Cost of manned mission to Mars as estimated by NASA: $ 20 billion.
Estimated cost of national missile defense system: $ 60 billion.
In other words: The United States develop a "missile defense" system against "rogue states" which is known not to work. For this money, they could fly man three times to Mars and back. 'nuff said.
This kind of research on animal intelligence is indeed groundbreaking, and is opposed from many sides who believe that animals cannot really communicate with humans, and any signs of communication are really just imitation. It's like with SETI: Trying to get people to finance a project where you tell them you want to talk to chimpanzees, or dolphins, or parrots (some interesting experiments there, too) is similar to requesting grants for funding a nanotechnological molecular assembler that circulates in your blood and destroys viruses..
This despite the fact that many of these projects have produced astonishing results. I was especially fascinated by the work of Dr. Roger Fouts and his colleagues, who have tried to teach the American Sign Language to chimpanzees -- and succeeded. Not only did the chimps communicate with them over food and life in general, they also taught the sign language to their children. And more precise than you might imagine: Instructions like "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV" are not at all uncommon;-)
Find more info at their Institute, I especially recommend the book "Next to Kin". I really wish such projects could be funded through micropayments. If every Slashdot reader donated a dollar to this research, they'd be much farther than they are now.
Gnutella is working quite well again. Remember, the scalability problem doesn't mean that the network congests at a given size, it just means that you will only see a limited part of the network, which is really no big deal if that part is big enough.
Check out BearShare, it's one of the most powerful Gnutella clients around and works nicely here. Other than that, see infoAnarchy (sig) for news & updates on Napster alternatives, as well as a comprehensive list of them.
As Mr. Touretzky pointed out, his page is an academic work. I am a journalist working for various German newspapers and magazines, and I would like to know whether the American Movie Industry is now trying to censor academic works? Will there be a public apology for the threats against Mr. Touretzky?
Well, here's a plug for one of my favorites. It's developing into a really weird storyline, but I like the drawing style. Read it from the start to appreciate it. Many of the other ones I like (ThinHLine, Sinfest) have already been mentioned. Oh, and I don't know if it qualifies as an online comic, but Exploding Dog is neat. I go for the emotional stuff.
And if you really have too much time, check out The Bench, a comic by the readers. Reading the backlog will take you a few years, though.
Now, to the people who have Paypal accounts, start giving something back. A dollar won't hurt you, but it'll help them.
Moron moderators. This was not off-topic but referred to the conference location. Well, I've found a cheap hotel by now, maybe I'll see some of the Slashdot guys there.
This: "Please note that in order to send, receive, or withdraw money with PayPal, you will need to register and confirm a credit or debit card."
Unfortunately(?), credit cards are not very popular outside the US. People in Europe don't trust them, and far fewer people have one. So if someone offers me something and wants me to pay via Paypal, I can't, even if I want to. (And international wire transfers are expensive, slow and complicated -- been there, done that.)
Of all the existing systems, Paypal is indeed the most promising, though. Maybe they'll allow me to wire money into an account on a German bank soon.
Wiley of "Non-Sequitur" fame had already tried a $2/month subscription-based idea for distributing his spin-off, "Homer", online. And found that the vast majority wouldn't pay for it. Even at that low a price. Advertising (or run-at-a-loss) has given everyone the impression that "everything on the web is free", and the vast majority of comments on the subscription idea were reflecting that
There are always whiners (see Napster). However, those who make the "People see the web as free beer and are never gonna pay for content" argument overlook one important thing: People are LAZY. Millions of Americans are too lazy to even cancel Internet account subscriptions they're not using! Now if people are too lazy to cancel a subscription that costs them money they will hardly take the effort to make one unless they really, really want what's offered (Napster might offer a big enough incentive to join).
It must, as Scott pointed out in his strip, be as easy as a single click. (Something else that might work: Have a phone number on the page you must call to be automatically billed via the phone bill. Goes via cell phones as well.) Anything else is not going to work for the majority. Oh, and don't make it mandatory. People will pay because it gives them a warm fuzzy feeling, Stephen King proved that. If it's easier than in King's case, the number of people who will pay will be even higher.
Very well done indeed. Many people have been saying this, yet the industry doesn't seem to get it. Why? Microsoft does have a quasi-monopoly on the browser market, why haven't they implemented a secure transaction protocol? They could be running the bank themselves and be making billions in fees. Take a look at page 2 in the carton linked at Scott's comic: That's exactly what it could look like.
The practical applications are endless. Even when I only think about comics: Right now, good comics that convey a political or scientific message are rare. But imagine: On Kuro5hin, you get 1000 users to vote on a story -- why shouldn't the same 1000 users donate 10 cents to the production of a comic? And the resulting art would be free to reproduce wherever you like. I would really like to see a good, free evolution theory comic in response to Jack Chick's creationist *$()=).
Now, think about what could be done on sites like Slashdot -- imagine the Slashdot effect with "money-URLs". Slashdot's weekly worthy cause: "Donate 1$ to the EFF" == 10000$ in donations. "Donate 1$ to help this college student get a good lawyer." "Donate 1$ to build a school in Cambodia."
