Strangely enough, the IBT does have a public contact page, easily acessible right from their front page.
As usual, if you feel inclined to contact them directly, please use at least two brain cells and leave the flame gear in storage. (High Voltage might be okay, however.)
Actually, I thing these guys would love it if everything was set up like a pr0n site. Just so people would have to go through 15 or 20 links just to find the news content or whatever they are interested in, making them pay whatever outrageous fees they can scam for minimal content.
Nothing but ads forever without end.
I can just imagine using one of the adbusting softwares, and having it come up with a blank page.
[which reminds me, we need to rewrite lyrics for Lennon's song Imagine, to cover internet issues like spam, etc.]
To keep this in perspective, I submit this item that I spotted in another forum recently:
Reality "101" (whatever the hell that is)
Add a printer under Linux.
Add a printer under Windows 2000.
Install a game under Linux.
Install a game under Windows 2000.
Connect to your ISP under Linux.
Connect to your ISP under Windows 2000.
Download and print your digital camera pictures under Linux.
Download and print your digital camera pictures under Windows 2000.
Change your screen from 640x480 @ 256 colours to 1024x768 16.7 million colours under Linux.
Change your screen from 640x480 @ 256 colours to 1024x768 16.7 million colours under Windows 2000.
Note that these are typical things that tech support techs deal with all of the time, walking people through things, etc.
And yes, I am a long time member of the "I Hate Bill" Club. but we got to look at what this means when it comes to mass market items like games, etc.
Just how much expertise do we assume on the part of the typical user for each of the operating systems? And what about for those who are command line impaired?
Alot of new coders come from guys who first got an appetite for this stuff by editing/creating new levels etc. Obviously, those guys are fairly sharp since they figured out what to do, even if undereducated.
Sad to say, not every one belongs in that league. I can remember ages ago in retail talking to folks who wanted to by a cheap machine for the kids, y'know, just to do homework, and play a few games. I can't imagine it has changed all that much in this regard.
for that crowd, sadly the bucks are in the Windows programs.
Remember, mad scientists are a distinct minority of the population. Even if highly valuable.
My dad is not a geek, although he knows enough to do upgrades, etc.
Even he is mad at MS.
It sees that there is a large collection of users that are unhappy with MS and their fools-gold-plated tin handcuffs. They would be so much happier if they didn't have to use it because of work, or whatever. And they would do so if they could.
Unfortunately they are enslaved to the MS apps. But they would revolt if they could.
So there is a market if someone could pull it together, somehow. I can only applaud and encourage guys like these to keep on trucking. If no one tries, then it certainly will not happen.
It is interesting to examine the connection between the material success of a culture and the values of the culture itself. This is just another angle on the material of the book itself.
This shows up in many controversial areas.
For example, take the immigration from poor areas of the world to the richer areas of the world. The question here is how the culture of these immigrants is different from the country they are going to, and how important is this differance.
For example, if you have a town or village where the immigrants predominate, and have become a political force, what does the community look like? Does it look like and reflect the country that they are in, or where they came from? Typically, it looks like where they came from.
The problem is when this results in the same conditions that they left in the first place. Actually, it never gets that far, because of local ordinances, etc. but it does produce dramatic culture clashes. Southern California is an example of this. Xenophobia and prejudice are easy to develop under these conditions because in a democratic society, those moving in want things their way, similiar to what they are comfortable with, the way they knew it in their former homelands.
A less touchy example is when rich successful people buy a house in the country, after having lived in the cities all their lives. They get all freaked out by things like the smells of the local farms, and complain to the local town council, or whatever.
This becomes important when you are talking about things like how people deal with the basics of their lives, the economics, and how they create their own community.
Part of the problem is that many lack the lifetime of education in the culture of the country the aspire to, thinking that they must hold on to what they know already out of pride. They think in terms of either/or, or at least some political leaders do. The better would be knowing both.
This gets flipped on its head when we take this into another context completely. For example, the arena of the software market, open source vs proprietary software, etc.
As some may say, this is another can of worms entirely.
This has been mentioned over the past month or so in exactly this of context. The original story I saw was in the Registerhere.
To Recap: The bottom line is that if you have a moderately large gaming club of 25 to 50 members, you can start your own ISP at a cost that compares to some hardware upgrades.
The town of Laramie, Wyoming, has done just this by setting up Lariat.net. Residents started the networking business in 1995 in an effort to bring everyone in the area online after various squabbles with the area's telephone company (now Qwest). The initial cost was around $3,000, with many residents donating their own PCs, according to Glass. Relevant equipment was stuck on private land, and copper wire was bought from Qwest for areas that couldn't get wireless.
