The right to privacy falls under the umbrella of humane working conditions, like the rights to a decent wage and a limited workday. To invade someone's privacy without a compelling, situation-specific motive is to insult their dignity as a free human being. Many "rights" for which people clamor amount merely to spoiled selfishness (a fellow I know once told me of our "right" to a department coffee maker), but to invade someone's privacy is a worse insult and a deeper exploitation than is sexual harassment.
It's not my right to use someone else's resources to surf the net at work, granted. But if I am allowed the privilege of doing so, it _is_ my right to have my privacy untrammelled while I'm at it. If a guest at your home asks to use the telephone, you are not obligated to let them. But if you _do_ give them permission, a basic respect for human dignity demands that you not eavesdrop on their conversation by using another phone without their knowledge. And I haven't met the person yet with enough ill-advised chutzpah to inform his guests that all calls made from his phones will be monitored by him without specific permission (which is exactly the stance many companies take in their anti-privacy policies that explicitly warn employees that everything they do is being watched.)
Personal use of company equipment is a privilege. To have my privacy respected while I exercise that privilege is my right.
I don't remember if the movies made specific mention of this, but their novelizations (written by Lucas himself, IIRC) blamed the 'clone wars' for the extreme rarity of Jedi at the time episodes IV-VI took place. It's a story I've been waiting to hear for a long, long time, and if Episode II was about anything else, I and (I'm sure) many others would be gravely dissapointed.
I found Episode I to be more of a dud than an outright disaster (as has been often opined). I felt a little sick and a lot dissapointed after seeing it, but the fact that the Jedi then were so prevalent seemed a tacit promise to tell what happened to them before Ep V. I suppose the only thing I got from Ep I was a confirmed desire to see Ep II, which is, one assumes, Lucas' purpose.
Funny, I never thought of myself as a Star Wars geek..
I don't think your article is about the same experiment, or you are mistaken in your interpretation. The type of virus they gave the mice doesn't have to be anything special -- it could be the common cold and properly serve their purposes. In fact, it pretty much has to be non-lethal, if any useful information is to be gleaned from the experiment.
The key here is that some of the mice had been genetically engineered without the ability to produce CD45. The mice were then infected with the virus, and their immune systems responded.
Now comes the interesting part. What happens when their bodies successfully stave off the infection? The normal mice use CD45 to subdue their immune response, but the altered mice's bodies keep attacking cells. The article doesn't go into enough detail about this, but I suspect it gave them something like cancer. Or lupus. Both of these can be seen as a sort of out-of-control immune response. CD45 might give people with these diseases the ability to bring their immune system back in control.
The page displayed is the first of twenty-three being sent. The last of these pages is a bunch of questions about themselves and their understanding of the universe.
The first page is here. I suggest spending some time on each one. This stuff is fascinating.
Best thing in the world for a hangover. You can buy little packets of pills in gas stations that advertise increased energy.. etc.
Look on the back of the package to ensure that it is indeed B12 you're getting. Pop'em and wait half an hour.
I've heard of a lot of things to do to treat hangovers.. this is the only thing I've ever encountered that cures one. (Along with a glass or two of water.)
I took that to mean that the only reason he found out about the crime was due to actions on the part of the criminal. If the thief hadn't used his card number, it's not as if the company itself appeared likely to ever notify its customers of the incident.
My two cents concerning these things:
I am a hacker: I find a sense of creative purpose in making machines do neat stuff.
I am a cracker: I'm a 'po' white guy from the Deep South.
The incontinent, quasi-intelligent, spectacularly emasculate nadir of de-evolutionary genetic pollution that took these credit card numbers is a criminal: He broke the law.
He is also a worthless asshole: He caused unneccesary harm to others.
To call him anything else seems only to glorify his persona beyond the base nature of his actions.
The Windows version of Opera is a lot faster, at least, than any Mozilla build I've had the patience to lumber through. It seems to have a much better cache-ing procedure, for instance, which makes Back/Forward operations much quicker. It's also been a lot more stable for me. Mozilla seems to crash almost at the drop of a hat. (And will drop the hat itself, if need be.) Opera has crashed once or twice, and each time I restarted it I was automatically presented with the option to change some settings that might prevent future crashes. Mozilla also just seems sluggish in its response to anything like pulling down menus, etc., where Opera never does.
Another thing Opera has over Mozilla, though admittedly non-vital, is its easy and extensive configurability, part of which is the way you can override a document's own settings with your own.
The only fault I am able to find with Opera is the frequent JavaScript/JScript errors it produces, due generally to two things:
IE/M$-happy web developers who wouldn't recognize a non-IE browser if it tap-danced across their noses.
