Whenever I post something that's intended to be funny, either it gets moderated "Insightful" or "Redundant". Either way, because of it, everyone else takes it seriously too and posts serious replies to it, leaving me in a position to say nothing but "uh, y'know, I don't actually mean it".
Stupid. No wonder I don't spend much time at Slashdot anymore.
So I think that living forever is something that we shouldn't want, and shouldn't work towards.
Gee, thanks for telling the rest of the species what it shouldn't do and think. Just don't find it weird when all the biologists utterly ignore your orders and go on developing this technology as far as possible like they have always done, regardless of whether anyone (especially Slashdot posters) thinks they shouldn't.
How can we be sure that this isn't just the beginning of the marketing scheme to promote the next big Schwarzenegger bio-warfare shoot-'em-up blockbuster, "The Executioner"?
I bet next week it'll be on CNN, and then it'll start to run amok and kill people randomly, and then there'll be talk of bioterrorism of a kind never before heard, controlled by something that can't be human...
Hey, in this day and age, even Nature magazine can be called into question. (Don't you think they would accept it if Columbia or Universal or whoever offered them a ridiculously large amount of money to run with this?)
Actually, this wasn't acknowledged by the international scientific comunity, but Mai (no last name), a papua mathematical savant who developed the equivalent of 2500 years of Western number theory from first principles using only the bones of defeated and eaten enemies, has developed an entire proof of the Riemann hypothesis, which has been photographed into microfilm by anthropologist Lucius Zingelberger, and is currently being stored in the local library at the village of Ikai, 200 miles into the deep woods of the island. As far as I know, it has no telephone number or Internet connection, so interested parties should visit Ikai Library in person; I believe the daily fee for borrowing microfilm from it is 8000 human bones (how one will acquire this amount is none of my business). Good luck on the trip, and don't forget to take your shots! (And your shotgun. White man's meat is very much appreciated in Papua New Guine. Just ask Prof. Zingelberger.)
Samir(surprised, suddenly turning his attention from the computer): General!!! I-I-I didn't know you were here at this hour, sir!!!!
General: Samir, were you using Allah's network connection to visit porn sites?
Samir: No, General! Of course not! I was just -- I was just, eh, using the porn site's bulletin board to send terrorist messages, sir! (types in something random)
General: But I can't read any of it!
Samir: Of course not, General! You see, sir, they're encrypted! Yes, that's right, they're encrypted!
General: Very well, I'll let it pass this time.
Samir turns off the computer and the lights. Exeunt.
IIRC, all of Gabriel's solo albums also sold very well. (I remember the time when "In Your Eyes" was playing on every radio station every half hour.) He's also got other stuff going on for him. It's pretty unlikely that Gabriel's got financial problems, even if he isn't ridiculously rich - which I don't know if Collins is either, given the nature of record contracts...
Regarding integrity, most of Gabriel's solo output wasn't really any more progressive than "I Can't Dance". Just well-produced, intelligent pop. (Featuring Tony Levin, which is always a plus!)
Okay, when I first heard "Trick of the Tail", I liked it, but I thought "poor Phil Collins, wishing he were Peter Gabriel". Next "Wind and Wuthering" came out. I liked it too. I thought "that Phil Collins is coming along nicely as a Peter Gabriel impersonator". Then "Then There Were Three" came out, and it became bloody evident to everyone (except Taco) that Phil Collins no longer wishes he was Peter Gabriel.
APL per se uses a non-ASCII character set, which means you need a really funky keyboard. However, there's an APL variant called J which has the same semantics, but a textual (i.e. ASCII) syntax. I remember seeing a J primer somewhere on the Net; you can look for that.
Is it just me, or does this seem to be a very bad idea? After all, wouldn't misanthropic silicon just refuse to carry electric current altogether? This kinda negates the whole point, doesn't it?
Oh wait, it's not misanthropic either... don't you hate people who can't fucking read?:)
Mmmmm. I'd say calling Hoyle and his gang "thinkers" is being too kind on them. They're about on the same level of "thought" as creation scientists and space bacteria.
I attribute this fault to Freenet's coarse-grained object model (which I in turn blame on Unix, but that's an entirely different story). It's built having in mind heavy-weight "documents", not light-weight, generalised, abstractly-modeled "objects". A proper implementation of the Freenet concept would be like a mega-Slashdot (or more appropriately, a mega-Everything2 or somesuch): a gigantic distributed object database. Better, instead of having a predetermined interface, the software could have transparent bindings for all popular languages; it also support easy object format change; et cetera, et al...