The cost of the service is pretty good compared to what it would be otherwise. Individuals get a normal dial-up service for $5 a month, or $20-$30 a month for high speed (10MB/second). It is doing quite well thank you.
They want to clone this effort around the country, so you can contact them via this page. So get you buds together and put together a business plan. You might wind up with something you can have fun with!
but you're still wrong. Those are due to interference of the light beam with itself, not with your retina. If you don't believe me, take a picture of these dots with an analog camera.
Which is not what I said. I said that each cell sends back data for one cell. Each cell is one sensor, averaging, if you will, the input across it. Of course interferance varies the intensity of the light on the surface of the cells. (Well duh!)
Take a look at the diagram 5 in the original article. Cells receiving lots of light send back one data point saying "bright". Cells receiving not so much send back one data point saying "dark". Really, it is not some other way.
So if you see light dots and darks dots, then you have to have at least one individual cell making a strong response to make the bright dot.
This actually is basic sensor technology at the bilogical level. Individual sensors sending back point data.
This has relevence to the discussion we had about the resolution of the human eye and lasers a few weeks ago.
For those who missed it, my original post is here, complete with the chain of responses from outraged laser geeks, my counter response, etc.
To recap: my argument is that the Light/Dark spots you see in the speckling of laser light are the individual Pixels (cones and rods, actually) of your own eyes. I ommitted to mention this effect probably comes from the interferance of Laser light on the retina of your eye. The bottom line is that each sensory cell in the eye, be it a cone or a rod, sends one point of brightness data to the brain, thus the speckle effect. This is noted indirectly by this section from the article mentioned above:
Although there are many potential benefits of super-normal visual optics, there is at least one expected penalty. Given a dramatic increase in optical quality of the retinal image, the photoreceptor mosaic will appear relatively coarse by comparison, as shown in Figure 5. As a result of this mismatch, very fine spatial details in the retinal image will be smaller than the distance between neighboring cones and therefore will not be registered properly in the neural image. This mis-representation of the image due to neural undersampling by a relatively coarse array of photoreceptors is called "aliasing". However, for everyday vision the penalty of aliasing is likely to be outweighed by the reward of higher contrast sensitivity and higher detection acuity.
In this context, this causes the aliasing effect because each receptors reports only one dot of light intensity data back to the brain. If the receptors sent more than one data point to the brain at the same time for a higher resolution, then the aliasing effect would still be there, although at a much smaller point.
See my original comments for the full details, etc. but it is still my contention the the effect of seeing the speckles in laser light is the individual variation of reception of light intensity by the individual cells of your eye.
This is a way for you to notice the granuality, the pixels of your eyes.
But what the &^$%^%*$%(has this to do with the issue at hand or the first ammendment ?
What is interesting is that there are books like The Anachists Handbook, that are printed legally in the USA. There is an interesting FAQ here. This passage is relevant:
Lyle Stuart (the auther)published the book (The Anachists Handbook) for a number of reasons. At the time Librarians across the US were being intimidated by the FBI and CIA who wanted to get names of people checking out books they felt were subversive. Lyle Stuart felt that publishing this book would make those efforts meaningless since people could simply buy the book without signing for it. Anyway Lyle did publish the book.
In my opinion the event of publishing the book was important. The contents are garbage. This was a very dangerous and brave publishing act for the 1960's.
People obviously do not want this info (found at 2600) spread around for reasons of their own profits. But somehow publishing on the internet is different than putting out a book?
I guess it is expected that the US gov would enter a brief on the side of big business, but in this case it is slightly disturbing. heck, it is plainly disturbing.
These Things take a while to prepare, so I wonder if this is something that was developed under the Clinton Administration, and then now has the blessing of the Bush. It is doubtful that the Bush folks would have put something like this just since the swearing in, or even since the election, since they were so distracted with other business.
This then presents the picture of both political parties supporting the people with deep pockets. Again not unexpected. But upsetting, since you would hope that *someone* was not corrupt.
This separate from the merits of the debate to begin with.
Um, would this be the same RTP that QNX offered free for commercial use.....last year? Oh, yeah. It is. Even the front page of get.qnx.com says "Posted January 18, 2001". I.e., they've been offering their RTP for free for quite a while now, and have even updated it once! A month ago. I don't usually rag on/. for redundant or late posts, but they covered this when it was actually news, and it's been literally *months*. That's bad. Real bad.