Now that you think about it, doesn't it sound suspiciously like the powers that be may be afraid of our combined monetary power? And even if this is not the case, do we really want a central Microsoft bank that controls our money flow?
Where is the open-source movement when you really need it? This is one of the most important battles of the 21st century -- I'm not exaggerating, consider that this payment method will be applied macro and micro, for shopping as well as for donating.
Why don't we have an open micropayment foundation, and an open-source bank, with Richard Stallman as the director? Heck, I'll even settle for Natalie Portman, but really -- the crypto is out there, writing a browser plugin shouldn't be that hard. A mini fee (say 1/10 cent per transaction) might be used to pay the bank, surpluses go to the EFF. What are we waiting for?
Argh. If only this were a troll, then it would be easier to ignore. Unfortunately, people like this are part of a wave of historical revisionism: "The Dark Ages were not dark". How wrong you are. Let me go into it:
Boy do you need a basic history refresher. As you (quite obviously) don't know, it was the Church which preserved scientific knowledge and learning throughout the Middle Ages.
Since the church was indeed the only place where "education" was allowed, it was the only place where a faint resemblance of knowledge was preserved. Indeed, many of the ancient writings were copied, copied, and copied again, usually without giving much thought to their content. However, most of what existed in ancient times disappeared, and much of it was changed in the Middle Ages was also faked. The monks of the MA are known as the greatest fakers in history. For example, 60% of the documents of the Merowingian dynasty are known to be fakes, usually with the intention to give their creators more privileges or real estate.
Often the actual writings of ancient scientists were overwritten for mere lack of paper:
The motive for making palimpsests usually seems to have been economic--reusing parchment was cheaper than preparing a new skin. Another motive may have been directed by Christian piety, as in the conversion of a pagan Greek manuscript to receive the text of a Father of the Church. [Encyclopaedia Britannica, "palimpsest"]
More interesting than what these monks have preserved is the question what we have lost, a majority of ancient writings, complete encyclopaedias, writings on palaeontology, medicine, physics, astronomy. Often writings that contradicted the "morality" of the medieval church. Some of this is still being recovered from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Monastic scriptoria churned out copies of Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy, Homer, Virgil... and Galen, since you mention medical sciences,
Correct, Galen's ideas were taken and preserved without ever examining or even extending them. However, most of the knowledge by Galen and Hippocrates was not practically applied but "canonically" interpreted. Anatomy, surgery, dissection of corpses and the recognition of epidemics were seen as sins, and, as church historian Deschner points out, often punishable with death - in some places, until the 18th century! For centuries, doctors were only allowed to treat diseases of the abdomen if it was properly covered by lots of blankets. One of the most popular ways to combat the "Black Death" was sacrifice.
Here is the official statement by Paris university on the causes of the pest:
"We, the members of the faculty of the doctors of Paris, have, after careful consideration and debate about the current deaths, taken the advice of thet old masters of this profession... and we want to reveal the causes of the pest more clear and more open than possible by the principles of astrology and science." They recognized the cause in solar energy and the warmth of the "heavenly fire": "Steams develop which cover the sun and change its light into darkness. It repeats all the time, and this way part of our waters is spoiled." etc. They appealed to the stars to heal humanity, and suggested sexual abstinence as a preventive measure.
Did you know that one of the most important scientists of the late MA, Roger Bacon, wrote a whole book about how to capture and ride a dragon?
Lastly, let me quote a translation of Soldan's "Geschichte der Hexenprozesse" I started a couple of years ago:
p92f:
(...)
Let us take a look at medicine first!
The idea that diseases could come from bad juices and other organic disturbances instead of demoniac influence was already regarded as a ridiculous claim since the fourth century (1).
The assumption of the demoniac core of diseases made by all theurgical therapies can be attributed to the Akkadians, the native inhabitants of Chaldea. Agolbard of Lyon denied all demoniac diseases and thereby still represented a rare opinion among his contemporaries of the ninth century, just as with all his other ideas. Therefore, real medicine was seldom used, and even in these rare cases only the recipe collections created in the eighth and ninth century were used, faulty compilations by rough empiricists who on their part had exploited the older Plinius (2).
Much more frequently, patients were treated with chrism, hand laying, holy water sprinklings, formulae etc. This kind of liturgical or ritualistic medicine had precociously become a monopoly of the clergy or the monks (3). Essenic and neo-platonic theurgy had blended with this, and even the tricks of the Asclepiads were no longer disdained: Those who were not healed did not have the necessary faith.
Thedosius and Justinian took fancy to such means; occasionally, Christian clerics using such weapons entered a challenge with pagan magicians, when, for instance, bishop Maruthas healed the Persian king Jezdergerd, who had already been given up by the magicians, using words and prayers. By means of prayers and consecrated oil, St. Martine brought a paralyzed, dying woman in Venantius Fortunatus to immediate recovery (4); using chrism and crosses,
(1) "Sprengel" Gesch. d. Medicin, Th. II. p. 170.
