> I'd be interested to see how the leadership of the company may/may not tie in to the people in the city government that made the decision to migrate away from MS.
Hey, all those city officials need to have some way of recouping their Enron losses!
> Anyone want to bet how high a percentage of ordinance dropped on Iraq is going to be good old-fashioned, dumb heavy lumps of metal filled with explosives?
The Feb. '03 Scientific American has an article that says the "vast majority" of bombs dropped in Afghanistan were GPS guided. The latest technology is a "strap-on" system for good old-fashioned, dumb heavy lumps of metal filled with explosives. The system adds about $20,000 to the dumb bomb's $3,000 base cost, but gives it a 50% chance of hitting within 40 feet of the target. The reduction in the number of missions required to neutralize the target more than makes up for the cost (which also compares extremely favorably to Gulf War era cruise missles, which ran about $1,000,000 a pop).
> This and other media fluff about smart weaponry seems to be designed to present war as a videogame...
I would blame the Administration/military PR machine rather than the media. The media likes the horrid stuff that stirs up controversy and keeps the readers/viewers coming back for more.
IMO there's none better, but tastes vary and some people genuinely don't care for his style.
> The "Demon Princes" books are some of the best SF out there, and "Planet of Adventure" isn't too bad either.
I heartily recommend both, but actually prefer the latter. Unfortunately it gets off to a slow start, but anyone who's still there half-way through the second book will never put the rest of the books down, nor forget them.
Vance also wrote some best-of-breed fantasy series. The Lyonesse trilogy is as good as fantasy gets {Suldrun's Garden, The Green Pearl, Madouc}. The two Cugel books {Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga} are also great, though they are somewhat too cold-blooded for many people's tastes (particularly the former).
> allow me to throw my support behind... he standalone books by Guy Gavriel Kay: "Tigana,"...
A truly horrid book, on every level of analysis.
> (If I'm not mistaken, it was Kay that was tapped to finished off some Tolkien fragments prior to their posthumous publication; when you read his stuff, you'll understand how he got that gig.) Kay also wrote something called "The Fionavar Trilogy" which I tried and couldn't get through...
> Man, if there was *ever* an argument for the original poster to try something other than scifi, it's this. I read Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon based on rantings and ravings I've read on/., and I almost didn't make it through SC.
Yeah, I haven't read it because I hear so many raves about it on Slashdot. Anyone who reads Slashdot might get the impression that The Matrix is a great movie.
Forgive the appearence of trolling, but there's something about the Slashdot demographic that results in some really odd choices of material to rave about.
No accounting for taste I suppose - mine included.
> As much as I hate to do this to the site, check out the Internet Top 100 list [geocities.com].
Nice site, but kind of odd. Frinstance, I've read most of the Vorkosigan novels and either "enjoyed" or "really enjoyed" almost all of them... but #3 on the list?
You get similar oddities if you grep for an author (say, Jack Vance) and look at the order his books show up relative only to each other.
I think the problem is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of weighting by the total number of votes cast, with the result that a few avid fans of one book or series can put it far out of sequence.
OTOH, I suppose that if you filtered out all the older stuff then this method of ranking might be useful for answering the question posed by the Slashdot query.
BTW, O geeks, there's a juicy patent waiting for whoever solves the problem of internet polling. If you don't like software and business method patents, do it first and get that prior art!
> It was only after the media picked up the term "flying saucer" that people started seeing saucer-shaped objects. This type of evolution would tend to indicate something other than nuts and bolts.
> Yeah it was dumb of Lindows to do this without any kind of forewarning, but to pull out of the conference completely? I think both parties are a bit at fault here.
Not unless Lehrbaum is lying when he says he only entered the conference on the basis of an agreement, which Robertson just unilaterally discarded.
\meethinks Lindows is going to end up paying out some other vendors' expenses in small claims court.
> I've yet to see a single pair of fossils that are close enough to one another to be a single mutation apart
You and your parents are several mutations apart. You won't find that minimal quantum jump in the fossil record.
> We should see all kinds of creatures and evidence of past creatures that are similar, with relatively smooth transitions from one form to another. The just isn't any evidence of that.