Well I do not get out that often, and this part of the programming world is new to me. Since I am abviously not an all knowing expert in all things geek, this is news to me.
Granted it was a month ago, but better late than never. I prefer this, as opposed to those who say "well it came out this morning, so it is already too old for us."
This reminds me of the elitist attitude I have seen in buying hardware, ie, "If it can be purchased commercially, it is obsolete". This would translate to "If I've heard of it, it's old"
A more legit criticism would be if it was obviously just flogging something for some hapless companies marketing department. That is what commercial magaziones are for.
For the regular high voltage geek, if you want to build stuff from scratch, fine. but most folks will not have a use for it.
It is interesting, however, even if a specialized field.
In a related story summed up at the bottom of the original blurb (original link here):
"Alarm bells first rang when it emerged last October that Corel's mystery investor was none other than Microsoft. They should have rung louder... Now it appears the United States Department of Justice is taking a closer look at the antitrust implications of that transaction."
"To be brutally honest, I'm not going to shed any tears over the death of Corel's Linux distribution... On the other hand the passing of WordPerfect for Linux and WordPerfect Office for Linux would be more of a worry. Officially these products have not yet been dumped - but don't hold your breath."
"But there's another reason to worry about the demise of Corel's Linux offering, the company
has played a major role in the development of Wine. In January Corel outlined its business plan
in a press release. Wine isn't specifically mentioned, but the company says it will continue to develop Linux applications and presumably this means the Wine contribution will continue. This
means that a Microsoft controlled company is going to play a major role in the development
of Wine. Is anyone looking at the antitrust implications of that?"
While the original article is far more in depth, and goes on to mention that this is more likely a remnant of the previous administration, I can not but help start to feel like the republicans do about Clinton. It is hard. I try to control my dark side.
But MS..., each day one of its' minions goes and does something that just irritates the hell out of me.
I'm going to have to start painting MS in the pictures of royalist France or something. Or maybe Napoleon. They are really starting to irritate me.
essential a class of engines with no moving parts...
I remember an old story illustrating the differance a 50 or 100 year gap in technology makes. It was based on the idea of someone from 1920 trying to cope with a jet engine from 1970 drone with semi conductors, etc. interesting stuff.
We need to be careful about the conclusions we draw from our proofs. I am sure that because of this proof of the mechanics of Evolution, that many folks are going to to jump to the conclusion that this disproves spirituality, etc.
This does not logically follow. I could make an arguement about this, but I submit for you consideration this essay found at this site, which says it all much better than I could come up with at a moments notice. It is a poetry site BTW, and not particularly political in nature, although opinions are expressed.
Television Science: the Year of the Circuit
I keep hearing authorities on public radio applying logic to who and what we are that, if applied to a TV set, might run as follows: Though tradition claims that there is life beyond this TV set, a life that continues after its demise --actual living beings who create these moving pictures, the TV set being only a means of presenting them to others --we know, scientifically, that this cannot be the case. Here is the evidence:
1. Obviously, nothing of the life you see on a TV set can survive the demise of the TV set. Proof: destroy a TV set. It contains no more life, nor ever will again.
2. Evidence is mounting that the TV set is the SOURCE of the pictures you see on its screen. They are all created within the "brain" of the TV set. For example, if you sever this wire, the pictures vanish. If you sever THIS one, the picture lose their vertical hold. If you cut THAT one, they lose horizontal hold. If you destroy that part, they fade. If you destroy THAT part, the sound vanishes. And so forth. By disabling one or another component to see what it controls, scientists, daily, are clarifying the ways in which the various parts of the TV set contribute to the creation of its pictures. (Tube or not tube?)
3. Where sets are faulty (electrical brain imbalances), we can't cure them, but we CAN keep them operating. For example, when we jolt this set by attaching a power line to this part here, we don't get the correct picture back, but notice how the screen flares up, all brilliant white? See? We can keep it happy.
Our scientists -- never has more intelligence been exerted to propound greater stupidity. When a body dies, a body dies; therefore there is no soul. Huh? When you mess up part of a brain, the person becomes incapable of telling one face from another. Therefore the person IS his brain. So let's see: If I'm using brains and nerves to communicate via a body, and you can mess up my communication lines by messing up the body, I don't exist? If you can cut the brake linings on a car so that the brakes don't work, this proves that there's no driver?
The only point being , we need to be careful in our logic when it cones to these things.
Depending on the current market positioning, it would make sense that you would look at your nearest rivals first, compared to the others in the field.
