More than that, though. There are different kinds of flow, as judged by the different perceptions I have of time. I like the ones where experience-time is large and clock-time is small.
Feel I'm getting a bargain, you know. Good investment.
It's true that the Nobel Peace Prize has been unreasonably politicized — not so much with Liu Xiaobo, but certainly with Gore and Obama. Then again, international events are intrinsically political and always have been.
I don't know what to say about the Confucius Peace Prize, though. Confucius was not about either peace or war — he was about extreme social conservatism. I suspect that one of these days, the world is going to stop finding China cute and see it for what it is: a first world colonialist culture with a high developed traditional theory of realpolitik and a chip on its shoulder about not being treated with sufficient respect. China will then be a much more interesting foil to the United States than it is now.
I mean, assuming the United States and China both still exist and haven't destroyed each other or merged into some horrible monster.
I guess the problem with any of them is that you don't really end up achieving anything by playing them. In that sense writing code or just writing is more satisfying. You end up with something to show for your efforts.
Yes, that's one part of it - I hate the sensation of time spent without something going on. Listening to Beethoven or exercising doesn't give me that feeling, but playing computer games (when I was too young to understand myself) always did.
However, what I really like about writing code or prose is the sensation that time outside of my mind is going more slowly than time inside. I struggle with some piece of construction for what seems like days; then I look up and only an hour has passed on the clock. The physical world has been traveling near the speed of light - my mind, however, has had the advantage of much more time, untrackably. That's the opposite of what happens with a game, where two hours can disappear in the world and I have the sensation that only a few minutes have passed.
Programming and writing are the only things I know of that make me feel, truly, I've made a sort of gain in my struggle to stay ahead of time. Sort of like your signature says: "Reality, to be commanded, must be destroyed," though maybe you meant it in a different sense.
You know, as a form of challenging relaxation, only coding and writing prose really satisfy me. I used to watch people playing Doom in the computer lab for hours and maybe days, but I could never get into it. Sim City was worse. Even among the geekish, I guess I'll never really fit in.
Any thoughts about the feasibility of Clean Slate and other proposals to "remake" the Internet?
I'm not asking for predictions so much as informed thoughts about what the obstacles are to this actually happening. I used to think the Internet was perfectly anonymous, until I encountered (second-hand) the Chinese renrou sousuo yinqing "human flesh search engine"). Cyberspace is bound to physical servers and wires and antennas; can the majority of these be controlled? Is the political will now accumulating for it to happen?
This is really a momentous time in history. For the first time since the Cold War ended, there is a serious international political conflict in which everyone everywhere may see that they have some economic or intellectual stake.
After September 11th, I heard many older people in New York say, "I hoped not to live long enough to see this." Well, I'm grateful to be alive now to see this. It is a very important conflict.
For many Slashdot readers, this is old news. But the interesting thing is how awareness of web-privacy issues has hit the mainstream. The Wall Street Journal (whose news pages typically have at least half a dozen trackers on them) has been running a whole series on simple tools to avoid being tracked online.
I think the place of the Internet in society is entering a new phase.
women are more likely to buy an iPhone for their next smartphone purchase, while men prefer Android devices
Gee, where does that leave me?
I've been disappointed with both the Apple and Droid phones. I can't honestly say I am looking forward to either for my next smartphone purchase — I've really been thinking about going back to an old fashioned just-a-phone, and using a NanoNote or whatever of its kind might become available.
What I really want is a programmable opensource palmtop that also has phone functionality. A jailbroken phone is a poor substitute for an opensource palmtop. I've never felt right since the HP 100lx went out of production.
Still, having only a handful of newspapers and some journalists try to find something interesting in this large pile of documents means that there will be gems that will not be found.
The Guardian.co.uk has an interface for "browsing" the cables, but it doesn't tell you how many cables are currently in the set being browsed.
There's also the issue that recognizing a gem as a gem sometimes takes a long time. They don't necessarily come pre-tagged as such.
The humorous thing to me, and I'm speaking as an American here, is that the paranoia of the TSA makes a great deal more sense when taken under the context of the WikiLeaks info.
That reminds me of something Terry Gilliam said in his comments on the Criterion Collection edition of Brazil: that he had intended it as satire, but after September 11th, it had begun to look like reality.
Communist states view everything as being controllable.
China has a long history of favoring centralized state power. This is not really a communist issue; Chinese communism itself is just an expression of the brand of authoritarian traditionalism that goes by the name of "Confucianism".
I keep hearing tech people assuring me that "the genie is out of the bottle" and the Internet can never be controlled, and polisci people assuring me that power will never consent to being restricted by the powerless.
It's an interesting dispute - I'm glad I don have to risk actual money backing one outcome or the other.
if you find any 'mistakes' then perhaps you should try to fix them as any expert in any field should be doing..
I used to, but I got tired of making the same corrections over and over again.
If I publish an article or book or even my own blog, I can set down what I believe to be true and people can consult it or cite if they accept my authority; they can also dispute my statements or just ignore me if they choose to. But with Wikipedia, everything I say is written in the sand at low tide.
All this is off-topic to the main point of the news item, of course, but it's a second thing (besides Amazon pseudo-ads) that somewhat diminishes my confidence in Wikipedia's content.
I guess there's nothing that doesn't end up being commercialized. Wikipedia has certain problems — when I look up topics in which I'm an expert, I always find the articles full of mistakes — but it was nice to see something that was relatively free of commercial spin. No more, it seems.
