The terrorist attack on New York, Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania was a significant test of American resolve. On the heels of those attacks and through the next several months, our message was clear: we are not going to let calamity or insanity destroy our dreams for good lives in America. We are going to keep on keepin' on, and your silly attacks aren't going to bring us down -- they're going to wake us up.
The explosion of the shuttle Columbia in February was a similar test of American resolve, but the test was much more concentrated... on the space program, particularly the shuttle program. On the heels of that disaster and through the months that have followed, our message is clear: we are not going to let calamity or insanity destroy our dreams for the impossible. We are going to continue to explore our universe, both near and far, and no minor disaster (minor on the timeline of human history) is going to offset the progress of human knowledge.
Face it, is the the American way. In fact, it is the human way: Life will go on, and we will always be there to try to make it better.
New and exciting isn't exactly part of the formula for success. The shuttle business isn't a commercial business. The goal isn't our excitement, but excitement to all the space-nerds who practically have an orgasm when they see something as simple as a "green comet"...
Instead of new and exciting, I think "new and improved" would suffice. We could probably move up to a newer design that isn't several decades old. Anything newer than old, in this case, would be "new and exciting" as far as the media is concerned. And wouldn't that be enough, assuming things would go smoothly?
I know some people that look too old to be alive, and I know some things that should be left well enough alone -- this qualifies as neither, as I'm the kind of guy that wants to see Tim Allen holding up a 160,000-year-old skull and asking someone in the front row of his audience if they're related...
It occurs to me that this post is either interesting and funny or overrated and offtopic. Such is the way of the world.
When I first signed up to ICQ, I had a four- or five-digit number. Then I never used it, because it was early in the game and I didn't have anyone on my list. A couple years later when it made more sense to use it, I had long since forgotten my password... hence, 9775929! And I think I ended up forgetting that password and signing up for an eight-digit UIN before I finally ditched ICQ.
AIM is so much better for what I want it to do. My only problem with it is that I can't be set "Away" and talk to someone on my list at the same time. That would be so useful for keeping the IMs down...
I had a lengthy debate with a friend about how great Aragorn truly is for a specific reason: he is as great a warrior as Legolas, and Legolas has a couple milliennia of experience behind him.
But now that Aragorn is 87 instead of 37, well, I understand! After all, man learns and develops so incredibly well in childhood and young adulthood, so if that period of his life was drawn out, then I can see where he gets it.
At any rate, and I know I will be slammed for this one: Why can't people play by the rules, ever?
...somebody got the silly idea that rules are made to be broken. It isn't our fault that we are compelled to (civil?) disobedience when we disagree with the reason behind a rule, but it is our fault when our ignorance (lack of understanding, specifically) of the reason perpetuates the larger problem.
When are we going to stop fueling the terrorists' minds with ideas we can't (or don't want to) defend against? I mean, geez, it's enough that they use plastic knives... now they're going to use their cell phones against us!
("And, of course, all terrorists read slashdot." -- Clarissa)
Death (by fear of just about anything a government does, boredom of the decision-making process to do it, or by other, more direct means) and taxes.
Since the 6+ billion people on earth generally agree that coming after people with guns and blades is morally unacceptable, the government comes after your wallet. "If we can't kill you, then you've gotta pay us more!"
But, then again, those of us who bother to read up on our history know that a government will tax any thing that moves on its own for anything that doesn't.
But, for the love of God or any other high (or low?) being, don't stop paying. If we stop greasing the wheels of government, it will be forced not only to fight even more wars that we don't agree with, but even to turn on those it is sworn to protect... (This, my friends, is why tax day feels sort of like a very uncomfortable physical examination. You hate to do it but you know it's best for everyone involved, especially the one collecting your money!)
Haven't you seen Office Space? Tom Smykowski is fired because his "people skills", no matter how incredibly talented he may be, are no match for the insignificance of the job he does at Initech.
Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
There is no need for pointless middlemen in the workplace. Artists can deliver the music for themselves with little aid from distributors. They don't need to sign their lives away to huge record companies that want [X] percent of the revenues generated by the artists creativity. Sorry, but the record companies' services aren't that significant. The artists could put in a little extra work and make loads of extra cash for their own work. (Obviously, it isn't just as simple as that, but in some cases it can be. And with a little effort, then it can be made to be that simple...)
Sorry, it is so rare that I get to rub anything in anyone's face as a result of my preference for IE, so I think all IE users deserve this one.
Now some Netscape or Mozilla user needs to tell me an exploit horror story that could have been avoided if they had used IE! We need the comic relief, don't we? Or is this, perhaps, a wakeup call?
Maybe 43 million are willing to admit it -- that's barely 1/6 of the population. Okay, take out people too young and old, and maybe that's about 1/4 of the remaining population. I still think 1 in 4 is a bit of an underestimate...
PNG is here to stay. I'm not as tech-savvy as most of the readers of this forum, but I know that I can save images to a smaller filesize and better quality (visually) using PNG, so guess which format I prefer!
I don't think PNG is simply going to replace GIF, as I think was the original intent, but I do believe that older, less capable formats generally always make way for the newer, better formats -- cassette to disc, disc to hard drive... Win95 to WinNT to WinXP (that's not backtracking any, is it?)...
I suppose the point is that PNG is simply better than JPG and GIF for most purposes, so I expect that it will be the #1 image format on the web, if it isn't already, in the not-too-distant future.
Irony only refers to "intended meaning" when referring to literature. When referring to non-literary elements, such as a graphic on a web page, it refers to expectation in general: Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. In other words, not necessarily a matter of intention, but necessarily a matter of violating expectation.
Does anyone else think it's a bit ironic that the link from the main page to this story, a story in the "Graphics" section, is missing its topic image?
The used goods market has been a valuable, integral part of the world economy for longer than anyone can imagine, and it's been a part of the American economy since long before the United States celebrated the ratification of its Constitution, which is the foundation of the US legal system.
Simply put, our economy does NOT have a problem with volume. The money is quite obviously here. We have the largest GDP in the world, nearly twice that of Japan, who ranks second. No, that is not the problem. The problem is velocity of exchange -- money isn't moving around enough. People aren't buying, selling, transacting...
Strictly economically speaking, the RIAA, MPAA, and their sympathizers have in the last few years shot themselves in their proverbial feet. If their only provably claim is that they're losing money, but someone actually believes them when they sling the blame elsewhere (like on you and me, for proudly participating in the great experiment called "freedom"), then they will continue to get away with it because their revenues will certainly continue to fall. (I am not speaking of nominal revenues, but of real revenues -- taking inflation and other economic factors into account.)
I, for one, am glad to see that the US government is finally starting to do something about this, even if 9 in 10 Congressmen probably don't understand the economic impact of their actions (kinda makes you wonder why Congress makes all the laws about money).
It's been a good run and, for what it's worth, Nullsoft has generated some of the niftiest and most useful programs I have ever used... Winamp, Sex, then SafeSex, and several of your utilities. I learned quite a bit by examining the code of some of Nullsoft's creations. Thanks for all you've done for the Internet community, and best of luck on your future endeavors. I hope to see your name applied to a new development project in the not-too-distant future...
For my first semester in college (Fall 2000), I was fully equipped with pencils, pens, and notebooks for my relatively light load of classes. I call it a light load, but I had three courses (English, History, Physics) in which taking notes was very useful. At the time, pencil and paper was fine. English was a breeze (despite a 74.5 lifetime average in English/Literature courses in high school), and I earned a B in Physics and History.
Over the Christmas break, I inherited a friend's laptop because it had stopped working, and his parents promptly bought him a newer, better one. I fixed the old one as best I could, and despite a funky LCD and a bad power source, I kept it running for the next 30 months (the CD-ROM died after 6 months, and I kept Windows 98 up -- problem free and virus free -- for the next two years... go me!).