(2) "Sprengel" Gesch. d. Med., Th. II. p. 178.
(3) "Sprengel" a.a.O. p. 150ff. - Only when medicine took on a scientific character, the monks were forbidden to practice it, like on the Council of Reims in 1131 and on the second Lateran Council in 1239. Physicians were however still considered as clerics; in France they received the permission to marry not before the 15th century.
(4) Vita S. Martini lib. I.
p94:
Hospitine, Eparchius and other hermits treated deaf and dumb as well as blind people, those sick of smallpox and the lepers. Gregory of Tours writes that, immediately after the treatment, the sick started to hear, talk and see and that they became clean (1). By exorcism, the clergymen became masters of the demons; they gave protectional powers to the rosary, the relics and the Agnus Dei no Roman ever managed to give to a phylacterium [consecrated amulet, E. M.]. The bishop Gregory of Tours (t. 594) reports in his second book about the wonders of St. Martin (2) that he, when he was sick of heavy dysentery and all medical treatment had been unsuccessful, had let a deacon get some dust from Martin's tomb. The doctor had to create a potion of it based on prescriptions, which the patient drank. He felt relieved very soon and and was completely healthy three hours after the use of the remedy. He was firmly convinced that he owed his recovery only to the power of the holy dust. - The worship of such healings took such extents that it opposed medical treatments with hostility and that it made the use of natural means appear as an interference with the area of divineness.
In the 60th chapter of the mentioned book, the religious Gregory tells how he was punished only because of one sacrilegious thought. He had already described ninty-nine miracles Martin had done and was looking for the hundredth one when he was suddenly attacked by such violent pain in the left side of his head that his veins began to knock impertuously and he burst into tears. He resisted this pain for one day and one night, but then he entered the cathedral for praying and touched the ill spot with the curtain that concealed the saint's grave. At the same moment he felt alleviation. Three days later, the same pain affected the right side and the same remedy helped for the second time. When he, however, had decided to use phlebotomy after some time,
(1) "Gregor. Turon." Hist. Franc. VI. 6.
(2) The work consists of four books which Gregory wrote in the years 576-595. Cf. "Loebell", "Gregor v. Tours und seine Zeit." [Gregory of Tours and his time] Leipz. 1839.
p95:
three days later, the evil, as he believes, gave him the idea that his earlier headache only resulted from the blood and that it could undoubtedly have been eased quickly by opening a vein the natural way. But right when he thought this, Gregory felt his had being terribly attacked by the old pain. He remorsefully hurries to the church, begs for forgiveness and touches his head with the curtain. Shortly afterwards he is completely cured. -
The story of the archdeacon "Leonastes to Bourges" (1) is the counterpart to this. He suffered from cataract and no doctor managed to help him. Finally he resorted to Martin's Basilica and staid there for two or three months, constantly fasting and praying. Then, on a festive day, his eyesight was returned. He hurried home, ordered a Jewish doctor and placed, on his advice, cupping glasses on his neck.
Now the blindness, however, returned to the same degree as the blood was drained. Full of shame, Leonastes returned to the church, prayed and fasted as before, but was not healed again. "Every man", Gregory concludes in his tale, "may draw the conclusion from this incident that he, if he has been healed by heavenly medicine once, should not resort to worldly arts again." - So the spirit of that time let religious therapy celebrate its triumphs over pharmacologic one, so that it seems as if the ancient time of Greek healing temples had moved into the Christian cathedrals, only more shiny and powerful.
While the ancients had believed in bringing up names, pictures and symbols using incantations, the Christian clergy surpassed them by orders of magnitude, even into modern days. In the exorcisms that had been adopted from Judiasm and which were extended and modified later, the names of God and the Blessed Virgin Mary
(1) "Greg. Tur." Hist. Fr. V. 6.
p96:
appeared again and again; with them, the devil was exorcised, the water was given the power to devour or expel the culprits in God's judgement, the fire's heat was taken away when it touched the limbs of the innocent and the weapons of the fighters for a just cause were steeled. By placing superstition against superstition, even the jesuits Schott and David recommended saints' bones, holy water and Agnus Dei against enchantments. In a bull from the 22th of March 1741, Pope Sixtus IV. declared the production and distribution of such Lambs of God as an exclusive right of the popes.
According to him, touching the Lambs of God leads to, aside from forgiveness of sins, protection from fire, shipwreck, storm, thunderstorm and heavy hail (1). Such sacred amulets, as the jesuit Delrio calls them, were also put around the necks of obstinate witches while they were interrogated, and the society of Jesus assures that then, during the use of torture, all insensitivity to pain would disappear.
A tale the bishop of Chartres, John of Salisbury (t. 1181), tells from his own life shows how the priests dealt with divination (2). When he learned the psalms, the priest who taught him sometimes let him and another boy take a look into a mirror-like basin covered with chrism in order to find and reveal certain information other persons were looking for. John's fellow student was docile and talked about lots of figures in misty contours; John, however, did not see anything but a blank basin in spite of his best intentions and was consequently not asked to participate anymore. Here we have the old catoptromancy [divination by examination of light reflexions, E. M.], only with the addition of consecrated oil.