Microsoft's aggresive (and somewhat rude) attempts to "outrace the standards" by adding tons of script functionality to IE that never gets approved by the W3C, but nevertheless has the affect of making other browsers seem uncompliant when they aren't. Whew. Rant over.
I've rambled long enough. Time to go outside and shoot BBs at the neighbors' dogs.
The commercial version is commercial free, except that it is supposed to generate commerce for the non-commercial version that has commercials for other commercial products (otherwise they wouldn't have commericals, right?)
Commercialism only informs the non-commercial version inasmuch as commercials for non-commmercialism direct commerce toward the commercial version which is, after all, what makes the world turn, don'cha know?
A compiler can be used to divide things into two categories:
Things that are programs
Things that are not
Group 2 can be discarded. Group 1 (CLASS = Programs) can be further subdivided into:
Programs that fail
Programs that do not fail
--
Re:Damn punk kid moderators. No knowledge of histo
on
On Asteroid Mining
·
· Score: 1
Yeaahh.. [encrusted synapses fire intermittenly as the dusty veil of memory unfolds].. Sinistar..
God, that game was scary. It was like asteroids on acid. You pump something like twenty thousand rounds into an asteroid and get out a few drifting sparklies that you have to pick up to make the bombs, which were the only thing that could really hurt the sadistic flying skull-face demon from Hell.. after a while he shows up to chase you around. And he doesn't/stop/ chasing you. If you don't have enough bombs, you just have to make 'em fast, before catches up with you.
What was that evil fucker called?
God, I feel/old/.
-Jon, who sits on the front porch now and whittles.
Please read this slowly and carefully, Anonymous Coward:
IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ IT, THEN DON'T
Are you honestly unable to tell at a glance, Anonymous Coward, the difference between "4 lines and a link" and a long JC post?
Allow me to express my condolences and to inquire further, Anonymous Coward, as to the specific nature of whatever malady it is that causes you to be either:
Unable to count
Unable to act on desires that you're annoyingly able to express
An insecure, snide sheep that can't even express his own opinion, however scatological in nature and merit it will inevitably be, outside of a pathetic "Ooh, ooh, me too, me too! I hate Jon Katz, too!"
*Sigh*
I guess you don't merit all this, kid, but I'm just titanically disgusted at the gross lack of responsibility for one's own actions that I see out here every damn day.
Highbrow? Isn't that just an uppity way of saying stuck up?
Damn, man.. why the hell would someone type "opposite of a geek" when they meant Luddite? Try typing both of those several times and see if you can figure out which one is easier to type. Extra credit if you don't drool on your keyboard.
Okay.. I got it: make the sphere sufficiently large that the gravitational attraction between the player and the sphere be strong enough to prevent the player from being able to "step off the sphere".
An added advantage of this gravitational effect is that you could pack as many people as you wanted onto the sphere (allowing them elbow room, of course.)
This method does have a drawback: Projection of the VR is no longer possible. Some other method of delivering the sensory data to the players is here indicated.
Well, with a sphere this size, it's even possible to forego the digital nature of data generation and use a more literal approach. Imagine: What the player sees is not a digital tree, imperfect in detail and 'projected' at his eyes with some bulky expensive device; no, instead he sees a real tree, with a complete sensory presence. The player can not only see the tree, he can touch it, and smell it, and even hear it, as long as it doesn't fall in the forest (ha, ha!)
There is so much more potential to this idea that it's completely out of the scope of this forum: But once you've heard all this, the idea begins to sell itself.
Guess what: It's already underway.
It's long designation is:
Enhanced-Application Reality Test Hoverball
I'm sure there's a diminutive of this, but I haven't yet been able to discover it. The location of the Hoverball is not verified, but rumors abound, and some of them are pretty amazing, let me tell you. One guy claims that they're actually able to run such a huge project and hide it under our very noses! (ha, ha!)
Oh, one last thing: It's run by a corporation called the Golden Origins Directorate. The home offices of this company are unknown, but most of the higher management seems to be Jewish.
Scene: A small kitchen in suburban America. A teenage girl sits at the table studying a Physics text. Her mother appears to be cooking.
Mother: "Honey, do you like antipasto? I thought I'd make some -- maybe mix it in with the pasto, and see how it turns out."
Girl: "Sure, mom. Sounds good."
The girl seems slightly uncomfortable, but doesn't know why. Suddenly, she begins flipping madly through the textbook until she finds what she's looking for. As she reads, her eyes grow into the size of Buick hubcaps. For one fatal moment, she's frozen.