No one is going to make you believe the results of scientific enquiry if you don't want to, but if you want to sound like an informed critic you're going to have to get informed first. There is absolutely nothing in the theory of evolution that implies that we should have the collection of fossils you are demanding to see.
> > who wants to code on a machine that can only use one language?
> The Feds. They've done it before (Ada) and, I'm sure, wouldn't mind doing it again.
Uhmmm... What machine was that?
Ada was adopted because the DoD wanted a language standard, not because they had hardware that would only run that particular language. If your hardware is a von Neuman machine you should be able to program for it in any language. All you need is an appropriate back-end for your favorite compiler.
> The biggest problem I see with the whole evolution thing is that the more we dig, the more find weirder and weirder species that seem to have nothing to do with what's around today.
That's completely compatible with the theory of evolution. It doesn't predict what we will find in detail, but what it predicts at the higher level is that the tree of life will be very bushy, with some things closely related and others only very, very distantly related.
> Doesn't the evolution theory predict that we should be finding a lot of intermediate forms of present day species?
The theory doesn't predict that we will find anything. There are lots of problems with finding the remains of stuff that has been dead for thousands, millions, or billions of years. Consider the problem of finding the remains of your own ancestors: you could probably take me straight to where grandpa and grandma are buried, but if you go back 5, 10, 50, or 100 generations you would be less and less likely to actually be able to find anything even if you made a full-time job of looking for it.
But as it happens, over the past couple of centuries we have found lots of intermediate forms. We have even identified several species that are thought to be on our side of the family tree since the split with our nearest living kin, the chimps.
> Is there even a single species where we can find a complete chain of intermediate forms between it and a previous species that it evolved from?
That's very problematic, because there's no way of actually knowing how many intermediates existed between two species. Sometimes you can make some very general predictions, but for the details you just have to dig and see what you find.
BTW, the joke on talk.origins is that there will always be "missing links", because every time you find one you create two more -- one on each side of the one you just found!
> This slowdown of sales has everything to do with P2P and nothing whatsoever to do with a slowing global economy.
I wonder if anyone has actually compared the rate of rips and downloads today to the rate of people copying each others' albums onto cassette 25 years ago?
Heck, for most of that 25 years you've been able to buy dual-cassette boom boxes that were designed for the express purpose of copying one cassette to another, and could be operated by complete idiots. Unless p2p has been adopted outside the Geek Elite, the rate of bootlegging may have actually dropped.
> Economy slumps > Music sucks > Downturn...must be piracy.
Another effect is that they've lost a free bonus market that they've had for the last 20 years. During the '80s the baby boomers shelled out millions or probably billions to replace their vinly with CDs of the same recordings, and during the '90s they did it again to get the remastered versions of those same recordings.
But both of those trends have almost completely run their course, so the record companies are back to selling new music for the first time without all the free bonus re-sales of old stuff to the large and economically powerful baby boomer generation. Unless they can think of a way to get the boomers to buy all that stuff for yet a fourth time, that "free bonus" revenue is gone for ever.
I would like to see a plot of sales growth/dips for the past 25 years that counted only new releases.
> Long story short, we spent weeks and weeks bending over backwards, crossing and dotting all letters, only to have her change her mind at the last minute.
Lucky for you that she was content to make you bend over backwards.
Slashdot Mirror
> They just openly defined the file format, not the tools to create graphics.
Even if you were correct, that's no problem. Wherever open formats go, open code follows.
> That said, if they really DO try to collect revenue, then yes, there should be some kind of market retaliation against the company.
I think the market's "pre-retaliation" is what left them needing this new source of income.
How do you threaten a company that's already bound for the crapper?
> I'd be interested to see how the leadership of the company may/may not tie in to the people in the city government that made the decision to migrate away from MS.
Hey, all those city officials need to have some way of recouping their Enron losses!
> the similarities between the US and the Roman Empire at its height (before it imploded) have been jumping out at me even more lately.
The USA has been behaving like an empire at least since WWII.
In the western hemisphere, add about 100 years to that.
> it's not very difficult to shield against the effects of this weapon.