(...)
(1) "Raynald." Annal. Eccles, ad ann. 1471.
(2) Policraticus I. 28.
p98:
(...)
The decision of doubtful cases with the help of notes which had the words "Yes" or "No" or other short answers on them and which were taken from beneath the altar's covering is old as well and has been practiced by the most respected men. Because of such a decision, the holy Patroklus from Bourges withdrew into solitude (3), and the corpse of the holy Leodegar was adjudged to the bishop of Poitiers when the bishops of Autun and Arras fought for it with him (4). The fact that in England, in the ninth century the lot had become a regular mean of making decisions even in court is proven by a ban that was enacted by Leo IV. to the British clergy for this reason (5). So a kind of Christian magic was practiced with the ritual of the church.
3 "Gregor. Tur." vita 5. Patrocli.
4 "Baldrici" Chronicon Camerac. I. 21.
5 "Gratian, Derret." P. II. Caus. XXVI. Qu. V. Cap. 7.
and which for many centuries did not exist outside of monastic libraries
What a great perception of knowledge, where knowledge is considered too powerful or dangerous to be actually applied, examined or expanded.
Astronomy, mathematics, cartography, botany, medicine, logic and rhetoric -- there isn't a branch of medieval learning which wasn't preserved in
Yeah, we got it. The monks copied the stuff of ancient times without adding to it for fear of being persecuted. They changed or discarded what they disliked. Most importantly, this knowledge could not be applied until the Renaissance, when finally the intellectual handcuffs of the church began to crumble. Do you actually realize what you're writing?
The only schools in existence for nearly a thousand years were in the monastaries and cathedrals of the Catholic Church.
Yep, because the Catholic Church, which was the relevant source of power over the whole Middle Ages, did not want the general population to be educated. However, of course they did want the clergy to be educated to better control and manipulate the populace.
Oh, just so you don't get a wrong impression WRT the size of the medieval libraries.. while the library of Alexandria, the largest of ancient times, held 700,000 to 1,000,000 scrolls, and the library of a rich citizen of Roman times held around 30,000 scrolls, one of the largest libraries of the Middle Ages for which we have data, that of the crusader fortress of Cluny, didn't hold 100,000 books, not 10,000, not even 1,000, no, around 420.
All the great universities of Europe -- and many in America -- owe their origins to Church patronage of learning.
Because that was the origin where they could have come from.
During some of the darkest periods of Western history the monk was the most highly educated member of society.
Yep, as I said, education for the ruling class.
Den of ignorance?
Yes, compared with ancient times, the monks of the Dark Ages were, well, crazy as shithouse rats, as outlined by their actual practices. If you speak German, go here, you'll find the complete copy of "Der Pfaffenspiegel", one of the most important works of church criticism, written in the 19th century. It gives you more examples than I can ever churn out, but if you insist, I will give you some.
To the contrary, the Church was the great educational force of the medieval ages, at a time when the world outside monastic walls had abandoned the fire of knowledge.
ROTFL. How selective can your perception get? The church was not only the only place where knowledge was preserved, it was also the center of power! The abandonment of knowledge "outside monastic walls" was not a free decision by the citizens ("Oh! All this Roman ancient knowledge stuff. Who needs it? I will rather starve or be a slave to some rich landlord!"), but a direct imposition by the church, which not only spread disinformation called belief, controlled the populace through churches and cults, but also directly persecuted and often eradicated all movements that were contrary to the Catholic belief.
Boethius, Cassiodorus, and later the saintly Bede, Isidore of Seville, and Alcuin -- these were the great educators of their time, and they were
universally children of the Church.
You can repeat it as often as you want to, it doesn't get any more logical. Of course the educated people came from the church, as nobody else was allowed to be educated.
In the twelfth century the Church conceived and nurtured the Renaissance.
The church was a source of ancient knowledge when, because of the loss of power suffered by the church, it became possible to use and distribute this knowledge again. However, as you well know, the church itself remained a fiery fighter against science in the next centuries, burning thousands of books and the people who wrote them.
The fact is that for nearly a thousand years in the West, scientific knowledge and learning existed nowhere except in monasteries and Church-sponsored centers of education.
Thanks for, again, pointing this out.
Instead of castigating the Church for its ignorance
I castigate it for its fear of the truth, which was the reason that the preservation of knowledge was only permitted within church walls, its application only if reconcilable with the primitive medieval worldview.
you should be down on your knees in gratitude for what it had preserved when all others had turned their backs.
Your selective perception is so remarkable that a book could be written about it. The rest of your comment repeats the same "The church was the only place of knowledge, therefore the church is good" argument, which is one of the most ridiculous attempts at apologism I have ever heard. Next you're probably going to babble about how the crusades were necessary and the inqusition had to be seen in the context of history, the witchhunts weren't that bad either (hey, the Protestants did it, too!) and anti-semitism, well, uh, yeah, the church did nothing compared to the nazis!
