No, 667 is across the street. 664 and 668 are the neighbors. I left those out because everybody's heard it, and Slashdot has a sig limit. (And, mine are all palindromes, at least the numerical part, like the original 666.)
The rest of them:
111: Skinny Beast (or Victorious Beast)
222: Too Beasty for My Shirt
333: Arboreal Beast
444: Golfing Beast
777: Lucky Beast
888: Fat Beast (or After-Dinner Beast)
All: Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Karl: Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Lenny: Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
Alien: We do! We do!
All: Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Skinner: Who robs cavefish of their sight?
Homer: Who rigs every Oscar night?
All: We do! We do!
King of the Hill did a great treatment of low-flow toilets: the manufacturer lobbied the government to change the law, to mandate low-flow toilets to save water.
Hank Hill found that generally these low-flow toilets take twice the flushes, meaning they actually waste water.
I like that a somewhat children's cartoon (it's on at 7 pm Sunday nights) can teach us to question authority. And, that any time the law changes, there's usually money involved.
[...] try setting the "config.trim_on_minimize" pref to "false"
This is done by:
1. Open new tab.
2. Go to "about:config".
3. Right-click, select New, Boolean.
4. Type the variable name, "config.trim_on_minimize", hit Enter.
5. Type "false", hit Enter.
6. Exit and restart Mozilla.
Now it won't free memory when it minimizes, which it generally takes 30-60 seconds (sometimes longer!) to restore when the user clicks on the task bar icon to bring it back up.
While I don't disagree with your premise, I think the helplessness you portray is inaccurate.
Wikimedia has done a lot for showing how a loose collaboration of many individuals can create a stable, strong, factual, dynamic environment.
Sure, there will always be polluters, but their rating will be lowered the more they pollute, and given a decent rating system (not exactly Slashdot, but it's a good start), the polluters can never do as much damage as they would like, so they tend to stop polluting (or go somewhere else where it's easier to, like perhaps ZDNet).
I guess my point is: it would be more beneficial for everyone involved if information was more easily accessible. I'm reading a book on Lisp right now, and it describes the difference between Lisp and other traditional programming languages like this: imagine you're having a conversation by letter. Then, imagine the person is in the same room as you. Not only will you have faster turnaround time, you will have a different type of conversation than you would have had by post.
So, sure, there'll be some people who prefer to prop up their fantasy worlds and will neglect to seek out confirmation of beliefs presented to them. But there will always be those people. Having the ability to immediately refute statistics is a net benefit for everyone.
And, will I believe the statistics? It depends on where I get them from. The CIA World Factbook has a great deal of information about foreign countries' populations, GDP, telephone/TV/cellphone coverage, etc. I would tend to believe those statistics. Something on geocities would obviously need to be verified.
And I don't agree with your conclusion, that politicians will stop lying and only misrepresent statistics. With this system in place, they won't be able to misrepresent statistics because not only the host, but every viewer will be able to immediately look up the right data. And not actually the host, since the host will be sitting there talking; but the host's support network will include real-time fact checkers, with a direct line to the host's earpiece.
[...] while at the same time sustaining the most bullet wounds to their feet.
My favorite image along those lines comes from someone's response to one of the older SCO articles (probably about a year ago): "He's shooting himself in the foot before sticking his foot in his mouth."
I just love that (perhaps that makes me sick) -- the image of a guy hopping around on one foot, yelling incoherent obscenities because his mouth is full of his other foot, and blood flying everywhere. A fitting end.
Perhaps the future will bring change. Consider: modern cell phones give us an almost instant link to the Internet, so we can do fact-checking (almost) in real time.
It won't be too long before we have a "better interface" to the Internet. By this I'm not saying a direct Matrixesqe neural link (although that's coming); I mean something like a display in your glasses, and a special microphone so you can subvocalize (move your mouth in the speech pattern without actually making sounds) to control it.
At that point, the host (of a TV program) could immediately confirm or deny the statistics and confront the liar with them. We'd end up voting in far fewer liars, I would imagine.
Actually I like your logic. I used it myself many years ago: "What if attempted murder was punishable by death? Then all you'd have to do is attempt suicide, and society would help you guarantee your result..."
Doesn't matter whether Sony uses their hidden software to compromise a system. They installed the hidden software which allowed someone to compromise. That hidden software is commonly known as a "rootkit".
A "virus" or "trojan" or "worm" is the software that performs the compromise. A "rootkit" allows the V/T/W writer to produce their creation with less effort.
Sony is directly responsible for reducing system security on PCs that have been infected with their rootkits. That is actionable, but likely nobody will go to jail.
Actually, if the school board had gotten away with not telling the student which of their farcical "laws" they violated, they would have taught the student a lesson in the proper abuse of authority. (Of course, these lessons are rarely learned right, because the climate changes and the student then becomes the incarcerated...)
What's really cool is as I was reading your post, I was thinking up ways to convince the rents to put an incinerator down here next to me. Three benefits: 1. no trash disposal fee; 2. free electricity; and 3. free heat and white noise for my bedroom!
You're half right: the universe may have oscillated in the past, but scientists have proven that it doesn't have the energy to collapse back in on itself again. (See the fourth paragraph of that article.)
Which makes me wonder in awe at the scale of the previous oscillations. Perhaps the first few were nanoseconds in duration, and each successive oscillation gave the universe more "time" to develop, until finally we're here. I wonder whether creatures obtained intelligence in the last oscillation, and tried to leave messages for their future counterparts (us)?