How many layers of tin foil should I use in my new hat?
> Anyone want to bet how high a percentage of ordinance dropped on Iraq is going to be good old-fashioned, dumb heavy lumps of metal filled with explosives?
The Feb. '03 Scientific American has an article that says the "vast majority" of bombs dropped in Afghanistan were GPS guided. The latest technology is a "strap-on" system for good old-fashioned, dumb heavy lumps of metal filled with explosives. The system adds about $20,000 to the dumb bomb's $3,000 base cost, but gives it a 50% chance of hitting within 40 feet of the target. The reduction in the number of missions required to neutralize the target more than makes up for the cost (which also compares extremely favorably to Gulf War era cruise missles, which ran about $1,000,000 a pop).
> This and other media fluff about smart weaponry seems to be designed to present war as a videogame...
I would blame the Administration/military PR machine rather than the media. The media likes the horrid stuff that stirs up controversy and keeps the readers/viewers coming back for more.
> The logic for open-source is so compelling that after a year of debates we decided to stop talking and declare government an open-source zone.
Someone must not have found it too terribly compelling, or else they wouldn't have spent a whole year debating it.
At any rate, it's easy to imagine that billg is packing his bags for another emergency handout run right now.
> I would recommend Jack Vance.
IMO there's none better, but tastes vary and some people genuinely don't care for his style.
> The "Demon Princes" books are some of the best SF out there, and "Planet of Adventure" isn't too bad either.
I heartily recommend both, but actually prefer the latter. Unfortunately it gets off to a slow start, but anyone who's still there half-way through the second book will never put the rest of the books down, nor forget them.
Vance also wrote some best-of-breed fantasy series. The Lyonesse trilogy is as good as fantasy gets {Suldrun's Garden, The Green Pearl, Madouc}. The two Cugel books {Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga} are also great, though they are somewhat too cold-blooded for many people's tastes (particularly the former).
> allow me to throw my support behind
A truly horrid book, on every level of analysis.
> (If I'm not mistaken, it was Kay that was tapped to finished off some Tolkien fragments prior to their posthumous publication; when you read his stuff, you'll understand how he got that gig.) Kay also wrote something called "The Fionavar Trilogy" which I tried and couldn't get through...
Ah, the joys of cognitive dissonance!
> Man, if there was *ever* an argument for the original poster to try something other than scifi, it's this. I read Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon based on rantings and ravings I've read on
Yeah, I haven't read it because I hear so many raves about it on Slashdot. Anyone who reads Slashdot might get the impression that The Matrix is a great movie.
Forgive the appearence of trolling, but there's something about the Slashdot demographic that results in some really odd choices of material to rave about.
No accounting for taste I suppose - mine included.
> As much as I hate to do this to the site, check out the Internet Top 100 list [geocities.com].
Nice site, but kind of odd. Frinstance, I've read most of the Vorkosigan novels and either "enjoyed" or "really enjoyed" almost all of them... but #3 on the list?
You get similar oddities if you grep for an author (say, Jack Vance) and look at the order his books show up relative only to each other.
I think the problem is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of weighting by the total number of votes cast, with the result that a few avid fans of one book or series can put it far out of sequence.
OTOH, I suppose that if you filtered out all the older stuff then this method of ranking might be useful for answering the question posed by the Slashdot query.
BTW, O geeks, there's a juicy patent waiting for whoever solves the problem of internet polling. If you don't like software and business method patents, do it first and get that prior art!
> What are you guys reading?
Slashdot.
> > Once the PM's email is made public, he will get tons of spam.
> He's probably more concerned about getting "flamed" right now.
Grilled spam makes a great sandwich.
> The second picture suggests the Moon landing was a fraud, which is a slap in the face to the tens of thousands of engineers who made it happen.
No problem. Some of those involved are starting to slap back!
> It was only after the media picked up the term "flying saucer" that people started seeing saucer-shaped objects. This type of evolution would tend to indicate something other than nuts and bolts.
Such as loose screws.
> Yeah it was dumb of Lindows to do this without any kind of forewarning, but to pull out of the conference completely? I think both parties are a bit at fault here.
