That is something that consenting adults are free to do in my version of utopia, if that's really what they want. Doesn't do too much for me. If that's what you got out of Heinlein I think you missed the point. Sure he was a ecchi old bastard - but he believed in freedom. There are things he wrote about that I *won't* defend (a rape in "Friday" for example), but mostly he believed in uncontrolled and uninhibited freedom. So do I. KSR's utopian societies are based on perfectly goverable people, Heinlien's on perfectly ungovernable people. I know which I prefer.
I was afraid that this book would be PC junk like
The last book in his Mars series, and some of his other work. And I thought it would be exactly what you suggest. It wasn't. It seemed fairly even-handed,
with a fair share of greed, rape, murder for everyone.
The last book in the Mars series, however, was a betrayal of all the characters that had been developed in the previous two; simply in order that we might arrive at his utopia. Now, hypocritically, I don't really mind when Heinlein does it, because we pretty much agree on what utopia looks like; but KSR has a new-age greenpeace kill-the-gun-nuts kind of thing going on in his utopias which I would feel compelled to take up arms to overthrow. Budding SF Authors: utopia is forbidden and unreachable. This is why bad-guy wins stories are never quite as appealing as they would seem.
I got SolidWorks 97 [somewhat] running [wireframe only] with wine using (transgaming's) winex 1.0.3. I just used winex because I didn't want to recompile wine w/ OpenGL. anyone know of someone who packages
wine w/GL buitin? SW 98 and 2000 did not run.
On topic, I bought the codeweavers plugin. I'd like to have an install interface that easy for mozilla plugins on windows.
A.K. Pseudoman (aka E.P. Northrup) wrote a bizarre science fiction novel in 1937 called 'Zero to Eighty: Being My Lifetime Doings, Reflections, and Inventions; Also My Journey Around the Moon' which has a large section in the back of photographs of (he claims working) models of railguns, and all sorts of technical arcana. In the book a railgun is used to launch a spacecraft... Clarke certainly knew of this book, as he metions it it the foreword of one of the Venus Prime books as one of his inspirations.
I guess this is a little OT, but I hope interesting nonetheless.
"turning magnets backwards" is an awkward turn of phrase, but I think I know what you mean. Actually the Maglev and Drive parts of these motors are often completely separate (not true in a rail gun type setup though.)- so what you would want to do is leave the mag-lev in the same state and reverse the drive of the (linear) motor. Though this is probably not the best soloution (for the Navy) either. Passive eddy current braking is probably easier and certainly cheaper. and regardless of the technology doing the starting and stopping, It'll have to be bkwds compatible with every fighter made in the last 50 years, so It'll have the same mechanical interfaces you see today.
Mechanical Complexity. Maglev, with linear motors and associated control systems are complicated. don't let the lack of moving parts decieve you. One part the company I work for makes has hundreds of not-moving parts to replace four moving parts- in an application very similar to this. Which system is more failure prone? expensive? It depends, but isn't always obvious.
Disclaimer: I work for a company that makes linear motors and maglev devices. Heck, we're probably some of the idiots doing conceptual work for them.
The fellow is describing a system. Not justifying it. Not that the system can't be justified, (or rationalized).
One justification, that the writer hinted at, is that the alternative (unified world govenment, unified legal sytem, unified military) would be worse. Playground justice sometimes is justice. Depends on who has the strength. Luckily, in this case, it is the US., because there are worse choices.
Now, If you'd like to propose a different system besides unified world gov't or playground justice, I'd be interested. I'd guess your system would begin with enforcement of International Law. Currently, International Law does not exist. Laws are backed up by force. Without force behind a law it is just a Whiny Pronouncement. The people who actually have power (Not just the US)sometimes defer to it when it suits them, and sometimes don't. I like this system, because 99% of international law is shit.
Of course, 99% of everything is shit. In particular, your last paragraph, which lacks even a semblance of truth.
a recent example: A general in Nigeria disobeys civilian orders by the president, and goes off to kill some people from some other ethnic group in retaliation for.... How is the US involved? We'd love stability in Africa, stability is good for business. Periodically, we try to intervene to stabilize things, and always find out that both sides are fuck-ups who just want to whack every person who doesn't belong to their group, tribe, gang, family or sexual orientation.
Does anyone know what "technologies" this game is built with? esp. in regard to porting potential? Is it something that is doable if the economics and politics align? Obviously, I'm not holding my breath, but as a linux user who was obsessed with the previous versions, I'd love to know. I expect I'll be trying to hunt down my copy of WinNT that's hiding somewhere in the bottom of a box...
