Sadly, Worldcom has already decided to call it "Generation D" Maybe we ought to get together and nail this thing down before the corporations do? --Fesh
Ever seen any advertising from the sixties? It's thoroughly disgusting. Not that I disagree with you. I think advertising in all forms should be abolished. But as far as the sheer, in-your-face "buy things or you're a commie pervert" attitude goes, I think things have gotten a bit better. Not much, but a bit. --Fesh
Yah, the role that Bob Hoskins plays in Brazil is easily overlooked, but he does a fantastic job. But then again, Hoskins is one of my absolute faves. Anyone born with a thick lower-class British accent who can do a 1940's era Californian gumshoe (Who Framed Roger Rabbit) is someone who demands my respect...
Heh. His definition of "best customers" is "those with the most money". Tells you how valued you are as an individual by these people, doesn't it?
I only looked at the first few paragraphs, but the gist I got was that since people don't want to deal with advertising and will soon gain the tools to ignore it, advertisers will have to find new ways to claw for our mindshare. Honestly... If advertising wasn't such an annoying phenomenon in the first place, we wouldn't fight as hard as we do to get away from it. Personally, I don't think any advertiser could ever succeed in targetting me with a message that I'm interested in seeing, no matter how much personal information they gather or how closely they monitor my every move. If I need something, I can easily find out where to get it. What I don't need is to be told that I need something, which is the whole point behind advertising these days. I can decide for myself what I need and what I don't, thank you...
Oh well... Got off on a rant there myself. I'd rather see advertising eliminated entirely, with products competing on their own merits instead of flashy gimmicks. But since that approach works on the sheeple, I don't think we'll ever see it.
Uh no, there's another. Check this out: An EMP bomb pumped by conventional explosives. I wonder why these things aren't being used yet... They look fairly simple and reliable. By the way, the paper which describes these in detail is further down the page. It's the first article under the "Published in United States Air Force College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education Air Chronicles, Air University, Maxwell AFB" heading. It links to an af.mil site which for some freaky reason I can only hit if I link through this page. Scary, no?
Damn. I previewed and still missed it. Anyway, the third sentence of the second paragraph should have been, "Thus, the line of tanks he saw in front of him and was targetting were friendly forces, even though he thought they were the enemy."
Actually, he was a command officer and wasn't supposed to be flying that mission in the first place. He wanted to get in on the action even though he probably hadn't flown a combat-intensity mission in a while. I think he got court martialled, not for shooting a friendly IFV, but for disobeying regs and flying the mission when he knew he wasn't supposed to.
What actually happened was this. The mission was to take on a line of enemy IFVs which (I think) were advancing on an American position. As he was setting up his attack, he neglected to notice that the wind had pushed his helicopter back across friendly lines. Thus, he thought the line of tanks he was targetting were actually the friendly forces. He didn't bother to look at his position until after he had destroyed the tank, even though his CP/G (copilot/gunner) had asked repeatedly if he was sure of their position. Being a Lieutenant Colonel, I believe, the gunner wasn't about to call him an idiot (although he clearly was). Anyway, it wasn't a technology mistake. It was a case of an officer abusing his authority and who was unqualified and by policy not supposed to be flying that mission that caused this tragedy.
We did a case study of this in one of the Air Force ROTC classes I took.
We are discussing the difference between people who have free minds and people who are, er, good at not rocking the boat.
I have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. I've had my bouts with having conformity crammed down my throat. In elementary high school, I had almost nothing in the way of workable social skills because of ADD, and I have to say that my life was not terribly happy because of it. Social skills are not being conditioned to conform, but the are the ability to know when and how to say what you have to say so that your ideas will be recieved receptively. That was an ability I often just didn't have. For example, jumping up and down babbling in front of a peer review board trying to explain my General Theory of Everything (even if my math was right) would probably cause them to ignore me, even if I had my facts straight. Unfortunately, due to my lack of social skills early in life, this was precisely the sort of behavior that I was prone to engage in.
To sum up my point: social skills are important to communicate good ideas and to foster collaboration and agreement. Having them does not mean you've become a conformist consumer-unit.