Even if they happen to be "family"
Of course, there are always other options and other games you could play. But this gets back to the zero-sum game discussions we have had around here over the past few weeks.
Well, a while back there was the story about ethyl alcohol being found floating free between the stars. This, combined with complex hydrocarbons, brings this classic to mind ( I wish I knew who the author was so that I give proper credit):
This week, a million fraternity brothers rushed to join NASA. The reason: scientists have discovered beer in space.
Well, not beer exactly. But they did find alcohol: ethyl alcohol,
to be precise, the active ingredient in all major alcoholic drinks
(antifreeze Jell-O shots, quite obviously, are exempted from this
category). Three British scientists, Drs. Tom Millar, Geoffrey
MacDonald and Rolf Habing, discovered this interstellar Everclear
floating in a gas cloud in the contellation of Aquila (sign of the
Eagle, the mascot of Anheuser-Busch! Hmmmmm).
Millar and his compatriots have estimated the size of this gas
cloud at approximately 1,000 times the diameter of our own solar
system; there's enough alcohol out there, they say, to make 400
trillion trillion pints of beer. These guys are British, mind you; if
you were to translate this in terms of American beer (which the
British, with some justification, regard as fermented club soda), the
amount of potential brewski just about doubles.
In human terms: remember that double-keg party you threw at the
end of your Junior year in college (the second Junior year)? Imagine
throwing that same party, every eight hours, for the next 30 billion
years. You'd STILL have beer left over. And boy, would YOUR bathroom
be a mess! Simply put, no one could ever drink 400 trillion trillion
pints of beer, except maybe Buffalo Bills fans.
The sheer volume of all this alcohol begs the question of how it
managed to get out there in the first place. Despite the simplifying
effect it has on the human brain, ethyl alcohol is a reasonably
complex
molecule: two carbon atoms, five hydrogen atoms, and a hydroxyl
radical, all cavorting together in beery camaraderie. It's not a
compund that is
going to spontaneously arise out of the cold depths of space. It can
lead to speculation: What is this cloud?
1. It's God's beer. After all, He worked for six days creating the
universe, and on the seventh day, He rested. And after you've had a
hard week at the office, don't YOU grab a beer? Since man is made in
God's image, it could be that this cloud is the remaining evidence of
the first, and best, Miller Time.
2. It's Purgatory ("400 trillion trillion bottles of beer on the
wall, 400 trillion trillion bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it
around, three hundred ninety-nine septillion, nine hundred ninety-nine
sextillion, nine hundred ninety-nine quintillion, nine hundred
ninety-nine quadrillion, nine hundred ninety-nine trillion, nine
hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine
hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine, bottles of
beer on the wall!")
3. Proof of an undeniably highly advanced but chronically
dipsomaniac alien society. This particular theory is shaky, however:
it's reasonable to assume that if the aliens were going to construct a
nebula of alcohol, they'd also have large clouds of Beer Nuts and
pretzels nearby for snacking. Advanced spectral analysis has yet to
locate them.
The truth of the matter, however, is far more prosaic. In the middle
of this gas cloud is a young and no doubt quite inebriated star. As
the star heats up and contracts, sucking the dust and gas of the cloud
into a smaller area, complex molecules form as a result of greater
interaction between the elements. Ethyl alcohol forms on small motes
of dust in the cloud, and then, as the motes angle in closer towards
the star and heat up, the alcohol is released from the motes in
gaseous form. And there you have it: an alcohol cloud. Or, as Dave
Bowman might say, "My God! It's full of booze!"
Enough with the science lesson, you say. Just tell me how to GET
there! Sorry, Chuckles. You can't get there from here. The gas cloud
(which, by the way, has the utterly romantic name of "G34.3") is
10,000 light years away: 58 quadrillion miles. Even if you hijacked
the shuttle and headed out with thrusters on full, by the time you got
there, the guy in Purgatory would be done with his tune. You'd have
had time to work up a powerful thirst, but you'd also be, in a word,
dead.
No, the Space Beer Cloud will have to wait for the far future, when
men can leap through the universe at warp speed. One can only imagine
what they will do when they get there:
For example there are many social theories that have not had any solid scientific proof except in the harse world of politics. And even there it would be questionable. One example of this would be marxism, which since most of those systems have fallen, can be said to be a flawed system. This can hardly be taken as scientific proof.
Another example is in the field of mental health where despite billions of dollars of goverment funding, we hardly have a better society because of it. In fact, there have been dozens if not hundreds of schools of mental practice since WWII, but not much in terms of real social advance. The things touted as major advances often lead to things like Hellmouth. And there is not much that could stand up to the standards of proof demanded by hard Science. Referances include respected people such as Thomas Sasz(?) and others.