Well, I'm not really sure I like the terms "karma whore" or "troll". But if you mean with a) people who write interesting comments to contribute to the community (and possibly be rewarded by being rated high or receiving high comments), and with b) people who write comments that elicit a lot of responses, then you're right;-).
The human brain looks for rewards & avoids punishments, and this fact will inevitably reflect in all online communities.
The "problem", if there is such is not really in "karma" or "mojo" or whatever, if you don't have these, people will do it manually by posting "Thank you! Well said" or "TROLL *plonk*" (see Usenet). No real difference except for the little number that shows up in the account info (I believe it's wrong to show it, that only creates challenges, K5 doesn't show it).
The real question is what behavior is rewarded. I think that by making all users effectively moderators, K5 avoids the kind of behavior that many may find annoying on/. ("Oh, look, I've looked up the link, mod me up!") On/., you have more a selection of posts, where on K5, you have an election:)
The only kind of behavior I find annoying is posting an opinion different from your own just to get a lot of feedback. I have never understood where the reward in this lies, and I like to know what the people I talk to really think. Ah, and those goatsex links. They suck.
Censorship can prevent life-saving information from being spread. Much of the overpopulation of the last 2000 years can be attributed to lack of knowledge about contraception, which has been (and still is) actively censored by religious pressure groups.
The Dark Ages were the best example for the killing power of censorship. During that time, the church held a monopoly on the truth -- and the consequence was that most knowledge of ancient times was lost or suppressed, and science stagnated, which was especially important with regard to the medical profession, which practically did not exist. I have a huge file on the absurd rituals and practices that were used to "heal" people in the Dark Ages. Demons were believed to cause all illnesses, and those who strayed from this belief were outcasts and often persecuted. As you may know, exorcism is still practiced by the Catholic Church, even in the Vatican.
The fact that repressive governments like China can remain in power and continue to kill people is also a direct consequence of the fact that they censor information that could mean change. Censorship prevents change, and change can save lives.
Recently on German TV, there was a documentary about a US sect that prevented the use of traditional medicine. They showed a cemetery where all the victims of this irrationality, many of them children, were buried. Surely these people would love it if nobody had access to this information. By trying to pass legislation that would have outlawed a lot of drug-related information on the Net, the US gov't would have done the first step in that direction.
Always remember: Where they burn books, people are next. Censorship kills. Sooner or later.
IMO, Kuro5hin is lame. I keep the K5 Slashbox up, and still read the titles semi-regularly. Most of them are drivel.
It should be noted that K5 is mostly a discussion site. Slashdot & K5 are not in direct competition with each other, and I browse both sites regularly. Those who just want the news (and additional facts that are usually supplied by the readers) should go to Slashdot.
Whether the discussions on K5 are of any value, everyone must decide for themselves. They are certainly not for close-minded people.
Show me an out-of-the box installation of Emacs for Windows that not only does decently install & configure the program without much user interaction but also gives you all the info you need to know to write letters, including an easy interface to select templates for common tasks.
No, you can't expect the average user to acquire this info by themselves. Emacs is even too much for a geek like myself.
Oh yeah, but it requires an X-Server. Not exactly what I would expect the type of user to handle who thinks all his data is lost if a disk is left in the drive at startup.
you're right, but I don't. Positioning, scaling and using graphics within LaTeX is far from easy. And we don't have to discuss in which ways MS Word sucks -- it will never find its way onto my harddisk. (I personally use TXT, LaTeX, HTML and StarOffice, depending on the task at hand.)
The question is not whether something is possible in LaTeX, the question is how long it takes the average user to do it.
Note that the copyright situation for streaming MP3s is not much different than for serving them directly. (After all, it is no problem to capture the bitstream and save it.) So unless you're paying royalties or serving only free MP3s, you might as well run a decent MP3 FTP or webserver, or fire up Napster or the P2P sharing application of your choice.
Napster can be used like a streaming audio directory if you have enough bandwidth and find users with the right speed. I have played a lot of songs while d/ling them. Pretty cool: 1) Search any song you like, 2) find fastest location, 3) play live. For maximum speed, Kazaa is quite cool, it bundles downloads from several locations to achieve higher speeds.
Um, regarding StarOffice, that should be programs, not platforms. StarOffice itself is available on a number of platforms, but AFAIK, with one or two exceptions, that's the only program you can use to open SDW.
HTML print results are unpredictable, formulas are hard to layout, and page design is impossible.
LaTeX is bad at handling images, and there are no easy editors for the Windows platform.
RTF has been killed by Microsoft with dozens of different implementations. (Some of them omit important things like footnotes.)
SDW (Star Office) is just as proprietary as Microsoft's DOC, but supported by fewer platforms.
PDF is a print format, text extraction is more difficult, and it's bad for PDAs.
TXT is insufficient for most tasks.
XML may be a way out, but there's no XML-based document format on the horizon. (I don't know about this Open E-Book stuff, though.) All in all, the OSS community has failed to provide an open, flexible document format that could compete with MS Word. I'm as unhappy with that as you are, but if you want to change it, all word processor developers must get together and formulate a standard. Is this ever going to happen? Note that most closed-source word processors want to bind their users to their product by using a proprietary, closed format.