I'll bet the certified DRM code will not be free(beer), or open(free). Now some nice person might pay the 10-100K this will cost, and build a closed source module, and distribute it for free(beer), which all the commercial dist builders would include by default to avoid rugburn on their knees, And we'd just remove it, becoming criminals. Yay! I'd say that's just about optimal.
Now, if the DRM algore/code is open source, that would be something else, namely, funny. of course, we could remove that too, becoming criminals. Doubleplusgood! So in one respect, it isn't really a problem if you don't mind 1)paying to become a criminal, or 2)getting a good laugh and then becoming a criminal, or 3)Only doing approved things at approved times with approved hardware with approved people, and probably becoming a criminal anyway cause you know too much. No, it's not an attack on free software, we're just standing between them and our money.
There's this thing called "gallows humor". This is a prime example. You just can't hold the monstrosity of this in your head very long before you snap. If you can't act, If you can't cry, you laugh. And I think you probably know this.
Re:What the hell is wrong with the U.S.A.?!
on
Optical SETI
·
· Score: 1
Ordinary Citizens + Small Arms + time = Terrorists?
regardless of how one feels about private gun ownership, I think we can all agree that this proposed bit of logic is seriously flawed, and reeks of hyperbole. I am reluctantly willing to agree that some european nations which ban small arms have managed to avoid sinking into despotism. Ordinary Gov't + Ban Small Arms+ time= Despotism : the corresponding argument of the 'gun nuts'. Neither
argument is really true. You have to remember, the NRA is not really a secret society of evil child killers. That's just your propaganda. When you start to believe your own propaganda, that's really sad. Not that this is anything but flamebait.
(Congratulations, you've just bought the best car on the market! See all those empty spaces under the hood? You can install any carboretur, radiator, transmission, and catalytic converter you want! The customer's always right! What, you don't have 31337 m3ch4n1x ski11z? Get off the road, luser!)
This sounds like heaven. Especially the bit about an empty space where the catalytic converter goes. The reason cars are not sold like this (I hope), Is *not* that it is too complicated. It is no harder than editing a configuration file. It is sold that way beacuse the tools are expensive and few people have them. I do expect my mother to look in discussion forums for scanner drivers. You know what? She's getting there after a few years. The idea that you can walk around all your life and not know how a radiator or webserver works is Arrogance worthy of some uppity Victorian quasi-nobility. The Eloi will get eaten if they arn't careful.
I think (and I'm not being sarcastic) that fact checking *is* the user's job in this kind of forum. It may even be its distinguishing characteristic. You are not reading a newspaper. This is a different medium with different rules. You may view it as irritating and unprofessional, and I understand that. I, however, enjoy blundering towards some sort of half-assed consensus. It is addictive, involving, alive. Reading/. is not a passive act.
There are existing standards dictating how one
spells words in the english language. They are open standards. Why do you feel the need to extend
this standard with creative spellings?
In addition to all the usual suspects, it seems to me that there is a point being missed about the nature of automation. The article mentions that the record companies just want to make it hard for the average user to rip. But as long as we're dealing mostly with software, the complexities of writing drivers that ignore bad TOC data, or rippers that do bitwise copies and guess where tracks are (maybe from an online lookup table) can be almost completely transparent to the end user. That is, there is going to be little or no real added complexity. The record companies are not idiots, right? They know that this is only a bump in the road. They just are doing this as a stopgap untill they can strongarm device manufacturers (with stuff like CSS liscencing) into limiting outputs and paying attention to copyright bits and encryption.
The elder Bush was rumoured to have GONE TO WAR over the potential increase in oil costs. (Which pretty much translates into higher energy costs.) Remember Desert Storm? If you bought that explanation of the Gulf War, (and I'm sure you did) you have to admit he, if not his son, cared about energy costs. The connection between electricity and the death penalty (which like you, I oppose- in fact, I signed an ACLU petition on the subject Monday.) could be some sort of clever reference to the electric chair- but it's not. Your blind hatred leaves your mind weak and unfocused. You jump from topic to topic as the week's propaganda bubbles to the surface. Unless you moderate your tone, you will never convince anyone of anything, and do irrepairable harm to the causes you believe in.
