I really hope I'm just reading at too high a threshold to see actual discussion of the correlation between geeks (actual geeks -- not "Jesus was really the ultimate geek, you see, because...") and actual Pagans (in religious discussions, you can tell which one a person follows by which one's name they capitalize).
What Pagan doesn't mean:
Satanist (I don't think I've seen anyone here say this today, but you know what I'm talking about.)
Believes in ancient Greek or Roman gods. Man I hear this almost as often as I hear 'Satanists! Aaah!'. No, I don't pray to Zeus. Hercules is a character played by Kevin Sorbo. There may be strains of Pagans that have been in contact with beings they perceive to be an ancient god, either by choice or not, but this is not the norm, as far as my experience has been.
All about dungeons and dragons bullshit (e.g., the "mystical religions" thread I saw a while ago). I'm Pagan, and yes I've played D&D. No, I don't own a broadsword and invoke the spirits of dead dragons. Not since '97...;-)
A hedonist that may or may not wish to attend "Burning Man". Also, merely by attending Burning Man, this would not make me a Pagan. Maybe just a pyro and/or exhibitionist. And/or Pagan or whatever.
Into sacrifices, covens, spells and "magick" (with a 'k' mind you). Wicca is a Pagan religion. Wicca don't do sacrifices either (that old rumor lends itself back to the Satanism misconception), but it is the most common form of Paganism. This does not mean that a Pagan is necessarily Wicca. Kind of like the definitions of squares and rectangles.
Technophiles. Many Pagans I know don't know how to turn a computer on, merely due to circumstance (just not 'into it', etc.), and not because they're Pagan. Indeed I have 'techno-Pagan' friends too, but not because of one or the other.
What Pagan does mean:
'Earth dweller' or 'country dweller', for one (following that link, skipping the nonsensical definitions presented in favor of the etymological details below them).
A person who is in tune with nature and the elements, whether they believe they can manipulate them in anti-Newtonian ways or not.
A person who believes that the changing seasons (e.g., Earth's relative position in its orbit) and the position of the moon relative to that collectively govern certain functions of the human body, particularly the female body (moon-thly menstruation, anyone?). The gravitic patterns do indeed change during this period, and aren't we smaller bodies being enacted upon by the gravities of larger ones?
Typically (hopefully) someone who follows a simple tenet (akin to the simple rules of Bhuddist or monastic life), "It harm none, do what thou wilt". For the impaired, this just means "do whatever you're going to do, as long as you don't hurt anybody"
Not necessarily a militant "anti-Christian". I have flamebait-style opinions of just about every religion, including subsets of Paganism, that I'm just not going to get into. I am going to say that I do indeed have some pretty Christan friends, including the guy who runs an Internet-only Christian Metal station (my shameless plug for the day). You have to respect a guy like that.
Someone that may believe that they have the ability either within themselves or through divination of someone they perceive to be more powerful than they (such as Goddess, or perhaps Odin) to manipulate reality. Consider for a moment that the definition of 'magic' (however the hell you make up rules to explain when to spell it with a 'k') is this: the willed manipulation of reality, by any means. This definition can include a lot of things, such as illusionary mirror tricks by David Copperfield, the perception of extradimensional (e.g., "astral") travel, and turning enemies into lawn furniture (or at least scaring the shit out of them so they'll stop trying to get you fired from your job, for example).
I'm a neo/techno-Pagan type that believes in Stephen Hawking, Larry Wall, Richard M. Stallman, Norse gods (not by choice...they're just kind of there), practicality and relativism, karma (not the/. kind...no, no, I definitely don't believe in that at all. Do you?), the willed manipulation of reality (by thinking it real hard and driving my energies to the event horizon), chi, herbalism, and running cool e-commerce sites to sell stuff to other Pagans. (okay, two shameless plugs then).
I have dealt with many common and uncommon strains of Pagans, and my view may be a bit broad for the liking of most common Pagan types, so I'm probably not the guy to tell you all this. If you want to know any more about the topic, I'd recommend the book that was referenced in the original story.
On another subject, I remember that there was a guy in the early digital cash space that was trying to create anonymous digital cash. He considered it important from a privacy standpoint that digital cash should be untraceable, just like regular cash. I would imagine PayPal is not that, but does anyone know what happened to that guy or what happened with his technology?
Being both anonymous and untraceable, he could not be reached for comment...
Perhaps I've just forgotten, but I can't seem to recall where this all began. I'm interested to know more about the "Kenneth Star" that first decided, "Hey, Bob, let's start an anti-trust casse against Microsoft...see what happens...".