Slashdot Mirror
"The less a man knows about how sausages and laws are made, the easier it is to steal his vote and give him botulism."
From http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169368 &cid=14119001
More evidence: the song lyrics posted were hosted at area51newmexico.com -- the ninjas are watching!
The rest of them:
111: Skinny Beast (or Victorious Beast)
222: Too Beasty for My Shirt
333: Arboreal Beast
444: Golfing Beast
777: Lucky Beast
888: Fat Beast (or After-Dinner Beast)
You heard it here first. 1/2 ;-)
"Besmirching Rectum" sounds about right.
Like this.
All: Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Karl: Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Lenny: Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
Alien: We do! We do!
All: Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Skinner: Who robs cavefish of their sight?
Homer: Who rigs every Oscar night?
All: We do! We do!
Hank Hill found that generally these low-flow toilets take twice the flushes, meaning they actually waste water.
I like that a somewhat children's cartoon (it's on at 7 pm Sunday nights) can teach us to question authority. And, that any time the law changes, there's usually money involved.
Turns out there's a great answer:
From http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/qa/archives/2005/10 /beta2_candidate_builds_availab.html
This is done by:1. Open new tab.
2. Go to "about:config".
3. Right-click, select New, Boolean.
4. Type the variable name, "config.trim_on_minimize", hit Enter.
5. Type "false", hit Enter.
6. Exit and restart Mozilla.
Now it won't free memory when it minimizes, which it generally takes 30-60 seconds (sometimes longer!) to restore when the user clicks on the task bar icon to bring it back up.
Wikimedia has done a lot for showing how a loose collaboration of many individuals can create a stable, strong, factual, dynamic environment.
Sure, there will always be polluters, but their rating will be lowered the more they pollute, and given a decent rating system (not exactly Slashdot, but it's a good start), the polluters can never do as much damage as they would like, so they tend to stop polluting (or go somewhere else where it's easier to, like perhaps ZDNet).
I guess my point is: it would be more beneficial for everyone involved if information was more easily accessible. I'm reading a book on Lisp right now, and it describes the difference between Lisp and other traditional programming languages like this: imagine you're having a conversation by letter. Then, imagine the person is in the same room as you. Not only will you have faster turnaround time, you will have a different type of conversation than you would have had by post.
So, sure, there'll be some people who prefer to prop up their fantasy worlds and will neglect to seek out confirmation of beliefs presented to them. But there will always be those people. Having the ability to immediately refute statistics is a net benefit for everyone.
And, will I believe the statistics? It depends on where I get them from. The CIA World Factbook has a great deal of information about foreign countries' populations, GDP, telephone/TV/cellphone coverage, etc. I would tend to believe those statistics. Something on geocities would obviously need to be verified.
And I don't agree with your conclusion, that politicians will stop lying and only misrepresent statistics. With this system in place, they won't be able to misrepresent statistics because not only the host, but every viewer will be able to immediately look up the right data. And not actually the host, since the host will be sitting there talking; but the host's support network will include real-time fact checkers, with a direct line to the host's earpiece.
My favorite image along those lines comes from someone's response to one of the older SCO articles (probably about a year ago): "He's shooting himself in the foot before sticking his foot in his mouth."
I just love that (perhaps that makes me sick) -- the image of a guy hopping around on one foot, yelling incoherent obscenities because his mouth is full of his other foot, and blood flying everywhere. A fitting end.
It won't be too long before we have a "better interface" to the Internet. By this I'm not saying a direct Matrixesqe neural link (although that's coming); I mean something like a display in your glasses, and a special microphone so you can subvocalize (move your mouth in the speech pattern without actually making sounds) to control it.
At that point, the host (of a TV program) could immediately confirm or deny the statistics and confront the liar with them. We'd end up voting in far fewer liars, I would imagine.
I read that as he has relationships with executables.
Why, -1, Redundant, of course! ;-)
Actually I like your logic. I used it myself many years ago: "What if attempted murder was punishable by death? Then all you'd have to do is attempt suicide, and society would help you guarantee your result..."
Then I remembered my college days. (It's early this morning...)
A "virus" or "trojan" or "worm" is the software that performs the compromise. A "rootkit" allows the V/T/W writer to produce their creation with less effort.
Sony is directly responsible for reducing system security on PCs that have been infected with their rootkits. That is actionable, but likely nobody will go to jail.
Actually, if the school board had gotten away with not telling the student which of their farcical "laws" they violated, they would have taught the student a lesson in the proper abuse of authority. (Of course, these lessons are rarely learned right, because the climate changes and the student then becomes the incarcerated...)
UQM is "The Ur-Quan Masters" and is a great clone of Star Control.
What's really cool is as I was reading your post, I was thinking up ways to convince the rents to put an incinerator down here next to me. Three benefits: 1. no trash disposal fee; 2. free electricity; and 3. free heat and white noise for my bedroom!
Which makes me wonder in awe at the scale of the previous oscillations. Perhaps the first few were nanoseconds in duration, and each successive oscillation gave the universe more "time" to develop, until finally we're here. I wonder whether creatures obtained intelligence in the last oscillation, and tried to leave messages for their future counterparts (us)?
Your computer is mauve; the bits flying through the air are magenta. (OK, that's enough...)
Nonono, all they have to do is make owning a BMW illegal. Problem solved.
But just because someone applies for a patent doesn't mean there isn't prior art. (Apparently the patent examiners don't watch Drew Carey.)