And I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery! It's funny that this actually is a moral issue, and not one about power. The sides are balanced. On one side, The State. the other, the forces of Indifference. Who are you going to sue? and what would you get, besides bad publicity? The author seems to realize this, and is asking nicely. So what is the right thing to do? It may be clear-cut to you, but just because it violates some laws, and causes enormous tech support bills doesn't make it right to change the name. The best reason I can come up with to change the name is: It is the polite thing to do. The man asked nicely, and the name doesn't matter particularly to me. As long as it works.
I also always see the same movies as JK. I live and work in the Andover area, and often see movies on Saturdays in Boston or Cambridge, and wonder if JK, out visiting Slashdot Corperate HQ is sitting in the same theater somewhere. After a few weeks, it really gets creepy. Like some sort of reverse-stalking. Anyway, I'd like to second your approval of movie reviews on/., though not your approval of Saving Silverman. PEOPLE OF EARTH! Do not be decieved! This movie is an utter waste of your ill-gotten funds! You will not see acting. You will find no witty repartee. you will not see starlet cleavage lubricated with vaseline and filmed through cheesecloth. All this movie wants from you is your man-juice! (OK,there's that one line) Stay clear!
I agree and apologize. Too often when I hear the "take your money elsewhere" argument there is a defensive tone that really means "shut up and go away".
An economics prof and a student were walking down the street. They see a dollar in the street. student goes to pick it up. The prof stops him, saying, "if the dollar was there, someone would have picked it up." An old story, the message of which is, we are the market, money is made in the gap between where the market is and a perfectly efficient market. That said, I agree that what we are seeing is probably a reasonable market response. The problem is that we are atypical consumers, with very different needs ie. shell accounts, newsfeeds, cgi scripts etc. There is a gap there, and somebody will or has filled it.
We are currently in the complaining stage. This often involves a level of hyperbole; ie. ~"Evil Corp". Many of us have taken our money elsewhere, and people are telling us where in many of these posts. Complaining that people are following *exactly* your advice is illogical. You are complaining aren't you?
This has not been my experience. I don't think there would be as much whining if your statement was true. I think of this as The myth of the professional. Better products, happier employees, and better service *do not* come from the big guys. Better prices, sometimes. This isn't nostalgia, Its experience. Things go to shit when competition declines. The path from Unresponsive Big Company to Oligarchy to Monopoly is well worn, and we've all seen it happen before too many times. I do not believe in government regulation of things like this, but that is not the same as approval. I will not be going to a big ISP while there is one small, responsive one left standing. If you measure success only by the size of the company you own/work for you will make the world a worse place because of it, and be less likely to succeed yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
That is something that consenting adults are free to do in my version of utopia, if that's really what they want. Doesn't do too much for me. If that's what you got out of Heinlein I think you missed the point. Sure he was a ecchi old bastard - but he believed in freedom. There are things he wrote about that I *won't* defend (a rape in "Friday" for example), but mostly he believed in uncontrolled and uninhibited freedom. So do I. KSR's utopian societies are based on perfectly goverable people, Heinlien's on perfectly ungovernable people. I know which I prefer.
I was afraid that this book would be PC junk like The last book in his Mars series, and some of his other work. And I thought it would be exactly what you suggest. It wasn't. It seemed fairly even-handed, with a fair share of greed, rape, murder for everyone.
The last book in the Mars series, however, was a betrayal of all the characters that had been developed in the previous two; simply in order that we might arrive at his utopia. Now, hypocritically, I don't really mind when Heinlein does it, because we pretty much agree on what utopia looks like; but KSR has a new-age greenpeace kill-the-gun-nuts kind of thing going on in his utopias which I would feel compelled to take up arms to overthrow. Budding SF Authors: utopia is forbidden and unreachable. This is why bad-guy wins stories are never quite as appealing as they would seem.
I thought It was "H" for Hentai.
Doesn't that bring some pleasant images to mind?
What does that say about my Ecchi-ness, or lack thereof?
I got SolidWorks 97 [somewhat] running [wireframe only] with wine using (transgaming's) winex 1.0.3. I just used winex because I didn't want to recompile wine w/ OpenGL. anyone know of someone who packages wine w/GL buitin? SW 98 and 2000 did not run.
On topic, I bought the codeweavers plugin. I'd like to have an install interface that easy for mozilla plugins on windows.
I have visions of "Neko" with a railgun....
I am not amused.
