Re:And here comes Carnivore...
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More WTC News
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In Japan, you can leave your shopping bag outside the door while you go into someplace else to buy more because
nobody will steal it. There is no motivation to.
On the other hand, Japan is the only country
in the world in which my pocketknife has been
taken from me by airport security (this includes
substantial Mideast and Europe travel).
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
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More On Tragedy
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Another: The original Assassins sect were a serious problem in the middle east until Genghis Khan swept thru. He wasn't exactly a soft-on-crime dude. (Sorry, no ref., this is from memory).
Yeah but... $20-30 US (not atypical for many
graphic novels---Jimmy Corrigan for example
is $30) is still a lot. I almost never
buy hardback novels for that price, why should
I pay that for a comic I'll read in half the time?
There are several times I've picked up really good looking graphic novels, seen the price, and went and bought 2-3 paperback novels (or 2 CDs) instead.
I realize that these things are high quality art, etc., but this is pricing itself right out any audience that isn't pure fanboy. If I want to read the whole Lord of the Rings Saga, I pay $20-30. The whole Cerebus line? $300 at least, trade paperback. That's
an order of magnitude, people.
(ps. I'm partially playing Devil's advocate here. I've almost got all of Cerebus up to the present, but it took a long time to do and I spend much more on other things in the meantime).
Isn't it interesting that the groups of people which traditionally are responsible for the greatest amount of innovation are almost
unanimous against the idea of software patentability.
Isn't in interesting that the groups of people which traditionally are responsible for the funding of the greatest amount of
innovation are almost unanimous in wanting to
guarantee funding for more research?
Haven't you ever been to a department store? Put the things people want at the *back* so you have to wade through miles of purses and perfume to get to them...
It works, I've gone to Amazon at least once to search for a specific book and ended up following a random link and buying something I didn't expect---just acting like a good consumer I guess!
How many of the "support people" (your garbage men, janitor,
delivery man- yes and maybe even scientists) love (insert favorite musician here) and make it through their day
easier with some song in their head -- and how does that effect productivity? maybe that's not quantifiable
Yeah, but the transmission technology required
for them to be able to hear it is...
I went to see the show with some Amazon friends (I'm not one). It was pretty funny, even some of the "higher up" Amazonians thought.
But the guy himself? Well-remembered! "Yeah, he joined Customer Service when I did. Always hung around and never did anything. We were all being promoted beyond him when he left...never did a bit of work..."
This opinion was shared by both his colleagues and his higher-ups.
Total agreement here. Got powerfully zapped like that three years ago.
I went from "competant" Unix (Solaris) User, where the machine was maintained by someone else, to "Administrator" when I bought a PC and installed Red Hat a few years back. Plugged it right into my office ethernet (University campus, so fairly open to the world).
Didn't know half of what Ports were open until I was owned by some kiddie (via Sendmail). Took me ten minutes to put on wrappers (after the complete wipe/rebuild, naturally) when I knew, but why the hell wasn't it like that to begin with?? Would have taken the same ten minutes for anyone who wanted those services to turn them on... I'm not shirking my own responsibility, but I think Red Hat made a mistake.
You can buy a lot of crack for the cost of a good pair of running shoes. (This doesn't really
change the overall point, though, because if it weren't for aggressive marketing, they wouldn't be worth
nearly as much money).
And what about all those folks who have gotten
killed for those Little Green Pieces of Paper
and little lumps of metal?
Can't eat 'em. Can burn 'em for heat and make conductors out of some of 'em. But I think some organization's done some good marketing on them...must be a conspiracy...
Inventor Peter Suber quotes one of the "interesting, maybe impossible goals" of Nomic is to try and make a game in which "at least one" rule is completely impossible to change, yet at the same time there are still some rules which may change.
Football games are zero sum. To see this, keep score on a number line, starting at 0 in the middle. Whenever one team scores, move the score pointer to the left. Whenever the other team scores, move the score pointer to the right.
This is exactly the same as the traditional way of keeping score, in the results.
By this logic, any game where the object is to have the highest score at the end of a time limit is 0-sum.
For that matter, Scrabble is the same way. The rules define "low-scoring games" and "high-scoring games," and you can only get high scoring games by being relatively generous in leaving opportunities.
And one of the things you learn quickly... the high-scoring games (where everyone admires everyone else's cleverness) tend to be more fun. Well, for me anyway!
However, in both M.U.L.E. and Settlers you can have two types of games: hoarding games where everyone does poorly, and trading games where everyone does well. Yes, one person reaches a goal first, but the score of everyone is higher with trading. It's a delicate balance.