For the next four semesters, it was made ridiculously obvious that taking notes on paper is ridiculously inefficient. I can write maybe 20 words per minute at best, and my hand cramps up. I can type maybe 150 words per minute, and my hands never get tired! That, and I had dictionary and encyclopedia software installed for on-the-fly simple research. I didn't have to flip through several pages of notebook paper scouring for information -- a quick CTRL+F and I can find any subject I've studied. Oh, and copies were much easier. I could email my notes to friends for studying, and they can copy or highlight/emphasize the text they need most... And writing papers? Just copy my thoughts out of my notes and work them into coherent essays. CTRL+C is much easier than, well, the old way...
As for keeping up with little things, I've found that a combination of Outlook's calendar (or any other program with Outlook's calendar features) and a pocket calendar-booklet kept me on track, but most of the time they were only useful for reinforcement. I relied on memory to get most of my assignments done.
I guess the point here is that the portability and utility of a laptop is very desirable. When my friend's old laptop finally kicked the bucket in March, I had already ordered a new one (coincidence? luck?), and it has been the best investment I've made in quite a while. Nothing like keeping my notes, homework, and music in my backpack...
Short, short version: I recommend getting a laptop, unless you don't expect to take notes very often.
But the speed of light can be slowed down. Consider the effects of a black hole. Obviously, a black hole possesses qualities that exceed our scientific understanding -- forces that, among other things, are more powerful than we can imagine... powerful enough to slow even light. (Of course, that's just one theory. A theory that does not involve slowing light is that a black hole merely bends light so that it swirls around back toward the singularity, or the black hole's point of origin.)
Of course, if black holes are also part of the simulation, perhaps the singularity -- the point in the middle that currently has no scientific explanation -- is an access point to something, or someone, higher...? Or maybe not.
First, I should say that I agree with your idea that we can fix anything, ignoring expense, given a complete understanding of a given technology. Your point is very well illustrated.
However, I believe that a complete understanding of exactly what makes the human body tick is one of those cosmological mysteries that will never be fully solved. A prerequisite for such understanding would be to have a little one-on-one with God himself, or to actually figure out the very first thing that happened in this universe. We would have to know the nature of the cosmic order, what makes stuff stuff, what makes life live, etc.
Then again, I will not rule out the possibility that the "technology" of the human body may be a bit simpler than that; however, my limited understanding of why life works the way it does gives me the opinion that organic things are far more succeptible to the technological limitations of infinite possibilities. That is, an organic thing -- more specifically a living organism -- is not likely to fully understand itself simply because it is not a higher being than itself.
I consider full human understanding of the human body to be an asymptote on a graph... we may keep getting closer and closer, but we'll never quite get there, simply because there is no higher being there to guide us, and the probability that our stumbling will lead us in the right direction without such a guide is 1 in infinity (but, well, I guess that means there's a chance...)
(I would love to re-write this argument into a better-arranged, more thoughtful essay... if I weren't so damn lazy.)
Evolution works two ways. We get better at defending against one thing, and something else develops. That is to say, human beings are not the only thing developing in the natural world, and human beings can never outpace nature. No matter how good we get at immunizing ourselves, there will always be something worse to be discovered or set upon us.
My theory: the only we could ever cure ourselves from all diseases would be for everyone to die from everything they've ever gotten, leaving only the few lucky, healthy, uninfected of us. Of course, proper removal of the infected bodies could pose a problem...
The world is too big, and something big or small will alway be plaguing it. If we ever seem to have immunized ourselves completely, the resulting complacency will be our undoing.
Slashdot Mirror
The explosion of the shuttle Columbia in February was a similar test of American resolve, but the test was much more concentrated... on the space program, particularly the shuttle program. On the heels of that disaster and through the months that have followed, our message is clear: we are not going to let calamity or insanity destroy our dreams for the impossible. We are going to continue to explore our universe, both near and far, and no minor disaster (minor on the timeline of human history) is going to offset the progress of human knowledge.
