Re:Is it possible to write your own music?
on
Borrowing ROMs
·
· Score: 2
Note: in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) I am often handed a drum and I periodically try to make music with it and sometimes I even get to keep the drum for a while.
I like that the bill requires them to NOTIFY the Attorney General before they do anything... I don't like that they don't have to wait for approval.
In other news, the Attorney General's office has been Denial of Service attacked by a 100 foot high pile of RIAA notifications of intended DoS Attack Victims...
Einstein had nominal education and apparently flunked math his first time through. Then he went and worked in a patent office... or so I've heard. I'm no expert.
M.C. Escher made money designing stamps and advertising pamphlets for a while. Seriously.
So maybe Genius is described as "intelligence" that is taught to one self. A kind of unexpected smarts that surpasses the expected level of smarts? But there are many other people who are geniuses that have had formal learning.
Maybe genius is defined as "intelligence at a level that is commonly accepted to be extraordinary". Lets see what the dictionary has for us:::SNIP:: Main Entry: genius Pronunciation: 'jEn-y&s, 'jE-nE-&s Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural geniuses or genii/-nE-"I/ Etymology: Latin, tutelary spirit, natural inclinations, from gignere to beget Date: 1513 1 a plural genii : an attendant spirit of a person or place b plural usually genii : a person who influences another for good or bad 2 : a strong leaning or inclination : PENCHANT 3 a : a peculiar, distinctive, or identifying character or spirit b : the associations and traditions of a place c : a personification or embodiment especially of a quality or condition 4 plural usually genii : SPIRIT, JINNI 5 plural usually geniuses a : a single strongly marked capacity or aptitude b : extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity c : a person endowed with transcendent mental superiority; especially : a person with a very high intelligence quotient::SNIP::
Re:Wanna hurt the MPAA/RIAA'? End Media Addiction
on
Borrowing ROMs
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Ideas for things to do in your spare time other than buy stuff from other people.
1) Learn to cook. Baking cookies and breads for friends can be very theraputic and win you more friends.
2) Learn to homebrew. Brewing beer, making wine, or even mead can certainly win you friends.
3) Join a club or other organization. A couple come to mind: 3a) Society for Creative Anachronism (don't need even electricity for most of their activities, how's THAT for not consuming?) 3b) NTrak Model Trains 3c) Pick up Ham Radio 3d) Open Source Software. Lots of projects out there.
4) Make your own music. Heck, someone has to make it.
5) Fly a kite.
6) Read to your kids/friends/parents.
7) Play a board game (anything from "Sorry" or "Monopoly" to "Munchkins", "Hackers", or "The Settlers of Catan"
8) Woodworking. Talk about a hacker heaven... turn trees into anything you want!
9) Sports. No, not watching them, particiapting. Try Baseball, Soccer, Football, Rugby. Or if you are more of a loner, Cycling, Running, Swimming, Inline Skating. Or possibly even my favorites: Fencing, Volleyball and Rockclimbing.
10) Art. Paiting, poetry, pottery, photography.
There, 10 things that anyone can do and do well with a minor bit of practice that do not consume anything from the media giants. Some of them are even healthy and might reduce your waistline. At least one of them can get you drunk!
The biggest problem with wearable video is the fact that it moves with your head and can cause vertigo.
I want a head mounted display that lets me decide if I want the display to move when I move my head or if I want the display to stay where it is while I look at other things....
Imagine being able to......add a "window" into any cube....have a real time weather map....have a real time network map....have signs and placards in public places that change language every 10 seconds... or at the push of a button....as a teenager, have several poster in your room that immediately change as soon as your door is opened and don't change back until you hit a hidden button...cubes with walls made out of this material could be in whatever internal color scheme/desktop theme you wanted and you could "hang pictures" on your "walls" that were nothing more than graphics files complete with frames. You could then hotel into any cube and get your pictures/home office effect/whatever....the police could change speed limits like in the Dukes of Hazard but easier....Walmart could change the prices of their merchandise without that singing smiley face guy....The seat back in front of you on a plane could be a full sized monitor for your ultra-personal computer....Keyboards that change character mappings and actually show the new characters....Harry Potter -esq pictures that move....Debit/Gift cards that show their running balance....Wall phones like in Spaceballs...Don't repaint the inside of your house..... just change its color from the computer....Large Screen TV? Try the wall over here... no over there... no...that picture....Can you say psychadelic bed sheets?
The main problem with this is that you would have to blend in from all angles....