Can anyone refresh my memory? Was it an original idea of the DOJ? Was there some kind of concerted effort on the part of their major competitors?
If we've never found out who the instigator actually was, then feel free to let the conspiracy theories fly.
The only reasonable use I can think of to a geography-based address is, surprise!, the government for a particular city, where the geography makes sense to include in the URL.
Now that Netscape has made it possible for any of us to [eventually] create a full-featured web browser to our specifications, wouldn't it be possible to integrate voice synth into a Mozilla variant for the blind that delivers a very specific code in their User Agent string that web developers can test for with JavaScript, possibly delivering blind users to an alternate page design (a "light mode") with text links and / or ALT elements in IMG tags?
I'd develop for that...why not? We've got that damn WAP for the crippled "wireless web" users...
So far, the software only supports Windows 95, 98, NT 4, and Windows2000.
Aah, not true! This thing works just like having a second keyboard installed...you can literally just plug it in, turn the computer on, open up Notepad (or whatever) and swipe something...an encoded version of the bar code will be "typed" at the cursor as though you had typed it out yourself. Refer to the parent of this thread for the translation tables.
Gotta go -- I haven't swiped every damn thing in my house yet.:-)
Oh whew...I guess it's a good thing their message board drops new submissions into a bit bucket. I just posted a lengthy alarmist statement about how the membership agreement doesn't say that you have to have some kind of DoE certification before you can become a buyer on the site...it just says anyone can sign up who wants to sign up.
Shouldn't this be a more closed-loop sort of thing? I mean, let the general public see who's buying what, how much and for what price (maybe), but keep the delivery date a secret (so Dolf Lundgren & Co. can't hijack the transportation vehicle), and don't give the general public the ability to sign up in the first place. If nothing else, it just looks really bad.
Whether I'll ever get invited into an auction or not, I don't *want* to be able to sign up to be a buyer on a nuclear fuel site, damnit...and I don't want any of you other nerds to be able to either. Jesus, we're dangerous enough as it is having all the root passwords for so many servers in our collective posession...the last thing we need is even the faintest possibility of being able to create nuclear weapons!
If anyone has any family in Redmond, WA, I recommend you quietly convince them to move.:-)
The signal is interlaced, so the odd scanlines are displayed on one frame, the even scanlines on the next frame
IANABE (I Am Not A Broadcast Engineer), but truthfully, each 'frame' is the composite of both 'fields', one for the even scanlines, one for the odd scanlines. Each field is drawn in 1/60th of a second to compose a full frame in 1/30th of a second (30 frames per second).
If you ever look into really serious (read "expensive") video digitizing boards such as a TrueVision Targa or Bravo card, you'll see they promote "full 60 fields/sec" digitizing, which is incredibly important for professional video editing intended for output back to video.
What is WITH all this crap? Don't these people have an IRC channel they can go be annoying in or something? I mean, we're trying to have an intelligent discussion about HOT GRITS here...Christ people...what would Natalie Portman say anyway?
ASCII art of naked men, the personal 800 numbers of your ex-girlfriends, Stallman quotes, lead-nowhere viagra ads...go play in the road, kiddies.
If it ain't about crappy southern U.S. traditional food, tight-assed young actresses with cheekbones that wrap around the back of their heads, pictures of stretched assholes, or Columbus-ian (not to be confused with "post-Columbine") First Post declarations, then shut the hell up and go DDOS Hotmail or something (now that they made it easier for you).
Leave the joke posts to the adults. After all, Slashdot has proven that we can be amused by *ANYTHING* after sixteen straight hours of coding with no external sensory inputs except the taste of that last flat, warm mouthful of Jolt cola left at the bottom of the bottle.
Slashdot Mirror
What Pagan doesn't mean:
What Pagan does mean:
I'm a neo/techno-Pagan type that believes in Stephen Hawking, Larry Wall, Richard M. Stallman, Norse gods (not by choice...they're just kind of there), practicality and relativism, karma (not the
I have dealt with many common and uncommon strains of Pagans, and my view may be a bit broad for the liking of most common Pagan types, so I'm probably not the guy to tell you all this. If you want to know any more about the topic, I'd recommend the book that was referenced in the original story.
Anyone who claims their belief to be the one true belief is delightfully amusing.
Despite my sig, I am not merely a 'relativist'.
On another subject, I remember that there was a guy in the early digital cash space that was trying to create anonymous digital cash. He considered it important from a privacy standpoint that digital cash should be untraceable, just like regular cash. I would imagine PayPal is not that, but does anyone know what happened to that guy or what happened with his technology?
