Hmmm there's the example of Jesus casting the money lenders from the temple... I'm trying to rack my fading memories (and google) to think up a specific verse in the bible, and theres not a verse prohibiting nonreligious (as opposed to irreligious) activities... there is a verse describing a church as holy and blameless (well actually showing how women should be in marriage) but I can't really see how that comments upon it.
Churches have a need to attract new members, and this is just one method by which they may do so; whether it works is another thing entirely.
And reading Jamie's words has made me think creatively about the wireless home network I'll be setting up in the near future. I was going to go with xp for basic functionality and so as not to panic my girlfriend, but I'm thinking Ubuntu with a Windows emu for software that needs it just might not be such a bad idea.
I'm really not sure where the posters ragging on how inappropriate this story is are coming from. Hyndman is a geek who is also celebrity, not a celebrity who happens to be a geek. He has gained his celebrity by popularising engineering as much as, say, Carl Sagan did so popularising astronomy. Given his popularity with the geek audience, posting to inform the community of an article he's written is appropriate. No, it doesn't provide the indepth answer to every problem, but it does what popular science writing is supposed to do: to challenge and inspire. Were/. to post an article with paparazzi pictures of Jamie's sex romp with Britney, that would be a different thing.
Although I would click the link. Just to find out if he ever takes that damn beret off.
'a North Carolina man who saw a space programme flip and roll on the launchpad last November was able to provide engineering aid to the space programme with skills he learned from the NASA MMO'.
For that matter a wooden pegboard with flipswitches is logical in that it can process inputs (a marble being dropped in) to outputs (the slot via which the marble exits).
In fact logic and intelligence are in no way related. It's possible to be intelligent without a trace of logic.
I'd personally liked to eject Brian Herbert's books using a cannon.
He turns his father's universe of harsh realities and millennia-deep scheming into a soap opera with characters who in the main cycle are master strategists and are cheapshot emotional gameplayers.
Which describes Herbert and Anderson's writing style itself. Frank lost many readers further into the series as he got too involved in the sociopolitical complexities he was exploring, but you can be sure the younger Herbert will do anything to keep the audience reading, even if it's at the cost of sacrificing the entire Weltanschauung so painstakingly created.
With that in mind I would not take any of their descriptions of the preconditions or origins of the Butlerian Jihad seriously. That only leaves us with the original series for a true view of Herbert's thoughts, which on that subject were few and obscure. Little more was known than it had happened, and that the building of thinking machines was forbidden.
If you think about it, were one to have a viable teleporter then you'd want some kind of placeholder (sparkly lights and sound) appear at the destination and transfer points so as to prevent mishaps (people walking through and everyone going splat).
I'm not for a minute suggesting that this was the reason for the Star Trek team going so, but I'd sure want everything going in my favour to prevent this kind of mishap.
My preference would be the locked-at-both-ends teleport booths described in some scifi novels for just that reason of guaranteed safety. The door at the other end won't close? I'm not going.
It's one of the common causes of death I guess... but does anyone else find it significant that he died at age 64, the number of squares on a chessboard?
Exactly. Going back to the recent post on first gaming experiences, a lot of us were found to have started out with pong and the like.
We therefore have a growing adult cohort of 'native' gamers whose interests deserve to be represented.
Now it's easy to look at political lobbying and see it as a simple dollars-for-votes machine; but it's far from it.
Any good PAC will create around it a body of political analysis to support its views, and at the end of the day political thought that can be translated into a coherent stance for a politician will find more takers.
Yes money talks, but without creating the language so that the politicians can pocket the money and be able to tell themselves (and their electorate) they're being good representatives is the key.
And let's face it - other political movements got started by people taking to the streets. Inspiring stuff. By contrast, nobody (not even Blizz) cares about 1000 naked level 1 gnomes crashing Ironforge on a roleplay server, so it's a good thing if the gaming industry is recruiting some real political thinkers and activists to do that kind of work.
I'm interested in your exchanging licences notion - to me it works in a physical-format context but fails in a digital one. If you're selling the licence you surely have to delete all your extant copies of the work; how on earth can this be monitored? I see straight P2P sharing as being a line of lesser legal danger compared to someone selling the 'licence' to an mp3 on ebay.
To me that's the entire problem with the digital age and licencing - with a physical artifact licencing is easy to control, with an infinitely duplicatable digital construct it is impossible to verify that you no longer have the "item" in your possession.
I think an interesting way to view it would be to see each copy as being it's own implicit licence. With infinite duplicability this means that the value of the concept of "licence" is precisely 1/infinity (sorry, couldn't find the symbol on the char map).
Basically the music industry wonks to accept that in the digital age licencing is effectively dead.