If you were just worried about the frontal side or if you were in a very repeating field of grass or something similarly "bland" then there would be greater effect. Probably would be better than regular camo.
But a man standing up in clearing is just as likely to be seen if he is projecting his own background as if he were wearing camo.
And lets not forget shadows....
Now if you wanted to have camo that would determine a good set of colors to be based on the surrounding average colors... THAT is probably easy and probably even better than trying to project the exact image of what is around you.
Libel is deliberately lying about someone in a public forum in order to defame them.
Like the line in Wayne's World "This man blows goats, I have proof."
That kind of statement, when listened to and believed by people, can cause damage to ones reputation, loss of buisiness, or other real problems. The libel laws give people a protection from that kind of speech by giving them some way to recoup losses in a court of law. Otherwise you'd have to find your own way to get back at them, like beating the tar out of them.
However, putting up that billboard is not Libel. Its just offensive.
Is America confused? Possibly. Our laws pretend that we are all children and we can't control ourselve or know right from wrong without being told what is right and what is wrong in every specific detail. Yet our Constitution and Bill of Rights treat us like mature adults who can all get along with a basic set of rights.
Someone once said it best. "America's system is horrible, but its the best one out there".
I can account for 5 of those (in order of purchase)
C= 64 (Dead) Amiga 3000 (Resold through Usenet) Intel Pentium 133 MHz (Resold to a friend) Intel Pentium III 1 GHz (Main Home Computer) Intel Pentium II 433 MHz (Plays my MP3 Collection 24 by 7) Intel Pentium II 233 MHz Laptop (Flies around my house on a wireless network... controls my music program remotely)
Favorite solution to a bug
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
In C:
Program was failing... inserting debug statements made the bug go away...
so the program ultimately ran with the following line in it.
Seems like this would be an ideal hosted service. On its regular schedule it sends you an email to remind you to go to the web site. If you don't go to the web site within a certain (configurable) amount of time to "reset" the switch then the action is taken. The action is most likely an email release of some data to certain folks.
But for a fee it could be something more complicated.
Of course, keeping this site secure would be most interesting once people started using it for self protection blackmail "you'd better not kill me" purposes like what always happens in the movies.
I just downloaded it... paid my $0.99... am listening to it right now.
You know, I never really had any funk music before. I kinda like it.
Quality is pretty good (not the best)....
I think I'll support this. Vivendi, good job. Next, offer multiple versions.... perhaps charge a bit less for this quality ($0.75) and a bit more for higher quality VBR ($1.25). But I like this first forray.
By shining one frequency of light on the device, the team was able to crimp the molecule, causing it to pull the diving board downward - converting light into mechanical energy. When another light frequency was used, the molecule relaxed.
Not quite sure, but if the molecule stays in the kinked or relaxed state absent all light, could they not mount little mirrors on top that would swivel and then use this tech as a massive, persistent, extremely fast, storage mechanism? Sort of like a re-writeable CD but in solid state?
Take it to a store in the same chain that you got it from (if possible, if not, Walmart or Best Buy) and say that you got it as a gift and that it was defective, ask for a store credit.
What follows is the thank you letter that I received from Congressman Boucher for writing him about this subject.
Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Rick Boucher
9th District, Virginia
NINTHNET@mail.house.gov
HTTP://www.house.gov/boucher/
May 3, 2002
Thank you for your kind expression of support for my efforts to prevent the erosion of fundamental fair use rights in the digital era.
Please be assured that reaffirming the rights of consumers to exercise legitimate fair use rights is among my highest priorities. From such routine practices as making custom compilation CDs of lawfully-acquired songs for personal use to more advanced actions such as circumventing technological protection measures in order to archive or excerpt material for research and educational purposes, the American public traditionally has enjoyed the ability to make convenience and incidental copies of copyrighted works without obtaining the prior consent of the copyright owner. The potential to penalize or prosecute individuals who exercise such rights, or who create or publish software and devices which facilitate the exercise of individual fair use rights, affronts First Amendment protections, harms consumers, and ultimately inhibits the creation and public use of intellectual property.
As Co-Chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus, my work in Congress focuses on the intersection of the Internet and other technologies with our nation's intellectual property laws. I intend to introduce various legislative measures which will protect fair use rights, and your expression of support for these efforts with your Congressional representatives will be most welcome.