But of course, that's "awfully hard" to understand and implement... especially when you're dealing with stupid, static languages... sigh
Well, I know all that (and yes, I have programmed in REBOL a bit). My point concerned semantics (as apparent to the user), not syntax:
Forth programming relies on the concept of computing as pushing and popping values on the stack (1 2 + means "push 1 on the stack, push 2 on the stack, pop them both into hidden registers, have the ALU add them, push the result from the result register into the stack").
Whereas in REBOL, non-continuation-based Lisps, etc. it's mostly an implementation detail ((+ 1 2) could mean the exact same thing - hell, I myself have implemented a little linear Lisp that compiled to asm for an old stack machine -, or it could mean "put 1 and 2 into the i1 and i2 registers, look up the address of + in a symbol table, jump to that address", or even just "let k be a closure such that k x = x + 1; then the result is k 2").
Read again, bucko. Nobody's saying they'll "banish" alternative medicine sites from the Web. They just want to regulate the.health TLD, that's all. Must everything be the fucking end of the world on Slashdot? Jeez!
That's a stupid philosophy. Every link on the food chain means a tremendous loss of energy; just by living, a cow wastes most of the energy stored in the sugar reserves of the plants it eats, a man wastes most of the energy stored in the fat cells of the bovine meat he eats (and he also breaks all the cow's proteins into aminoacids only to assemble them again into proteins, spending even more energy), and a cannibal does the same thing to the men it eats. So let's draw up an energy consumption table for this food chain (with an arbitrary unit of energy):
Being Source [1] Wastes [2] Passes on
Plant Sun (100u) 99% 1u
Cow 10^6 plants 99% 10^4u
Man eq. 1 cow 99% 100u
Cannibal eq. 10 men 99% 10u
Cannibal^2 eq. 10 can. 99% 1u
_YOU_ eq. 10 can. 99% _0.1u_
[1] Throughout the being's lifetime.
[2] Just a guess; I don't have the actual values
You start your post by claiming that your theory has been "proven" (the only thing you've proved is your ignorance of the way science works). You continue by pontificating self-congratulatingly and without meaning. And you end it thanking God for it. Why the hell would I take you seriously?
If DullBlade's post is a troll, it isn't a particularly good one. If it's a serious post, it's quite stupid.
Actually, REBOL is much more like a little Common Lisp subset with different syntax. It's very list (they call it "block") oriented, has dynamic typing with a lot of predefined types, and some nice functional features, although it hides them well for the benefit of the imperative freaks. (I can't see the similarity to Forth; first of all, REBOL's not stack-based...)
"We don't like it that Microsoft is indoctrinating our kids, so we should... do the exact same thing"?!? As another poster pointed out, this seems like nothing but ABMS (Anything But Microsoft Syndrome) on Slashdot's part.
The only honest thing someone can do about this is take it to the parents: "Mrs Blum, did you know that your school's computer education programme is limiting little Jimmy's future career opportunities? You didn't? Well, lemme tell you all about how they're forcing him to learn nothing but limited tools from a company that might be broken up at any time now. If this goes on, when little Jimmy graduates, he'll have no prospective employers!"
And to the schools too: "Mr Principal, I've heard that a lot of moms are planning to take their kids out of your school... why? Well, it seems your Microsoft-sponsored comp. ed. programme is woefully inadequate compared to Next Door High's platform-independent programme devised by actual CS. professionals... how about that?"
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. Look at the thread's title.
-- Kaufmann
Whenever I post something that's intended to be funny, either it gets moderated "Insightful" or "Redundant". Either way, because of it, everyone else takes it seriously too and posts serious replies to it, leaving me in a position to say nothing but "uh, y'know, I don't actually mean it".
Stupid. No wonder I don't spend much time at Slashdot anymore.
So I think that living forever is something that we shouldn't want, and shouldn't work towards.
Gee, thanks for telling the rest of the species what it shouldn't do and think. Just don't find it weird when all the biologists utterly ignore your orders and go on developing this technology as far as possible like they have always done, regardless of whether anyone (especially Slashdot posters) thinks they shouldn't.
-- Kaufmann
How can we be sure that this isn't just the beginning of the marketing scheme to promote the next big Schwarzenegger bio-warfare shoot-'em-up blockbuster, "The Executioner"?
I bet next week it'll be on CNN, and then it'll start to run amok and kill people randomly, and then there'll be talk of bioterrorism of a kind never before heard, controlled by something that can't be human...