The real problem is when the hard or soft science is biased because of political agendas, which is what this program is supposed to counteract. I think that there will be some commontion caused by all of this.
MS is a very large and powerful company that feels threatened by a small but up and coming group of people.
People, groups, etc playing a I win You lose type of game are very frightened by people who choose to not play that game, who are not intmidated by that game, and who play a game where everyone wins, since that means that they gotta loose because their opponents win.
utter lunacy, of course. In other words, they loose power if you do not play their game.
Slashdot Mirror
As usual, if you feel inclined to contact them directly, please use at least two brain cells and leave the flame gear in storage. (High Voltage might be okay, however.)
Nothing but ads forever without end.
I can just imagine using one of the adbusting softwares, and having it come up with a blank page.
[which reminds me, we need to rewrite lyrics for Lennon's song Imagine, to cover internet issues like spam, etc.]
Reality "101" (whatever the hell that is)
Add a printer under Linux.
Add a printer under Windows 2000.
Install a game under Linux.
Install a game under Windows 2000.
Connect to your ISP under Linux.
Connect to your ISP under Windows 2000.
Download and print your digital camera pictures under Linux.
Download and print your digital camera pictures under Windows 2000.
Change your screen from 640x480 @ 256 colours to 1024x768 16.7 million colours under Linux.
Change your screen from 640x480 @ 256 colours to 1024x768 16.7 million colours under Windows 2000.
Note that these are typical things that tech support techs deal with all of the time, walking people through things, etc.
And yes, I am a long time member of the "I Hate Bill" Club. but we got to look at what this means when it comes to mass market items like games, etc.
Just how much expertise do we assume on the part of the typical user for each of the operating systems? And what about for those who are command line impaired?
Sad to say, not every one belongs in that league. I can remember ages ago in retail talking to folks who wanted to by a cheap machine for the kids, y'know, just to do homework, and play a few games. I can't imagine it has changed all that much in this regard.
for that crowd, sadly the bucks are in the Windows programs.
Remember, mad scientists are a distinct minority of the population. Even if highly valuable.
Depending on the size and the extra features (speakers, cattleprods, whatever), just the thing to scare the heck out of the neighborhood dogs.
Looks very promising, but I think the editotial title of the version says it all.
;-)
Another worthy project I just wish I had the time for!
Even he is mad at MS.
It sees that there is a large collection of users that are unhappy with MS and their fools-gold-plated tin handcuffs. They would be so much happier if they didn't have to use it because of work, or whatever. And they would do so if they could.
Unfortunately they are enslaved to the MS apps. But they would revolt if they could.
So there is a market if someone could pull it together, somehow. I can only applaud and encourage guys like these to keep on trucking. If no one tries, then it certainly will not happen.
This shows up in many controversial areas.
For example, take the immigration from poor areas of the world to the richer areas of the world. The question here is how the culture of these immigrants is different from the country they are going to, and how important is this differance.
For example, if you have a town or village where the immigrants predominate, and have become a political force, what does the community look like? Does it look like and reflect the country that they are in, or where they came from? Typically, it looks like where they came from.
The problem is when this results in the same conditions that they left in the first place. Actually, it never gets that far, because of local ordinances, etc. but it does produce dramatic culture clashes. Southern California is an example of this. Xenophobia and prejudice are easy to develop under these conditions because in a democratic society, those moving in want things their way, similiar to what they are comfortable with, the way they knew it in their former homelands.
A less touchy example is when rich successful people buy a house in the country, after having lived in the cities all their lives. They get all freaked out by things like the smells of the local farms, and complain to the local town council, or whatever.
This becomes important when you are talking about things like how people deal with the basics of their lives, the economics, and how they create their own community.
Part of the problem is that many lack the lifetime of education in the culture of the country the aspire to, thinking that they must hold on to what they know already out of pride. They think in terms of either/or, or at least some political leaders do. The better would be knowing both.
This gets flipped on its head when we take this into another context completely. For example, the arena of the software market, open source vs proprietary software, etc.
As some may say, this is another can of worms entirely.
To Recap: The bottom line is that if you have a moderately large gaming club of 25 to 50 members, you can start your own ISP at a cost that compares to some hardware upgrades.