Not unless Lehrbaum is lying when he says he only entered the conference on the basis of an agreement, which Robertson just unilaterally discarded.
\meethinks Lindows is going to end up paying out some other vendors' expenses in small claims court.
I have a copy inhibition scheme too - Sell Crappy Music.
> I've yet to see a single pair of fossils that
are close enough to one another to be a single mutation apart
You and your parents are several mutations apart. You won't find that minimal quantum jump in the fossil record.
> We should see all kinds of creatures and
evidence of past creatures that are similar, with relatively smooth transitions from one form to another. The just isn't any evidence of that.
No one is going to make you believe the results of scientific enquiry if you don't want to, but if you want to sound like an informed critic you're going to have to get informed first. There is absolutely nothing in the theory of evolution that implies that we should have the collection of fossils you are demanding to see.
> > who wants to code on a machine that can only use one language?
> The Feds. They've done it before (Ada) and, I'm sure, wouldn't mind doing it again.
Uhmmm... What machine was that?
Ada was adopted because the DoD wanted a language standard, not because they had hardware that would only run that particular language. If your hardware is a von Neuman machine you should be able to program for it in any language. All you need is an appropriate back-end for your favorite compiler.
> The biggest problem I see with the whole evolution thing is that the more we dig, the more find weirder and weirder species that seem to have nothing to do with what's around today.
That's completely compatible with the theory of evolution. It doesn't predict what we will find in detail, but what it predicts at the higher level is that the tree of life will be very bushy, with some things closely related and others only very, very distantly related.
> Doesn't the evolution theory predict that we should be finding a lot of intermediate forms of present day species?
The theory doesn't predict that we will find anything. There are lots of problems with finding the remains of stuff that has been dead for thousands, millions, or billions of years. Consider the problem of finding the remains of your own ancestors: you could probably take me straight to where grandpa and grandma are buried, but if you go back 5, 10, 50, or 100 generations you would be less and less likely to actually be able to find anything even if you made a full-time job of looking for it.
But as it happens, over the past couple of centuries we have found lots of intermediate forms. We have even identified several species that are thought to be on our side of the family tree since the split with our nearest living kin, the chimps.
> Is there even a single species where we can find a complete chain of intermediate forms between it and a previous species that it evolved from?
That's very problematic, because there's no way of actually knowing how many intermediates existed between two species. Sometimes you can make some very general predictions, but for the details you just have to dig and see what you find.
BTW, the joke on talk.origins is that there will always be "missing links", because every time you find one you create two more -- one on each side of the one you just found!
> Anybody know what NetHack's relation to Rogue is? The games are incredibly similar.
Basic answer here and here. You should be able to find more by googling for roguelike.
> This slowdown of sales has everything to do with P2P and nothing whatsoever to do with a slowing global economy.
I wonder if anyone has actually compared the rate of rips and downloads today to the rate of people copying each others' albums onto cassette 25 years ago?
Heck, for most of that 25 years you've been able to buy dual-cassette boom boxes that were designed for the express purpose of copying one cassette to another, and could be operated by complete idiots. Unless p2p has been adopted outside the Geek Elite, the rate of bootlegging may have actually dropped.
> Economy slumps
> Music sucks
> Downturn...must be piracy.
Another effect is that they've lost a free bonus market that they've had for the last 20 years. During the '80s the baby boomers shelled out millions or probably billions to replace their vinly with CDs of the same recordings, and during the '90s they did it again to get the remastered versions of those same recordings.
But both of those trends have almost completely run their course, so the record companies are back to selling new music for the first time without all the free bonus re-sales of old stuff to the large and economically powerful baby boomer generation. Unless they can think of a way to get the boomers to buy all that stuff for yet a fourth time, that "free bonus" revenue is gone for ever.
I would like to see a plot of sales growth/dips for the past 25 years that counted only new releases.
> Long story short, we spent weeks and weeks bending over backwards, crossing and dotting all letters, only to have her change her mind at the last minute.
Lucky for you that she was content to make you bend over backwards.
> Q20: Who's the chick in the pictures?
I forsee a worse than usual slashdotting coming on.