The government spends that much deciding who to name government buildings after. Heck, they spend that much checking the spelling of the names they put on government buildings!;o)
I don't even know what "Passport" is. I figure operating systems should stay in the background and stay out of my face. Do you guys have to report every time Microbrain tries to do something innovative like stick their foot up their own corporate ass? The top of the page says "stuff that matters." Clue #1: Microsoft doesn't matter.
Well, I've pretty much read everything PhilDick has written, so maybe I'll give this guy a shot. Two of my favorite things rolled into one. Hard to believe.
By the way, I didn't think Minority Report was PhilDickian at all. Another evisceration job by Hollywood.
You just need a good targeting system. Great practice for "Star Wars." A big laser would be nice too. Seems anything that doesn't run on 5V DC circuits is beyond some people here.;o)
I doubt very much if "repeated" sequences in real recordings are absolutely perfect reproductions. I'd think a bunch of technoheads on slashdot would comprehend this. I'm beginning to think there are more pseudos than veros here.
What, me a troll? perish the thought.
Hey, if computers can use changes in file size to map ownership, they can certainly use perfectly repeated sequences.
Maybe that's where all that "and Melchizedek begat Abramelin" in the OT came from. Some idiot trying to protect his copyright. Now all these little children think there's something mistical about "begatting.";o)
There are socially acceptible ways of "trying to stop illegal activities." These are what are commonly called "laws." Trashing somebody's network is not a socially acceptible way of "trying to stop illegal activities," precisely because it contravenes those laws. Lynch mobs are and have been outlawed in most parts of the civilized world for a long time, and the cybernetic equivalent of lynch mobs come dangerously close to violating laws against cyber-terrorism.
The bottom line is corporations and private organizations need to get it through their thick skulls that this kind of private spy-vs-spy warfare may be technically legal in some cases, but it is definitely not in the best interests of civil society. Of course, in an era where the very president of the United States has trouble with the concept of US soldiers being subject to international war crimes tribunals, it's understandable. After all, "how dare THEY think that they can tell US what to do," no matter how heinous the proscribed activity.
It's time for folks to step back and take a deep breath and think about what's best for society and civilization and stop worrying so much about their own private interests. Capitalism may work because it assumes greedy, less than ideal people, but it doesn't constitute a blanket endorsement of bad behaviour. There are other, competing modes of regulating human behaviour, and they are not all based on greed. One of them is called "ethics." Another is morality. Another is concern for ones neighbors' well-being. Despite what the politicos try to tell you, these are not outmoded concepts best thrown on the trash heap of history.
Even the Roman Empire fell. And not because they didn't enforce their copyright laws.
I have nothing against 3rd world computers, but it seems to me that a good whatever language version of Dick and Jane and Sally would be a lot cheaper than a computer. Of course, you couldn't use it to send e-mail, but I'm not sure that's way up at the top of rural Indian priorities. Despite the protestations of use by "pre-literates," this all sounds to me like a means of "leap-frogging" literacy the way some of these countries have leap-frogged a hard-wired phone system with cell phones. And THAT, it seems to me, is a very BAD idea.
It's a small homogeneous country with most of the population along the narrow coastal plains. You really are comparing apples and watermelons. I do, however, agree with the primary thesis, that Japan has a good deal more of the cool stuff, mainly for the previously mentioned reason that they make maybe 20 models for every one they export.
One factor I think has been overlooked so far. It's not that the Japanese have a fetish for the small. They have a national obsession for the neat, the precise, the spare, the efficient. Look at their art. Japanese design is just an extension of Japanese art. Find a copy of "Japanese Style" somewhere and look at the pictures.
In Shinto, it's not the object per se. It's the whole place, the entire experience. There's a grizzled old pine tree at the end of a peninsula that's juts out from Shimizu into Suruga Bay. This is the proper Shinto spot for viewing Mount Fuji. There's a Shinto shrine there. The tree is just the environment, not the essence.
Now just say it outloud along with me so you'll remember it: MO-NAH'-PO-LEE, MO-NAH'-PO-LEE.;o)
When will it end? When folks get around to voting the reprobates who allow this crap out of office. Or is it too late for that? Did somebody already crown George III? Oh, well, Brutus.
Personally, I'd take cultivating an orb of energy over the morons that brought us the Spanish Inquisition and the trial of Galileo Galilei (and the murder of Giordano Bruno) anyday.
Zealots indeed.
Somebody has to bring down the butchers in Beijing. It might as well be the practitioners of a modern form of Tai Chi. Only fitting, I suppose.
What I don't quite understand, beyond the obvious cryptological uses, is what's so important about a "set" of numbers made up exclusively of integers that are not subject to even division by an integer other than themselves. From my admittedly nonmathematical perspective, you have simply elevated to the level of mathematical entity something that amounts to the refuse from a series of simple arithmetical operations, i.e., dividing a series of numbers by a series of smaller numbers and seeing which ones always have a remainder.