The town of Laramie, Wyoming, has done just this by setting up Lariat.net. Residents started the networking business in 1995 in an effort to bring everyone in the area online after various squabbles with the area's telephone company (now Qwest). The initial cost was around $3,000, with many residents donating their own PCs, according to Glass. Relevant equipment was stuck on private land, and copper wire was bought from Qwest for areas that couldn't get wireless.
The cost of the service is pretty good compared to what it would be otherwise. Individuals get a normal dial-up service for $5 a month, or $20-$30 a month for high speed (10MB/second). It is doing quite well thank you.
They want to clone this effort around the country, so you can contact them via this page. So get you buds together and put together a business plan. You might wind up with something you can have fun with!
I go out into the Big Blue room to be retro, and do some shopping in this place called a store, and when I get back, what do I see?
Anyhow, my two bits of webbased strips:
Sabrina -(mirror here) - Life as a dedicate Amiga user, etc.
Vinny The Vampire - Almost everyone is a hollywood classic monster of one sort or another. But other wise it is a more or less "normal" world.
Supermegatopis - the worlds largest open air insane asylum
FreeFall - Space Opera Lite
GeekComics - 'nuff said
Which is not what I said. I said that each cell sends back data for one cell. Each cell is one sensor, averaging, if you will, the input across it. Of course interferance varies the intensity of the light on the surface of the cells. (Well duh!)
Take a look at the diagram 5 in the original article. Cells receiving lots of light send back one data point saying "bright". Cells receiving not so much send back one data point saying "dark". Really, it is not some other way.
So if you see light dots and darks dots, then you have to have at least one individual cell making a strong response to make the bright dot.
This actually is basic sensor technology at the bilogical level. Individual sensors sending back point data.
For those who missed it, my original post is here, complete with the chain of responses from outraged laser geeks, my counter response, etc.
To recap: my argument is that the Light/Dark spots you see in the speckling of laser light are the individual Pixels (cones and rods, actually) of your own eyes. I ommitted to mention this effect probably comes from the interferance of Laser light on the retina of your eye. The bottom line is that each sensory cell in the eye, be it a cone or a rod, sends one point of brightness data to the brain, thus the speckle effect. This is noted indirectly by this section from the article mentioned above:
Although there are many potential benefits of super-normal visual optics, there is at least one expected penalty. Given a dramatic increase in optical quality of the retinal image, the photoreceptor mosaic will appear relatively coarse by comparison, as shown in Figure 5. As a result of this mismatch, very fine spatial details in the retinal image will be smaller than the distance between neighboring cones and therefore will not be registered properly in the neural image. This mis-representation of the image due to neural undersampling by a relatively coarse array of photoreceptors is called "aliasing". However, for everyday vision the penalty of aliasing is likely to be outweighed by the reward of higher contrast sensitivity and higher detection acuity.
In this context, this causes the aliasing effect because each receptors reports only one dot of light intensity data back to the brain. If the receptors sent more than one data point to the brain at the same time for a higher resolution, then the aliasing effect would still be there, although at a much smaller point.
See my original comments for the full details, etc. but it is still my contention the the effect of seeing the speckles in laser light is the individual variation of reception of light intensity by the individual cells of your eye.
This is a way for you to notice the granuality, the pixels of your eyes.
What these guys are doing is trying to pull the same kind of scam over our eyes.
There is an old quote, going back to WWII, and maybe even back to the revolution in various forms:
"The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigalance"
I hate to say it, but it seems to be truer than ever. It used to apply just to governments, etc.; now it applies to anyone with big bucks.
What is interesting is that there are books like The Anachists Handbook, that are printed legally in the USA. There is an interesting FAQ here. This passage is relevant:
Lyle Stuart (the auther)published the book (The Anachists Handbook) for a number of reasons. At the time Librarians across the US were being intimidated by the FBI and CIA who wanted to get names of people checking out books they felt were subversive. Lyle Stuart felt that publishing this book would make those efforts meaningless since people could simply buy the book without signing for it. Anyway Lyle did publish the book.
In my opinion the event of publishing the book was important. The contents are garbage. This was a very dangerous and brave publishing act for the 1960's.
People obviously do not want this info (found at 2600) spread around for reasons of their own profits. But somehow publishing on the internet is different than putting out a book?
These Things take a while to prepare, so I wonder if this is something that was developed under the Clinton Administration, and then now has the blessing of the Bush. It is doubtful that the Bush folks would have put something like this just since the swearing in, or even since the election, since they were so distracted with other business.
This then presents the picture of both political parties supporting the people with deep pockets. Again not unexpected. But upsetting, since you would hope that *someone* was not corrupt.
