HOLLY: I was in love once -- a Sinclair ZX-81. People said, "No, Holly, she's not for you." She was cheap, she was stupid and she wouldn't load -- well, not for me, anyway.
LISTER: What are you trying to say, Hol?
HOLLY: What I'm saying, Dave, is that it's better to have loved and to have lost than to listen to an album by Olivia Newton-John.
CAT: Why's that?
HOLLY: Anything's better than listening to an album by Olivia Newton-John.
While the idea itself sounds interesting, how accurate can this really be, given the complexity of music and the quantity of cross-genre stuff being put out? It all seems vaguely reminiscent of the Censorware skin-tone heuristic, if slightly more legit. The question is how long before Metallica, Dr. Dre, etc. will want to use this to screen their music out, or before I can get a napster client that screens out the "crap" genre.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
"-iR This option tells Nmap to generate its own hosts to scan by simply picking random numbers:). It will never end. This can be useful for statistical sampling of the Internet to estimate various things. If you are ever really bored, try nmap -sS -iR -p 80 to find some web servers to look at."
The only difference is that most normal people aren't bored enough to keep going after the 500th or so 403 Forbidden error.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
While the intracasies of US copyright and intellectual property laws may be bad enough, as far as I can tell, this stuff would be covered under Italian law. While the actual legalese clause cited above is most likely a symptom of overactive paranoia, it is possible the project does have the rights it claims. Presumably, they might have recieved rights to this specific digital form of the pieces from their respective owners under Italian law (the museums involved, Michelangelo's relatives, etc.), or perhaps Italy has laws in place covering just such an eventuality. While the point that this is silly is well taken, I don't quite think this is worthy of knee-jerk copyright paranoia or, say, a Jon Katz writeup, until more information comes to light.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
While I realize my opinion of this organization is not commonly shared by readers here, especially after a hefty dose of rhetoric the unsually overzealous Jon Katz, I feel that it's worth mentioning. What is described on the company's web site (as opposed to Katz's decidedly biased information) sounds like a reasonable idea. From the sound of it, the phone calls are not the primary focus of the organization, but are rather reserved for emergency situations. In addition, the staff manning the phone lines is (at least in theory) trained to handle the kinds of calls they will receive and will be able to evaluate the level of potential danger represented. It is important to note that of the warning signs mentioned on the web site, only two (severe social withdrawl/depression, consistant violent themes in art or writing) seem to be at all out of place, and these are only judged potentially dangerous when accompanied by more conventional signs (e.g., illegal possession of firearms, detailed violent threats). In my own opinion, having read the full description of the program as provided on the company site, neither myself nor any of my geekish friends would fit the profile that the company is looking for. However, this is not to say that bad things can arise from the program. Certainly, most children will not understand the program's criteria as well as the adults who wrote them, and there is likely to be abuse of the system. This will most likely not prove to be a problem, however, unless the "highly-trained experts" the company has manning the lines turns out to be a bunch of first year undergrad psych majors from third-rate universities working for minimum wage, as they very well might. I thus think the idea should be considered only on its merits as an idea until it has had time to be tested in reality. Should shades of Hitler begin materializing in North Carolina, then the kind of response the program has garnered here so far will be appropriate.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
By this definition, the latest versions of Compaq's OpenVMS could be considered a UNIX. Although shell tools do not ship standard with VMS, they could likely be ported without too much trouble. And yet I can't quite bring myself to consider a VMS system to be UNIX...
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
Despite the inherant capitalistic tendancy to allow free market ownership and trade of just about everything, it should be clear to most people that there are obvious exceptions to this idea, that there are certain resources which are better off controlled by the government. Radio waves are a classic example of this. Instead of offering up them up for a corportate feeding frenzy, the government could simply share them equally among those with a legitimate reason to control them. Ideally, this would be done at the local level except in cases of extremely powerful signals, so that what constitutes a legitimate reason would be more closely controlled by the people. This is more or less how things work now, and while there are problems with the current system, they are nothing compared to the can of worms this brilliant new idea will open up.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
If the Open Source world actually cares enough about this to act, which I'm not at all convinced of, there are a number of things I think might be viablly done.
By the priciples of open source, it would be best to provide a large bank of end user input to a large community of programmers. One way this could be accomplished is something along the lines of a user interface poll. This ideally would not be simply a list of checkboxes, but something more creative, such as a simple UI designer which allows the user to place elements wherever and however he likes. Common design choices could be integrated into applications. The only real possible problem is that people would probably tend to redesign Windows, MacOS, etc.
