People have been generating music from streams of data for a LONG time. Mozart's musical dice game comes to mind, as well as Charles Dodge's Earth's Magnetic Field, from back in 1970, which generated some very pleasant music from K index data. And what about Xenakis's work?
Have they made a deal with the copyright holders? If they haven't, won't they go down the same road as the outfit that sold bowdlerized versions of movies?
"From the day a child of the 21st century begins his education, he is confronted with mind-numbing statistics, numbers, and facts via the computer -- which he must accept. Perhaps even more important, he must master its 'techniques' as the sine qua non tool to be successful in life."
So what's really different if one makes it
"From the day a child of the 9th century BC begins his education, he is confronted with mind-numbing statistics, numbers, and facts via writing -- which he must accept. Perhaps even more important, he must master its "techniques" as the sine qua non tool to be successful in life."
I think Plato kvetched about the same thing... and somehow culture survived. As it will survive the computer, at least until the Singularity comes along.
I'm perpetually amazed that that line is always trotted out.
If that were the case, we could have saved billions of dollars by making a sweetheart deal with Saddam Hussein, the way the French did. Google "totalfinaelf" and "hussein" for details.
A "standard" that has things in it like a flag to say "handle this the way version XYZ of MS Word did it--it's so convoluted that we can't really describe it, but you have to do it if you want to conform to this standard"?
I think our understandings of what a standard is differ.
If you already know, it's not risk, it's certainty. That's why they don't let you sign up for fire insurance after your house burns down.
Similarly, if you're human, you're darn near certain to have a functioning reproductive system... so it makes no sense for insurance to pay for birth control.
>and you still reap dividends: better preventive care means your kids will be threatened by less communicable disease
Actually, isn't spreading a communicable disease a form of assault, or at least a negative externality like pollution, so that it should be made illegal, or at least have a penalty imposed?
You are wrong. The system won't "cleanse itself." If others can determine how you voted, then you won't vote your true preference, at least not in some cases. It lends itself to abuse... as does voting online, because someone, e.g. an abusive spouse, could look over your shoulder.
Or how about this: the local union holds an "online voting party" and invites all its members. Of course, they'll be able to see how you vote, and if you decline the invitation, well, you must be trying to hide something, right?
"Add/Remove Applications lets you search the entire directory of applications recommended for Ubuntu -- dozens of programs in 11 categories -- and install them with little effort."
I've looked around, and have yet to find "Add/Remove Programs", perhaps because I haven't switched to the more Windows-like interface, but "dozens of programs" seems more than a little misleading for the number of packages available in Ubuntu repositories.
>I always wondered what the point of Second Life was. I don't get it at all. Going to a virtual world and playing a character? I understood that was the venue of Everquest and World of Warcraft.
Nope. SL isn't like those. There aren't hit points, or spells to cast (unless you're in the universe of Rick Cook's Wiz Zumwalt stories), or monsters to kill, and there's no final boss to kill off. Somebody else defines the goals of those games.
SL is what you make of it. It's only a game in the sense of the discussion at the end of David Gerrold's _When HARLIE Was One_.
>I have noticed that Windows fans' excuse for crashing on other people's systems is something along the lines of "Jeez, they must be stupid if they couldn't figure out what was causing their problem".
The same kind of response occurs when malware is under discussion; only an idiot, it is said, would click on the link/open the attachment/etc.
At the same time, one hears from Windows fans that Windows is the OS of choice for the proverbial grandmother rather than Linux. What's wrong with this picture?
>Consumers don't have to rationalize buying Vista. If they're buying a new computer, they don't have a choice.
Well... a week ago, an acquaintance said she was finally upgrading her computer (from one running Windows 98, with 64 Mbytes of RAM!), and wanted some advice, because she'd heard bad things about Vista. She'd heard of Linux, but had bought the line that one had to be a "nerd" to use it, so she was hoping to buy a computer with Windows XP; I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I did tell her that now that Vista has been released for the general public, basically any computer running Windows she buys now will have Vista on it. Based on that, she said a Macintosh was looking better and better, so I expect that's what she'll end up with.
Of course, that's a lousy sample size, but I'm heartened somewhat that an average computer user is leery of moving to Vista.
>I haven't seen "I, Robot", but if it's even a little bit like the book...
It's not. They took some random script and the rights to the name "I, Robot" and replaced a few names with those of characters in Asimov's stories. In the movie, Earth just loves its robots; in Asimov's stories, the majority of the population of Earth hates and fears robots.
Worst of all, they turned Susan Calvin into eye candy.
In a bizarre way, that common description of libertarianism is sort of like accepting "grue" and "bleen" as fundamental terms. Wouldn't it be better to describe the right and left as supporting liberty to varying extents and in different areas?
