The problem really is not linked to "conservatism," which isn't, or "liberalism," which isn't. The problem is politicians and would be leaders wed to a dogmatic ideology, which blinds their ability to actually exercise "discernment." Instead their dogmas lead to mindless prejudice and simple, ignorance-based answers to complex issues. This kind of thinking leads to "conservatives" who support clear-cutting by the timber industry and "liberals" who want to conserve every tree, despite over-population problems within forests. It leads to men who think they have a right to opinions on abortion and women who think they don't. It leads to Amerincans convinced we have the best healthcare in the world and intellectuals who believe we should curtail our freedom of speech to protect the sensitivities of others, religious leaders who expect the non-religious to respect the "sanctity" of the their opinions, and scientists who think research is value free.
When you get down to it, your proposal to improve education actually demand more spending. So the conclusion would be that in general, if there is no correlation between school quality and spending on education, the money is not being spent in the appropriate ways. Smaller classes require additional buildings, additional teachers and additional naterial and equipment. Presently teachers are not generally paid as much per student as you would pay a baby sitter or day care. Teachers frequently spend part of their income on materials for classes because there is no school money available for those materials.
It also a sad fact that many teachers are complete strangers to any form of the scientific method. My kids have come to dread my showing up at school with questions about completely idiotic misinformation being propagated as "education." I am not happy with "science" classes that emphasize rote memorizaion of "facts" rather than method and process. Being involved, challenging misinformation, talking with, and if necessary, presenting your children with alternate ideas and backing them up when their teacher objects will all help. It helps your children, it wakes up the somnolent school staff, and it can even help educate the occasional teacher.
Hubble, foobarred or not, is the single most productive optical system in use in astronomy. Even before it was supplied with conatct lenses, it yielded some of the most spectacular imaging that had ever been obtained. Why suggest retiring such a system until there is a functioning replacement?
--
The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+ 1 politicians.
I bought Soulblighter at Fry's, but do you know? It was nearly the ONLY Linux game on the shelf. I think the other was one of the SimCiv releases. I don't know what your feeling is, but I dislike buying mail order. There is no telling just when the UPS or the Postal Service will provide complimentary package mangling free of charge. Then too, I like picking up the box and looking at it, and comparing it with other available games. That absence on the shelf is a serious handicap.
Actually, some other posts have mentioned it. It was the Scientific American issue for January this year. I read it standing in Tower Books and could not remember the source. I was interested to see a recent sci-fi realease by D. Weber and J. Ringo - Marching Upcountry - take advantage of the information.
Actually, the blacksmith in the article makes blades that can't be distinguished from damascus blades. The blades are not pattern welded. An article in a science periodical reported this story months ago. The article, written by the two investigators, describes the problem, experimentation, the breakthrough of succuessfully producing "wootz" steel, and provides numerous photographs of damascened blades in production and finished. Among other things the smith was able to sucessfully, and deliberately reproduce the various named patterns of banding. One note: mines produce ore. "Stock" comes from a smelter or foundry. Damascus blades were made from loaf-shaped ingots of "wootz" steel.
God, Im so pissed off now that I could fucking strangle a fucking poodle and throw it in traffic, except that if I am in California the damn liberals there would just throw me in jail. Now Im pissed off and I don't have any creative outlet other than to take it out on some sorry ass linux zealot. I'd punch you in the face but I don't want your god damn zits to pop all over me thus coating me in layer of thin
Is it possible you accidentally left your sense of humour and response to irony in your other pants?
I think that if you dig for it, there has been considerable discussion and experimentation since the effect was first noted. I ran across discussion and remarks on the net about additional experimentation several years ago. One of the issues was whether the effect might not be gravity but instead simply related to circulating gases. Even tiny gas motions would have effects on an analytic balance, and at that time the "effect" was detected as an apparent change in weight. The idea was that cold gas in the closed environment containing a spinning, superconducting disk warmed and circulated upward above the disk, creating a slight but measurable draw that could appear as an apparent reduction in weight. The authors were planing experiments designed to eliminate that possibility in what I read. Since that was years ago, this sounds like the newest round.
I have the CD Burner. But getting broadband simply to download distros would be way more expensize than buying the boxed set, and OS would benefit less. Make no mistake, I would like broadband. But right now I pay less than $10/mo for my IS. Broadband in my area costs anywhere from 3 to 5 times as much.