Slashdot Mirror
More than that, though. There are different kinds of flow, as judged by the different perceptions I have of time. I like the ones where experience-time is large and clock-time is small.
Feel I'm getting a bargain, you know. Good investment.
It's true that the Nobel Peace Prize has been unreasonably politicized — not so much with Liu Xiaobo, but certainly with Gore and Obama. Then again, international events are intrinsically political and always have been.
I don't know what to say about the Confucius Peace Prize, though. Confucius was not about either peace or war — he was about extreme social conservatism. I suspect that one of these days, the world is going to stop finding China cute and see it for what it is: a first world colonialist culture with a high developed traditional theory of realpolitik and a chip on its shoulder about not being treated with sufficient respect. China will then be a much more interesting foil to the United States than it is now.
I mean, assuming the United States and China both still exist and haven't destroyed each other or merged into some horrible monster.
I guess the problem with any of them is that you don't really end up achieving anything by playing them. In that sense writing code or just writing is more satisfying. You end up with something to show for your efforts.
Yes, that's one part of it - I hate the sensation of time spent without something going on. Listening to Beethoven or exercising doesn't give me that feeling, but playing computer games (when I was too young to understand myself) always did.
However, what I really like about writing code or prose is the sensation that time outside of my mind is going more slowly than time inside. I struggle with some piece of construction for what seems like days; then I look up and only an hour has passed on the clock. The physical world has been traveling near the speed of light - my mind, however, has had the advantage of much more time, untrackably. That's the opposite of what happens with a game, where two hours can disappear in the world and I have the sensation that only a few minutes have passed.
Programming and writing are the only things I know of that make me feel, truly, I've made a sort of gain in my struggle to stay ahead of time. Sort of like your signature says: "Reality, to be commanded, must be destroyed," though maybe you meant it in a different sense.
You know, as a form of challenging relaxation, only coding and writing prose really satisfy me. I used to watch people playing Doom in the computer lab for hours and maybe days, but I could never get into it. Sim City was worse. Even among the geekish, I guess I'll never really fit in.
Got to wait until I feel Ubuntu/tablet is working relatively well.
Yes, that would be just fine.
Any thoughts about the feasibility of Clean Slate and other proposals to "remake" the Internet?
I'm not asking for predictions so much as informed thoughts about what the obstacles are to this actually happening. I used to think the Internet was perfectly anonymous, until I encountered (second-hand) the Chinese renrou sousuo yinqing "human flesh search engine"). Cyberspace is bound to physical servers and wires and antennas; can the majority of these be controlled? Is the political will now accumulating for it to happen?
This is really a momentous time in history. For the first time since the Cold War ended, there is a serious international political conflict in which everyone everywhere may see that they have some economic or intellectual stake.
After September 11th, I heard many older people in New York say, "I hoped not to live long enough to see this." Well, I'm grateful to be alive now to see this. It is a very important conflict.
I think the place of the Internet in society is entering a new phase.
women are more likely to buy an iPhone for their next smartphone purchase, while men prefer Android devices
Gee, where does that leave me?
I've been disappointed with both the Apple and Droid phones. I can't honestly say I am looking forward to either for my next smartphone purchase — I've really been thinking about going back to an old fashioned just-a-phone, and using a NanoNote or whatever of its kind might become available.
What I really want is a programmable opensource palmtop that also has phone functionality. A jailbroken phone is a poor substitute for an opensource palmtop. I've never felt right since the HP 100lx went out of production.
Maybe next year.
Still, having only a handful of newspapers and some journalists try to find something interesting in this large pile of documents means that there will be gems that will not be found.
The Guardian.co.uk has an interface for "browsing" the cables, but it doesn't tell you how many cables are currently in the set being browsed.
There's also the issue that recognizing a gem as a gem sometimes takes a long time. They don't necessarily come pre-tagged as such.
The humorous thing to me, and I'm speaking as an American here, is that the paranoia of the TSA makes a great deal more sense when taken under the context of the WikiLeaks info.
That reminds me of something Terry Gilliam said in his comments on the Criterion Collection edition of Brazil: that he had intended it as satire, but after September 11th, it had begun to look like reality.
Communist states view everything as being controllable.
China has a long history of favoring centralized state power. This is not really a communist issue; Chinese communism itself is just an expression of the brand of authoritarian traditionalism that goes by the name of "Confucianism".
I keep hearing tech people assuring me that "the genie is out of the bottle" and the Internet can never be controlled, and polisci people assuring me that power will never consent to being restricted by the powerless.
It's an interesting dispute - I'm glad I don have to risk actual money backing one outcome or the other.
if you find any 'mistakes' then perhaps you should try to fix them as any expert in any field should be doing..
I used to, but I got tired of making the same corrections over and over again.
If I publish an article or book or even my own blog, I can set down what I believe to be true and people can consult it or cite if they accept my authority; they can also dispute my statements or just ignore me if they choose to. But with Wikipedia, everything I say is written in the sand at low tide.
All this is off-topic to the main point of the news item, of course, but it's a second thing (besides Amazon pseudo-ads) that somewhat diminishes my confidence in Wikipedia's content.
I guess there's nothing that doesn't end up being commercialized. Wikipedia has certain problems — when I look up topics in which I'm an expert, I always find the articles full of mistakes — but it was nice to see something that was relatively free of commercial spin. No more, it seems.