Dell need only support one Linux distribution, but it must also insist on hardware for which there are Linux drivers that have feature and speed parity with the Windows drivers. Then if someone wants another distribution, go for it; it shouldn't be any problem as long as they make sure they use only hardware that has full Linux support. What they would give up then is Dell support, aside from hardware defects.
>You can run a command as root by using "sudo", but you enter your *own password? What gives?
It makes it easy to do things as root while minimizing the time you actually run with root privileges. On Ubuntu, by default, root literally has no password, so you can't log in as root.
>And as far as users finding UAC "annoying", riddle me this: how is any more annoying than Linux? Linux will do the SAME DAMN THING as Vista's UAC.
You're right; it's not any more annoying--to us Linux users. We're used to it; the Principle of Least Privilege is drilled into us. Windows users aren't, so it will be annoying to them, and they'll turn it off in a heartbeat.
Then there's hubris: once a Windows user posted to her LJ that her XP system wasn't recognizing a piece of hardware. In passing, I innocently said in my response: "You are running non-administrator by default, aren't you?"
You'd think I'd insulted her... the reply came back, "I KNOW what I'm doing."
>...Vista's just using the extra RAM to cache frequently used apps, documents, etc., and it'll automatically be freed up if any application requests it...
Will it? Given past MS dirty tricks, how many layers of tinfoil are really required to suspect that Vista is set up to give third-party apps short shrift when it comes to RAM so that they're more likely to thrash?
Yes, but... people will want to use their local timezone for entering dates, too, and that's where the problem comes in.
Scenario: someone enters that something is going to happen at so and so date, so and so time. As you say, the rational thing to do is to right away convert it to a time_t; easy to compare with other time_t values, easy to find the difference between any two time_t values... very convenient.
Then.. the legislature changes the DST rules out from under you, and the time of that event happens to be in the interval that changes. Can you correct it? No. You threw away the information needed to correct it when you converted it to time_t.
It would seem to follow from this that to be safe, you need both forms, and you need a way to be notified when the rules change.
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People have been generating music from streams of data for a LONG time. Mozart's musical dice game comes to mind, as well as Charles Dodge's Earth's Magnetic Field, from back in 1970, which generated some very pleasant music from K index data. And what about Xenakis's work?
Have they made a deal with the copyright holders? If they haven't, won't they go down the same road as the outfit that sold bowdlerized versions of movies?
"From the day a child of the 21st century begins his education, he is confronted with mind-numbing statistics, numbers, and facts via the computer -- which he must accept. Perhaps even more important, he must master its 'techniques' as the sine qua non tool to be successful in life."
So what's really different if one makes it
"From the day a child of the 9th century BC begins his education, he is confronted with mind-numbing statistics, numbers, and facts via writing -- which he must accept. Perhaps even more important, he must master its "techniques" as the sine qua non tool to be successful in life."
I think Plato kvetched about the same thing... and somehow culture survived. As it will survive the computer, at least until the Singularity comes along.
> we're only there because of the oil
I'm perpetually amazed that that line is always trotted out.
If that were the case, we could have saved billions of dollars by making a sweetheart deal with Saddam Hussein, the way the French did. Google "totalfinaelf" and "hussein" for details.
Gee, that's nice. Does it run under Linux? I think not.
A "standard" that has things in it like a flag to say "handle this the way version XYZ of MS Word did it--it's so convoluted that we can't really describe it, but you have to do it if you want to conform to this standard"?
I think our understandings of what a standard is differ.
If you already know, it's not risk, it's certainty. That's why they don't let you sign up for fire insurance after your house burns down.
Similarly, if you're human, you're darn near certain to have a functioning reproductive system... so it makes no sense for insurance to pay for birth control.
>and you still reap dividends: better preventive care means your kids will be threatened by less communicable disease
Actually, isn't spreading a communicable disease a form of assault, or at least a negative externality like pollution, so that it should be made illegal, or at least have a penalty imposed?
You are wrong. The system won't "cleanse itself." If others can determine how you voted, then you won't vote your true preference, at least not in some cases. It lends itself to abuse... as does voting online, because someone, e.g. an abusive spouse, could look over your shoulder.
Or how about this: the local union holds an "online voting party" and invites all its members. Of course, they'll be able to see how you vote, and if you decline the invitation, well, you must be trying to hide something, right?
Even more bizarre and misleading, from TFA:
"Add/Remove Applications lets you search the entire directory of applications recommended for Ubuntu -- dozens of programs in 11 categories -- and install them with little effort."
I've looked around, and have yet to find "Add/Remove Programs", perhaps because I haven't switched to the more Windows-like interface, but "dozens of programs" seems more than a little misleading for the number of packages available in Ubuntu repositories.
We're throwing chairs at Crazy Steve's!
"We're slicing prices on @#$!@%! Vista Home Premium!" [chair crash f/x]
"We're slicing prices on !%!@#%! Vista Ultimate!" [chair crash f/x]
Crazy Steve's... his prices are insane!
