No. When Pratchett talks of a flat world, he's not talking of a two-dimensional world (Flatland). He's instead talking of world that's not a spheroid. Discworld, is a disc with mountains on top and elephants and tortoises underneath.
And while the elephant/turtle/snake/flat world concept may originally have been derived from Hindu mythology-- it's basically what schoolchildren were taught as "the predominate belief structure before Columbus/rationalism/"people got smarter"/whatever."
LinuxOne now has a source code site available at 63.201.69.114 and 140.174.127.95. The first server runs LinuxOne 2.0, kernel 2.2.12-2 on a i586, and the second server runs on LinuxOne 1.2, kernel 2.2.12-2 on an i686. Feeling suspicious, I poked around on the second site, and noticed the global replace of RedHat with LinuxOne. Here is an excerpt from their RPM-PGP-key:
The following public key can be used to verify RPM packages built and signed by Red Hat Software using `rpm -K'. If anyone cares to sign this key, please send the signed key to marc@redhat.com. Type bits/keyID Date User ID pub 1024/CBA29BF9 1996/02/20 Red Hat Software, Inc.
Note that that the source tree seems to be brought over directly from CVS, and includes such interesting bits of detritus as object files and emacs buffer files. The CVS root file reveals it to be from:ext:msw@devserv.devel.redhat.com:/mnt/devel/CVS
Unfortunately, this argument relies on the opinion that only the people of the United States may know the true intentions of the "creator." That does lead to some rather difficult problems. For instance, the British empire abolished slavery some thirty years (at least) before the United States did. Before the War of the Rebellion, the reigning opinion of the Supreme Court was that the government could not deny individuals the (constitutionally protected) right to own slaves.
So what somebody has broken the encrytion scheme. If they didn't want someone to do this they should have _patented_ the technology. Now they are whining in court that someone in Norway is giving away their trade secrets.
Patenting requires public disclosure of the algorithm. I doubt such a patent would hold up in court for long.
I really liked the interface to Codewarrior. I liked its advanced support for the standard C++ libraries. Their browser was very useful. I still use it with Windows; however the linux port did not interest me for long because the browser was broken; the advanced C++ library was gone, and because it proved to be a real hassle to import code. It struck me as a GUI welded onto gcc-- which it was.
Many open source projects support configure/autoconf/autoheader/automake. I was unable to use these common tools with CW. I would have liked a system that translated between Codewarrior projects and these more common cross platform formats.
Sony v. Universal (464 U.S. 417), the 1983 case that essentially legalized the recording of TV broadcasts for home use, has been often cited by various posters, since it establishes the principle that
Accordingly, the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses. Theoretically, since DeCSS has a substantial non-infringing use (allowing linux users access to DVD content), it is not an infringement. Interestingly, this argument was derived from patent (not copyright) law.
I would be interested in hearing (or watching) the proceedings, but judges aren't supposed to encourage "playing to the crowd, so any pleas that "the whole world wide web is watching" are likely to fall on deaf ears. It's also likely that the streaming audio server will experience the wrong end of the Slashdot effect.
Not that a gold miner is a very noble profession... After all, a widely used technique for extracting Gold involves the use of Cyanide, leading to the possibility of long term environmental damage. Quite a few gold mining companies have been accused of serious human rights abuses.
There's a link in the wired article to "The Sordid Saga of Sex.com," in which the original registrant of sex.com claims that NSI transferred ownership of "sex.com" to a rather shady character, after recieving a forged letter approving the transfer. The article is here. Apparently the new owner is something of a crook. Sex.com supposedly pulls in $100 million annually...
The liquid used the the Abyss scene is a flourocarbon-- an organic molecule containing flourine atoms. Take cyclohexane, for instance (C6H12). In a laboratory, the hydrogens can be replaced with flourines, producing C6F12, or perflourocyclohexane. The resulting liquid can be perfused with oxygen, and animals submerged in oxygen perfused flourocarbons, can breath fairly normally, although the lungs may have to some extra work.
To work, a lung must be able to inflate. In the case of premature infants, the neonate's lungs will tend to stick together, in part because the infant has not been able to produce surfactant (which keeps lung tissuues from sticking together.)
In the case of the Abyss, the extreme pressure at the bottom of the ocean will cause a lungs to collapse, if the incoming gas pressure is not high enough. The problem one gets is that oxygen and nitrogen can be toxic at high pressure. Theoretically, if a liquid, such as a perflourocarbon, could substitute for the carrier gas (He, N, etc), high pressure diving could be made more practical.
In neither case does one actually breathe liquid in place of oxygen. The liquid just carries the oxygen. Perflourocarbons can theoretically substitute for red blood cells--a person with perflourocarbon blood would still need oxygen.
BTW, for those who plan to do deep diving, perflourocyclohexane has its share of problems. But, there are thousands of possible perflourcarbons to choose from. I would suggest doing a search in the scientific literature. You might start with Leland Clark, who has written dozens of papers on the subject.