Another possibility is making common linux interfaces more easy to configure. For example, take my favorite window manager, Afterstep. With some time and a text editor, you can configure Afterstep to look, feel, and behave in nearly any way you like. Unfortunately, to people accustomed to graphical configuration, a.look file is totally incomprehensible. Now image if a user could right click on his wharf, chose "configure" from the context menu, and be presented with choices about background tiles, text, and items, all in a graphical manner. With similar options for the entire interface, Afterstep could be a very viable end-user GUI.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
What a bizarre concept. It's pretty incredible, but bizarre nonetheless. I've heard that Quake and it's predecessor Doom have been at times used to train marines for combat missions (of course, this never came up in the wake of all the Columbine anti-gaming reaction), so I wonder if it would be possible to outfit actual soldiers with some sort of similar technology. If it is possible to adapt to a larger field of view, a headset of some sort could be invaluable not only in the military, but in law enforcement and any other activity where needing to see behind oneself is advantageous. All in all, an interesting idea, if perhaps beyond my own modest gaming ability to master.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
From the United States Socialist Party's official platform:
"We call for free and open access to information, including the public ownership of all large data bases, so that access cannot be restricted to those able to pay transaction fees."
This, along with what can be inferred from the party's other strongly pro-labor, anti-corporate policies, means that existance of even a moderately-sized Socialist minority could help prevent the passage of laws such as this one which abridge our constitutional rights in order to placate the wealthy minority. This is clearly only one particular aspect of the Socialist party, which has a very complex platform, but I encourage those unhappy with the current two-party system or simply curious about the alternatives to research the party themselves. Its official web site can be found at http://www.sp-usa.org/. Also, for clarification, the United States Socialist Party is not in any way affiliated with "socialism" or "communism" as practiced in such totalitarian states as the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, or Castro's Cuba. The Socialist Party rather stands for Democratic Socialism, a policy which has been widely implemented and very successful in many European nations.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
Slashdot Mirror
HOLLY: I was in love once -- a Sinclair ZX-81. People said, "No, Holly, she's not for you." She was cheap, she was stupid and she wouldn't load -- well, not for me, anyway.
LISTER: What are you trying to say, Hol?
HOLLY: What I'm saying, Dave, is that it's better to have loved and to have lost than to listen to an album by Olivia Newton-John.
CAT: Why's that?
HOLLY: Anything's better than listening to an album by Olivia Newton-John.
-Red Dwarf, Season 2, Episode 1: "Stasis Leak"
While the idea itself sounds interesting, how accurate can this really be, given the complexity of music and the quantity of cross-genre stuff being put out? It all seems vaguely reminiscent of the Censorware skin-tone heuristic, if slightly more legit. The question is how long before Metallica, Dr. Dre, etc. will want to use this to screen their music out, or before I can get a napster client that screens out the "crap" genre.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
From the nmap man page:
:). It will never end. This can be useful for statistical sampling of the Internet to estimate various things.
"-iR This option tells Nmap to generate its own hosts to scan by simply picking random numbers
If you are ever really bored, try
nmap -sS -iR -p 80
to find some web servers to look at."
The only difference is that most normal people aren't bored enough to keep going after the 500th or so 403 Forbidden error.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
While the intracasies of US copyright and intellectual property laws may be bad enough, as far as I can tell, this stuff would be covered under Italian law. While the actual legalese clause cited above is most likely a symptom of overactive paranoia, it is possible the project does have the rights it claims. Presumably, they might have recieved rights to this specific digital form of the pieces from their respective owners under Italian law (the museums involved, Michelangelo's relatives, etc.), or perhaps Italy has laws in place covering just such an eventuality.