A.K. Pseudoman (aka E.P. Northrup) wrote a bizarre science fiction novel in 1937 called 'Zero to Eighty: Being My Lifetime Doings, Reflections, and Inventions; Also My Journey Around the Moon' which has a large section in the back of photographs of (he claims working) models of railguns, and all sorts of technical arcana. In the book a railgun is used to launch a spacecraft... Clarke certainly knew of this book, as he metions it it the foreword of one of the Venus Prime books as one of his inspirations. I guess this is a little OT, but I hope interesting nonetheless.
Mechanical Complexity. Maglev, with linear motors and associated control systems are complicated. don't let the lack of moving parts decieve you. One part the company I work for makes has hundreds of not-moving parts to replace four moving parts- in an application very similar to this. Which system is more failure prone? expensive? It depends, but isn't always obvious.
Disclaimer: I work for a company that makes linear motors and maglev devices. Heck, we're probably some of the idiots doing conceptual work for them.
maybe you could try running the virii/trojans in wine? I can see it now:
wine --dll fuckme,fuckmehard32=n --winver win98 TROJAN.exe
The fellow is describing a system. Not justifying it. Not that the system can't be justified, (or rationalized).
One justification, that the writer hinted at, is that the alternative (unified world govenment, unified legal sytem, unified military) would be worse. Playground justice sometimes is justice. Depends on who has the strength. Luckily, in this case, it is the US., because there are worse choices.
Now, If you'd like to propose a different system besides unified world gov't or playground justice, I'd be interested. I'd guess your system would begin with enforcement of International Law. Currently, International Law does not exist. Laws are backed up by force. Without force behind a law it is just a Whiny Pronouncement. The people who actually have power (Not just the US)sometimes defer to it when it suits them, and sometimes don't. I like this system, because 99% of international law is shit.
Of course, 99% of everything is shit. In particular, your last paragraph, which lacks even a semblance of truth.
a recent example: A general in Nigeria disobeys civilian orders by the president, and goes off to kill some people from some other ethnic group in retaliation for.... How is the US involved? We'd love stability in Africa, stability is good for business. Periodically, we try to intervene to stabilize things, and always find out that both sides are fuck-ups who just want to whack every person who doesn't belong to their group, tribe, gang, family or sexual orientation.
Does anyone know what "technologies" this game is built with? esp. in regard to porting potential? Is it something that is doable if the economics and politics align? Obviously, I'm not holding my breath, but as a linux user who was obsessed with the previous versions, I'd love to know. I expect I'll be trying to hunt down my copy of WinNT that's hiding somewhere in the bottom of a box...
I'll bet the certified DRM code will not be free(beer), or open(free). Now some nice person might pay the 10-100K this will cost, and build a closed source module, and distribute it for free(beer), which all the commercial dist builders would include by default to avoid rugburn on their knees, And we'd just remove it, becoming criminals. Yay! I'd say that's just about optimal. Now, if the DRM algore/code is open source, that would be something else, namely, funny. of course, we could remove that too, becoming criminals. Doubleplusgood! So in one respect, it isn't really a problem if you don't mind 1)paying to become a criminal, or 2)getting a good laugh and then becoming a criminal, or 3)Only doing approved things at approved times with approved hardware with approved people, and probably becoming a criminal anyway cause you know too much. No, it's not an attack on free software, we're just standing between them and our money.
There's this thing called "gallows humor". This is a prime example. You just can't hold the monstrosity of this in your head very long before you snap. If you can't act, If you can't cry, you laugh. And I think you probably know this.
Ordinary Citizens + Small Arms + time = Terrorists?
regardless of how one feels about private gun ownership, I think we can all agree that this proposed bit of logic is seriously flawed, and reeks of hyperbole. I am reluctantly willing to agree that some european nations which ban small arms have managed to avoid sinking into despotism. Ordinary Gov't + Ban Small Arms+ time= Despotism : the corresponding argument of the 'gun nuts'. Neither argument is really true. You have to remember, the NRA is not really a secret society of evil child killers. That's just your propaganda. When you start to believe your own propaganda, that's really sad.
Not that this is anything but flamebait.
This sounds like heaven. Especially the bit about an empty space where the catalytic converter goes. The reason cars are not sold like this (I hope), Is *not* that it is too complicated. It is no harder than editing a configuration file. It is sold that way beacuse the tools are expensive and few people have them. I do expect my mother to look in discussion forums for scanner drivers. You know what? She's getting there after a few years. The idea that you can walk around all your life and not know how a radiator or webserver works is Arrogance worthy of some uppity Victorian quasi-nobility. The Eloi will get eaten if they arn't careful.