[Slow-mo action sequence: Girl knocks her chair back and leaps toward her mother, who is blithely opening a package. The girl's mouth slowly forms the word "No-o-o-o-o.." as she flies through the air.]
Cut to helicopter's-eye view of the house. Birds chirp. Horns honk. Suddenly, the house becomes a huge plume of smoke and a shockwave that levels trees, buildings, and vehicles for miles around. The mushroom cloud forms, gracefully as always. There is naught but silence disturbed only by the timid crackling of citywide fires.
Announcer: "People don't kill people; violent transmutation of matter into raw light and energy kills people. We at the Coalition of Concerned Citizens against Food Physics Ignorance have a better way. Join now, and fight Food Physics Ignorance -- [a scream puncuates the silence. A school bus explodes] -- before it's too late."
The first thing to do is validate the assumption that bandwidth-hoarding is really a problem.
i.e. Are there really enough people (down|up)loading craploads of.. uh.. crap all the time such that the other users' access is significantly impaired?
It's true that flat-rate charges don't discourage bandwidth hoarding, but does it need discouraging? My experience has not been that it does.
I hope I can do this politely.. your attitude annoys (not offends) me. I prefer that someone know that I am abusing some resource before they limit my use of it on the grounds that I might. Human beings (even internet users) are savages, granted, but most of us are not infants. We are nobody's charges but our own.
It was originally published as a short story entitled "Flowers for Algernon", and was later expanded into a novel entitled "Charly".
The short story was unutterably tremendous. Absolutely the most heart-rending (and terrifying) thing I've ever read.
The book should not have been written. Alone, it was pretty good. But compared to the shorter version, it appeared spread too thin. Sort of like how you think you get really blasted from the schwag you normally smoke, until you finally encounter some truly good stuff..:)
Actually, in the seventies they made a movie out it that I saw for the first time a few weeks ago. Nice, but again nowhere near the original.
I have read way too much sci-fi over the years, but this story remains my absolute uncontested favorite.
Oh, by the way.. this post is off-topic.
Scene: Smoky nightclub.
At the bar sit two young men with significantly divergent IQs. They are ogling two young ladies across the room. The ladies as well are.. unqueally intelligent.
Smart Guy: "That blonde sure is cute... probably means she already has a boyfriend. No harm in trying, I guess.. but what if I make a fool of myself? Damn, I'm so indecisive.. "...etc.
Dumb Guy: "Duh-uh.. pretty girl" "Hi. Wanna have sex?"
Smart Girl: "How rude! I can't believe you think I'll have sex with a cretin like you just because you can walk over and ask!"
Dumb Girl: "Duh-uh.. you're strong..
etc.
You're right, of course -- rate of change of time changes with velocity. Hrm.. Motion is relative.. there is no motion without a frame of reference.. The difference in the rates at which two seperate observers travel through time is a function of their velocities relative to each other.
Here's something I wonder.. the idea that the speed of light is a limit on how fast something can travel seems to be at odds with the notion of the relativity of motion.
Ex: (1) - relatively motionless (v = 0 m/s)
...(2) - half of lightspeed (v = 0.5c)
......(3) -lightspeed (v = c)
(4)... -1/2 lightspeed the other way (v= -0.5c)
QUESTION: Isn't (3) exceeding lightspeed relative to (4), but not to (1) or (2)? What happens at this point? Is there a fault in my logic?
It seems to me that the best you can do with this is to determine (or decree) that a star does not move. Which frame of reference you pick doesn't matter, but you can only have one at a time. ..this is, of course, nit-picking.
But here's a thought: why is time not relative? Everything in the universe (that we know of) travels in the same direction at the same rate through time. Is time the one constant in a relative world?
-- Philosophy, like masturbation, is something everyone does, but most of the time it's just too awkward to talk about.
Did anyone else notice that, as far as the story reports, no-one felt it at all worthwhile to deny any of the kid's accusations?
This seems to allow two possible interpretations:
The accusations are true. The kid did not commit libel.
The accusations are so ridiculous as not to merit refutation. In other words, they are so unbelievable that no one would seriously consider them true. Therefore, there exists no possiblity of damage to the public opinion of the accused people. The kid did not commit libel.
..sigh..
..or maybe it doesn't matter to any of the authorities whether or not the kid's story was true. While I realize that what was posted was probably nothing more than angry name-calling and mud-flinging, I am scared of anyone with a gun who uses it to force a guy into a jail cell and doesn't even try to find out whether or not he was right.