I appreciate your taking the time to share your views with me. With kind regards and best wishes, I remain
The independent vote-tabulation firm, Delaware-based IVS Associates, reported 838,401,376 shares of stock were voted in favor of the merger, 793,094,105 shares were voted against, and 13,950,651 shares abstained.
Who wants to bet that a lot of the folks who voted against the merger sell their stock?
Personally (and my.sig also shows that I am a HHGTTG fan) I loved MH. I had read all four of the other books several times before MH came out and after reading MH I went back and read the other four again before reading MH again.
To me, it is the ultimate ending that could possibly happen. It left me with a giant warm ironic happy feeling in my stomach. I couldn't stop grinning as Douglas Adams wrapped up the whole of the 5 book trilogy in a final, ultimate, sigularity.
Pure beauty and art.
If you've read the other four, do yourself a favor and read Mostly Harmless. At least once.
So it appears that the Wal-Mart machine as tested makes a very reasonable Linux box. But I suggest you lose the Lucent modem card and replace it with a real hardware modem.
I have more respect for Wal-Mart now. I used to scoff at shopping there, but if they can produce this kind of barebones system, at a very low cost, that can handle Windows and Linux with equal ease then the state of the computer as a home appliance is improving greatly.
As for me, I buy my computers from a friend who owns a computer store so I probably won't be getting one myself.
You know what, I first heard of this and I thought, "Geez, America is getting behind in the Space Race", but you know what? I wish them the best of luck because ultimately the quest for Space Knowledge with benefit the whole planet.
As seen in the local supermarket... Star Wars Episode II Breakfast Cereal. Basically Lucky Charms with "marshmellows" shaped like light saber weilding Jedi.
Not a breakfast cereal sponsored by EpII. Its own damn cereal!
One reason that suicide attacks are so popular with terrorists is that it is really hard to punish a person to a suffient degree to make up for the loss of innocent peoples lives. Its even harder when the criminal is dead.
Of course, we have laws against conspiring to kill.
Its THOSE criminals that the law enforcement agencies are trying to catch with these new tactics.
Slashdot Mirror
Note: in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) I am often handed a drum and I periodically try to make music with it and sometimes I even get to keep the drum for a while.
How's that for music as a sport?
I like that the bill requires them to NOTIFY the Attorney General before they do anything... I don't like that they don't have to wait for approval.
In other news, the Attorney General's office has been Denial of Service attacked by a 100 foot high pile of RIAA notifications of intended DoS Attack Victims...
Einstein had nominal education and apparently flunked math his first time through. Then he went and worked in a patent office... or so I've heard. I'm no expert.
::SNIP:: /-nE-"I/ ::SNIP::
M.C. Escher made money designing stamps and advertising pamphlets for a while. Seriously.
So maybe Genius is described as "intelligence" that is taught to one self. A kind of unexpected smarts that surpasses the expected level of smarts? But there are many other people who are geniuses that have had formal learning.
Maybe genius is defined as "intelligence at a level that is commonly accepted to be extraordinary". Lets see what the dictionary has for us:
Main Entry: genius
Pronunciation: 'jEn-y&s, 'jE-nE-&s
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural geniuses or genii
Etymology: Latin, tutelary spirit, natural inclinations, from gignere to beget
Date: 1513
1 a plural genii : an attendant spirit of a person or place b plural usually genii : a person who influences another for good or bad
2 : a strong leaning or inclination : PENCHANT
3 a : a peculiar, distinctive, or identifying character or spirit b : the associations and traditions of a place c : a personification or embodiment especially of a quality or condition
4 plural usually genii : SPIRIT, JINNI
5 plural usually geniuses a : a single strongly marked capacity or aptitude b : extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity c : a person endowed with transcendent mental superiority; especially : a person with a very high intelligence quotient
Ideas for things to do in your spare time other than buy stuff from other people.
1) Learn to cook. Baking cookies and breads for friends can be very theraputic and win you more friends.
2) Learn to homebrew. Brewing beer, making wine, or even mead can certainly win you friends.
3) Join a club or other organization. A couple come to mind:
3a) Society for Creative Anachronism (don't need even electricity for most of their activities, how's THAT for not consuming?)
3b) NTrak Model Trains
3c) Pick up Ham Radio
3d) Open Source Software. Lots of projects out there.
4) Make your own music. Heck, someone has to make it.
5) Fly a kite.
6) Read to your kids/friends/parents.
7) Play a board game (anything from "Sorry" or "Monopoly" to "Munchkins", "Hackers", or "The Settlers of Catan"
8) Woodworking. Talk about a hacker heaven... turn trees into anything you want!