Hey, in this day and age, even Nature magazine can be called into question. (Don't you think they would accept it if Columbia or Universal or whoever offered them a ridiculously large amount of money to run with this?)
Just my two paranoid cents.
A mechanic RAM! *rimshot*
-- Kaufmann
Actually, this wasn't acknowledged by the international scientific comunity, but Mai (no last name), a papua mathematical savant who developed the equivalent of 2500 years of Western number theory from first principles using only the bones of defeated and eaten enemies, has developed an entire proof of the Riemann hypothesis, which has been photographed into microfilm by anthropologist Lucius Zingelberger, and is currently being stored in the local library at the village of Ikai, 200 miles into the deep woods of the island. As far as I know, it has no telephone number or Internet connection, so interested parties should visit Ikai Library in person; I believe the daily fee for borrowing microfilm from it is 8000 human bones (how one will acquire this amount is none of my business). Good luck on the trip, and don't forget to take your shots! (And your shotgun. White man's meat is very much appreciated in Papua New Guine. Just ask Prof. Zingelberger.)
-- Kaufmann
Late at night, Muslim terrorist headquarters...
General walks into a room unannounced.
General: Samir, what are you doing?!?
Samir (surprised, suddenly turning his attention from the computer): General!!! I-I-I didn't know you were here at this hour, sir!!!!
General: Samir, were you using Allah's network connection to visit porn sites?
Samir: No, General! Of course not! I was just -- I was just, eh, using the porn site's bulletin board to send terrorist messages, sir! (types in something random)
General: But I can't read any of it!
Samir: Of course not, General! You see, sir, they're encrypted! Yes, that's right, they're encrypted!
General: Very well, I'll let it pass this time.
Samir turns off the computer and the lights. Exeunt.
General: By the way, Samir...
Samir: Yes, sir?
General: I think "CIABoy935466" likes you.
Where is Taco? Well,
bored with the life in the City of Gold,
he left and let nobody know...
IIRC, all of Gabriel's solo albums also sold very well. (I remember the time when "In Your Eyes" was playing on every radio station every half hour.) He's also got other stuff going on for him. It's pretty unlikely that Gabriel's got financial problems, even if he isn't ridiculously rich - which I don't know if Collins is either, given the nature of record contracts...
Regarding integrity, most of Gabriel's solo output wasn't really any more progressive than "I Can't Dance". Just well-produced, intelligent pop. (Featuring Tony Levin, which is always a plus!)
Okay, when I first heard "Trick of the Tail", I liked it, but I thought "poor Phil Collins, wishing he were Peter Gabriel". Next "Wind and Wuthering" came out. I liked it too. I thought "that Phil Collins is coming along nicely as a Peter Gabriel impersonator". Then "Then There Were Three" came out, and it became bloody evident to everyone (except Taco) that Phil Collins no longer wishes he was Peter Gabriel.
Schmuck.
APL per se uses a non-ASCII character set, which means you need a really funky keyboard. However, there's an APL variant called J which has the same semantics, but a textual (i.e. ASCII) syntax. I remember seeing a J primer somewhere on the Net; you can look for that.
Is it just me, or does this seem to be a very bad idea? After all, wouldn't misanthropic silicon just refuse to carry electric current altogether? This kinda negates the whole point, doesn't it?
:)
Oh wait, it's not misanthropic either... don't you hate people who can't fucking read?
How was this offtopic? I bet the idiot moderator didn't even bother to read the fucking post. Moron.
The office of the US Press Secretary, late at night...
/etc/home/press.
/etc/home/press/bulletins.
Bob the Assistant: Mr Secretary, the, um, special official space bulletins have been uploaded into your account for you to check before release.
Secretary: Thanks Bob.
WHUX - White House Unix (c) (tm), version 6.0 ("Kissinger" release)
(Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.)
Username: press
Password: ***
$ go to home
Current directory is
$ go to bulletins
Current directory is
$ run "s/extraterrestrial interference/misuse of the metric system/i; s/impending alien invasion/geomagnetic storm/" on all files
Changes effected.
$ send all files to newswire
Email sent.
$ shut down
Mmmmm. I'd say calling Hoyle and his gang "thinkers" is being too kind on them. They're about on the same level of "thought" as creation scientists and space bacteria.