Being both anonymous and untraceable, he could not be reached for comment...
Perhaps I've just forgotten, but I can't seem to recall where this all began. I'm interested to know more about the "Kenneth Star" that first decided, "Hey, Bob, let's start an anti-trust casse against Microsoft...see what happens...".
Can anyone refresh my memory? Was it an original idea of the DOJ? Was there some kind of concerted effort on the part of their major competitors?
If we've never found out who the instigator actually was, then feel free to let the conspiracy theories fly.
Man, you know what really pisses me off?
Now that Netscape has made it possible for any of us to [eventually] create a full-featured web browser to our specifications, wouldn't it be possible to integrate voice synth into a Mozilla variant for the blind that delivers a very specific code in their User Agent string that web developers can test for with JavaScript, possibly delivering blind users to an alternate page design (a "light mode") with text links and / or ALT elements in IMG tags?
I'd develop for that...why not? We've got that damn WAP for the crippled "wireless web" users...
So far, the software only supports Windows 95, 98, NT 4, and Windows2000.
:-)
Aah, not true! This thing works just like having a second keyboard installed...you can literally just plug it in, turn the computer on, open up Notepad (or whatever) and swipe something...an encoded version of the bar code will be "typed" at the cursor as though you had typed it out yourself. Refer to the parent of this thread for the translation tables.
Gotta go -- I haven't swiped every damn thing in my house yet.
Oh whew...I guess it's a good thing their message board drops new submissions into a bit bucket. I just posted a lengthy alarmist statement about how the membership agreement doesn't say that you have to have some kind of DoE certification before you can become a buyer on the site...it just says anyone can sign up who wants to sign up.
:-)
Shouldn't this be a more closed-loop sort of thing? I mean, let the general public see who's buying what, how much and for what price (maybe), but keep the delivery date a secret (so Dolf Lundgren & Co. can't hijack the transportation vehicle), and don't give the general public the ability to sign up in the first place. If nothing else, it just looks really bad.
Whether I'll ever get invited into an auction or not, I don't *want* to be able to sign up to be a buyer on a nuclear fuel site, damnit...and I don't want any of you other nerds to be able to either. Jesus, we're dangerous enough as it is having all the root passwords for so many servers in our collective posession...the last thing we need is even the faintest possibility of being able to create nuclear weapons!
If anyone has any family in Redmond, WA, I recommend you quietly convince them to move.
--
The signal is interlaced, so the odd scanlines are displayed on one frame, the even scanlines on the next frame
IANABE (I Am Not A Broadcast Engineer), but truthfully, each 'frame' is the composite of both 'fields', one for the even scanlines, one for the odd scanlines. Each field is drawn in 1/60th of a second to compose a full frame in 1/30th of a second (30 frames per second).
If you ever look into really serious (read "expensive") video digitizing boards such as a TrueVision Targa or Bravo card, you'll see they promote "full 60 fields/sec" digitizing, which is incredibly important for professional video editing intended for output back to video.
Dreamweaver??! Hah! The only HTML editor that actually writes GOOD CODE is freaking Notepad.
Yes, yes, this is both a troll and insighful flamebait. Mod it either way, I don't care.
I think the use of the word 'aura' in the context of this technology is probably:
"An invisible breath, emanation, or radiation."
and not what your ex-girlfriend thinks she saw:
"A distinctive but intangible quality that seems to surround a person or thing; atmosphere"
Don't confuse new-age metaphysical terms with scientific definitions. This is a very dangerous thing. Both parties tend to get pretty pissed off.
What is WITH all this crap? Don't these people have an IRC channel they can go be annoying in or something? I mean, we're trying to have an intelligent discussion about HOT GRITS here...Christ people...what would Natalie Portman say anyway?
ASCII art of naked men, the personal 800 numbers of your ex-girlfriends, Stallman quotes, lead-nowhere viagra ads...go play in the road, kiddies.
If it ain't about crappy southern U.S. traditional food, tight-assed young actresses with cheekbones that wrap around the back of their heads, pictures of stretched assholes, or Columbus-ian (not to be confused with "post-Columbine") First Post declarations, then shut the hell up and go DDOS Hotmail or something (now that they made it easier for you).
Leave the joke posts to the adults. After all, Slashdot has proven that we can be amused by *ANYTHING* after sixteen straight hours of coding with no external sensory inputs except the taste of that last flat, warm mouthful of Jolt cola left at the bottom of the bottle.