There's a user manual available here for ASCI Blue. LLNL is already working on a 10 teraOPS machine called ASCI White. 8000 processors... ASCI Red is currently 1.8 TeraOPS.
There's a user manual available here for ASCI Blue. LLNL is already working on a 10 teraOPS machine called ASCI White. 8000 processors... ASCI Red is currently 1.8 TeraOPS.
Moral context is suprisingly irrelevant in a whole host of areas, including many scientific fields. (Pray tell us what relevence moralism has to quantum field theory.) In fact, moralism is a source of much bias, and a barrier to effective analysis.
Communist regimes have caused the deaths of million of people-- yes, but it is not appropriate to blame Marx, until you can explain why his political ideas led neccesarily to human suffering. Bonus points for not mentioning Ayn Rand.
Some say that EVIL (as you so gently put it) is a social construction. In any case, it is very difficult to define-- there are many people who might well be evil, but very little in common among them.
DVDs are encrypted to both stop piracy, and to protect Hollywood's incremental release dates.
A film is usually released in its country of origin first. Some months later, other countries may see it. This is done to save on film printing costs. The DVD zone system--which forms a large component of DVD "encryption" is designed to ensure that a people in Australia don't order a US-imprinted DVD instead of viewing the film in theaters. Of course, this system ends up shafting the foriegn film buff. Many Japanese films simply don't make it into the US market/zone, and thus are inaccessible to the most import savvy viewers. Of course, one could always buy a Japanese-encoded DVD player, but that's rather expensive. One oddity with the zone system is that China forms its own zone. Of course, China is home to many a pirate, but this also allows the government of the PRC to essentially control film imports more effectively. The whole incremental release system will be obsoleted by digital distribution systems, anyway. Bravo for the crackers!
Maybe the problem with Trek at the moment is that its original mission is played out and old. Space has already been explored and how much more can you discover?
But space hasn't been explored. Sure, Star Trek's been to a lot of planets with bipedal aliens, and introduced a dozen forms of fictional radiation, but what of real science? Ideally, any new show should be set in an eralier era, in which technology is less distinguishable from magic.
I liked DS9, if only because it tried to develop a (somewhat) plausible political and social background for some of its cultures. Nimoy actually makes the Starfleet Academy idea sound plausible-- until I had read this article, ST:Starfleet Academy reminded me of BH:90210.
Emma Fanning of the BPI said: "It has always been the case that piracy has links with pornographers and organised crime. What is most repellent about this is that it is likely to attract the younger user."
"Piracy" is not an organized activity. Individual "Piracy" organizations may merge with other outfits, take advantage of synergistic relationships, and engage in strategic partnerships, but that does not mean that your local supplier of bootleg MP3s is somehow involved in some international drugs conspiracy.
As for pornography, I doubt that Playboy Enterprises is "mobbed up." There are many perfectly legitimate organizations distributing MP3's, and equally legitimate enterprises distributing pictures of naked people.
Why is the BPI trying to make us believe that MP3.com is somehow a front organization for the Mafia? There's very little profit in it. If I was a Mob figure, I might intead target a conventional record company. After all, record companies already know how to get an artist to sign contracts they can't refuse.
I've visited the "War in Heaven" website, more out of curiousity than anything else. Apparently the game's author wrote this game more out of a desire to promote his own theological theories than anything else.
Most Christians I know don't believe in this "War in Heaven" (heresy), and disdain the hyper-athletic (muscular?) Christianity from which it comes.
Is the War in Heaven purely limited to the spiritual realm? There are those who believe that eventually, such a war will be fought on Earth. Unfortunatly for the rest of, a battle between pure good and pure evil (or, most likely, two or three warring factions who believe themselves to be "good" and their enemies to be "evil") will quite possibly lead to atrocities.
Quite possibly, this why most christian sects have dicarded the "war in heaven" concept. As for your comments on Gangis (sic) Kahn (sic), Napolean (sic), and Hitler:
Christianity has nothing to do with concepts of personal freedom. There are sects that correspond to an individual's desire for freedom, and sects that cater to individual's desire for conformity.
I really don't know much about the Great Khanate, so I cannot comment on whether Genghis's conquest was motivated by theology.
As for Hitler: The Judenfragen was well established in the Germany's political literature. Certainly Hitler was not the only anti-semite in Germany, nor was he the first. In large part, anti-semitic tendencies within the German staes was motivated by religion. Both Martin Luther and the Catholic Church preached that the Jews, (and presumably, not the Romans) were responsible for Jesus's death. Thus the Jugenfragen- lit. "Jewish Question," which was based of the supposition tht Jews were not Germans (and vice versa).
Two: Hitler was motivated by the concept of the "Ubermensch," or Superman. In the Nazi interpretation, Superman transcends ordinary morality, and is free of the constraints of ordinary society. Thus free of moral constraints, work on the Final solution could begin. If mass murder is not wrong, then mass murder is possible.