Not only that, but any agreement made between two parties is tantamount to the formation of a government. The parties' actions are governed by the agreement. In fact, I argue that everything we've accomplished since gaining sentience is pretty much based on the concept of agreement. Heck, language wouldn't have any meaning if we didn't agree about what the sound symbols mean.
This case is a little different though. Espionage is meant to deprive the "owner" of the information of any benefit that the information may have given them when it was secret. So, if the people communicating by semaphore are telling each other where they can find rare beany babies for real cheap and every beany fanatic in town happens to watch the conversation, they have been deprived of the utility of the information even if they are not deprived of the information itself. This, I think is the same argument to this analogy when dealing with the copyright thing. Yes, if the MP3 is available for free but the record company is charging for the CD, you don't deprive them of the information by downloading the MP3. However you do deprive them, slimy bastards though they are, of the utility (in other words, the money they charge for the CD) of the information. Now, I'm not making a moral judgement here, but I do feel that this argument pretty much puts a hole in the argument that an information "owner" is not deprived of anything when an unauthorized copy is made. We're gonna need stronger arguments than that if we're going to beat the stuff coming down the pipe at us (DMCA et al).
The father of one of my friends is a gun nut, and has several corporations (in name, anyway). He said that all he had to do to get automatic weapons and other not-readily available implements of destruction was to have a document drawn up which lists him as head of security for one of his corporations (and this would be true, within the strict letter of the law). He could then go to a firearms dealer, lay that document down, and get pretty much anything he wanted, no questions asked. Now think about corporations that actually have security staff... They already have armies, folks.
Why use the heat from the processor? Just hook the clock up to a cavity magnetron and make yourself a hot pocket. Microwaves, after all, being radio waves up in the GHz range...
Of course, when I brought this up on alt.folklore.urban, somebody compared it to saying, "So if I bought a sofa about the size of my car, I could drive that sofa down to the supermarket."
Well, from what I remember from Biology, NADH is one of the cellular energy transport chemicals. Its energetic form is NADH2... I think you get that by adding the electrons that they were talking about. Anyways, 2NADH2 -> 2NADH + H2.
Note: I'm not a biochemist, and my organic chem is really rusty. But if I had to hazard a guess, this would be it.
Well, I don't remember much from Organic chemistry as far as the reactions go, but I'll give it a shot...
Step 1: C02 + H2 -> CHOOH Hydrogen cleaves one of the C=O bonds, with one H attaching to the C, the other attaching to the O.
Step 2: CHOOH + H2 -> CH2O + H20 One H and the OH group combine to form H20, other H attaches to the C.
Step 3: CH20 + H2 -> CH3OH Hydrogen Cleaves the C=O Bond, with one H attaching to the C, the other attaching to the O.
This balances the equations, but I'm not sure which reacions would need to be done. Needless to say, without the enzymes, they're probably pretty hairy. This particular synthesis was very likely not practical before they started using enzymes as catalysts. --Fesh
Walk, stop, play with hair... Walk, stop, play with hair... Look at mirror, play with hair... God it got so annoying, and I wasn't even the one playing it!
"Make sure to give your blonde plenty of water, otherwise it may die of thirst!"
It was called "Robot Battle" (funny enuf). I don't have a firm link... I downloaded it from happypuppy.org years back. Wish I still had a copy and some competition...
I got a look at the page source on the Aukland Airport site... Looked to me like the year was hardcoded. Is that necessarily the case? I don't know enough about DHTML or CGI to tell if the page source had been automatically generated or not.
Anyways, if it was hardcoded, then it isn't a Y2K issue... Sorry to spoil the fun, guys.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, Worldcom has already decided to call it "Generation D" Maybe we ought to get together and nail this thing down before the corporations do?
--Fesh
Ever seen any advertising from the sixties? It's thoroughly disgusting. Not that I disagree with you. I think advertising in all forms should be abolished. But as far as the sheer, in-your-face "buy things or you're a commie pervert" attitude goes, I think things have gotten a bit better. Not much, but a bit.
