Anyone remember the RISCOS font manager? Drawfiles? I seem to remember using 32-bit fixed-point co-ordinates and anti-aliased fonts on an A5000 a *good* long while ago.
I first heard Metallica's music on an Ampeg C60 tape, which I still have, onto which a friend had copied "Master of Puppets" in its entirety.
I was fourteen, and most of the music I had was on tapes of one sort or another. Myself and my friends taped computer games and music, illegally, on a regular basis: this was a normal activity for us. It was how we got to find out what was out there, what we liked. It was how we got to hear things we couldn't afford to buy, and had no hope of ever hearing on the radio.
It was also - there's no ducking out of this - how we got hold of stuff we could perfectly well afford to buy, and just wanted free copies of. But if that stuff was really any good, we usually ended up buying it anyway - at least one copy between three or four of us...
I don't need to tell you what that music meant to me at the time. It was the first thing I had ever heard that had more passion, more aggression and more intelligence in it than Dire Straits. It scared me shitless. I listened to it through headphones, over and over, wondering if it was going to recruit me into the legions of the damned and how I would explain things to my parents if it did. It was truly wonderful, life-affirming, life-saving stuff.
Does this sound like treating your music as a commodity? The tapes we swapped and traded were commodities, sure, and however much nostalgia value that Ampeg C60 has for me now it was one of dozens cluttering my bedroom floor at the time.
But I had a *lot* of respect for Metallica - the kind of respect that send me out when I had a bit of money in my pocket to get hold of everything Metallica-related I could find, that made me want not only records (dead medium - remember 'em?) but T-shirts, baseball caps, guitar tab books, ticket stubs, samples of Lars' faeces, you name it. The kind of respect that meant I can still play the solo to "To Live Is To Die" note-perfect from memory. And it was the music that earned that respect, not the medium I first heard it on.
How much respect do you think I would've had for Metallica if a fscking lawyer had turned up on my front doorstep saying "you've *stolen* from these people, son", swept up all those C60s and issued an injunction banning me from ever using a cassette player again?
"So you've shut off your cookies, blocked those banner ads, and installed JunkBuster. Feeling secure in your anonymity? Well, Martin Paul at Linuxcare Australia knows a way they can still track you while you surf: By using the HTTP cache-control. It's far more devious than cookies, and more difficult to block too. His article, the Meantime Exploit, will give you a description and a demonstration. As a bonus, Martin's writing is funny and clear. Welcome to Standard Paranoia Time." Is that a corrected corrected-corrected translation, or a corrected-corrected corrected translation?
Just one point: "Es" I think is "As", not "It's", so the translation should read:
"So you've shut off your cookies, blocked those banner ads, and installed JunkBuster. Feeling secure in your anonymity? Well, Martin Paul at Linuxcare Australia knows a way they can still track you while you surf: By using the HTTP cache-control. It's far more devious than cookies, and more difficult to block too. His article, the Meantime Exploit, will give you a description and a demonstration." As a bonus. Martin's writing is funny and clear. Welcome to Standard Paranoia Time.
Which surely makes more sense anyhow.
How to incur the burden of proof
on
The Mind of God
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure that the burden of proof automatically falls on the party making "the affirmative claim" in such matters (sure, in the absence of decisive evidence one way or another, y'all can believe what you like), but it does seem to me that Davies incurs that burden by implying that there exist compelling reasons for believing as he does. Doesn't his own rhetoric oblige him to state what those reasons are?
There is a difference between saying "I do not believe that the fact [?] that the universe has generated self-awareness through conscious beings is a trivial detail" and asserting that "[t]his can be no trivial detail" (my emphasis). In the latter instance, one needs to say just why it can't.
Davies seems to assume that anyone who accepts that what has happened is that "the universe has generated self-awareness" (is my limited human awareness really awareness of the universe? All of it?) will be so impressed by this fact that they will find it impossible to regard it as "a minor byproduct of mindless...forces".
Fine: if you look at it that way, no doubt what you see looks very impressive. But its persuasive force is not rational, any more than it is rational to be persuaded of the existence of god by one's own sense of humble awe in the face of the grandeur of creation. "Gosh wow" sentiments are a fine part of being human, ect., but they aren't much use as a support for theories.
I am unable to see in Davies' language - "I cannot believe...too intimate...surely a fact of fundamental significance...no trivial detail...we are truly meant to be here" - anything more substantial than a stirringly expressed "gosh wow" sentiment, and it is dishonest of him to write as if that the force of that sentiment dislodged the need for rational argumentation.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone remember the RISCOS font manager? Drawfiles? I seem to remember using 32-bit fixed-point co-ordinates and anti-aliased fonts on an A5000 a *good* long while ago.