I think (and I'm not being sarcastic) that fact checking *is* the user's job in this kind of forum. It may even be its distinguishing characteristic. You are not reading a newspaper. This is a different medium with different rules. You may view it as irritating and unprofessional, and I understand that. I, however, enjoy blundering towards some sort of half-assed consensus. It is addictive, involving, alive. Reading /. is not a passive act.
A modest proposal? Well, I suppose that both are satire. But Roblimo's proposal doesn't have nearly enough bite to it. (ouch).
There are existing standards dictating how one spells words in the english language. They are open standards. Why do you feel the need to extend this standard with creative spellings?
In addition to all the usual suspects, it seems to me that there is a point being missed about the nature of automation. The article mentions that the record companies just want to make it hard for the average user to rip. But as long as we're dealing mostly with software, the complexities of writing drivers that ignore bad TOC data, or rippers that do bitwise copies and guess where tracks are (maybe from an online lookup table) can be almost completely transparent to the end user. That is, there is going to be little or no real added complexity. The record companies are not idiots, right? They know that this is only a bump in the road. They just are doing this as a stopgap untill they can strongarm device manufacturers (with stuff like CSS liscencing) into limiting outputs and paying attention to copyright bits and encryption.
The elder Bush was rumoured to have GONE TO WAR over the potential increase in oil costs. (Which pretty much translates into higher energy costs.) Remember Desert Storm? If you bought that explanation of the Gulf War, (and I'm sure you did) you have to admit he, if not his son, cared about energy costs. The connection between electricity and the death penalty (which like you, I oppose- in fact, I signed an ACLU petition on the subject Monday.) could be some sort of clever reference to the electric chair- but it's not. Your blind hatred leaves your mind weak and unfocused. You jump from topic to topic as the week's propaganda bubbles to the surface. Unless you moderate your tone, you will never convince anyone of anything, and do irrepairable harm to the causes you believe in.
And I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery!
It's funny that this actually is a moral issue, and not one about power. The sides are balanced. On one side, The State. the other, the forces of Indifference. Who are you going to sue? and what would you get, besides bad publicity? The author seems to realize this, and is asking nicely. So what is the right thing to do? It may be clear-cut to you, but just because it violates some laws, and causes enormous tech support bills doesn't make it right to change the name. The best reason I can come up with to change the name is: It is the polite thing to do. The man asked nicely, and the name doesn't matter particularly to me. As long as it works.
I also always see the same movies as JK. I live and work in the Andover area, and often see movies on Saturdays in Boston or Cambridge, and wonder if JK, out visiting Slashdot Corperate HQ is sitting in the same theater somewhere. After a few weeks, it really gets creepy. Like some sort of reverse-stalking. Anyway, I'd like to second your approval of movie reviews on /., though not your approval of Saving Silverman. PEOPLE OF EARTH! Do not be decieved! This movie is an utter waste of your ill-gotten funds! You will not see acting. You will find no witty repartee. you will not see starlet cleavage lubricated with vaseline and filmed through cheesecloth. All this movie wants from you is your man-juice! (OK,there's that one line) Stay clear!
I agree and apologize. Too often when I hear the "take your money elsewhere" argument there is a defensive tone that really means "shut up and go away".
An economics prof and a student were walking down the street. They see a dollar in the street. student goes to pick it up. The prof stops him, saying, "if the dollar was there, someone would have picked it up."
An old story, the message of which is, we are the market, money is made in the gap between where the market is and a perfectly efficient market. That said, I agree that what we are seeing is probably a reasonable market response. The problem is that we are atypical consumers, with very different needs ie. shell accounts, newsfeeds, cgi scripts etc. There is a gap there, and somebody will or has filled it.
We are currently in the complaining stage. This often involves a level of hyperbole; ie. ~"Evil Corp". Many of us have taken our money elsewhere, and people are telling us where in many of these posts. Complaining that people are following *exactly* your advice is illogical. You are complaining aren't you?
This has not been my experience. I don't think there would be as much whining if your statement was true. I think of this as The myth of the professional. Better products, happier employees, and better service *do not* come from the big guys. Better prices, sometimes. This isn't nostalgia, Its experience. Things go to shit when competition declines. The path from Unresponsive Big Company to Oligarchy to Monopoly is well worn, and we've all seen it happen before too many times. I do not believe in government regulation of things like this, but that is not the same as approval. I will not be going to a big ISP while there is one small, responsive one left standing. If you measure success only by the size of the company you own/work for you will make the world a worse place because of it, and be less likely to succeed yourself.