may (or may not) adopt Linux as the "official" OS. We're getting mad because they have perpetrated numerous human rights violations. We think that licences should forbid countries like the People's Republic from using Linux.
By endorsing such ideas, we are just as much in violation of the ideas of free speach.
I agree that China has done many things that are evil and wrong. I don't support their corrupt idea of "comunism." But it is wrong to tell the Chinese government that it can't use Linux because the government is evil.
Making it impossible for the Chinese to use Linux because of human rights violations would be like telling a member of the KKK that they can't buy rope because they will use that rope to kill some one. It would be like telling a satanist that they can't get up on a soap box in a park and rant because some one might take offense.
Here in the US, we have a Bill of Rights. This bill protects our citizens from many things. But why is it that as soon as an idea is not covered by the Bill of Rights (i.e. China, because they are not memebers of our union and, therefore, don't have to abide by the Bill of Rights), we feel that the Bill of Rights no longer applies?
If China wishes to use Linux, it is their right, not because they are a large, oppressive superpower and can take what they want; not because they adhear to the Bill of Rights; not because we like them. It is their right because it is the fundamental right of all people, and through the people, the countries in which the people live, to improve themselves and speak their minds.
I am sorry to rant on like this, but I feel that there is something of a double standard here and I felt the need to point it out.
I agree, in theory, that China using Linux looks bad for the Linux community, but if we deny them the right to use Linux (via licensing etc.) are we not just as bad? Aren't we then supporting the very thing we wish to stop?
Yes, the People's Republic is an oppressive society, but the government that runs it knows what it is doing this time. Linux is the OS of choice.
It is free in a country where money is important.
It runs on old machines in a country where industry and computing are not on par with much of the rest of the world.
For the PR, Linux is ideal. There is great flexibility and power inherint in the OS and it can communicate with other systems fairly easily (i.e. Mac, Windoze, etc.).
In terms of public relations for China and good spin control, Linux is also ideal. The OS is developed by many often scattered strangers in often remote places. It is a community effort. "A People's OS for a People's Republic."
For the Linux community outside of China, on the other hand, this could be bad. In the United States and in much of the rest of the world, we still fear the "red bastards" and every thing even slightly smelling of communism is seen as taboo and evil. Linux as an OS may be tainted by communism.
Of course, die hard Linux users will never go away, but convincing other people to use Linux (read: the US Gov.) may grow more difficult. Though it is a good, stable OS, it may be killed by paranoid politicians crying "commies! commies!" ("wolf! wolf!").
And then of course, it is hard to truely feel good about making the Chinese government more effecient in its ability to oppress the masses (even with an OS from the masses).
And the Chinux mascot should be tux in red, instead of black.
Da Zdrastvui Revolutsia!!! Da Zdrastvui Lenin!!! Da Zdrastvui TUX!!!!!!!!
hopefully, a judge would side against yahoo and an equally powerfull precident would be set: you can't censor and not take resposibility for what gets through.
pardon my idealism, but i still beleive in our legal system and in our government as a whole.
But what if sensitive personal information was posted? Say, Hemos' phone number and sexual preference? Or the password of a few Government mainframes? (I'm not saying they're of equal sensitivity, mind...:) )
sure,/. could censor such things, but then they would be responsible for every post. better to just let someone complain and leave it at that than to censor the comment and risk getting sued.
IF /. were censoring its posts and some slanderous comment got through, then I believe that/. could be sued under the theory that they are taking responsibility for the content of the comments.
As I understand it,/. is not censoring any comments -- they are allowing us (via moderation) to choose what we want to read. Moderated posts are not deleted, just scored down so that most people won't bother reading them.
/. is not taking responsibilty for the comments posted. Think of it like a big tree. Any random person could walk by and put a sign up on the tree. Then, some other random good citizen (read: moderator) could walk by and read the sign. If they feel that the sign is derogitory or offensive, or if they just don't like it, they can moderate it by putting a sign above it that says something like "This sign is offensive, you might not want to read it" (read: score = -1). It's still there, only now some people may choose not to read it.
The first 5 words in the First Amendment are "congress shall pass no law...".
This is true, the first amendment prevents congress from passing any laws that censor or otherwise abridge our ability to speak freely. Obviously, there was something wrong with that. Then, the fourteenth amendment was passed:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Several Supreme Court decisions have since made it clear that free speach goes under the catagory of liberty and that states can't deprive someone of free speech.