Yes, it is. Napster is P2P on the application layer, while Freenet, Gnutella & Co. are P2P on the network layer. On iA, we categorize the different networks by "centralized P2P" and "decentralized P2P".
Please store this as a stock rant on the subject somewhere. The whole discussion is just too repetitive, and this is one of the best summaries I've seen so far.
Slashdot Mirror
If a megaton H-Bomb goes down on the US, you'll lose much more than just a city. Unfortunately, this risk cannot be reduced by military means.
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Estimated cost of national missile defense system: $ 60 billion.
In other words: The United States develop a "missile defense" system against "rogue states" which is known not to work. For this money, they could fly man three times to Mars and back. 'nuff said.
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This despite the fact that many of these projects have produced astonishing results. I was especially fascinated by the work of Dr. Roger Fouts and his colleagues, who have tried to teach the American Sign Language to chimpanzees -- and succeeded. Not only did the chimps communicate with them over food and life in general, they also taught the sign language to their children. And more precise than you might imagine: Instructions like "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV" are not at all uncommon ;-)
Find more info at their Institute, I especially recommend the book "Next to Kin". I really wish such projects could be funded through micropayments. If every Slashdot reader donated a dollar to this research, they'd be much farther than they are now.
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Check out BearShare, it's one of the most powerful Gnutella clients around and works nicely here. Other than that, see infoAnarchy (sig) for news & updates on Napster alternatives, as well as a comprehensive list of them.
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Dear Sir,
I read the e-mail you sent to Dr. David Touretzky:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/mpaa-thre at-feb2001.txt
with regard to his "DeCSS Gallery" page:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/
As Mr. Touretzky pointed out, his page is an academic work. I am a journalist working for various German newspapers and magazines, and I would like to know whether the American Movie Industry is now trying to censor academic works? Will there be a public apology for the threats against Mr. Touretzky?
Best regards,
Erik Moeller
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And if you really have too much time, check out The Bench, a comic by the readers. Reading the backlog will take you a few years, though.
Now, to the people who have Paypal accounts, start giving something back. A dollar won't hurt you, but it'll help them.
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Unfortunately(?), credit cards are not very popular outside the US. People in Europe don't trust them, and far fewer people have one. So if someone offers me something and wants me to pay via Paypal, I can't, even if I want to. (And international wire transfers are expensive, slow and complicated -- been there, done that.)
Of all the existing systems, Paypal is indeed the most promising, though. Maybe they'll allow me to wire money into an account on a German bank soon.
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There are always whiners (see Napster). However, those who make the "People see the web as free beer and are never gonna pay for content" argument overlook one important thing: People are LAZY. Millions of Americans are too lazy to even cancel Internet account subscriptions they're not using! Now if people are too lazy to cancel a subscription that costs them money they will hardly take the effort to make one unless they really, really want what's offered (Napster might offer a big enough incentive to join).
It must, as Scott pointed out in his strip, be as easy as a single click. (Something else that might work: Have a phone number on the page you must call to be automatically billed via the phone bill. Goes via cell phones as well.) Anything else is not going to work for the majority. Oh, and don't make it mandatory. People will pay because it gives them a warm fuzzy feeling, Stephen King proved that. If it's easier than in King's case, the number of people who will pay will be even higher.
Hey, I used a lot of formatting in that post.
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The practical applications are endless. Even when I only think about comics: Right now, good comics that convey a political or scientific message are rare. But imagine: On Kuro5hin, you get 1000 users to vote on a story -- why shouldn't the same 1000 users donate 10 cents to the production of a comic? And the resulting art would be free to reproduce wherever you like. I would really like to see a good, free evolution theory comic in response to Jack Chick's creationist *$()=).
Now, think about what could be done on sites like Slashdot -- imagine the Slashdot effect with "money-URLs". Slashdot's weekly worthy cause: "Donate 1$ to the EFF" == 10000$ in donations. "Donate 1$ to help this college student get a good lawyer." "Donate 1$ to build a school in Cambodia."
Now that you think about it, doesn't it sound suspiciously like the powers that be may be afraid of our combined monetary power? And even if this is not the case, do we really want a central Microsoft bank that controls our money flow?
Where is the open-source movement when you really need it? This is one of the most important battles of the 21st century -- I'm not exaggerating, consider that this payment method will be applied macro and micro, for shopping as well as for donating.
Why don't we have an open micropayment foundation, and an open-source bank, with Richard Stallman as the director? Heck, I'll even settle for Natalie Portman, but really -- the crypto is out there, writing a browser plugin shouldn't be that hard. A mini fee (say 1/10 cent per transaction) might be used to pay the bank, surpluses go to the EFF. What are we waiting for?
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Boy do you need a basic history refresher. As you (quite obviously) don't know, it was the Church which preserved scientific knowledge and learning throughout the Middle Ages.