For the life of me I can't see how this could be a fundamental building block of mathematics any more than twiddling ones thumbs could be a building block of physics. The reason it's so difficult to prove anything related to prime numbers is that they really aren't fundamental. You might as well try to "prove" something related to the manhole covers the driver in front of you manages to avoid.
Keep in mind that in a hundred years personal computers will be as irrelevant as sliderules. And I guarantee you Bill Gates and his heirs and assigns will not control the new technology any more than the Burroughs Adding Machine Company controls the PC. It is precisely M$'s lack of creativity that dooms them, as it doomed every other one-product company in the history of commerce. Some day in the not too distant future PCs will be just so much junk in the landfill. And the damned things are so butt ugly there won't even be a market for them among the collectors.
The bulb in my crystal ball is a little dim, but I would think the first sign of the end of M$ will be the development of applications that do not require an operating system--the software equivalent of a peer to peer network. Strip away all the crap, and exactly what does Windows do that something 1/50 the size couldn't do while attached to an actual program? Does anybody really think the current OS/driver/program paradigm is anything but a passing fancy? You don't think the Transmeta chip is just a little hint of what is to come?
Make him reboot for everybody. "Hello, Bill? My computer needs to be rebooted for some darn silly reason. I know it's 2:00 in the morning. Get your sorry butt down here."
I wouldn't buy another HP printer if it came with a free Ferrari. It's that bad.
As for memory sticks, I bought a Sony CD1000 that saves directly to mini CD-R. Once it's finalized, I can play it in anyone's computer.
And I find that I can print good 8 x 10s on my inkjet printer using Konica photo paper that's impermeable to water, unlike most photo papers that run when they get wet.
I use the TIFF reader at http://www.alternatiff.com/ recommended by the Patent Office. It does require registration, but it's free, and it avoids the Quicktime plugin and it produces high quality images.
Leave it to an article on alien visitations to bring out the most hilarious and illogical opinions on everything from probability to theology. I have been studying, nonacademically admittedly, the idea of the presence of nonhuman intelligence on Earth for a good 40 years, and no-one ever seems to really get the point. There is only one set of primary conditions that would lead to such a reality:
1) Detection--there must be a way, not necessarily technical, to determine from afar that Earth is of some interest to visit--random discovery just doesn't cut it in terms of a very large universe, and
2) Means--it must be possible to get here from there. This implies a way around special relativity or its disproval, or it implies close physical proximity, a case ignored by most researchers since Donald Keyhoe claimed there were aliens based under the surface of Mars.
Those two conditions are both necessary and sufficient to guarantee the presence of aliens on Earth. Everything else is just blowing smoke rings.
Actually, it doesn't appear to be the grammar. It's more a matter of vocabulary. Specifically, words that look alike but mean different things. Quality translation programs, the ones that help automate translations by professionals, give choices for these words for the translator to choose from and don't translate them automatically.
My favorite is: "the abundant electric power at will supplements." Sounds like free energy!
Not that I know anything about this, but that hasn't stopped me before.;o)
I would think that it would be to everyone's advantage that Chinese computer users should at least be acquainted with the M$ Windows interface. Whether they should adopt it wholesale is another story. Being as the Chinese government has decided to push Gnulix, I don't think the latter is in any danger of being overrun by billions of Windows users. Someone has suggested that M$ and the Chinese oligarchs should make good bed fellows, but seriously, M$ doesn't hold a candle to Beijing as far as rule by executive fiat goes.
I don't think it should be ignored, though, that there has been *some* improvement in Chinese styles of government over the last century. They have, after all, gone from an Emperor as god on earth to a party head as fearless leader to an oligarchy as rotating rulers for a year. So there has definitely been some attempt to broaden the power base;o). And do not overlook the fact that there has been serious progress toward representative government on the local level. Capitalism emerged in China in this very way, with the farmers and the local economies. Is Eastern Europe really better off for having installed democracy right out of the box after nearly a century of dictatorial rule?
I look forward to the day when the Chinese have finally established an egalitarian state and *they* read M$ the riot act, telling *them* that their anticompetitive and undemocratic methods will not be tolerated in the Middle Kingdom, which, as everyone knows, is the real center of the world, not Billy Boy Gates. That would surely get M$'s attention more than some silly lawsuit brought by the bought and paid for politicos in DC.
That's exactly what I had in mind. Supposedly, dumber police are better at following orders, which is certainly true. One need only look at Germany during the 2nd World war.
Slashdot Mirror
The government spends that much deciding who to name government buildings after. Heck, they spend that much checking the spelling of the names they put on government buildings! ;o)
Where is Theodore when we really need him?