Having kids of my own, this discussion gets me a little schizoid. However, one issue that I suspect gets very poor consideration is the effect authority figures investigating such rumours have on kids who may or may not have been molested. It can be very easy to convince a kid there is something wrong, whether there is or not. In the US some of the worst effects from child "molestation" are on kids who never experienced the real thing, but have been subjected to authority figures urging them to "tell the truth." Ultimately many of these kids find themselves creating bizaar fabrications to please their inquisitors. In effect, if they were not molested before, by the time the authorities are finished with them, they have certainly been abused. A little sanity and a little humour from these authorities, instead of the dreadful seriousness they express, could help those kids more than a year of "intervention." So even if it isn't funny, humour may be necessary, and the most important means of relieving these kids of the stress of the investigation, and perhaps from other and worse experiences.
My own retarded reason is that downloading any distro over a modem seems to be a retarded way to tie up a cpmuter and phone so no one else can use, forever.
Besides, why not think of it as actively supporting the OSD community.
Actually, there is every reason to think that the Net was developed simply to scare the bejabbers out of the Soviets by creating the kinds of "security leak potentials" that every one is so busy fixing these days. After all, once you had the Soviets on line and conducting computer espionage, you could feed them all the disinformation you wanted.
Modern nav systems are accurate to less than a meter using GPS. Another possibility is to use an image recognition system. Give the weapon an image or probably more than one of the target and say "get it boy." Using some kind of GIS to work with the GPS and you actually tell the weapon to go to a particular street address. Wasn't Darkstar the movie in which the bombs were so smart they had to depressed and suicidal?
The only real difficulties in sending a manned expedition to the moon are human (i.e. money and psychology). The simplest and most direct method is simply to build a Mars lander similar to the lunar landers and provision it adequately to lift off from Mars, even if there is no suitable chemical source on Mars (unlikely). This approach has been kicked around since the days of Werner von Braun and became demonstrably possible from an engineering point of view as soon as we landed men on the Moon. Throw enough resources and money at the problem and the trip is engineering child's play. The martian gravity well is nowhere near the problem the earth's is. The trip could even be staged with fuel sent ahead by slower orbits while the crew waited for more optimal transfer possibilities and for the fuel and gear to arrive ahead of them.
The real pinch is assembling the talent and funding. The current climate would lead to profoundly idiotic questions from the White House and the lamer members of congress about cost and whether it would be good for business.
The other human issue is how well a crew could stand the mixture of isolation and inability to avoid their fellow crew on such a trip. The situation could become a pyschological pressure cooker that could put new meaning to "going postal."
The idea is interesting, and using lunar materials is already a feasible possibility. Solar power could be used to foam rock for the structure, and water ice is suposedly present at the Moon's poles.
But, without significant infrastructure to move people between the earth and the moon, feed them, supply air and water (reclammation of metabolic water would help for instance) a hotel on the moon is simply a playful idea, regardless of the detail. Besides, I think Heinlein's ideas in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are important. Going underground makes immense sense in an environment where the "open" can kill you abruptly.
Re:Lord of Light as CIA ruse?
on
Lord of Light
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· Score: 1
"Lord of Light" is also a title of Ahura Mazda, the chief good-guy deity who, with his opponent Ahriman, comprised the deities of the Zoroastrian religion. Scouting for a putative film about that in Iran would make perect sense.
In this day and age, profitable businesses are built on ideas and intangibles alone. I'm sure that Jefferson would have had a different point of view on the matter if copying and distribution of expression carried zero cost.
Drivel. Jefferson was talking about the propagatio of ideas. One look at a usenet news group shows that the produciton and propagation of YOUR ideas is just as "costless," if you want it that way. Also, the fact that a business is based upon an "intangible" does not make the intangible into "property" in Jefferson's terms. He states that the only means of protecting an idea is to keep it to yourself. His response to a complaint that others were profiting from your idea would be along the lines of "Tough. Get a new one, or keep your yap shut." Property is limited to tangibles. Jefferson had a very tough minded viewpoint. It was TJ who said the tree of liberty must be watered at intervals with the blood of patriots and tyrants. You really can't think that someone willing to be counted among the patriot and tyrant donors to the tree, is going to sympatize with someone who wants to exercise a little petty tyranny over an idea and its recipients, do you?
Jefferson explicitly is refering to "ideas" in the quote. He distrusted ANY form of monopoly, but supported time-limited copyright for "works" with rezervation. He found protecting "ideas" are more problematic.
Once you have been exposed to an idea there is no known means availbable to purge yourself of it. Furthermore, unlike a book, once the idea is passed on, you are not poorer for the passing. Ideas make themselves part of your consciousness whether you will it or not. Consequently, it might be just as reasonable to argue that I can charge you storage fees for your idea if you it express it my hearing. "Intellectual prpoerty" is an oxymoron.