I first heard Metallica's music on an Ampeg C60 tape, which I still have, onto which a friend had copied "Master of Puppets" in its entirety.
I was fourteen, and most of the music I had was on tapes of one sort or another. Myself and my friends taped computer games and music, illegally, on a regular basis: this was a normal activity for us. It was how we got to find out what was out there, what we liked. It was how we got to hear things we couldn't afford to buy, and had no hope of ever hearing on the radio.
It was also - there's no ducking out of this - how we got hold of stuff we could perfectly well afford to buy, and just wanted free copies of. But if that stuff was really any good, we usually ended up buying it anyway - at least one copy between three or four of us...
I don't need to tell you what that music meant to me at the time. It was the first thing I had ever heard that had more passion, more aggression and more intelligence in it than Dire Straits. It scared me shitless. I listened to it through headphones, over and over, wondering if it was going to recruit me into the legions of the damned and how I would explain things to my parents if it did. It was truly wonderful, life-affirming, life-saving stuff.
Does this sound like treating your music as a commodity? The tapes we swapped and traded were commodities, sure, and however much nostalgia value that Ampeg C60 has for me now it was one of dozens cluttering my bedroom floor at the time.
But I had a *lot* of respect for Metallica - the kind of respect that send me out when I had a bit of money in my pocket to get hold of everything Metallica-related I could find, that made me want not only records (dead medium - remember 'em?) but T-shirts, baseball caps, guitar tab books, ticket stubs, samples of Lars' faeces, you name it. The kind of respect that meant I can still play the solo to "To Live Is To Die" note-perfect from memory. And it was the music that earned that respect, not the medium I first heard it on.
How much respect do you think I would've had for Metallica if a fscking lawyer had turned up on my front doorstep saying "you've *stolen* from these people, son", swept up all those C60s and issued an injunction banning me from ever using a cassette player again?
Aargh! Punctuation screw-up! OK, try again:
"So you've shut off your cookies, blocked those banner ads, and installed JunkBuster. Feeling secure in your anonymity? Well, Martin Paul at Linuxcare Australia knows a way they can still track you while you surf: By using the HTTP cache-control. It's far more devious than cookies, and more difficult to block too. His article, the Meantime Exploit, will give you a description and a demonstration. As a bonus, Martin's writing is funny and clear. Welcome to Standard Paranoia Time." Is that a corrected corrected-corrected translation, or a corrected-corrected corrected translation?Pedantic beyond the call of duty? You betcha.
Just one point: "Es" I think is "As", not "It's", so the translation should read:
"So you've shut off your cookies, blocked those banner ads, and installed JunkBuster. Feeling secure in your anonymity? Well, Martin Paul at Linuxcare Australia knows a way they can still track you while you surf: By using the HTTP cache-control. It's far more devious than cookies, and more difficult to block too. His article, the Meantime Exploit, will give you a description and a demonstration." As a bonus. Martin's writing is funny and clear. Welcome to Standard Paranoia Time.
Which surely makes more sense anyhow.
I'm not sure that the burden of proof automatically falls on the party making "the affirmative claim" in such matters (sure, in the absence of decisive evidence one way or another, y'all can believe what you like), but it does seem to me that Davies incurs that burden by implying that there exist compelling reasons for believing as he does. Doesn't his own rhetoric oblige him to state what those reasons are?
There is a difference between saying "I do not believe that the fact [?] that the universe has generated self-awareness through conscious beings is a trivial detail" and asserting that "[t]his can be no trivial detail" (my emphasis). In the latter instance, one needs to say just why it can't.
Davies seems to assume that anyone who accepts that what has happened is that "the universe has generated self-awareness" (is my limited human awareness really awareness of the universe? All of it?) will be so impressed by this fact that they will find it impossible to regard it as "a minor byproduct of mindless...forces".
Fine: if you look at it that way, no doubt what you see looks very impressive. But its persuasive force is not rational, any more than it is rational to be persuaded of the existence of god by one's own sense of humble awe in the face of the grandeur of creation. "Gosh wow" sentiments are a fine part of being human, ect., but they aren't much use as a support for theories.
I am unable to see in Davies' language - "I cannot believe...too intimate...surely a fact of fundamental significance...no trivial detail...we are truly meant to be here" - anything more substantial than a stirringly expressed "gosh wow" sentiment, and it is dishonest of him to write as if that the force of that sentiment dislodged the need for rational argumentation.