It is true that neither the first nor fourteenth amendments cover private speech, so yahoo can leagally censor all they wish, but it is inaccurate to imply that only the federal congress is prohibited from taking our right to free speech.
i think that one of the ideas of the article that is being missed is that Gold is comes up with new theories. he has been wrong before (read: static universe theory), but his theories have raised hell -- they've caused us to think about how we see the universe and our place in it.
does it really matter if he is right or wrong, so long as his ideas cause us to think about how the world works and, in proving or disproving his theories, we learn some truth about the universe in which we live? (i apologize for the hideous run-on)
Slashdot Mirror
We can also see the need for a solar year instead of a lunar year (or a year composed of an arbitrary number of days) when we consider the seasons. There are four seasons a year (or two or six, depending on where in the world you live). The seasons happen at approximatly the same time every year and are important to people like farmers whose livelyhood depends on the seasons. It is therefore useful to be able to predict when the seasons occur based on some kind of solar calendar.
I suppose it would be possible to lable each day as a seperate day to infinity and not mess with the relations of the seasons. It might even be easier to keep track of the date (day++ instead of an ugly algorithm to find the day, month, and year), but I think that this would be even more linear than the system we currently employ.
Here's my proposal (just to add to the chaos): :)
1) Divide the year into 12 months, each 30 days in length.
2) At the end of every year, insert the extra five days, call it a vacation or long weekend.
3) When need calls, lengthen the five days to six to accomodate a leap year (following the same rules we use now).
4) In order to make the cyclilic nature of the year more apparent, start the year on, say, the vernal equinox (this also has the nice bonus of starting the year with spring instead of winter
We no longer have to worry about months with 28, 29, 30 and 31 days... they all have 30!!! The extra five days could also be spread about through the year to provide long weekends at the end of a month, etc... perhaps one before the first month, one after the third, sixth, and ninth months and one after the twelth (giving two days in a row -- one at the begining of the year and one on the day before).
A year on earth is equal to about 365.25 days, so an obvious solution would be to change the leangth of a day by a few seconds or minutes so that a year is exactly 365 days. The problem with this is that days would begin to drift. One might wake up to a sunrise at 6 in the evening. The same thing would happen if we were to insert .25 days at the end of every year.
The problem stems from the fact that one year (revolution about the sun) can not be evenly divided into days (rotations about Earth's axis). We are left with a calander system that either has days that are unrelated to nature , or years that are unrelated to nature.
I personally would rather be stuck with leap years than with the sun rising when the clock says 6 PM.
ONE MORE TIME:
Shut your fucking face, uncle fucker!
And look, I am almost on topic to! Who'ld've thunk it?
I think this was discussed on /. a while ago. Any one remember when?
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Most of their games are truely beuatiful (sp), engaging, and fun to play. They can all be downloaded from AmbrosiaSW.com, and most of them are not even crippled, allowing you to play through most games with out registering.
Another great advantage to Ambrosia's ideology is that the game engine and the other bits and peices (sprites, sound, etc) are kept in seperate files and there are generally instructions for creating new sprites etc. In some cases, this allows for players to create completely different games (check out Escape Velocity: Overide, then the Frozen Heart plug). Without knowing any programming languages at all, one can make a game that, while not completely original, can still be labled unique or "inovative."
I am sorry to plug so heavily for something that is Mac only, but Ambrosia is one of the only reasons I even try to get Mac-on-Linux working.
64 K RAM (more? less? I don't remember)
2 5 1/4" floppy drives
a cute little 7-9" green monitor
4 Mhz processor (again, I don't really remember)
Yes, it was a KAYPRO. I used it for everything until I got a Mac II in '94. Because of this machine, I learned to write BASIC almost as soon as I learned to read! And best of all, it still works! Though I use my new G3 for just about everthing now (it's the first machine I've ever owned capable of running Linux!).
Granted, that is not perfect, but at least we had 116 elements on our periodic tables!
I agree that to much is spent on silly things of little value, but much of the money that could be given to schools is also spent on silly things of little value (i.e. our bloated defense budget).
Just my $0.02.
Sure, its better than the War on Drugs!
This Y2K cr@p is being presented as "what will happen." If it were presented as a news story on, say, New Years Eve, it might have some of the style of Welles. Until then, it is worthy only of the garbage heap.
Otherwise, I agree.
Just don't compare this to a work from the Master.
Please.
Now, we all know that adds can often be false or misleading, and (as the article states), they often use morphing. Does that make those adds war crimes?
I agree completely on that score. Would there be any way of "moderating" the use of Linux? ie making it hard to get linux tech support in china? As most Linux support seems to be in the form of email between users, maybe we could boycott email to China? Just an idea...