If a deity were omnipotent and decided to give a message for the world then they could easily ensure the correct message would come through in spite of infallibility.
That being said, although I disagree with your argument I find myself in agreement with your conclusion.
I'm put in mind of Douglas Adams's envisaging of God's last message to the universe, my favourite passage from "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish":
They rounded the foot of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains, and there was the Message written in blazing letters along the crest of the Mountain. There was a little observation vantage point with a rail built along the top of a large rock facing it, from which you could get a good view. It had a little pay-telescope for looking at the letters in detail, but no one would ever use it because the letters burned with the divine brilliance of the heavens and would, if seen through a telescope, have severely damaged the retina and optic nerve.
They gazed at God's Final Message in wonderment, and were slowly and ineffably filled with a great sense of peace, and of final and complete understanding.
Fenchurch sighed. "Yes," she said, "that was it."
They had been staring at it for fully ten minutes before they became aware that Marvin, hanging between their shoulders, was in difficulties. The robot could no longer lift his head, had not read the message. They lifted his head, but he complained that his vision circuits had almost gone.
They found a coin and helped him to the telescope. He complained and insulted them, but they helped him look at each individual letter in turn, The first letter was a "w", the second an "e". Then there was a gap. An "a" followed, then a "p", an "o" and an "l".
Marvin paused for a rest.
After a few moments they resumed and let him see the "o", the "g", the "i", the "s" and the "e".
The next two words were "for" and "the". The last one was a long one, and Marvin needed another rest before he could tackle it.
It started with an "i", then "n" then a "c". Next came an "o" and an "n", followed by a "v", an "e", another "n" and an "i".
After a final pause, Marvin gathered his strength for the last stretch.
He read the "e", the "n", the "c" and at last the final "e", and staggered back into their arms.
"I think," he murmured at last, from deep within his corroding rattling thorax, "I feel good about it."
The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever.
Luckily, there was a stall nearby where you could rent scooters from guys with green wings.
Anything less clear than that is either from a deity that is not omnipotent, from a deity who does not care to explain themselves clearly (and therefore isn't that involved with the whole process) or some more bs made up, as you say, by some fallible human being.
Agreed, but it still possibly signals a distancing move on the part of the labels from the collection of strategies they've been following with regard to DRM - and when read in conjunction with such other signs suggests a definite move rather than a bit of "oh it wasn't us being so mean to the consumers" rhetoric.
The purpose of RIAA lobbying is to create a legislative environment in which a body of pro-DRM case law can develop, therefore removing that lobbying is a meaningful act within the context in which the lawsuits take place.
Slashdot Mirror
They've just found a specific branch of male-based dyslexia in which ordinary words come out spelt "pwned", "lolnub", and "biatch".
I played the original Duke Nukem. And yes.
No, not at all. It's a different 4 and 8 percent respectively.
Hmmm there's the example of Jesus casting the money lenders from the temple... I'm trying to rack my fading memories (and google) to think up a specific verse in the bible, and theres not a verse prohibiting nonreligious (as opposed to irreligious) activities... there is a verse describing a church as holy and blameless (well actually showing how women should be in marriage) but I can't really see how that comments upon it.
Churches have a need to attract new members, and this is just one method by which they may do so; whether it works is another thing entirely.
In what way is it blasphemous? Can you name a bible verse that states "thou shalt not watch football in church"?
Thank you, I'd forgotten that!
There goes my carefully crafted sleepover-ghost-story (itself more a US tradition than it is anywhere else) image...
I'm still of the opinion that being scared by what you know are rumours about MS and google is to take them more seriously than they deserve.
I'm sure they're not scaring you with these rumours.
I think you're scaring yourself.
Or maybe your friend over there in the sleeping bag shining a torch under his chin is.
"Conan has succumbed to lassitude."
20 years later I finally found out what lassitude meant.
Ulanoff's job is easier when he has good relations with Microsoft's PR dept.
Saying nice things about the product is part of his job, but I bet this one stuck in his throat.
It's simple.
Grind when you feel like it, don't when you don't.
Play when you feel like it, don't when you don't.
If you're feeling dominated by the requirements of the game, that's more about your response to it than the game itself.
And reading Jamie's words has made me think creatively about the wireless home network I'll be setting up in the near future. I was going to go with xp for basic functionality and so as not to panic my girlfriend, but I'm thinking Ubuntu with a Windows emu for software that needs it just might not be such a bad idea.
/. to post an article with paparazzi pictures of Jamie's sex romp with Britney, that would be a different thing.