9) Sports. No, not watching them, particiapting. Try Baseball, Soccer, Football, Rugby. Or if you are more of a loner, Cycling, Running, Swimming, Inline Skating. Or possibly even my favorites: Fencing, Volleyball and Rockclimbing.
10) Art. Paiting, poetry, pottery, photography.
There, 10 things that anyone can do and do well with a minor bit of practice that do not consume anything from the media giants. Some of them are even healthy and might reduce your waistline. At least one of them can get you drunk!
The biggest problem with wearable video is the fact that it moves with your head and can cause vertigo.
I want a head mounted display that lets me decide if I want the display to move when I move my head or if I want the display to stay where it is while I look at other things....
Imagine being able to ... ...add a "window" into any cube. ...have a real time weather map. ...have a real time network map. ...have signs and placards in public places that change language every 10 seconds... or at the push of a button. ...as a teenager, have several poster in your room that immediately change as soon as your door is opened and don't change back until you hit a hidden button ...cubes with walls made out of this material could be in whatever internal color scheme/desktop theme you wanted and you could "hang pictures" on your "walls" that were nothing more than graphics files complete with frames. You could then hotel into any cube and get your pictures/home office effect/whatever. ...the police could change speed limits like in the Dukes of Hazard but easier. ...Walmart could change the prices of their merchandise without that singing smiley face guy. ...The seat back in front of you on a plane could be a full sized monitor for your ultra-personal computer. ...Keyboards that change character mappings and actually show the new characters. ...Harry Potter -esq pictures that move. ...Debit/Gift cards that show their running balance. ...Wall phones like in Spaceballs ...Don't repaint the inside of your house..... just change its color from the computer. ...Large Screen TV? Try the wall over here... no over there... no...that picture. ...Can you say psychadelic bed sheets?
Ok... I'm done for now...
The main problem with this is that you would have to blend in from all angles....
If you were just worried about the frontal side or if you were in a very repeating field of grass or something similarly "bland" then there would be greater effect. Probably would be better than regular camo.
But a man standing up in clearing is just as likely to be seen if he is projecting his own background as if he were wearing camo.
And lets not forget shadows....
Now if you wanted to have camo that would determine a good set of colors to be based on the surrounding average colors... THAT is probably easy and probably even better than trying to project the exact image of what is around you.
Libel is deliberately lying about someone in a public forum in order to defame them.
Like the line in Wayne's World "This man blows goats, I have proof."
That kind of statement, when listened to and believed by people, can cause damage to ones reputation, loss of buisiness, or other real problems. The libel laws give people a protection from that kind of speech by giving them some way to recoup losses in a court of law. Otherwise you'd have to find your own way to get back at them, like beating the tar out of them.
However, putting up that billboard is not Libel. Its just offensive.
Is America confused? Possibly. Our laws pretend that we are all children and we can't control ourselve or know right from wrong without being told what is right and what is wrong in every specific detail. Yet our Constitution and Bill of Rights treat us like mature adults who can all get along with a basic set of rights.
Someone once said it best. "America's system is horrible, but its the best one out there".
I can account for 5 of those (in order of purchase)
C= 64 (Dead)
Amiga 3000 (Resold through Usenet)
Intel Pentium 133 MHz (Resold to a friend)
Intel Pentium III 1 GHz (Main Home Computer)
Intel Pentium II 433 MHz (Plays my MP3 Collection 24 by 7)
Intel Pentium II 233 MHz Laptop (Flies around my house on a wireless network... controls my music program remotely)
In C:
Program was failing... inserting debug statements made the bug go away...
so the program ultimately ran with the following line in it.
int k = k;
'k' was never used anywhere else.
"I disagree with what you say. But will defend to the death your right to tell such lies."
Seems like this would be an ideal hosted service. On its regular schedule it sends you an email to remind you to go to the web site. If you don't go to the web site within a certain (configurable) amount of time to "reset" the switch then the action is taken. The action is most likely an email release of some data to certain folks.
But for a fee it could be something more complicated.
Of course, keeping this site secure would be most interesting once people started using it for self protection blackmail "you'd better not kill me" purposes like what always happens in the movies.
I just downloaded it... paid my $0.99... am listening to it right now.
You know, I never really had any funk music before. I kinda like it.
Quality is pretty good (not the best)....