This separate from the merits of the debate to begin with.
Well I do not get out that often, and this part of the programming world is new to me. Since I am abviously not an all knowing expert in all things geek, this is news to me.
Granted it was a month ago, but better late than never. I prefer this, as opposed to those who say "well it came out this morning, so it is already too old for us."
This reminds me of the elitist attitude I have seen in buying hardware, ie, "If it can be purchased commercially, it is obsolete". This would translate to "If I've heard of it, it's old"
A more legit criticism would be if it was obviously just flogging something for some hapless companies marketing department. That is what commercial magaziones are for.
For the regular high voltage geek, if you want to build stuff from scratch, fine. but most folks will not have a use for it.
It is interesting, however, even if a specialized field.
But MS ..., each day one of its' minions goes and does something that just irritates the hell out of me.
I'm going to have to start painting MS in the pictures of royalist France or something. Or maybe Napoleon. They are really starting to irritate me.
I remember an old story illustrating the differance a 50 or 100 year gap in technology makes. It was based on the idea of someone from 1920 trying to cope with a jet engine from 1970 drone with semi conductors, etc. interesting stuff.
just goes to show you what progress has been made
This does not logically follow. I could make an arguement about this, but I submit for you consideration this essay found at this site, which says it all much better than I could come up with at a moments notice. It is a poetry site BTW, and not particularly political in nature, although opinions are expressed.
Television Science: the Year of the Circuit
I keep hearing authorities on public radio applying logic to who and what we are that, if applied to a TV set, might run as follows: Though tradition claims that there is life beyond this TV set, a life that continues after its demise --actual living beings who create these moving pictures, the TV set being only a means of presenting them to others --we know, scientifically, that this cannot be the case. Here is the evidence:
1. Obviously, nothing of the life you see on a TV set can survive the demise of the TV set. Proof: destroy a TV set. It contains no more life, nor ever will again.
2. Evidence is mounting that the TV set is the SOURCE of the pictures you see on its screen. They are all created within the "brain" of the TV set. For example, if you sever this wire, the pictures vanish. If you sever THIS one, the picture lose their vertical hold. If you cut THAT one, they lose horizontal hold. If you destroy that part, they fade. If you destroy THAT part, the sound vanishes. And so forth. By disabling one or another component to see what it controls, scientists, daily, are clarifying the ways in which the various parts of the TV set contribute to the creation of its pictures. (Tube or not tube?)
3. Where sets are faulty (electrical brain imbalances), we can't cure them, but we CAN keep them operating. For example, when we jolt this set by attaching a power line to this part here, we don't get the correct picture back, but notice how the screen flares up, all brilliant white? See? We can keep it happy.
Our scientists -- never has more intelligence been exerted to propound greater stupidity. When a body dies, a body dies; therefore there is no soul. Huh? When you mess up part of a brain, the person becomes incapable of telling one face from another. Therefore the person IS his brain. So let's see: If I'm using brains and nerves to communicate via a body, and you can mess up my communication lines by messing up the body, I don't exist? If you can cut the brake linings on a car so that the brakes don't work, this proves that there's no driver?
The only point being , we need to be careful in our logic when it cones to these things.
Depending on the current market positioning, it would make sense that you would look at your nearest rivals first, compared to the others in the field.
Even if they happen to be "family"
Of course, there are always other options and other games you could play. But this gets back to the zero-sum game discussions we have had around here over the past few weeks.
Thank you very much.
The column is brilliant, and the writer deserves appropriate credit.
Everyone should check out his other columns while we are at it. Reward him with a few hits.
This week, a million fraternity brothers rushed to join NASA. The reason: scientists have discovered beer in space.
Well, not beer exactly. But they did find alcohol: ethyl alcohol, to be precise, the active ingredient in all major alcoholic drinks (antifreeze Jell-O shots, quite obviously, are exempted from this category). Three British scientists, Drs. Tom Millar, Geoffrey MacDonald and Rolf Habing, discovered this interstellar Everclear floating in a gas cloud in the contellation of Aquila (sign of the Eagle, the mascot of Anheuser-Busch! Hmmmmm).
Millar and his compatriots have estimated the size of this gas cloud at approximately 1,000 times the diameter of our own solar system; there's enough alcohol out there, they say, to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer. These guys are British, mind you; if you were to translate this in terms of American beer (which the British, with some justification, regard as fermented club soda), the amount of potential brewski just about doubles.