I'm really not sure where the posters ragging on how inappropriate this story is are coming from. Hyndman is a geek who is also celebrity, not a celebrity who happens to be a geek. He has gained his celebrity by popularising engineering as much as, say, Carl Sagan did so popularising astronomy. Given his popularity with the geek audience, posting to inform the community of an article he's written is appropriate. No, it doesn't provide the indepth answer to every problem, but it does what popular science writing is supposed to do: to challenge and inspire. Were
Although I would click the link. Just to find out if he ever takes that damn beret off.
For that matter a wooden pegboard with flipswitches is logical in that it can process inputs (a marble being dropped in) to outputs (the slot via which the marble exits).
In fact logic and intelligence are in no way related. It's possible to be intelligent without a trace of logic.
It's called being female.
I'd personally liked to eject Brian Herbert's books using a cannon.
He turns his father's universe of harsh realities and millennia-deep scheming into a soap opera with characters who in the main cycle are master strategists and are cheapshot emotional gameplayers.
Which describes Herbert and Anderson's writing style itself. Frank lost many readers further into the series as he got too involved in the sociopolitical complexities he was exploring, but you can be sure the younger Herbert will do anything to keep the audience reading, even if it's at the cost of sacrificing the entire Weltanschauung so painstakingly created.
With that in mind I would not take any of their descriptions of the preconditions or origins of the Butlerian Jihad seriously. That only leaves us with the original series for a true view of Herbert's thoughts, which on that subject were few and obscure. Little more was known than it had happened, and that the building of thinking machines was forbidden.
If you think about it, were one to have a viable teleporter then you'd want some kind of placeholder (sparkly lights and sound) appear at the destination and transfer points so as to prevent mishaps (people walking through and everyone going splat).
I'm not for a minute suggesting that this was the reason for the Star Trek team going so, but I'd sure want everything going in my favour to prevent this kind of mishap.
My preference would be the locked-at-both-ends teleport booths described in some scifi novels for just that reason of guaranteed safety. The door at the other end won't close? I'm not going.
It's one of the common causes of death I guess... but does anyone else find it significant that he died at age 64, the number of squares on a chessboard?
Spooooooooky...
Exactly. Going back to the recent post on first gaming experiences, a lot of us were found to have started out with pong and the like.
We therefore have a growing adult cohort of 'native' gamers whose interests deserve to be represented.
Now it's easy to look at political lobbying and see it as a simple dollars-for-votes machine; but it's far from it.
Any good PAC will create around it a body of political analysis to support its views, and at the end of the day political thought that can be translated into a coherent stance for a politician will find more takers.
Yes money talks, but without creating the language so that the politicians can pocket the money and be able to tell themselves (and their electorate) they're being good representatives is the key.
And let's face it - other political movements got started by people taking to the streets. Inspiring stuff. By contrast, nobody (not even Blizz) cares about 1000 naked level 1 gnomes crashing Ironforge on a roleplay server, so it's a good thing if the gaming industry is recruiting some real political thinkers and activists to do that kind of work.
I'm interested in your exchanging licences notion - to me it works in a physical-format context but fails in a digital one. If you're selling the licence you surely have to delete all your extant copies of the work; how on earth can this be monitored? I see straight P2P sharing as being a line of lesser legal danger compared to someone selling the 'licence' to an mp3 on ebay.
To me that's the entire problem with the digital age and licencing - with a physical artifact licencing is easy to control, with an infinitely duplicatable digital construct it is impossible to verify that you no longer have the "item" in your possession.
I think an interesting way to view it would be to see each copy as being it's own implicit licence. With infinite duplicability this means that the value of the concept of "licence" is precisely 1/infinity (sorry, couldn't find the symbol on the char map).
Basically the music industry wonks to accept that in the digital age licencing is effectively dead.
No, we'd just go back to the Victorian times and define such crimes as not standing up when a lady enters a room as being an asshole.
Thank goodness for the freedoms of a permissive society! Now people really have to be vicious to deliver social harm to each other.
So long as you go open source I'm good with that.
He was afraid of being modded -1:Python
That being said, although I disagree with your argument I find myself in agreement with your conclusion.
I'm put in mind of Douglas Adams's envisaging of God's last message to the universe, my favourite passage from "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish":
Anything less clear than that is either from a deity that is not omnipotent, from a deity who does not care to explain themselves clearly (and therefore isn't that involved with the whole process) or some more bs made up, as you say, by some fallible human being.
Agreed, but it still possibly signals a distancing move on the part of the labels from the collection of strategies they've been following with regard to DRM - and when read in conjunction with such other signs suggests a definite move rather than a bit of "oh it wasn't us being so mean to the consumers" rhetoric.
The purpose of RIAA lobbying is to create a legislative environment in which a body of pro-DRM case law can develop, therefore removing that lobbying is a meaningful act within the context in which the lawsuits take place.
In Soviet Russia, self-referential jokes make you! :D