Face it, is the the American way. In fact, it is the human way: Life will go on, and we will always be there to try to make it better.
Instead of new and exciting, I think "new and improved" would suffice. We could probably move up to a newer design that isn't several decades old. Anything newer than old, in this case, would be "new and exciting" as far as the media is concerned. And wouldn't that be enough, assuming things would go smoothly?
It occurs to me that this post is either interesting and funny or overrated and offtopic. Such is the way of the world.
AIM is so much better for what I want it to do. My only problem with it is that I can't be set "Away" and talk to someone on my list at the same time. That would be so useful for keeping the IMs down...
...how this can be used to discover the percentage of broken links on the web at any given moment in time.
But now that Aragorn is 87 instead of 37, well, I understand! After all, man learns and develops so incredibly well in childhood and young adulthood, so if that period of his life was drawn out, then I can see where he gets it.
I replied to this, but I accidentally clicked the wrong reply button, and it's here if you care to read it.
This was a response to this comment.
("And, of course, all terrorists read slashdot." -- Clarissa)
Since the 6+ billion people on earth generally agree that coming after people with guns and blades is morally unacceptable, the government comes after your wallet. "If we can't kill you, then you've gotta pay us more!"
But, then again, those of us who bother to read up on our history know that a government will tax any thing that moves on its own for anything that doesn't.
But, for the love of God or any other high (or low?) being, don't stop paying. If we stop greasing the wheels of government, it will be forced not only to fight even more wars that we don't agree with, but even to turn on those it is sworn to protect... (This, my friends, is why tax day feels sort of like a very uncomfortable physical examination. You hate to do it but you know it's best for everyone involved, especially the one collecting your money!)
There is no need for pointless middlemen in the workplace. Artists can deliver the music for themselves with little aid from distributors. They don't need to sign their lives away to huge record companies that want [X] percent of the revenues generated by the artists creativity. Sorry, but the record companies' services aren't that significant. The artists could put in a little extra work and make loads of extra cash for their own work. (Obviously, it isn't just as simple as that, but in some cases it can be. And with a little effort, then it can be made to be that simple...)
Now some Netscape or Mozilla user needs to tell me an exploit horror story that could have been avoided if they had used IE! We need the comic relief, don't we? Or is this, perhaps, a wakeup call?
I bet Hilary Rosen uses Kazaa and Morpheus...
I don't think PNG is simply going to replace GIF, as I think was the original intent, but I do believe that older, less capable formats generally always make way for the newer, better formats -- cassette to disc, disc to hard drive ... Win95 to WinNT to WinXP (that's not backtracking any, is it?) ...
I suppose the point is that PNG is simply better than JPG and GIF for most purposes, so I expect that it will be the #1 image format on the web, if it isn't already, in the not-too-distant future.
Irony only refers to "intended meaning" when referring to literature. When referring to non-literary elements, such as a graphic on a web page, it refers to expectation in general: Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. In other words, not necessarily a matter of intention, but necessarily a matter of violating expectation.
Does anyone else think it's a bit ironic that the link from the main page to this story, a story in the "Graphics" section, is missing its topic image?
Simply put, our economy does NOT have a problem with volume. The money is quite obviously here. We have the largest GDP in the world, nearly twice that of Japan, who ranks second. No, that is not the problem. The problem is velocity of exchange -- money isn't moving around enough. People aren't buying, selling, transacting...
Strictly economically speaking, the RIAA, MPAA, and their sympathizers have in the last few years shot themselves in their proverbial feet. If their only provably claim is that they're losing money, but someone actually believes them when they sling the blame elsewhere (like on you and me, for proudly participating in the great experiment called "freedom"), then they will continue to get away with it because their revenues will certainly continue to fall. (I am not speaking of nominal revenues, but of real revenues -- taking inflation and other economic factors into account.)
