I went to a 70mm screening of 2001 with a couple of people only 5 years younger than me(late 20s) a while back. They really didn't get it. It was quite depressing.
(in the not being any good sense - who knows what business it will do)
The book's main protagonist is racked with guilt at leaving his girlfriend, knowing that if he did she'd try to kill herself. This is not only his emotional motivation, but informs his interaction with the planet, and is pretty impossible to remove without gutting the book.
George Clooney (or any major star) will NEVER be responsible for their girlfriend commiting suicide (on film anyway).
Therefore, there *will* be helicopter chases through decaying symmetriads, he *will* get it on with neutron girl, and there *will* be some kind of bad guy, no doubt a religious nutter trying to destroy the planet with a giant X-ray emitter.
I had this same argument with a friend who used to be the editor for our national broadcaster's online news service. He was very surprised that I considered it an issue, and thought that it was in fact an advantage of the web over traditional media, that you could seamlessly update and modify stories. He wasn't swayed by the 1984 comparison, or the point that he was deleting a valuable historical reference. But then he was working for an organisation that recorded over the Wanderly Wagon archive tapes rather than buy new ones.
It's funny the way we're ending up with a de facto, distributed Big Brother. Life eh.
random recruitment agency exec #1 - argh! our revenues are through the floor! How will we afford advertising? RRAE #2 - I know, let's make up some bullshit press release and ride on the coattails of the "geek culture" fantasy. RRAE #1 - I love you, Phil
Actually, it wouldn't be too hard to read an swf file into a textual format, the format is relatively simple and well-documented. (I think there's a free software utility that does this, as a matter of fact.) The authoring format is closed, however, and more complex.
As I said elsewhere, I think that part of the reason there isn't a free Flash package is coz the format itself isn't completely free but under the control of Macromedia. But it is relatively well-understood and easy to output.
A comparable flash tool to Macromedia's would be about as much work as an Illustrator clone before you added all the animation stuff. And all the while Macromedia could just change the swf format and/or introduce subtle incompatibilities in the player. (Though control of the standard may have changed recently, I stopped keeping track.)
There are various free software packages that do interesting things with vector graphics. I forgot what Killustrator changed its name to, but I think it could output static swfs. Autotrace (free, does about the same thing as Adobe Streamline) definitely can (I wrote the first version of the swf output). Then there's Ming, which can be used with several languages to output swf. But you've probably already come across most of these.
But if you're looking for a fully-featured swf authoring packages, just give up and nick Macromedia's, or hassle them for charity copies or something, coz otherwise you're SOL.
It may stop the US from pulling out of another treaty but it only increases the chance that nuclear weapons will be used by and/or against them.
Nuclear proliferation will not improve your lives in any way. It has a good chance of making you paranoid and miserable, and a very small chance of killing you and everyone you care about.
They'd constitute economic capital if they were still in copyright, and they execute in the human brain with definite results. And their political nature is defined by the results of their execution, which is true for code as well. There's definitely ideological elements to source code, even if it is just usually "this is how *I* think interfaces should work, O peasant user"
As someone who's taken quite a bit of acid, I've never understood the idea that it actually does anything beyond fuck you up in interesting ways. I really don't think James Joyce would have written better on it. He probably wouldn't have written at all if he was tripping off his face half the time.
And I do think that it is a problem, as it makes it hard to take the occasional gem seriously when it's drowned under a sea of what we shall politely label permutation. Also, if said permutation is given the benefit of the doubt, it can end in a situation where one accepts everything one reads without the application of too much critical thought. Which is bad, in case you're wondering.
google is your friend.
I had written a bit of guff about state tables and transitions and such, but this definition is so so much neater:
Definition: A model of computation consisting of a finite state machine controller, a read-write head, and an unbounded sequential tape. Depending on the current state and symbol read on the tape, the machine can change its state and move the head to the left or right. Unless otherwise specified, a Turing machine is deterministic.
The problem with these kinds of people is that they're a cross between cargo-cultists and priests trying to read the future in entrails. They're randomly recombining ideas and making vague statements, and occasionally this turns up something useful, but usually it's just offal.
The US is bullish on Wasenaar, which is supposed to limit arms and dual-use technologies but is usually used to try to prevent the spread of encryption. A good resource for checking which treaties a country has signed (and ratified) would be the CIA World Factbook.
Well, working through code translating it from
one language to another is a good way to understand
its underlying structure. I personally am
definitely a better programmer for all the
tedious pascal2c++ translation stuff I've done.
Slashdot Mirror
What, exactly, is Longhorn immitating?
Hard to say until it actually comes out.
But if its central feature is a database filesystem, PalmOS seems like the best candidate.
I went to a 70mm screening of 2001 with a couple of people only 5 years younger than me(late 20s) a while back. They really didn't get it. It was quite depressing.
(in the not being any good sense - who knows what business it will do)
The book's main protagonist is racked with guilt at leaving his girlfriend, knowing that if he did she'd try to kill herself. This is not only his emotional motivation, but informs his interaction with the planet, and is pretty impossible to remove without gutting the book.
George Clooney (or any major star) will NEVER be responsible for their girlfriend commiting suicide (on film anyway).