I don't even know what "Passport" is. I figure operating systems should stay in the background and stay out of my face. Do you guys have to report every time Microbrain tries to do something innovative like stick their foot up their own corporate ass? The top of the page says "stuff that matters." Clue #1: Microsoft doesn't matter.
Well, I've pretty much read everything PhilDick has written, so maybe I'll give this guy a shot. Two of my favorite things rolled into one. Hard to believe.
By the way, I didn't think Minority Report was PhilDickian at all. Another evisceration job by Hollywood.
You just need a good targeting system. Great practice for "Star Wars." A big laser would be nice too. Seems anything that doesn't run on 5V DC circuits is beyond some people here. ;o)
I doubt very much if "repeated" sequences in real recordings are absolutely perfect reproductions. I'd think a bunch of technoheads on slashdot would comprehend this. I'm beginning to think there are more pseudos than veros here.
What, me a troll? perish the thought.
Hey, if computers can use changes in file size to map ownership, they can certainly use perfectly repeated sequences.
Maybe that's where all that "and Melchizedek begat Abramelin" in the OT came from. Some idiot trying to protect his copyright. Now all these little children think there's something mistical about "begatting." ;o)
There are socially acceptible ways of "trying to stop illegal activities." These are what are commonly called "laws." Trashing somebody's network is not a socially acceptible way of "trying to stop illegal activities," precisely because it contravenes those laws. Lynch mobs are and have been outlawed in most parts of the civilized world for a long time, and the cybernetic equivalent of lynch mobs come dangerously close to violating laws against cyber-terrorism.
The bottom line is corporations and private organizations need to get it through their thick skulls that this kind of private spy-vs-spy warfare may be technically legal in some cases, but it is definitely not in the best interests of civil society. Of course, in an era where the very president of the United States has trouble with the concept of US soldiers being subject to international war crimes tribunals, it's understandable. After all, "how dare THEY think that they can tell US what to do," no matter how heinous the proscribed activity.
It's time for folks to step back and take a deep breath and think about what's best for society and civilization and stop worrying so much about their own private interests. Capitalism may work because it assumes greedy, less than ideal people, but it doesn't constitute a blanket endorsement of bad behaviour. There are other, competing modes of regulating human behaviour, and they are not all based on greed. One of them is called "ethics." Another is morality. Another is concern for ones neighbors' well-being. Despite what the politicos try to tell you, these are not outmoded concepts best thrown on the trash heap of history.
Even the Roman Empire fell. And not because they didn't enforce their copyright laws.
No, that's the model with the glow-in-the-dark control panel.
I have nothing against 3rd world computers, but it seems to me that a good whatever language version of Dick and Jane and Sally would be a lot cheaper than a computer. Of course, you couldn't use it to send e-mail, but I'm not sure that's way up at the top of rural Indian priorities. Despite the protestations of use by "pre-literates," this all sounds to me like a means of "leap-frogging" literacy the way some of these countries have leap-frogged a hard-wired phone system with cell phones. And THAT, it seems to me, is a very BAD idea.
But the article mentions future attempts to subsidize the product. I think they have a grasp of the economic situation.
You just HAD to mention that, didn't you? It's not bad enough I buy entirely too many woodblock prints....
"The Japanese are experts in small.
Sony. Because Caucasians are too damn tall."
One less syllable and you'd have a haiku.
Nice try for an American.
It's a small homogeneous country with most of the population along the narrow coastal plains. You really are comparing apples and watermelons. I do, however, agree with the primary thesis, that Japan has a good deal more of the cool stuff, mainly for the previously mentioned reason that they make maybe 20 models for every one they export.
One factor I think has been overlooked so far. It's not that the Japanese have a fetish for the small. They have a national obsession for the neat, the precise, the spare, the efficient. Look at their art. Japanese design is just an extension of Japanese art. Find a copy of "Japanese Style" somewhere and look at the pictures.
In Shinto, it's not the object per se. It's the whole place, the entire experience. There's a grizzled old pine tree at the end of a peninsula that's juts out from Shimizu into Suruga Bay. This is the proper Shinto spot for viewing Mount Fuji. There's a Shinto shrine there. The tree is just the environment, not the essence.
Now just say it outloud along with me so you'll remember it: MO-NAH'-PO-LEE, MO-NAH'-PO-LEE. ;o)
When will it end? When folks get around to voting the reprobates who allow this crap out of office. Or is it too late for that? Did somebody already crown George III? Oh, well, Brutus.
Personally, I'd take cultivating an orb of energy over the morons that brought us the Spanish Inquisition and the trial of Galileo Galilei (and the murder of Giordano Bruno) anyday.
Zealots indeed.
Somebody has to bring down the butchers in Beijing. It might as well be the practitioners of a modern form of Tai Chi. Only fitting, I suppose.