--Fesh
LOL!!! Oh my god, excellent Douglas Adams tie-in! For those of you who didn't get this, I am truly sorry. *grin*
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
I only looked at the first few paragraphs, but the gist I got was that since people don't want to deal with advertising and will soon gain the tools to ignore it, advertisers will have to find new ways to claw for our mindshare. Honestly... If advertising wasn't such an annoying phenomenon in the first place, we wouldn't fight as hard as we do to get away from it. Personally, I don't think any advertiser could ever succeed in targetting me with a message that I'm interested in seeing, no matter how much personal information they gather or how closely they monitor my every move. If I need something, I can easily find out where to get it. What I don't need is to be told that I need something, which is the whole point behind advertising these days. I can decide for myself what I need and what I don't, thank you...
Oh well... Got off on a rant there myself. I'd rather see advertising eliminated entirely, with products competing on their own merits instead of flashy gimmicks. But since that approach works on the sheeple, I don't think we'll ever see it.
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
What actually happened was this. The mission was to take on a line of enemy IFVs which (I think) were advancing on an American position. As he was setting up his attack, he neglected to notice that the wind had pushed his helicopter back across friendly lines. Thus, he thought the line of tanks he was targetting were actually the friendly forces. He didn't bother to look at his position until after he had destroyed the tank, even though his CP/G (copilot/gunner) had asked repeatedly if he was sure of their position. Being a Lieutenant Colonel, I believe, the gunner wasn't about to call him an idiot (although he clearly was). Anyway, it wasn't a technology mistake. It was a case of an officer abusing his authority and who was unqualified and by policy not supposed to be flying that mission that caused this tragedy.
We did a case study of this in one of the Air Force ROTC classes I took.
--Fesh
I have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. I've had my bouts with having conformity crammed down my throat. In elementary high school, I had almost nothing in the way of workable social skills because of ADD, and I have to say that my life was not terribly happy because of it. Social skills are not being conditioned to conform, but the are the ability to know when and how to say what you have to say so that your ideas will be recieved receptively. That was an ability I often just didn't have. For example, jumping up and down babbling in front of a peer review board trying to explain my General Theory of Everything (even if my math was right) would probably cause them to ignore me, even if I had my facts straight. Unfortunately, due to my lack of social skills early in life, this was precisely the sort of behavior that I was prone to engage in.
To sum up my point: social skills are important to communicate good ideas and to foster collaboration and agreement. Having them does not mean you've become a conformist consumer-unit.
--Fesh
Anyway, end rant.
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
Arthur? Arthur!!! My moustache is touching my braaaain!!!
--Fesh
--Fesh
--Fesh
Of course, when I brought this up on alt.folklore.urban, somebody compared it to saying, "So if I bought a sofa about the size of my car, I could drive that sofa down to the supermarket."
--Fesh
Hey Kids! Find the words Obfuscated_C and UNIX in this source fragment!
Although in my opinion, using defines like that is cheesing it a bit...
--Fesh
Note: I'm not a biochemist, and my organic chem is really rusty. But if I had to hazard a guess, this would be it.
--Fesh
Step 1: C02 + H2 -> CHOOH
Hydrogen cleaves one of the C=O bonds, with one H attaching to the C, the other attaching to the O.
Step 2: CHOOH + H2 -> CH2O + H20
One H and the OH group combine to form H20, other H attaches to the C.
Step 3: CH20 + H2 -> CH3OH
Hydrogen Cleaves the C=O Bond, with one H attaching to the C, the other attaching to the O.
This balances the equations, but I'm not sure which reacions would need to be done. Needless to say, without the enzymes, they're probably pretty hairy. This particular synthesis was very likely not practical before they started using enzymes as catalysts.
--Fesh
Walk, stop, play with hair... Walk, stop, play with hair... Look at mirror, play with hair... God it got so annoying, and I wasn't even the one playing it!
"Make sure to give your blonde plenty of water, otherwise it may die of thirst!"
--Fesh
--Fesh
Anyways, if it was hardcoded, then it isn't a Y2K issue... Sorry to spoil the fun, guys.
--Fesh
--Fesh