I, for one, am glad to see that the US government is finally starting to do something about this, even if 9 in 10 Congressmen probably don't understand the economic impact of their actions (kinda makes you wonder why Congress makes all the laws about money).
It's been a good run and, for what it's worth, Nullsoft has generated some of the niftiest and most useful programs I have ever used... Winamp, Sex, then SafeSex, and several of your utilities. I learned quite a bit by examining the code of some of Nullsoft's creations. Thanks for all you've done for the Internet community, and best of luck on your future endeavors. I hope to see your name applied to a new development project in the not-too-distant future...
Over the Christmas break, I inherited a friend's laptop because it had stopped working, and his parents promptly bought him a newer, better one. I fixed the old one as best I could, and despite a funky LCD and a bad power source, I kept it running for the next 30 months (the CD-ROM died after 6 months, and I kept Windows 98 up -- problem free and virus free -- for the next two years ... go me!).
For the next four semesters, it was made ridiculously obvious that taking notes on paper is ridiculously inefficient. I can write maybe 20 words per minute at best, and my hand cramps up. I can type maybe 150 words per minute, and my hands never get tired! That, and I had dictionary and encyclopedia software installed for on-the-fly simple research. I didn't have to flip through several pages of notebook paper scouring for information -- a quick CTRL+F and I can find any subject I've studied. Oh, and copies were much easier. I could email my notes to friends for studying, and they can copy or highlight/emphasize the text they need most... And writing papers? Just copy my thoughts out of my notes and work them into coherent essays. CTRL+C is much easier than, well, the old way...
As for keeping up with little things, I've found that a combination of Outlook's calendar (or any other program with Outlook's calendar features) and a pocket calendar-booklet kept me on track, but most of the time they were only useful for reinforcement. I relied on memory to get most of my assignments done.
I guess the point here is that the portability and utility of a laptop is very desirable. When my friend's old laptop finally kicked the bucket in March, I had already ordered a new one (coincidence? luck?), and it has been the best investment I've made in quite a while. Nothing like keeping my notes, homework, and music in my backpack...
Short, short version: I recommend getting a laptop, unless you don't expect to take notes very often.
It kinda sucks that, in a way, my death is what will prove me right...
Of course, if black holes are also part of the simulation, perhaps the singularity -- the point in the middle that currently has no scientific explanation -- is an access point to something, or someone, higher...? Or maybe not.
First, I should say that I agree with your idea that we can fix anything, ignoring expense, given a complete understanding of a given technology. Your point is very well illustrated.
However, I believe that a complete understanding of exactly what makes the human body tick is one of those cosmological mysteries that will never be fully solved. A prerequisite for such understanding would be to have a little one-on-one with God himself, or to actually figure out the very first thing that happened in this universe. We would have to know the nature of the cosmic order, what makes stuff stuff, what makes life live, etc.
Then again, I will not rule out the possibility that the "technology" of the human body may be a bit simpler than that; however, my limited understanding of why life works the way it does gives me the opinion that organic things are far more succeptible to the technological limitations of infinite possibilities. That is, an organic thing -- more specifically a living organism -- is not likely to fully understand itself simply because it is not a higher being than itself.
I consider full human understanding of the human body to be an asymptote on a graph ... we may keep getting closer and closer, but we'll never quite get there, simply because there is no higher being there to guide us, and the probability that our stumbling will lead us in the right direction without such a guide is 1 in infinity (but, well, I guess that means there's a chance...)
(I would love to re-write this argument into a better-arranged, more thoughtful essay... if I weren't so damn lazy.)
My theory: the only we could ever cure ourselves from all diseases would be for everyone to die from everything they've ever gotten, leaving only the few lucky, healthy, uninfected of us. Of course, proper removal of the infected bodies could pose a problem...
The world is too big, and something big or small will alway be plaguing it. If we ever seem to have immunized ourselves completely, the resulting complacency will be our undoing.
Of course, I agree with you, but I don't mind considering the alternatives for pointless debate.