In human terms: remember that double-keg party you threw at the end of your Junior year in college (the second Junior year)? Imagine throwing that same party, every eight hours, for the next 30 billion years. You'd STILL have beer left over. And boy, would YOUR bathroom be a mess! Simply put, no one could ever drink 400 trillion trillion pints of beer, except maybe Buffalo Bills fans.
The sheer volume of all this alcohol begs the question of how it managed to get out there in the first place. Despite the simplifying effect it has on the human brain, ethyl alcohol is a reasonably complex molecule: two carbon atoms, five hydrogen atoms, and a hydroxyl radical, all cavorting together in beery camaraderie. It's not a compund that is going to spontaneously arise out of the cold depths of space. It can lead to speculation: What is this cloud?
1. It's God's beer. After all, He worked for six days creating the universe, and on the seventh day, He rested. And after you've had a hard week at the office, don't YOU grab a beer? Since man is made in God's image, it could be that this cloud is the remaining evidence of the first, and best, Miller Time.
2. It's Purgatory ("400 trillion trillion bottles of beer on the wall, 400 trillion trillion bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it around, three hundred ninety-nine septillion, nine hundred ninety-nine sextillion, nine hundred ninety-nine quintillion, nine hundred ninety-nine quadrillion, nine hundred ninety-nine trillion, nine hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine, bottles of beer on the wall!")
3. Proof of an undeniably highly advanced but chronically dipsomaniac alien society. This particular theory is shaky, however: it's reasonable to assume that if the aliens were going to construct a nebula of alcohol, they'd also have large clouds of Beer Nuts and pretzels nearby for snacking. Advanced spectral analysis has yet to locate them.
The truth of the matter, however, is far more prosaic. In the middle of this gas cloud is a young and no doubt quite inebriated star. As the star heats up and contracts, sucking the dust and gas of the cloud into a smaller area, complex molecules form as a result of greater interaction between the elements. Ethyl alcohol forms on small motes of dust in the cloud, and then, as the motes angle in closer towards the star and heat up, the alcohol is released from the motes in gaseous form. And there you have it: an alcohol cloud. Or, as Dave Bowman might say, "My God! It's full of booze!"
Enough with the science lesson, you say. Just tell me how to GET there! Sorry, Chuckles. You can't get there from here. The gas cloud (which, by the way, has the utterly romantic name of "G34.3") is 10,000 light years away: 58 quadrillion miles. Even if you hijacked the shuttle and headed out with thrusters on full, by the time you got there, the guy in Purgatory would be done with his tune. You'd have had time to work up a powerful thirst, but you'd also be, in a word, dead.
No, the Space Beer Cloud will have to wait for the far future, when men can leap through the universe at warp speed. One can only imagine what they will do when they get there:
Captain Kirk: My....GOD! Sulu! What....is....THAT?
Sulu: It's a free floating cloud of alcohol, sir.
Kirk: And we've just run out of Romulan Ale! Could it be a trap, Bones?
Bones: Damn it, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a distiller of fine spirits!
Kirk: We need that booze! But if we fly through that cloud, we'll be too drunk to drive!
Spock: May I remind you, Captain, that I am a Vulcan. We are a race of designated drivers.
Kirk: Well, all righty, then. Spock, drive us through! Bones and I will be out on the hull. With our mouths... open!
To boldly drink what no man has drunk before.
For example there are many social theories that have not had any solid scientific proof except in the harse world of politics. And even there it would be questionable. One example of this would be marxism, which since most of those systems have fallen, can be said to be a flawed system. This can hardly be taken as scientific proof.
Another example is in the field of mental health where despite billions of dollars of goverment funding, we hardly have a better society because of it. In fact, there have been dozens if not hundreds of schools of mental practice since WWII, but not much in terms of real social advance. The things touted as major advances often lead to things like Hellmouth. And there is not much that could stand up to the standards of proof demanded by hard Science. Referances include respected people such as Thomas Sasz(?) and others.
The real problem is when the hard or soft science is biased because of political agendas, which is what this program is supposed to counteract. I think that there will be some commontion caused by all of this.
People, groups, etc playing a I win You lose type of game are very frightened by people who choose to not play that game, who are not intmidated by that game, and who play a game where everyone wins, since that means that they gotta loose because their opponents win.
utter lunacy, of course. In other words, they loose power if you do not play their game.
just find a better game.
They sort of have a Daffy Duck mentality when it comes to money (Mine! Mine! it's Mine! All Mine!)
Watch them shoot the goose that lays the golden eggs rather then give it up to anyone else. Even tho the goose was never theirs in the first place.