While the point that this is silly is well taken, I don't quite think this is worthy of knee-jerk copyright paranoia or, say, a Jon Katz writeup, until more information comes to light.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
While I realize my opinion of this organization is not commonly shared by readers here, especially after a hefty dose of rhetoric the unsually overzealous Jon Katz, I feel that it's worth mentioning. What is described on the company's web site (as opposed to Katz's decidedly biased information) sounds like a reasonable idea. From the sound of it, the phone calls are not the primary focus of the organization, but are rather reserved for emergency situations. In addition, the staff manning the phone lines is (at least in theory) trained to handle the kinds of calls they will receive and will be able to evaluate the level of potential danger represented. It is important to note that of the warning signs mentioned on the web site, only two (severe social withdrawl/depression, consistant violent themes in art or writing) seem to be at all out of place, and these are only judged potentially dangerous when accompanied by more conventional signs (e.g., illegal possession of firearms, detailed violent threats). In my own opinion, having read the full description of the program as provided on the company site, neither myself nor any of my geekish friends would fit the profile that the company is looking for.
However, this is not to say that bad things can arise from the program. Certainly, most children will not understand the program's criteria as well as the adults who wrote them, and there is likely to be abuse of the system. This will most likely not prove to be a problem, however, unless the "highly-trained experts" the company has manning the lines turns out to be a bunch of first year undergrad psych majors from third-rate universities working for minimum wage, as they very well might. I thus think the idea should be considered only on its merits as an idea until it has had time to be tested in reality. Should shades of Hitler begin materializing in North Carolina, then the kind of response the program has garnered here so far will be appropriate.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
By this definition, the latest versions of Compaq's OpenVMS could be considered a UNIX. Although shell tools do not ship standard with VMS, they could likely be ported without too much trouble. And yet I can't quite bring myself to consider a VMS system to be UNIX...
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
Despite the inherant capitalistic tendancy to allow free market ownership and trade of just about everything, it should be clear to most people that there are obvious exceptions to this idea, that there are certain resources which are better off controlled by the government. Radio waves are a classic example of this. Instead of offering up them up for a corportate feeding frenzy, the government could simply share them equally among those with a legitimate reason to control them. Ideally, this would be done at the local level except in cases of extremely powerful signals, so that what constitutes a legitimate reason would be more closely controlled by the people.
This is more or less how things work now, and while there are problems with the current system, they are nothing compared to the can of worms this brilliant new idea will open up.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
If the Open Source world actually cares enough about this to act, which I'm not at all convinced of, there are a number of things I think might be viablly done.
.look file is totally incomprehensible. Now image if a user could right click on his wharf, chose "configure" from the context menu, and be presented with choices about background tiles, text, and items, all in a graphical manner. With similar options for the entire interface, Afterstep could be a very viable end-user GUI.
By the priciples of open source, it would be best to provide a large bank of end user input to a large community of programmers. One way this could be accomplished is something along the lines of a user interface poll. This ideally would not be simply a list of checkboxes, but something more creative, such as a simple UI designer which allows the user to place elements wherever and however he likes. Common design choices could be integrated into applications. The only real possible problem is that people would probably tend to redesign Windows, MacOS, etc.
Another possibility is making common linux interfaces more easy to configure. For example, take my favorite window manager, Afterstep. With some time and a text editor, you can configure Afterstep to look, feel, and behave in nearly any way you like. Unfortunately, to people accustomed to graphical configuration, a
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
What a bizarre concept. It's pretty incredible, but bizarre nonetheless. I've heard that Quake and it's predecessor Doom have been at times used to train marines for combat missions (of course, this never came up in the wake of all the Columbine anti-gaming reaction), so I wonder if it would be possible to outfit actual soldiers with some sort of similar technology. If it is possible to adapt to a larger field of view, a headset of some sort could be invaluable not only in the military, but in law enforcement and any other activity where needing to see behind oneself is advantageous. All in all, an interesting idea, if perhaps beyond my own modest gaming ability to master.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
From the United States Socialist Party's official platform:
"We call for free and open access to information, including the public ownership of all large data bases, so that access cannot be restricted to those able to pay transaction fees."
This, along with what can be inferred from the party's other strongly pro-labor, anti-corporate policies, means that existance of even a moderately-sized Socialist minority could help prevent the passage of laws such as this one which abridge our constitutional rights in order to placate the wealthy minority.
This is clearly only one particular aspect of the Socialist party, which has a very complex platform, but I encourage those unhappy with the current two-party system or simply curious about the alternatives to research the party themselves. Its official web site can be found at http://www.sp-usa.org/.
Also, for clarification, the United States Socialist Party is not in any way affiliated with "socialism" or "communism" as practiced in such totalitarian states as the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, or Castro's Cuba. The Socialist Party rather stands for Democratic Socialism, a policy which has been widely implemented and very successful in many European nations.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!