Therefore, there *will* be helicopter chases through decaying symmetriads, he *will* get it on with neutron girl, and there *will* be some kind of bad guy, no doubt a religious nutter trying to destroy the planet with a giant X-ray emitter.
...you should never accept a counter-offer:
0. We don't get commision if you stay in your old job!
I was aware of that, thanks. Up until about a year ago, I worked almost exclusively on Alphas running VMS.
My point was that DEC were a much cooler company than HP, so feh to HP. Feh I say.
If I didn't shed a tear for DEC, I'm hardly likely to do so for HP.
I had this same argument with a friend who used to be the editor for our national broadcaster's online news service. He was very surprised that I considered it an issue, and thought that it was in fact an advantage of the web over traditional media, that you could seamlessly update and modify stories. He wasn't swayed by the 1984 comparison, or the point that he was deleting a valuable historical reference. But then he was working for an organisation that recorded over the Wanderly Wagon archive tapes rather than buy new ones.
It's funny the way we're ending up with a de facto, distributed Big Brother. Life eh.
random recruitment agency exec #1 - argh! our revenues are through the floor! How will we afford advertising?
RRAE #2 - I know, let's make up some bullshit press release and ride on the coattails of the "geek culture" fantasy.
RRAE #1 - I love you, Phil
It's not a law doofus. That's the point.
Actually, it wouldn't be too hard to read an swf file into a textual format, the format is relatively simple and well-documented. (I think there's a free software utility that does this, as a matter of fact.) The authoring format is closed, however, and more complex.
As I said elsewhere, I think that part of the reason there isn't a free Flash package is coz the format itself isn't completely free but under the control of Macromedia. But it is relatively well-understood and easy to output.
A comparable flash tool to Macromedia's would be about as much work as an Illustrator clone before you added all the animation stuff. And all the while Macromedia could just change the swf format and/or introduce subtle incompatibilities in the player. (Though control of the standard may have changed recently, I stopped keeping track.)
There are various free software packages that do interesting things with vector graphics. I forgot what Killustrator changed its name to, but I think it could output static swfs. Autotrace (free, does about the same thing as Adobe Streamline) definitely can (I wrote the first version of the swf output). Then there's Ming, which can be used with several languages to output swf. But you've probably already come across most of these.
But if you're looking for a fully-featured swf authoring packages, just give up and nick Macromedia's, or hassle them for charity copies or something, coz otherwise you're SOL.
It may stop the US from pulling out of another treaty but it only increases the chance that nuclear weapons will be used by and/or against them.
Nuclear proliferation will not improve your lives in any way. It has a good chance of making you paranoid and miserable, and a very small chance of killing you and everyone you care about.
This is the funniest thing I've read today.
It's not obvious at all. What it is is mind-boggling, and possibly the greatest intellectual achievement of the 20th century.
Which makes Turing's actual life all the sadder.
They'd constitute economic capital if they were still in copyright, and they execute in the human brain with definite results. And their political nature is defined by the results of their execution, which is true for code as well. There's definitely ideological elements to source code, even if it is just usually "this is how *I* think interfaces should work, O peasant user"
As someone who's taken quite a bit of acid, I've never understood the idea that it actually does anything beyond fuck you up in interesting ways. I really don't think James Joyce would have written better on it. He probably wouldn't have written at all if he was tripping off his face half the time.
And I do think that it is a problem, as it makes it hard to take the occasional gem seriously when it's drowned under a sea of what we shall politely label permutation. Also, if said permutation is given the benefit of the doubt, it can end in a situation where one accepts everything one reads without the application of too much critical thought. Which is bad, in case you're wondering.
I had written a bit of guff about state tables and transitions and such, but this definition is so so much neater:
Definition: A model of computation consisting of a finite state machine controller, a read-write head, and an unbounded sequential tape. Depending on the current state and symbol read on the tape, the machine can change its state and move the head to the left or right. Unless otherwise specified, a Turing machine is deterministic.
(From: here)
A little from column A, a little from column B...
Or you could apply for an Irish passport, and become Dr. O' Doctorow...[rimshot]
Nobody tell Congress about lambda-calculus!
The problem with these kinds of people is that
they're a cross between cargo-cultists and priests
trying to read the future in entrails. They're
randomly recombining ideas and making vague
statements, and occasionally this turns up
something useful, but usually it's just offal.
K.
-
The US is bullish on Wasenaar, which is supposed to limit arms and dual-use technologies but is usually used to try to prevent the spread of encryption. A good resource for checking which treaties a country has signed (and ratified) would be the CIA World Factbook.
I can't be arsed remembering the link though.
Well, working through code translating it from
one language to another is a good way to understand
its underlying structure. I personally am
definitely a better programmer for all the
tedious pascal2c++ translation stuff I've done.
I'm referring of course, to Cryptonomicon, not Quicksilver.
Actually, it's partly set in the second world war.
And if Enoch Root was 20something in WW2 it's not
unreasonable that he should be knocking around in
the 90s.
Is it just me or does anybody else find it amusing that this was posted by an anonymous coward?
K.
-