In general, whenever a free speach issue appears on /., we all react in the most liberal manner. We don't want our rights taken away; we don't want anyone's rights taken away. We agree that people have the right to say just about whatever they want as long as it is not slanderous or libellous. We also all seemed to feel that the moderation system here on /. was a good way of keeping offensive comments from being to much a part of the community without violating the rights of induviduals to make those comments.
Yet now, the /. community has turned around. Many people are taking offence at the idea that China may (or may not) adopt Linux as the "official" OS. We're getting mad because they have perpetrated numerous human rights violations. We think that licences should forbid countries like the People's Republic from using Linux.
By endorsing such ideas, we are just as much in violation of the ideas of free speach.
I agree that China has done many things that are evil and wrong. I don't support their corrupt idea of "comunism." But it is wrong to tell the Chinese government that it can't use Linux because the government is evil.
Making it impossible for the Chinese to use Linux because of human rights violations would be like telling a member of the KKK that they can't buy rope because they will use that rope to kill some one. It would be like telling a satanist that they can't get up on a soap box in a park and rant because some one might take offense.
Here in the US, we have a Bill of Rights. This bill protects our citizens from many things. But why is it that as soon as an idea is not covered by the Bill of Rights (i.e. China, because they are not memebers of our union and, therefore, don't have to abide by the Bill of Rights), we feel that the Bill of Rights no longer applies?
If China wishes to use Linux, it is their right, not because they are a large, oppressive superpower and can take what they want; not because they adhear to the Bill of Rights; not because we like them. It is their right because it is the fundamental right of all people, and through the people, the countries in which the people live, to improve themselves and speak their minds.
I am sorry to rant on like this, but I feel that there is something of a double standard here and I felt the need to point it out.
I agree, in theory, that China using Linux looks bad for the Linux community, but if we deny them the right to use Linux (via licensing etc.) are we not just as bad? Aren't we then supporting the very thing we wish to stop?
It is free in a country where money is important.
It runs on old machines in a country where industry and computing are not on par with much of the rest of the world.
For the PR, Linux is ideal. There is great flexibility and power inherint in the OS and it can communicate with other systems fairly easily (i.e. Mac, Windoze, etc.).
In terms of public relations for China and good spin control, Linux is also ideal. The OS is developed by many often scattered strangers in often remote places. It is a community effort. "A People's OS for a People's Republic."
For the Linux community outside of China, on the other hand, this could be bad. In the United States and in much of the rest of the world, we still fear the "red bastards" and every thing even slightly smelling of communism is seen as taboo and evil. Linux as an OS may be tainted by communism.
Of course, die hard Linux users will never go away, but convincing other people to use Linux (read: the US Gov.) may grow more difficult. Though it is a good, stable OS, it may be killed by paranoid politicians crying "commies! commies!" ("wolf! wolf!").
And then of course, it is hard to truely feel good about making the Chinese government more effecient in its ability to oppress the masses (even with an OS from the masses).
And the Chinux mascot should be tux in red, instead of black.
Da Zdrastvui Revolutsia!!! Da Zdrastvui Lenin!!! Da Zdrastvui TUX!!!!!!!!
hopefully, a judge would side against yahoo and an equally powerfull precident would be set: you can't censor and not take resposibility for what gets through.
pardon my idealism, but i still beleive in our legal system and in our government as a whole.
sure, /. could censor such things, but then they would be responsible for every post. better to just let someone complain and leave it at that than to censor the comment and risk getting sued.
just leave it all to the moderators!
As I understand it, /. is not censoring any comments -- they are allowing us (via moderation) to choose what we want to read. Moderated posts are not deleted, just scored down so that most people won't bother reading them.
This is true, the first amendment prevents congress from passing any laws that censor or otherwise abridge our ability to speak freely. Obviously, there was something wrong with that. Then, the fourteenth amendment was passed:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Several Supreme Court decisions have since made it clear that free speach goes under the catagory of liberty and that states can't deprive someone of free speech.
It is true that neither the first nor fourteenth amendments cover private speech, so yahoo can leagally censor all they wish, but it is inaccurate to imply that only the federal congress is prohibited from taking our right to free speech.
i think that one of the ideas of the article that is being missed is that Gold is comes up with new theories. he has been wrong before (read: static universe theory), but his theories have raised hell -- they've caused us to think about how we see the universe and our place in it.
does it really matter if he is right or wrong, so long as his ideas cause us to think about how the world works and, in proving or disproving his theories, we learn some truth about the universe in which we live? (i apologize for the hideous run-on)