Since the church was indeed the only place where "education" was allowed, it was the only place where a faint resemblance of knowledge was preserved. Indeed, many of the ancient writings were copied, copied, and copied again, usually without giving much thought to their content. However, most of what existed in ancient times disappeared, and much of it was changed in the Middle Ages was also faked. The monks of the MA are known as the greatest fakers in history. For example, 60% of the documents of the Merowingian dynasty are known to be fakes, usually with the intention to give their creators more privileges or real estate.
Often the actual writings of ancient scientists were overwritten for mere lack of paper:
More interesting than what these monks have preserved is the question what we have lost, a majority of ancient writings, complete encyclopaedias, writings on palaeontology, medicine, physics, astronomy. Often writings that contradicted the "morality" of the medieval church. Some of this is still being recovered from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Monastic scriptoria churned out copies of Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy, Homer, Virgil ... and Galen, since you mention medical sciences,
Correct, Galen's ideas were taken and preserved without ever examining or even extending them. However, most of the knowledge by Galen and Hippocrates was not practically applied but "canonically" interpreted. Anatomy, surgery, dissection of corpses and the recognition of epidemics were seen as sins, and, as church historian Deschner points out, often punishable with death - in some places, until the 18th century! For centuries, doctors were only allowed to treat diseases of the abdomen if it was properly covered by lots of blankets. One of the most popular ways to combat the "Black Death" was sacrifice.
Here is the official statement by Paris university on the causes of the pest:
"We, the members of the faculty of the doctors of Paris, have, after careful consideration and debate about the current deaths, taken the advice of thet old masters of this profession... and we want to reveal the causes of the pest more clear and more open than possible by the principles of astrology and science." They recognized the cause in solar energy and the warmth of the "heavenly fire": "Steams develop which cover the sun and change its light into darkness. It repeats all the time, and this way part of our waters is spoiled." etc. They appealed to the stars to heal humanity, and suggested sexual abstinence as a preventive measure.
Did you know that one of the most important scientists of the late MA, Roger Bacon, wrote a whole book about how to capture and ride a dragon?
Lastly, let me quote a translation of Soldan's "Geschichte der Hexenprozesse" I started a couple of years ago:
and which for many centuries did not exist outside of monastic libraries
What a great perception of knowledge, where knowledge is considered too powerful or dangerous to be actually applied, examined or expanded.
Astronomy, mathematics, cartography, botany, medicine, logic and rhetoric -- there isn't a branch of medieval learning which wasn't preserved in
Yeah, we got it. The monks copied the stuff of ancient times without adding to it for fear of being persecuted. They changed or discarded what they disliked. Most importantly, this knowledge could not be applied until the Renaissance, when finally the intellectual handcuffs of the church began to crumble. Do you actually realize what you're writing?
The only schools in existence for nearly a thousand years were in the monastaries and cathedrals of the Catholic Church.
Yep, because the Catholic Church, which was the relevant source of power over the whole Middle Ages, did not want the general population to be educated. However, of course they did want the clergy to be educated to better control and manipulate the populace.
Oh, just so you don't get a wrong impression WRT the size of the medieval libraries .. while the library of Alexandria, the largest of ancient times, held 700,000 to 1,000,000 scrolls, and the library of a rich citizen of Roman times held around 30,000 scrolls, one of the largest libraries of the Middle Ages for which we have data, that of the crusader fortress of Cluny, didn't hold 100,000 books, not 10,000, not even 1,000, no, around 420.
All the great universities of Europe -- and many in America -- owe their origins to Church patronage of learning.
Because that was the origin where they could have come from.
During some of the darkest periods of Western history the monk was the most highly educated member of society.
Yep, as I said, education for the ruling class.
Den of ignorance?
Yes, compared with ancient times, the monks of the Dark Ages were, well, crazy as shithouse rats, as outlined by their actual practices. If you speak German, go here, you'll find the complete copy of "Der Pfaffenspiegel", one of the most important works of church criticism, written in the 19th century. It gives you more examples than I can ever churn out, but if you insist, I will give you some.
To the contrary, the Church was the great educational force of the medieval ages, at a time when the world outside monastic walls had abandoned the fire of knowledge.
ROTFL. How selective can your perception get? The church was not only the only place where knowledge was preserved, it was also the center of power! The abandonment of knowledge "outside monastic walls" was not a free decision by the citizens ("Oh! All this Roman ancient knowledge stuff. Who needs it? I will rather starve or be a slave to some rich landlord!"), but a direct imposition by the church, which not only spread disinformation called belief, controlled the populace through churches and cults, but also directly persecuted and often eradicated all movements that were contrary to the Catholic belief.
Boethius, Cassiodorus, and later the saintly Bede, Isidore of Seville, and Alcuin -- these were the great educators of their time, and they were universally children of the Church.
You can repeat it as often as you want to, it doesn't get any more logical. Of course the educated people came from the church, as nobody else was allowed to be educated.
In the twelfth century the Church conceived and nurtured the Renaissance.
