The odd thing is that all photographs we see in print or on major media outlets are altered. Either in the darkroom or using a computer, photographs are routinely cropped, retinted, lightened or darkened, and otherwise manipulated to make them easier or more pleasing to view.
Some will argue that this is qualitatively different from rearranging content in the photograph, but the line is actually rather vague. For example, if you show someone aiming a gun, but crop out the target they were aiming at, the nature of the image changes. If you manipulate light and dark areas to minimize or emphasize the size of a crowd, ditto. Yet this sort of manipulation is almost as old as the camera (and certainly extends back into painting and drawing, which are of course far more subjective).
So the real issue is where to draw the line, given that image manipulation is happening all the time.
This may be an initial glimpse at how Microsoft could introduce Digital Restrictions Management by ensuring all retail hardware and software products are approved by Redmond.
By similar reasoning, it could be an initial glimpse of their plan to breed a race of immortal dragons to rule the world. I mean, seriously, exactly how does a business decision by Office Depot map onto a technology initiative by Microsoft? Sure you can draw a dotted line, but it's a long and twisty one, and at that level of conspiracy analysis you really should have your foil-lined hat on before you start.
Evil l337 h4x0r: Mwah ha ha! I am going to break into this system, cause it to become slow and unreliable, trash lots of files, turn the security framework into pure unmanageable chaos, and make it send out IP packets violating several RFCs!"
That's the beauty of capitalism, especially on the (relatively) level playing field of the net. Google is a business, and they are free to pursue strategy X in their quest for money so long as they do not violate the law in doing so. In the same way, customers are free to reward or punish Google for choosing strategy X by patronizing or not patronizing their services. And, should you desire to do so, you are free to start a competing search service which applies strategy Y instead, at which point the free market will inform you very quickly whether you or Google are closer to having it "right" -- where the measure of "right" is "making more money while not being thrown in jail".
It sucks at times, but it sure is a hell of a lot better than having to talk to some 12th-level bureaucrat at the Ministry of Information to request a search engine feature improvement.
The LoC already contains at least 6000 hours of movie just from the National Film Registry project, which is by no means the only video in their catalog. Did you mean the textual content of the LoC?
You might almost say that it was written by a swarm of experts.
Or maybe not.
Re:Expect final report in 6 months
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Yeah, but even those post-causal symptoms can tell you a lot. Knowing just how the craft departed controlled flight (what roll, pitch, and yaw rates, changing at what rate, how those rates themselves change over time, and so forth) can be of great use in determining the configuration of the craft after the primary failure. Knowing that makes it easier to work backward to what the primary failure looked like.
This is just another twist on the old "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. Both are self-evidently true, but also evade the point that our technologies amplify both the good and the bad we can do. If I have the urge to kill someone, I am far likelier to succeed with a gun than with a knife, and also more likely with a knife than with my fist.
Put another way, who we are is inseparable from our technology. Technology is our adaptive response to the problem of survival. It is what makes our species unique on Earth. Talking about humans without reference to their technology is like talking about sharks without reference to their teeth.
I've never quite understood the attraction of PHP over Perl (using e.g. Mason or Template to get the templating capability). This isn't a troll, this is a real question. What does PHP do better or easier than Perl plus a templating engine?
The really spooky thing is that their phone query system is usually completely up to date, including transactions made only minutes earlier. The mind boggles trying to imagine a system upfucked enough to have two status query systems for the same data and users behaving that differently. The phone and net systems must be independent silo apps, with little or no shared implementation despite clear opporunities for shared code to implement the business side of the apps (authorization and so forth). I don't envy their IT gang.
In exchange, will music swapping be legalized? Or will they agree not to try to stop it? It seems blatantly unfair to charge me for something you still can sue me over if you decide you want to. Oh, wait, this is the RIAA, of *course* it's blatantly unfair!
I believe the lawyers' problem was with their use of the acronym "PCI" as a site title, and of the PCI logo. I'm sure having the first body paragraph read "This is a list of PCI IDs" wouldn't cause problems. (If that's not the case, I imagine this very post will land me in court...)
Wouldn't this be easily resolved by removing the logo and renaming the site to something like "rot13-CPV"? Or perhaps "List of IDs for The Device Standard Which Must Not Be Named", to appeal to the Lovecraftian crowd.
Also, it should be noted that the referenced article is talking about harvesting ideas from science fiction, while Clarke's article proposing geosync radio relays was a factual (if speculative) work for a radio technology magazine. Clarke worked on British radar systems during WWII, so he had a very good practical grounding in radio technology.
Because they weren't needed for its primary mission (surverying Jupiter), and the probe wasn't designed to operate long enough to make repeaters necessary for post-primary monitoring. That it is still (partly) functional today is certainly a triumph of engineering, but it's also remarkably good luck wrt various MTBF values for its critical components, most notably the power bus and transmitter.
My favorite SF universe is that of Iain Banks' "Culture" novels. His triumph is to blend some serious gosh-wow old school superscience (gigantic artificial worlds, hypersentient AIs, near-godlike control over energy and matter) with richly nuanced characterization and deftly crafted cultures.
The most interesting question he asks -- many times, in many different ways, throughout his work -- is how a being can find meaning and purpose when all material needs can be met effortlessly, and all desires fulfilled nearly as easily.
Newcomers to the Culture books should start with _Consider Phlebas_. His most recent work, _Look to Windward_, is a sort of tonal sequel to Phlebas, revisiting some of the same themes in a more reflective, somber mood.