That's why M.U.L.E. was so good, by the way. At the end of the game, you could either be the richest person in a planet full of shacks (a dubious honor at best), or on a planet full of palatial estates, depending on the wealth of the entire planet.
So, even if you beat the other players, if you did so by being stingy, there was a feeling that you could have done much better.
Great game, M.U.L.E. Anyone have a link to an emulated version?
You earthlings, you think the universe revolves around you, why would we build the 1:10:101 ratio in a base-10 based measurement system, i don't know...
Weeell, measuring the 4 and 9 dimensions were probably only accurate to 1/4inch or so (hard to get the tape perfectly perpendicular-my error not the builder's error) but I also had a plastic ruler that was 1.0ft (marked and sqaured on the edges) and the thing was exactly 1.0 so I thought feet was a good measure to keep it in.
Just goes to show, Imperial measures were the work of God (or at least space aliens). Show those EU b@Stards that want us to measure things in kilograms a thing or two...
A followup: just finished re-orienting the rotated tape-measure, and the true dimensions are 1.0 x 4.0 x 9.0 x 16.0 x 25.0 x 36.0 x 49.0 x whups gotta run, i just figured out my tax return...
Well, I just walked down with my trusty tape measure (can see the hill from my office building) and the official size:
1.0ft x 4.0ft x 8.5+ft
My ruler goes to 1/16 inches and it was accurate to that level---don't have micrometers to examine further. It was buried slightly at an angle, so I couldn't determine the height.
It's oriented N/S, but with the sun at its current height there's at least one "sunrise over monolith" place to stand.
I would have dug it up to determine the height, but there was a crowd there, mostly dog-walkers. I got involved with a conversation with Fido
and Rex about the trival 12th-dimensional spacetime rotation required to unify...oh, that's right, you haven't touched it yet.
Well, I just walked down with my trusty tape measure (can see the hill from my office building) and the official size:
1.0ft x 4.0ft x 8.5+ft
My ruler goes to 1/16 inches and it was accurate to that level---don't have micrometers to examine further. It was buried slightly at an angle, so I couldn't determine the height.
It's oriented N/S, but with the sun at its current height there's at least one "sunrise over monolith" place to stand.
I would have dug it up to determine the height, but there was a crowd there, mostly dog-walkers. I got involved with a conversation with Fido and Rex about the trival 12th-dimensional spacetime rotation required to unify...oh, that's right, you haven't touched it yet.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, Japan is the only country in the world in which my pocketknife has been taken from me by airport security (this includes substantial Mideast and Europe travel).
Another: The original Assassins sect were a serious problem in the middle east until Genghis Khan swept thru. He wasn't exactly a soft-on-crime dude. (Sorry, no ref., this is from memory).
With this long list of favorite online comics from all you guys, how many of you have (paypal etc.) paid for them? How much?
Yeah but... $20-30 US (not atypical for many graphic novels---Jimmy Corrigan for example is $30) is still a lot. I almost never buy hardback novels for that price, why should I pay that for a comic I'll read in half the time? There are several times I've picked up really good looking graphic novels, seen the price, and went and bought 2-3 paperback novels (or 2 CDs) instead.
I realize that these things are high quality art, etc., but this is pricing itself right out any audience that isn't pure fanboy. If I want to read the whole Lord of the Rings Saga, I pay $20-30. The whole Cerebus line? $300 at least, trade paperback. That's an order of magnitude, people.
(ps. I'm partially playing Devil's advocate here. I've almost got all of Cerebus up to the present, but it took a long time to do and I spend much more on other things in the meantime).
Isn't in interesting that the groups of people which traditionally are responsible for the funding of the greatest amount of innovation are almost unanimous in wanting to guarantee funding for more research?
...most genes are split up into segments... That's it. I'm reprogramming everything with GOTOs.
The difference is, British Rail worked once.
Nope, nope, nope! It's the other way around.
Haven't you ever been to a department store? Put the things people want at the *back* so you have to wade through miles of purses and perfume to get to them...
It works, I've gone to Amazon at least once to search for a specific book and ended up following a random link and buying something I didn't expect---just acting like a good consumer I guess!
How many of the "support people" (your garbage men, janitor, delivery man- yes and maybe even scientists) love (insert favorite musician here) and make it through their day easier with some song in their head -- and how does that effect productivity? maybe that's not quantifiable Yeah, but the transmission technology required for them to be able to hear it is...