I think I'll support this. Vivendi, good job. Next, offer multiple versions.... perhaps charge a bit less for this quality ($0.75) and a bit more for higher quality VBR ($1.25). But I like this first forray.
By shining one frequency of light on the device, the team was able to crimp the molecule, causing it to pull the diving board downward - converting light into mechanical energy. When another light frequency was used, the molecule relaxed.
Not quite sure, but if the molecule stays in the kinked or relaxed state absent all light, could they not mount little mirrors on top that would swivel and then use this tech as a massive, persistent, extremely fast, storage mechanism? Sort of like a re-writeable CD but in solid state?
I think it is highly ironic that this article has a pop-under ad on it.
You want to get rid of these things? Stop linking to the sites that carry them.
Take it to a store in the same chain that you got it from (if possible, if not, Walmart or Best Buy) and say that you got it as a gift and that it was defective, ask for a store credit.
What follows is the thank you letter that I received from Congressman Boucher for writing him about this subject.
Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Rick Boucher
9th District, Virginia
NINTHNET@mail.house.gov
HTTP://www.house.gov/boucher/
May 3, 2002
Thank you for your kind expression of support for my efforts to prevent the erosion of fundamental fair use rights in the digital era.
Please be assured that reaffirming the rights of consumers to exercise legitimate fair use rights is among my highest priorities. From such routine practices as making custom compilation CDs of lawfully-acquired songs for personal use to more advanced actions such as circumventing technological protection measures in order to archive or excerpt material for research and educational purposes, the American public traditionally has enjoyed the ability to make convenience and incidental copies of copyrighted works without obtaining the prior consent of the copyright owner. The potential to penalize or prosecute individuals who exercise such rights, or who create or publish software and devices which facilitate the exercise of individual fair use rights, affronts First Amendment protections, harms consumers, and ultimately inhibits the creation and public use of intellectual property.
As Co-Chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus, my work in Congress focuses on the intersection of the Internet and other technologies with our nation's intellectual property laws. I intend to introduce various legislative measures which will protect fair use rights, and your expression of support for these efforts with your Congressional representatives will be most welcome.
I appreciate your taking the time to share your views with me. With kind regards and best wishes, I remain
Sincerely,
Rick Boucher
Member of Congress
The independent vote-tabulation firm, Delaware-based IVS Associates, reported 838,401,376 shares of stock were voted in favor of the merger, 793,094,105 shares were voted against, and 13,950,651 shares abstained.
Who wants to bet that a lot of the folks who voted against the merger sell their stock?
Personally (and my .sig also shows that I am a HHGTTG fan) I loved MH. I had read all four of the other books several times before MH came out and after reading MH I went back and read the other four again before reading MH again.
To me, it is the ultimate ending that could possibly happen. It left me with a giant warm ironic happy feeling in my stomach. I couldn't stop grinning as Douglas Adams wrapped up the whole of the 5 book trilogy in a final, ultimate, sigularity.
Pure beauty and art.
If you've read the other four, do yourself a favor and read Mostly Harmless. At least once.
So it appears that the Wal-Mart machine as tested makes a very reasonable Linux box. But I suggest you lose the Lucent modem card and replace it with a real hardware modem. I have more respect for Wal-Mart now. I used to scoff at shopping there, but if they can produce this kind of barebones system, at a very low cost, that can handle Windows and Linux with equal ease then the state of the computer as a home appliance is improving greatly. As for me, I buy my computers from a friend who owns a computer store so I probably won't be getting one myself.
You know what, I first heard of this and I thought, "Geez, America is getting behind in the Space Race", but you know what? I wish them the best of luck because ultimately the quest for Space Knowledge with benefit the whole planet.
Good Luck!
As seen in the local supermarket... Star Wars Episode II Breakfast Cereal. Basically Lucky Charms with "marshmellows" shaped like light saber weilding Jedi.
Not a breakfast cereal sponsored by EpII. Its own damn cereal!
Catch criminals AFTER they commit a crime.
One reason that suicide attacks are so popular with terrorists is that it is really hard to punish a person to a suffient degree to make up for the loss of innocent peoples lives. Its even harder when the criminal is dead.
Of course, we have laws against conspiring to kill.
Its THOSE criminals that the law enforcement agencies are trying to catch with these new tactics.
Buy a used computer. There are plenty out there looking for a home.
If you are in Northern Virginia you can go to Action Computing, great store, I know the owner (no, its not me).
He added, "This is a mess. And it's not one we need to sweep under the rug."
And what kinds of messes DO we sweep under the rug?