"...light is the fastest known way of communication we know of (except gravity)"
Gravity propogates at the speed of light. If the Sun were to suddenly vanish, the Earth would continue accelerating around its orbit for about eight minutes before it flew off on a tangent.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not my right to use someone else's resources to surf the net at work, granted. But if I am allowed the privilege of doing so, it _is_ my right to have my privacy untrammelled while I'm at it. If a guest at your home asks to use the telephone, you are not obligated to let them. But if you _do_ give them permission, a basic respect for human dignity demands that you not eavesdrop on their conversation by using another phone without their knowledge. And I haven't met the person yet with enough ill-advised chutzpah to inform his guests that all calls made from his phones will be monitored by him without specific permission (which is exactly the stance many companies take in their anti-privacy policies that explicitly warn employees that everything they do is being watched.)
Personal use of company equipment is a privilege. To have my privacy respected while I exercise that privilege is my right.
IHBT (I think)
I found Episode I to be more of a dud than an outright disaster (as has been often opined). I felt a little sick and a lot dissapointed after seeing it, but the fact that the Jedi then were so prevalent seemed a tacit promise to tell what happened to them before Ep V. I suppose the only thing I got from Ep I was a confirmed desire to see Ep II, which is, one assumes, Lucas' purpose.
Funny, I never thought of myself as a Star Wars geek..
--
The key here is that some of the mice had been genetically engineered without the ability to produce CD45. The mice were then infected with the virus, and their immune systems responded.
Now comes the interesting part. What happens when their bodies successfully stave off the infection? The normal mice use CD45 to subdue their immune response, but the altered mice's bodies keep attacking cells. The article doesn't go into enough detail about this, but I suspect it gave them something like cancer. Or lupus. Both of these can be seen as a sort of out-of-control immune response. CD45 might give people with these diseases the ability to bring their immune system back in control.
--
The first page is here. I suggest spending some time on each one. This stuff is fascinating.
--
--
Best thing in the world for a hangover. You can buy little packets of pills in gas stations that advertise increased energy.. etc.
Look on the back of the package to ensure that it is indeed B12 you're getting. Pop'em and wait half an hour.
I've heard of a lot of things to do to treat hangovers.. this is the only thing I've ever encountered that cures one. (Along with a glass or two of water.)
-Pip's drunken uncle
--
My two cents concerning these things:
- I am a hacker: I find a sense of creative purpose in making machines do neat stuff.
- I am a cracker: I'm a 'po' white guy from the Deep South.
- The incontinent, quasi-intelligent, spectacularly emasculate nadir of de-evolutionary genetic pollution that took these credit card numbers is a criminal: He broke the law.
- He is also a worthless asshole: He caused unneccesary harm to others.
To call him anything else seems only to glorify his persona beyond the base nature of his actions.--
Damn, this sucks. I like Opera..
There are a lot of things in IE that aren't reflected in the standards, however. Damn useful things, too, more's the pity.
Oh, well. Thanks.
--
Another thing Opera has over Mozilla, though admittedly non-vital, is its easy and extensive configurability, part of which is the way you can override a document's own settings with your own.
The only fault I am able to find with Opera is the frequent JavaScript/JScript errors it produces, due generally to two things:
I've rambled long enough. Time to go outside and shoot BBs at the neighbors' dogs.
--
The commercial version is commercial free, except that it is supposed to generate commerce for the non-commercial version that has commercials for other commercial products (otherwise they wouldn't have commericals, right?)
Commercialism only informs the non-commercial version inasmuch as commercials for non-commmercialism direct commerce toward the commercial version which is, after all, what makes the world turn, don'cha know?
--
Group 2 can be discarded. Group 1 (CLASS = Programs) can be further subdivided into:
Programs that fail
Programs that do not fail
--
God, that game was scary. It was like asteroids on acid. You pump something like twenty thousand rounds into an asteroid and get out a few drifting sparklies that you have to pick up to make the bombs, which were the only thing that could really hurt the sadistic flying skull-face demon from Hell.. after a while he shows up to chase you around. And he doesn't /stop/ chasing you. If you don't have enough bombs, you just have to make 'em fast, before catches up with you.
What was that evil fucker called?
God, I feel /old/.
-Jon, who sits on the front porch now and whittles.
--
No. No, he doesn't.
--
Are you honestly unable to tell at a glance, Anonymous Coward, the difference between "4 lines and a link" and a long JC post?
Allow me to express my condolences and to inquire further, Anonymous Coward, as to the specific nature of whatever malady it is that causes you to be either:
*Sigh*
I guess you don't merit all this, kid, but I'm just titanically disgusted at the gross lack of responsibility for one's own actions that I see out here every damn day.
I'm done with you, Anonymous Coward. Go play.
--
Damn, man.. why the hell would someone type "opposite of a geek" when they meant Luddite? Try typing both of those several times and see if you can figure out which one is easier to type. Extra credit if you don't drool on your keyboard.