You just might want to get StarOffice 5.2 just to rescue Word docs that Word refuses to open for what ever reason. I find that opening and saving the doc in S.O. often fixes the problem for Word. Its never failed in fact.
>Microsoft didn't steal market share, they earned it whether or not anyone agrees with how this was done.
This seems to put a new meaning to the word "earned." Just how did MS "earn" market share? And, as a matter of fact, it isn't how capitalism works. Ideally, in a capitalist system, there is a market within which competitors offer their goods and services for your money. You make the decision based upon price and quality. Now ask your self, just how did price and quality effect your choice of operating system and office suites?
MS gave away their Office Suite in the - justified - expectation that human laziness would work for them. They damned well forced DOS on computer users whether they wanted it or not. MS cornered you with your own laziness. It had nothing to do with "capitalism," and everything to do with exploiting the same parts of human nature that lead some people to become drug addicts. Habit and conditioning are things that we can reject if we wish, but MS has always known the majority are too lazy to work to learn a new word processor or spreadsheet, especially when one CAME with the computer for "free."
As much as I simpathize with the aims of the paper, every so often I gag on the revision of the meaning of words in the English language.
Technology "...total technical means and skills available to a given society..." - Cassel Concise English Dictionary. More broadly it can connote the application of science to the industrial capabilities of a society. Technology depends at a minimum on the trial and error application of physical principles to physical problems. Thus the hammer is the earliest solution to a technical problem ". . . may be if I hit it hard enough. .."
Law and contracts are NOT technology, never were and never will be. They are arbitrary social agreements or conventions. No science is involved. Anyone who disagrees is invited to watch C-SPAN in order to detect the functioning of science in the legislatorial environment. Since legislators have been known to back legally setting PI equal to three, the detection of science in the process is likely to be difficult. Furthermore law is backed by the threat of social or government sanction. It is not dependent on trust. Those guys carry guns in the black-and-white sedans are not exercising social trust. They represent pure, unadulterated threat. So, in short, the GPL is also dependent on law and the use of social sanction for inforcement. Just because GPL talks softly does not mean that object is not a big stick behind its back. Evidently MS does not like the idea of this.
jwdougherty
--
The only thing more hazardous to liberty than a politician is two politicians.
Anyone can be lost usimng a GPS unit. The essential skill, after all, is reading the map - and remembering to use fresh batteries.
jwd
--
The only thing more dangerous to liberty than a politician is two politicians.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem really is not linked to "conservatism," which isn't, or "liberalism," which isn't. The problem is politicians and would be leaders wed to a dogmatic ideology, which blinds their ability to actually exercise "discernment." Instead their dogmas lead to mindless prejudice and simple, ignorance-based answers to complex issues. This kind of thinking leads to "conservatives" who support clear-cutting by the timber industry and "liberals" who want to conserve every tree, despite over-population problems within forests. It leads to men who think they have a right to opinions on abortion and women who think they don't. It leads to Amerincans convinced we have the best healthcare in the world and intellectuals who believe we should curtail our freedom of speech to protect the sensitivities of others, religious leaders who expect the non-religious to respect the "sanctity" of the their opinions, and scientists who think research is value free.
Is "supersonic the right word here?
When you get down to it, your proposal to improve education actually demand more spending. So the conclusion would be that in general, if there is no correlation between school quality and spending on education, the money is not being spent in the appropriate ways. Smaller classes require additional buildings, additional teachers and additional naterial and equipment. Presently teachers are not generally paid as much per student as you would pay a baby sitter or day care. Teachers frequently spend part of their income on materials for classes because there is no school money available for those materials.
It also a sad fact that many teachers are complete strangers to any form of the scientific method. My kids have come to dread my showing up at school with questions about completely idiotic misinformation being propagated as "education." I am not happy with "science" classes that emphasize rote memorizaion of "facts" rather than method and process. Being involved, challenging misinformation, talking with, and if necessary, presenting your children with alternate ideas and backing them up when their teacher objects will all help. It helps your children, it wakes up the somnolent school staff, and it can even help educate the occasional teacher.
Hubble, foobarred or not, is the single most productive optical system in use in astronomy. Even before it was supplied with conatct lenses, it yielded some of the most spectacular imaging that had ever been obtained. Why suggest retiring such a system until there is a functioning replacement?
--
The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+ 1 politicians.
--- The only more dangerous to your liberty than n politicians is n + 1 politicians.