I attribute this fault to Freenet's coarse-grained object model (which I in turn blame on Unix, but that's an entirely different story). It's built having in mind heavy-weight "documents", not light-weight, generalised, abstractly-modeled "objects". A proper implementation of the Freenet concept would be like a mega-Slashdot (or more appropriately, a mega-Everything2 or somesuch): a gigantic distributed object database. Better, instead of having a predetermined interface, the software could have transparent bindings for all popular languages; it also support easy object format change; et cetera, et al...
But of course, that's "awfully hard" to understand and implement... especially when you're dealing with stupid, static languages... sigh
Well, I know all that (and yes, I have programmed in REBOL a bit). My point concerned semantics (as apparent to the user), not syntax:
Forth programming relies on the concept of computing as pushing and popping values on the stack (1 2 + means "push 1 on the stack, push 2 on the stack, pop them both into hidden registers, have the ALU add them, push the result from the result register into the stack").
Whereas in REBOL, non-continuation-based Lisps, etc. it's mostly an implementation detail ((+ 1 2) could mean the exact same thing - hell, I myself have implemented a little linear Lisp that compiled to asm for an old stack machine -, or it could mean "put 1 and 2 into the i1 and i2 registers, look up the address of + in a symbol table, jump to that address", or even just "let k be a closure such that k x = x + 1; then the result is k 2").
Read again, bucko. Nobody's saying they'll "banish" alternative medicine sites from the Web. They just want to regulate the .health TLD, that's all. Must everything be the fucking end of the world on Slashdot? Jeez!
Okay, here's a better formatted version:
;10u
BeingSource[1]Wastes&nbs p;[2]Passeson
PlantSun(100u)99%& nbsp;1u
Cow10^6plants99%&n bsp;10^4u
Maneq.1cow&n bsp;99%100u
Cannibaleq.10men99% 
Cannibal^2eq.10can.99%&n bsp;1u
_YOU_eq.10can.99%& nbsp;_0.1u_
[1] Throughout the being's lifetime.
[2] Just a guess; I don't have the actual values
That's a stupid philosophy. Every link on the food chain means a tremendous loss of energy; just by living, a cow wastes most of the energy stored in the sugar reserves of the plants it eats, a man wastes most of the energy stored in the fat cells of the bovine meat he eats (and he also breaks all the cow's proteins into aminoacids only to assemble them again into proteins, spending even more energy), and a cannibal does the same thing to the men it eats. So let's draw up an energy consumption table for this food chain (with an arbitrary unit of energy):
Being Source [1] Wastes [2] Passes on
Plant Sun (100u) 99% 1u
Cow 10^6 plants 99% 10^4u
Man eq. 1 cow 99% 100u
Cannibal eq. 10 men 99% 10u
Cannibal^2 eq. 10 can. 99% 1u
_YOU_ eq. 10 can. 99% _0.1u_
[1] Throughout the being's lifetime.
[2] Just a guess; I don't have the actual values
See, smart-ass? Cannibalism doesn't pay off...
You start your post by claiming that your theory has been "proven" (the only thing you've proved is your ignorance of the way science works). You continue by pontificating self-congratulatingly and without meaning. And you end it thanking God for it. Why the hell would I take you seriously?
If DullBlade's post is a troll, it isn't a particularly good one. If it's a serious post, it's quite stupid.
Actually, REBOL is much more like a little Common Lisp subset with different syntax. It's very list (they call it "block") oriented, has dynamic typing with a lot of predefined types, and some nice functional features, although it hides them well for the benefit of the imperative freaks. (I can't see the similarity to Forth; first of all, REBOL's not stack-based...)
Who said that? Go learn to read.
Oh man... a Rush Open-Source parody! I love it!!!!!!! Genius!
"We don't like it that Microsoft is indoctrinating our kids, so we should... do the exact same thing"?!? As another poster pointed out, this seems like nothing but ABMS (Anything But Microsoft Syndrome) on Slashdot's part.
The only honest thing someone can do about this is take it to the parents: "Mrs Blum, did you know that your school's computer education programme is limiting little Jimmy's future career opportunities? You didn't? Well, lemme tell you all about how they're forcing him to learn nothing but limited tools from a company that might be broken up at any time now. If this goes on, when little Jimmy graduates, he'll have no prospective employers!"
And to the schools too: "Mr Principal, I've heard that a lot of moms are planning to take their kids out of your school... why? Well, it seems your Microsoft-sponsored comp. ed. programme is woefully inadequate compared to Next Door High's platform-independent programme devised by actual CS. professionals... how about that?"