I went to see the show with some Amazon friends (I'm not one). It was pretty funny, even some of the "higher up" Amazonians thought. But the guy himself? Well-remembered! "Yeah, he joined Customer Service when I did. Always hung around and never did anything. We were all being promoted beyond him when he left...never did a bit of work..." This opinion was shared by both his colleagues and his higher-ups.
I went from "competant" Unix (Solaris) User, where the machine was maintained by someone else, to "Administrator" when I bought a PC and installed Red Hat a few years back. Plugged it right into my office ethernet (University campus, so fairly open to the world).
Didn't know half of what Ports were open until I was owned by some kiddie (via Sendmail). Took me ten minutes to put on wrappers (after the complete wipe/rebuild, naturally) when I knew, but why the hell wasn't it like that to begin with?? Would have taken the same ten minutes for anyone who wanted those services to turn them on... I'm not shirking my own responsibility, but I think Red Hat made a mistake.
You can buy a lot of crack for the cost of a good pair of running shoes. (This doesn't really change the overall point, though, because if it weren't for aggressive marketing, they wouldn't be worth nearly as much money). And what about all those folks who have gotten killed for those Little Green Pieces of Paper and little lumps of metal? Can't eat 'em. Can burn 'em for heat and make conductors out of some of 'em. But I think some organization's done some good marketing on them...must be a conspiracy...
Lego is a zero-sum game if you're playing with your sister ("That big green one's MINE!").
Inventor Peter Suber quotes one of the "interesting, maybe impossible goals" of Nomic is to try and make a game in which "at least one" rule is completely impossible to change, yet at the same time there are still some rules which may change.
This is exactly the same as the traditional way of keeping score, in the results.
By this logic, any game where the object is to have the highest score at the end of a time limit is 0-sum.For that matter, Scrabble is the same way. The rules define "low-scoring games" and "high-scoring games," and you can only get high scoring games by being relatively generous in leaving opportunities. And one of the things you learn quickly... the high-scoring games (where everyone admires everyone else's cleverness) tend to be more fun. Well, for me anyway!
However, in both M.U.L.E. and Settlers you can have two types of games: hoarding games where everyone does poorly, and trading games where everyone does well. Yes, one person reaches a goal first, but the score of everyone is higher with trading. It's a delicate balance. That's why M.U.L.E. was so good, by the way. At the end of the game, you could either be the richest person in a planet full of shacks (a dubious honor at best), or on a planet full of palatial estates, depending on the wealth of the entire planet .
So, even if you beat the other players, if you did so by being stingy, there was a feeling that you could have done much better.
Great game, M.U.L.E. Anyone have a link to an emulated version?
Well, in the collection of intelligent wildlife, we now have in the picture of a heron next on the evolutionary list...
Actually, it was hollow, but of a fairly thick steel, what you might call "public sculpture grade."
When you tapped it, the sound wasn't tinny or light, sort of heavy like a bell (tho' not in tune).
whups! That's 1:100:1001, of course! silly me typing too fast...
You earthlings, you think the universe revolves around you, why would we build the 1:10:101 ratio in a base-10 based measurement system, i don't know...
Just goes to show, Imperial measures were the work of God (or at least space aliens). Show those EU b@Stards that want us to measure things in kilograms a thing or two...
A followup: just finished re-orienting the rotated tape-measure, and the true dimensions are 1.0 x 4.0 x 9.0 x 16.0 x 25.0 x 36.0 x 49.0 x whups gotta run, i just figured out my tax return...
1.0ft x 4.0ft x 8.5+ft
My ruler goes to 1/16 inches and it was accurate to that level---don't have micrometers to examine further. It was buried slightly at an angle, so I couldn't determine the height.
It's oriented N/S, but with the sun at its current height there's at least one "sunrise over monolith" place to stand.
I would have dug it up to determine the height, but there was a crowd there, mostly dog-walkers. I got involved with a conversation with Fido and Rex about the trival 12th-dimensional spacetime rotation required to unify...oh, that's right, you haven't touched it yet.
Well, I just walked down with my trusty tape measure (can see the hill from my office building) and the official size:
1.0ft x 4.0ft x 8.5+ft
My ruler goes to 1/16 inches and it was accurate to that level---don't have micrometers to examine further. It was buried slightly at an angle, so I couldn't determine the height.It's oriented N/S, but with the sun at its current height there's at least one "sunrise over monolith" place to stand.
I would have dug it up to determine the height, but there was a crowd there, mostly dog-walkers. I got involved with a conversation with Fido and Rex about the trival 12th-dimensional spacetime rotation required to unify...oh, that's right, you haven't touched it yet.