What I don't quite understand, beyond the obvious cryptological uses, is what's so important about a "set" of numbers made up exclusively of integers that are not subject to even division by an integer other than themselves. From my admittedly nonmathematical perspective, you have simply elevated to the level of mathematical entity something that amounts to the refuse from a series of simple arithmetical operations, i.e., dividing a series of numbers by a series of smaller numbers and seeing which ones always have a remainder.
For the life of me I can't see how this could be a fundamental building block of mathematics any more than twiddling ones thumbs could be a building block of physics. The reason it's so difficult to prove anything related to prime numbers is that they really aren't fundamental. You might as well try to "prove" something related to the manhole covers the driver in front of you manages to avoid.
Keep in mind that in a hundred years personal computers will be as irrelevant as sliderules. And I guarantee you Bill Gates and his heirs and assigns will not control the new technology any more than the Burroughs Adding Machine Company controls the PC. It is precisely M$'s lack of creativity that dooms them, as it doomed every other one-product company in the history of commerce. Some day in the not too distant future PCs will be just so much junk in the landfill. And the damned things are so butt ugly there won't even be a market for them among the collectors.
The bulb in my crystal ball is a little dim, but I would think the first sign of the end of M$ will be the development of applications that do not require an operating system--the software equivalent of a peer to peer network. Strip away all the crap, and exactly what does Windows do that something 1/50 the size couldn't do while attached to an actual program? Does anybody really think the current OS/driver/program paradigm is anything but a passing fancy? You don't think the Transmeta chip is just a little hint of what is to come?
Make him reboot for everybody. "Hello, Bill? My computer needs to be rebooted for some darn silly reason. I know it's 2:00 in the morning. Get your sorry butt down here."
I wouldn't buy another HP printer if it came with a free Ferrari. It's that bad.
As for memory sticks, I bought a Sony CD1000 that saves directly to mini CD-R. Once it's finalized, I can play it in anyone's computer.
And I find that I can print good 8 x 10s on my inkjet printer using Konica photo paper that's impermeable to water, unlike most photo papers that run when they get wet.
I use the TIFF reader at http://www.alternatiff.com/ recommended by the Patent Office. It does require registration, but it's free, and it avoids the Quicktime plugin and it produces high quality images.
Leave it to an article on alien visitations to bring out the most hilarious and illogical opinions on everything from probability to theology. I have been studying, nonacademically admittedly, the idea of the presence of nonhuman intelligence on Earth for a good 40 years, and no-one ever seems to really get the point. There is only one set of primary conditions that would lead to such a reality:
1) Detection--there must be a way, not necessarily technical, to determine from afar that Earth is of some interest to visit--random discovery just doesn't cut it in terms of a very large universe, and
2) Means--it must be possible to get here from there. This implies a way around special relativity or its disproval, or it implies close physical proximity, a case ignored by most researchers since Donald Keyhoe claimed there were aliens based under the surface of Mars.
Those two conditions are both necessary and sufficient to guarantee the presence of aliens on Earth. Everything else is just blowing smoke rings.
Actually, it doesn't appear to be the grammar. It's more a matter of vocabulary. Specifically, words that look alike but mean different things. Quality translation programs, the ones that help automate translations by professionals, give choices for these words for the translator to choose from and don't translate them automatically.
My favorite is: "the abundant electric power at will supplements." Sounds like free energy!
Not that I know anything about this, but that hasn't stopped me before. ;o)
;o). And do not overlook the fact that there has been serious progress toward representative government on the local level. Capitalism emerged in China in this very way, with the farmers and the local economies. Is Eastern Europe really better off for having installed democracy right out of the box after nearly a century of dictatorial rule?
I would think that it would be to everyone's advantage that Chinese computer users should at least be acquainted with the M$ Windows interface. Whether they should adopt it wholesale is another story. Being as the Chinese government has decided to push Gnulix, I don't think the latter is in any danger of being overrun by billions of Windows users. Someone has suggested that M$ and the Chinese oligarchs should make good bed fellows, but seriously, M$ doesn't hold a candle to Beijing as far as rule by executive fiat goes.
I don't think it should be ignored, though, that there has been *some* improvement in Chinese styles of government over the last century. They have, after all, gone from an Emperor as god on earth to a party head as fearless leader to an oligarchy as rotating rulers for a year. So there has definitely been some attempt to broaden the power base
I look forward to the day when the Chinese have finally established an egalitarian state and *they* read M$ the riot act, telling *them* that their anticompetitive and undemocratic methods will not be tolerated in the Middle Kingdom, which, as everyone knows, is the real center of the world, not Billy Boy Gates. That would surely get M$'s attention more than some silly lawsuit brought by the bought and paid for politicos in DC.
That's exactly what I had in mind. Supposedly, dumber police are better at following orders, which is certainly true. One need only look at Germany during the 2nd World war.