>I always wondered what the point of Second Life was. I don't get it at all. Going to a virtual world and playing a character? I understood that was the venue of Everquest and World of Warcraft.
Nope. SL isn't like those. There aren't hit points, or spells to cast (unless you're in the universe of Rick Cook's Wiz Zumwalt stories), or monsters to kill, and there's no final boss to kill off. Somebody else defines the goals of those games.
SL is what you make of it. It's only a game in the sense of the discussion at the end of David Gerrold's _When HARLIE Was One_.
>I have noticed that Windows fans' excuse for crashing on other people's systems is something along the lines of "Jeez, they must be stupid if they couldn't figure out what was causing their problem".
The same kind of response occurs when malware is under discussion; only an idiot, it is said, would click on the link/open the attachment/etc.
At the same time, one hears from Windows fans that Windows is the OS of choice for the proverbial grandmother rather than Linux. What's wrong with this picture?
>Consumers don't have to rationalize buying Vista. If they're buying a new computer, they don't have a choice.
Well... a week ago, an acquaintance said she was finally upgrading her computer (from one running Windows 98, with 64 Mbytes of RAM!), and wanted some advice, because she'd heard bad things about Vista. She'd heard of Linux, but had bought the line that one had to be a "nerd" to use it, so she was hoping to buy a computer with Windows XP; I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I did tell her that now that Vista has been released for the general public, basically any computer running Windows she buys now will have Vista on it. Based on that, she said a Macintosh was looking better and better, so I expect that's what she'll end up with.
Of course, that's a lousy sample size, but I'm heartened somewhat that an average computer user is leery of moving to Vista.
Eh? I thought that MS hired away the guy who did VMS from DEC, and that NT was very VMS-like.
>I haven't seen "I, Robot", but if it's even a little bit like the book...
It's not. They took some random script and the rights to the name "I, Robot" and replaced a few names with those of characters in Asimov's stories. In the movie, Earth just loves its robots; in Asimov's stories, the majority of the population of Earth hates and fears robots.
Worst of all, they turned Susan Calvin into eye candy.
In a bizarre way, that common description of libertarianism is sort of like accepting "grue" and "bleen" as fundamental terms. Wouldn't it be better to describe the right and left as supporting liberty to varying extents and in different areas?
Dell need only support one Linux distribution, but it must also insist on hardware for which there are Linux drivers that have feature and speed parity with the Windows drivers. Then if someone wants another distribution, go for it; it shouldn't be any problem as long as they make sure they use only hardware that has full Linux support. What they would give up then is Dell support, aside from hardware defects.
>You can run a command as root by using "sudo", but you enter your *own password? What gives?
It makes it easy to do things as root while minimizing the time you actually run with root privileges. On Ubuntu, by default, root literally has no password, so you can't log in as root.
> If there is something (indicating that nothing is not everything) then there must be something which knows everything.
Sorry, I don't see how that follows.
Just as I read this article, pandora.com started playing the title cut from David Wilcox's Vista album:
"...and the wide open vista..."
>And as far as users finding UAC "annoying", riddle me this: how is any more annoying than Linux? Linux will do the SAME DAMN THING as Vista's UAC.
You're right; it's not any more annoying--to us Linux users. We're used to it; the Principle of Least Privilege is drilled into us. Windows users aren't, so it will be annoying to them, and they'll turn it off in a heartbeat.
Then there's hubris: once a Windows user posted to her LJ that her XP system wasn't recognizing a piece of hardware. In passing, I innocently said in my response: "You are running non-administrator by default, aren't you?"
You'd think I'd insulted her... the reply came back, "I KNOW what I'm doing."
>...Vista's just using the extra RAM to cache frequently used apps, documents, etc., and it'll automatically be freed up if any application requests it...
Will it? Given past MS dirty tricks, how many layers of tinfoil are really required to suspect that Vista is set up to give third-party apps short shrift when it comes to RAM so that they're more likely to thrash?
Yes, but... people will want to use their local timezone for entering dates, too, and that's where the problem comes in.
Scenario: someone enters that something is going to happen at so and so date, so and so time. As you say, the rational thing to do is to right away convert it to a time_t; easy to compare with other time_t values, easy to find the difference between any two time_t values... very convenient.
Then.. the legislature changes the DST rules out from under you, and the time of that event happens to be in the interval that changes. Can you correct it? No. You threw away the information needed to correct it when you converted it to time_t.
It would seem to follow from this that to be safe, you need both forms, and you need a way to be notified when the rules change.
Ah, but with that name we can eventually quote Ringo Starr.
"It's all down to goodnight Vienna..."
And when the schedule slips, Eddie Jobson's "Disturbance in Vienna" can play in the background of news stories and podcasts about it.