The church was a source of ancient knowledge when, because of the loss of power suffered by the church, it became possible to use and distribute this knowledge again. However, as you well know, the church itself remained a fiery fighter against science in the next centuries, burning thousands of books and the people who wrote them.
The fact is that for nearly a thousand years in the West, scientific knowledge and learning existed nowhere except in monasteries and Church-sponsored centers of education.
Thanks for, again, pointing this out.
Instead of castigating the Church for its ignorance
I castigate it for its fear of the truth, which was the reason that the preservation of knowledge was only permitted within church walls, its application only if reconcilable with the primitive medieval worldview.
you should be down on your knees in gratitude for what it had preserved when all others had turned their backs.
Your selective perception is so remarkable that a book could be written about it. The rest of your comment repeats the same "The church was the only place of knowledge, therefore the church is good" argument, which is one of the most ridiculous attempts at apologism I have ever heard. Next you're probably going to babble about how the crusades were necessary and the inqusition had to be seen in the context of history, the witchhunts weren't that bad either (hey, the Protestants did it, too!) and anti-semitism, well, uh, yeah, the church did nothing compared to the nazis!
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The human brain looks for rewards & avoids punishments, and this fact will inevitably reflect in all online communities.
The "problem", if there is such is not really in "karma" or "mojo" or whatever, if you don't have these, people will do it manually by posting "Thank you! Well said" or "TROLL *plonk*" (see Usenet). No real difference except for the little number that shows up in the account info (I believe it's wrong to show it, that only creates challenges, K5 doesn't show it).
The real question is what behavior is rewarded. I think that by making all users effectively moderators, K5 avoids the kind of behavior that many may find annoying on /. ("Oh, look, I've looked up the link, mod me up!") On /., you have more a selection of posts, where on K5, you have an election :)
The only kind of behavior I find annoying is posting an opinion different from your own just to get a lot of feedback. I have never understood where the reward in this lies, and I like to know what the people I talk to really think. Ah, and those goatsex links. They suck.
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Nor did many Nazi leaders.
Censorship can prevent life-saving information from being spread. Much of the overpopulation of the last 2000 years can be attributed to lack of knowledge about contraception, which has been (and still is) actively censored by religious pressure groups.
The Dark Ages were the best example for the killing power of censorship. During that time, the church held a monopoly on the truth -- and the consequence was that most knowledge of ancient times was lost or suppressed, and science stagnated, which was especially important with regard to the medical profession, which practically did not exist. I have a huge file on the absurd rituals and practices that were used to "heal" people in the Dark Ages. Demons were believed to cause all illnesses, and those who strayed from this belief were outcasts and often persecuted. As you may know, exorcism is still practiced by the Catholic Church, even in the Vatican.
The fact that repressive governments like China can remain in power and continue to kill people is also a direct consequence of the fact that they censor information that could mean change. Censorship prevents change, and change can save lives.
Recently on German TV, there was a documentary about a US sect that prevented the use of traditional medicine. They showed a cemetery where all the victims of this irrationality, many of them children, were buried. Surely these people would love it if nobody had access to this information. By trying to pass legislation that would have outlawed a lot of drug-related information on the Net, the US gov't would have done the first step in that direction.
Always remember: Where they burn books, people are next. Censorship kills. Sooner or later.
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It should be noted that K5 is mostly a discussion site. Slashdot & K5 are not in direct competition with each other, and I browse both sites regularly. Those who just want the news (and additional facts that are usually supplied by the readers) should go to Slashdot.
Whether the discussions on K5 are of any value, everyone must decide for themselves. They are certainly not for close-minded people.
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Show me an out-of-the box installation of Emacs for Windows that not only does decently install & configure the program without much user interaction but also gives you all the info you need to know to write letters, including an easy interface to select templates for common tasks.
No, you can't expect the average user to acquire this info by themselves. Emacs is even too much for a geek like myself.
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\raisebox{-12.8mm}{% \setlength{\unitlength}{1truemm} \includegraphics[width=50 pt,height=50 pt,keepaspectratio=true]{logo2.bmp} }
you're right, but I don't. Positioning, scaling and using graphics within LaTeX is far from easy. And we don't have to discuss in which ways MS Word sucks -- it will never find its way onto my harddisk. (I personally use TXT, LaTeX, HTML and StarOffice, depending on the task at hand.)
The question is not whether something is possible in LaTeX, the question is how long it takes the average user to do it.
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Napster can be used like a streaming audio directory if you have enough bandwidth and find users with the right speed. I have played a lot of songs while d/ling them. Pretty cool: 1) Search any song you like, 2) find fastest location, 3) play live. For maximum speed, Kazaa is quite cool, it bundles downloads from several locations to achieve higher speeds.
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XML may be a way out, but there's no XML-based document format on the horizon. (I don't know about this Open E-Book stuff, though.) All in all, the OSS community has failed to provide an open, flexible document format that could compete with MS Word. I'm as unhappy with that as you are, but if you want to change it, all word processor developers must get together and formulate a standard. Is this ever going to happen? Note that most closed-source word processors want to bind their users to their product by using a proprietary, closed format.
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