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User: j_w_d

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  1. Re:Reading too much into hexagons on Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory · · Score: 1
    Hexagons are the regular shapes with the hisghest degree of connectivity when tiled in a euclidian space, coming in with more matchable sides than squares or equilateral triangels (which tile into hexagons anyway).

    -- Regardless of individual intelligence, decisions driven by ideology tend to be inherently stupid. - anon

  2. Re:Then why did they have the challenge at all??? on SDMI Challenge Participants May Face DMCA Action · · Score: 1

    Apparently they didn't read, new less than even was available in public sources about encryption, assumed the scheme was designed by scientists instead of scientologists, thought academics were not in the real world - a prize "worth a couple of days of a security specialist's time" forsooth, took lessons in science and technology from George Bush's teachers, still believe the world is flat, think that might makes right and that money is right. . . . j_w_d

  3. Re:sigh! on Are Expensive RDBM Systems Worth The Money? · · Score: 1

    Actually, the question is a good one, even if it does inflame the opions of the ignorant and opinionated. Many, many new people are moving to Linux, and many of them are old-time (or even young) DOS/Win* hands yearning to breath free or whatever. Most are used to small, readily useable (I say this with tongue in cheek concerning Access) dbms's that permit a single user on a single machine to work with relatively small databases. When these people first encounter Linux, where are those small, easily used database systems? If you are an ex-DOS/dBASE/Paradox hand something like the commandline of postgreSQL may be a breath of fresh air after being in prison for 10 years, but for most, the dandruff from head-scratching piles up in drifts on the desktop. Even some flaming opinions are better, more current, and easier to execute than the search for information buried in the docs entombed under /usr/share/docs/HOWTO/html/en. --- Theories, they'ld map out roads through hell with their crackpot theories. - Dragon to Grendel JWD

  4. Re:the can sat on PicoSats And CanSats And NEAR, Oh My · · Score: 3

    They aren't satellites. Satellites enter orbit. The devices are little instrument packages that are launched on ballistic flight paths and then parachute back.

  5. Re:Fuck off, Commie Pinko on MAPS RBL Is Now Censorware (Updated) · · Score: 1

    First, writing anti-spam filters for your email program is educational and fun. Spam belongs in the trash can. Second, it looks to me that makers of RBL are wide open to a whopping class action suit, initiated by every innocent blocked site such as Peace-fire, through the ISPs whose service is being interfered with, to the very purveyors of spam-ware, since the RBL listing is a deliberate attempt to interfere with their "legal" livelihood. Any half-competent lawyer could make a case out of that. That lawsuit is one that would probably end up in front of the Supreme Court.

  6. Re:Not necessarily political forces on Could Tesla's Broadcast Power System Work? · · Score: 1

    When Tesla was doing his thing, there were no high tension lines. Long term health and environmental effects had yet to be imagined.

  7. Re:Libertarian's Bible on Stranger In a Strange Land · · Score: 1

    In the Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Heilein has the professor argue the best government is the one that governs least. Obviously, no government governs least. Thus no government is best. Heinlein argued that individual rights and the agreements between individuals were ethically more important than anything else in society - except perhaps taking care of children. He never had much use for liberals or authoritarians, so setting them up in a government would pit them against each other and let the rest of us get on with our lives. This theme that government is at best a necessary evil, and that people who WANT to govern are the last ones we should want in that position, recurs in his fiction throughout his lifetime. Many of the future history stories reflect this. Heinlein touches on this quite definitely in Stranger ... where he emphasizes the hazards of the religious right, and of authoritarians from societies where there is no tradition of even minimal respect for individual liberty.

  8. Re:Terrible on Stranger In a Strange Land · · Score: 1

    *Star Ship Troopers* and *Stranger In a Strange Land* were written at the same time. SST is not facist and SISL is not about free love. They are both serious considerations of ideas that are core to human society. SISL considers the problem of (American) social mores in detail. It concludes that they are not the be-all and end-all of social evolution, and he tactfully suggests that there may be bigger, tougher, more opinionated societies _out there_. SISL critiques ethnocentrism and asks just how valuable it really is, and whether or not we might be better off with out it. His later novels including perhaps especially *Job* delve into the problem of religion even more strongly. You may disagree with, or dislike his attitudes about sex, and gender, but they are certainly not standard American views. Likewise, SST isn't facist. Heilein hated facists as much as he despised communists. SST considers the nature of the "social contract" between the individual and society. We presently use the simple standard of age as a criterion for franchise. We address the issue of "getting out the vote" every two years, and each time, we hear more about why disinterest and cynicism grow about the electoral process. This is the very issue HeinLein addresses. I suspect that Heinlein was spinning in his grave when Rico was transmuted from an ethnic Pilipino to a northern European in the movie - which was indeed facist. If anything, SST is a libertarian tract, and so are many of Heinlein's other works, read with attention

  9. Re:Wow - CmdrTaco pissed off on Tech Stocks Tumble · · Score: 1

    The 1929 depression was real enough, but like anything else, perceptions were guided by where the percipient was embedded. In California it was slow rather than catastrophic. In the Great Lakes region and industrialized eastern US, where major factories shut their doors it was catastrophic for workers, and for Wall Street investors who were margined to their underwear it was time for bankruptcy proceedings via defenestration. On the other hand, it is also a fact that if you could hang on to your investments, you made money long term.