Slashdot Mirror
The odd thing is that all photographs we see in print or on major media outlets are altered. Either in the darkroom or using a computer, photographs are routinely cropped, retinted, lightened or darkened, and otherwise manipulated to make them easier or more pleasing to view.
Some will argue that this is qualitatively different from rearranging content in the photograph, but the line is actually rather vague. For example, if you show someone aiming a gun, but crop out the target they were aiming at, the nature of the image changes. If you manipulate light and dark areas to minimize or emphasize the size of a crowd, ditto. Yet this sort of manipulation is almost as old as the camera (and certainly extends back into painting and drawing, which are of course far more subjective).
So the real issue is where to draw the line, given that image manipulation is happening all the time.
Evil l337 h4x0r: Mwah ha ha! I am going to break into this system, cause it to become slow and unreliable, trash lots of files, turn the security framework into pure unmanageable chaos, and make it send out IP packets violating several RFCs!"
(Typing...)
Elh: Ah, crap, it's already running Windows.
In related news, it was confirmed by oceanographic researchers this morning that the Pacific Ocean is wet.
That's the beauty of capitalism, especially on the (relatively) level playing field of the net. Google is a business, and they are free to pursue strategy X in their quest for money so long as they do not violate the law in doing so. In the same way, customers are free to reward or punish Google for choosing strategy X by patronizing or not patronizing their services. And, should you desire to do so, you are free to start a competing search service which applies strategy Y instead, at which point the free market will inform you very quickly whether you or Google are closer to having it "right" -- where the measure of "right" is "making more money while not being thrown in jail".
It sucks at times, but it sure is a hell of a lot better than having to talk to some 12th-level bureaucrat at the Ministry of Information to request a search engine feature improvement.
Originally heard that joke as "Emacs is a great OS, but it needs an editor."
The LoC already contains at least 6000 hours of movie just from the National Film Registry project, which is by no means the only video in their catalog. Did you mean the textual content of the LoC?
Four words: "Blue Cube of Death".
Or maybe not.
Yeah, but even those post-causal symptoms can tell you a lot. Knowing just how the craft departed controlled flight (what roll, pitch, and yaw rates, changing at what rate, how those rates themselves change over time, and so forth) can be of great use in determining the configuration of the craft after the primary failure. Knowing that makes it easier to work backward to what the primary failure looked like.
SatireWire headline from last year: "House sends spam bill to Senate; Senate spam filter deletes it".
This is just another twist on the old "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. Both are self-evidently true, but also evade the point that our technologies amplify both the good and the bad we can do. If I have the urge to kill someone, I am far likelier to succeed with a gun than with a knife, and also more likely with a knife than with my fist.
Put another way, who we are is inseparable from our technology. Technology is our adaptive response to the problem of survival. It is what makes our species unique on Earth. Talking about humans without reference to their technology is like talking about sharks without reference to their teeth.
I've never quite understood the attraction of PHP over Perl (using e.g. Mason or Template to get the templating capability). This isn't a troll, this is a real question. What does PHP do better or easier than Perl plus a templating engine?
The really spooky thing is that their phone query system is usually completely up to date, including transactions made only minutes earlier. The mind boggles trying to imagine a system upfucked enough to have two status query systems for the same data and users behaving that differently. The phone and net systems must be independent silo apps, with little or no shared implementation despite clear opporunities for shared code to implement the business side of the apps (authorization and so forth). I don't envy their IT gang.
In exchange, will music swapping be legalized? Or will they agree not to try to stop it? It seems blatantly unfair to charge me for something you still can sue me over if you decide you want to. Oh, wait, this is the RIAA, of *course* it's blatantly unfair!
Emacs has an editor? :)
I believe the lawyers' problem was with their use of the acronym "PCI" as a site title, and of the PCI logo. I'm sure having the first body paragraph read "This is a list of PCI IDs" wouldn't cause problems. (If that's not the case, I imagine this very post will land me in court...)
Wouldn't this be easily resolved by removing the logo and renaming the site to something like "rot13-CPV"? Or perhaps "List of IDs for The Device Standard Which Must Not Be Named", to appeal to the Lovecraftian crowd.
Also, it should be noted that the referenced article is talking about harvesting ideas from science fiction, while Clarke's article proposing geosync radio relays was a factual (if speculative) work for a radio technology magazine. Clarke worked on British radar systems during WWII, so he had a very good practical grounding in radio technology.
Because they weren't needed for its primary mission (surverying Jupiter), and the probe wasn't designed to operate long enough to make repeaters necessary for post-primary monitoring. That it is still (partly) functional today is certainly a triumph of engineering, but it's also remarkably good luck wrt various MTBF values for its critical components, most notably the power bus and transmitter.
I thought this sort of math was only applied to drug busts.
"We estimate the marijuana had a street value of 4.5 million dollars."
(Yes, if you sold it one eighth at a time to desperate, confused rich people.)
Or 64 cars and one Segway.
My favorite SF universe is that of Iain Banks' "Culture" novels. His triumph is to blend some serious gosh-wow old school superscience (gigantic artificial worlds, hypersentient AIs, near-godlike control over energy and matter) with richly nuanced characterization and deftly crafted cultures.
The most interesting question he asks -- many times, in many different ways, throughout his work -- is how a being can find meaning and purpose when all material needs can be met effortlessly, and all desires fulfilled nearly as easily.
Newcomers to the Culture books should start with _Consider Phlebas_. His most recent work, _Look to Windward_, is a sort of tonal sequel to Phlebas, revisiting some of the same themes in a more reflective, somber mood.