--
Okay.. I got it: make the sphere sufficiently large that the gravitational attraction between the player and the sphere be strong enough to prevent the player from being able to "step off the sphere".
An added advantage of this gravitational effect is that you could pack as many people as you wanted onto the sphere (allowing them elbow room, of course.)
This method does have a drawback: Projection of the VR is no longer possible. Some other method of delivering the sensory data to the players is here indicated.
Well, with a sphere this size, it's even possible to forego the digital nature of data generation and use a more literal approach. Imagine: What the player sees is not a digital tree, imperfect in detail and 'projected' at his eyes with some bulky expensive device; no, instead he sees a real tree, with a complete sensory presence. The player can not only see the tree, he can touch it, and smell it, and even hear it, as long as it doesn't fall in the forest (ha, ha!)
There is so much more potential to this idea that it's completely out of the scope of this forum: But once you've heard all this, the idea begins to sell itself.
Guess what: It's already underway. It's long designation is: Enhanced-Application Reality Test Hoverball I'm sure there's a diminutive of this, but I haven't yet been able to discover it. The location of the Hoverball is not verified, but rumors abound, and some of them are pretty amazing, let me tell you. One guy claims that they're actually able to run such a huge project and hide it under our very noses! (ha, ha!)
Oh, one last thing: It's run by a corporation called the Golden Origins Directorate. The home offices of this company are unknown, but most of the higher management seems to be Jewish.
--
Mother: "Honey, do you like antipasto? I thought I'd make some -- maybe mix it in with the pasto, and see how it turns out."
Girl: "Sure, mom. Sounds good."
The girl seems slightly uncomfortable, but doesn't know why. Suddenly, she begins flipping madly through the textbook until she finds what she's looking for. As she reads, her eyes grow into the size of Buick hubcaps. For one fatal moment, she's frozen.
[Slow-mo action sequence: Girl knocks her chair back and leaps toward her mother, who is blithely opening a package. The girl's mouth slowly forms the word "No-o-o-o-o.." as she flies through the air.]
Cut to helicopter's-eye view of the house. Birds chirp. Horns honk. Suddenly, the house becomes a huge plume of smoke and a shockwave that levels trees, buildings, and vehicles for miles around. The mushroom cloud forms, gracefully as always. There is naught but silence disturbed only by the timid crackling of citywide fires.
Announcer: "People don't kill people; violent transmutation of matter into raw light and energy kills people. We at the Coalition of Concerned Citizens against Food Physics Ignorance have a better way. Join now, and fight Food Physics Ignorance -- [a scream puncuates the silence. A school bus explodes] -- before it's too late."
--
i.e. Are there really enough people (down|up)loading craploads of
It's true that flat-rate charges don't discourage bandwidth hoarding, but does it need discouraging? My experience has not been that it does.
I hope I can do this politely.. your attitude annoys (not offends) me. I prefer that someone know that I am abusing some resource before they limit my use of it on the grounds that I might. Human beings (even internet users) are savages, granted, but most of us are not infants. We are nobody's charges but our own.
--
The book should not have been written. Alone, it was pretty good. But compared to the shorter version, it appeared spread too thin. Sort of like how you think you get really blasted from the schwag you normally smoke, until you finally encounter some truly good stuff.. :)
Actually, in the seventies they made a movie out it that I saw for the first time a few weeks ago. Nice, but again nowhere near the original.
I have read way too much sci-fi over the years, but this story remains my absolute uncontested favorite. Oh, by the way.. this post is off-topic.
--
--
Hrm.. Motion is relative.. there is no motion without a frame of reference.. The difference in the rates at which two seperate observers travel through time is a function of their velocities relative to each other.
Here's something I wonder.. the idea that the speed of light is a limit on how fast something can travel seems to be at odds with the notion of the relativity of motion.
Ex:
(1) - relatively motionless (v = 0 m/s)
(4)... -1/2 lightspeed the other way (v= -0.5c)
QUESTION: Isn't (3) exceeding lightspeed relative to (4), but not to (1) or (2)? What happens at this point? Is there a fault in my logic?
--
..this is, of course, nit-picking.
But here's a thought: why is time not relative? Everything in the universe (that we know of) travels in the same direction at the same rate through time. Is time the one constant in a relative world?
--
Philosophy, like masturbation, is something everyone does, but most of the time it's just too awkward to talk about.
--
This seems to allow two possible interpretations:
--
Gravity propogates at the speed of light. If the Sun were to suddenly vanish, the Earth would continue accelerating around its orbit for about eight minutes before it flew off on a tangent.
--