Is it possible you accidentally left your sense of humour and response to irony in your other pants?
j_w_dougherty
I have the CD Burner. But getting broadband simply to download distros would be way more expensize than buying the boxed set, and OS would benefit less. Make no mistake, I would like broadband. But right now I pay less than $10/mo for my IS. Broadband in my area costs anywhere from 3 to 5 times as much.
Besides, why not think of it as actively supporting the OSD community.
jwd
The real pinch is assembling the talent and funding. The current climate would lead to profoundly idiotic questions from the White House and the lamer members of congress about cost and whether it would be good for business.
The other human issue is how well a crew could stand the mixture of isolation and inability to avoid their fellow crew on such a trip. The situation could become a pyschological pressure cooker that could put new meaning to "going postal."
But, without significant infrastructure to move people between the earth and the moon, feed them, supply air and water (reclammation of metabolic water would help for instance) a hotel on the moon is simply a playful idea, regardless of the detail. Besides, I think Heinlein's ideas in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are important. Going underground makes immense sense in an environment where the "open" can kill you abruptly.
Worse and worse.
Was Zelazny mentioned in this context?
Drivel. Jefferson was talking about the propagatio of ideas. One look at a usenet news group shows that the produciton and propagation of YOUR ideas is just as "costless," if you want it that way. Also, the fact that a business is based upon an "intangible" does not make the intangible into "property" in Jefferson's terms. He states that the only means of protecting an idea is to keep it to yourself. His response to a complaint that others were profiting from your idea would be along the lines of "Tough. Get a new one, or keep your yap shut." Property is limited to tangibles. Jefferson had a very tough minded viewpoint. It was TJ who said the tree of liberty must be watered at intervals with the blood of patriots and tyrants. You really can't think that someone willing to be counted among the patriot and tyrant donors to the tree, is going to sympatize with someone who wants to exercise a little petty tyranny over an idea and its recipients, do you?
Once you have been exposed to an idea there is no known means availbable to purge yourself of it. Furthermore, unlike a book, once the idea is passed on, you are not poorer for the passing. Ideas make themselves part of your consciousness whether you will it or not. Consequently, it might be just as reasonable to argue that I can charge you storage fees for your idea if you it express it my hearing. "Intellectual prpoerty" is an oxymoron.
You just might want to get StarOffice 5.2 just to rescue Word docs that Word refuses to open for what ever reason. I find that opening and saving the doc in S.O. often fixes the problem for Word. Its never failed in fact.
>Microsoft didn't steal market share, they earned it whether or not anyone agrees with how this was done.
This seems to put a new meaning to the word "earned." Just how did MS "earn" market share? And, as a matter of fact, it isn't how capitalism works. Ideally, in a capitalist system, there is a market within which competitors offer their goods and services for your money. You make the decision based upon price and quality. Now ask your self, just how did price and quality effect your choice of operating system and office suites?
MS gave away their Office Suite in the - justified - expectation that human laziness would work for them. They damned well forced DOS on computer users whether they wanted it or not. MS cornered you with your own laziness. It had nothing to do with "capitalism," and everything to do with exploiting the same parts of human nature that lead some people to become drug addicts. Habit and conditioning are things that we can reject if we wish, but MS has always known the majority are too lazy to work to learn a new word processor or spreadsheet, especially when one CAME with the computer for "free."
Technology "...total technical means and skills available to a given society..." - Cassel Concise English Dictionary. More broadly it can connote the application of science to the industrial capabilities of a society. Technology depends at a minimum on the trial and error application of physical principles to physical problems. Thus the hammer is the earliest solution to a technical problem ". . . may be if I hit it hard enough. . ."
Law and contracts are NOT technology, never were and never will be. They are arbitrary social agreements or conventions. No science is involved. Anyone who disagrees is invited to watch C-SPAN in order to detect the functioning of science in the legislatorial environment. Since legislators have been known to back legally setting PI equal to three, the detection of science in the process is likely to be difficult. Furthermore law is backed by the threat of social or government sanction. It is not dependent on trust. Those guys carry guns in the black-and-white sedans are not exercising social trust. They represent pure, unadulterated threat. So, in short, the GPL is also dependent on law and the use of social sanction for inforcement. Just because GPL talks softly does not mean that object is not a big stick behind its back. Evidently MS does not like the idea of this.
jwdougherty
-- The only thing more hazardous to liberty than a politician is two politicians.
Anyone can be lost usimng a GPS unit. The essential skill, after all, is reading the map - and remembering to use fresh batteries. jwd -- The only thing more dangerous to liberty than a politician is two politicians.