Except that the if the balon (quarter pint) is 12.5 cl, then the pint is 50cl, and hence half a liter and not a real pint at all. I've gotten used to the centiliter thing, even though it seems only to be used in Wine a bottle = 75 cl. a magnum = 150 cl. ... a nebuchanezzer = 1500 cl
It's a nice system, but my local American grocer converts everything into the American ounce equivalent, complete with three digits after the decimal point. To make matters worse, they calculate the unit cost (so many cents per ounce) as though I was somehow both crude enough to buy wine by the ounce, and too stupid to notice that wine bottles come in standard sizes.
I've finished reading the doubleclick patent and I must confess that I'm a little ignorent as to how this ad thing really works. Doubleclick's patent seems to be for targeted advertisements. Somehow I doubt that slashdot advertisements are targeted towards individual accounts (a component of the doubleclick patent, but I'm sure that Andover.Net keeps track of how much "screen time" a company has bought. (also a component of this patent.) Any patent lawyers want to take a crack at this?
Avalon Hill got bought because of a trademark fight. Once upon a time, Avalon Hill published an English board game called "Civilization," in which players would play one of several great civilizations, and try to "advance" their civilization into the Iron Age. Avalon Hill had a microcomputer games divison, that produced "Computer Civilization." In the meantime, Sid Meir produces Civilization, others produce Civilization II, and somehow, the trademark gets split between Microsoft and Activision-- which apparently had a hand in the development of "Civilization II." Activison later releases "Civilization:Call to Power," and Hasbro, having in meantime, bought Microprose, releases a kludgy "Civilization II:Test of Time," presumably to cannibalize Activison's sales of Call to Power. To strengthen Hasbro's hold over "Civilization: the Trademark" Hasbro buys Avalon Hill, granting them rights over "Civilization" and "Advanced Civilization". Also, this will allow them to finally release the long awaited "Dr. Ruth's Computer Game of Good Sex," and also give them control over a bunch of wargames. Incidentally, Runequest may be dead, but the world of Glorantha will still live on through a game of a different title, to be published by Issaries Games, a startup company with some very peculiar business plans. I believe this company will be more less seperate from the Chaosium, which originally published Runequest.
Slashdot Mirror
No. When Pratchett talks of a flat world, he's not talking of a two-dimensional world (Flatland). He's instead talking of world that's not a spheroid. Discworld, is a disc with mountains on top and elephants and tortoises underneath.
And while the elephant/turtle/snake/flat world concept may originally have been derived from Hindu mythology-- it's basically what schoolchildren were taught as "the predominate belief structure before Columbus/rationalism/"people got smarter"/whatever."
The following public key can be used to verify RPM packages built and signed by Red Hat Software using `rpm -K'. If anyone cares to sign this key, please send the signed key to marc@redhat.com. Type bits/keyID Date User ID pub 1024/CBA29BF9 1996/02/20 Red Hat Software, Inc.
Note that that the source tree seems to be brought over directly from CVS, and includes such interesting bits of detritus as object files and emacs buffer files. The CVS root file reveals it to be from :ext:msw@devserv.devel.redhat.com:/mnt/devel/CVS
Unfortunately, this argument relies on the opinion that only the people of the United States may know the true intentions of the "creator." That does lead to some rather difficult problems. For instance, the British empire abolished slavery some thirty years (at least) before the United States did. Before the War of the Rebellion, the reigning opinion of the Supreme Court was that the government could not deny individuals the (constitutionally protected) right to own slaves.
Patenting requires public disclosure of the algorithm. I doubt such a patent would hold up in court for long.
I really liked the interface to Codewarrior. I liked its advanced support for the standard C++ libraries. Their browser was very useful.
I still use it with Windows; however the linux port did not interest me for long because the browser was broken; the advanced C++ library was gone, and because it proved to be a real hassle to import code. It struck me as a GUI welded onto gcc-- which it was.
Many open source projects support configure/autoconf/autoheader/automake. I was unable to use these common tools with CW. I would have liked a system that translated between Codewarrior projects and these more common cross platform formats.
Accordingly, the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses. Theoretically, since DeCSS has a substantial non-infringing use (allowing linux users access to DVD content), it is not an infringement. Interestingly, this argument was derived from patent (not copyright) law.
I would be interested in hearing (or watching) the proceedings, but judges aren't supposed to encourage "playing to the crowd, so any pleas that "the whole world wide web is watching" are likely to fall on deaf ears.
It's also likely that the streaming audio server will experience the wrong end of the Slashdot effect.
Ted Stevens Release:
contains closed source kernel modules:
cryptography (with backdoor), web censorship.
Displays anti-drug mesage on login.
Red Flag Linux reminds me of socialist realist art.
Raise the Red Banner, and let a thousand open source projects bloom!
Not that a gold miner is a very noble profession... After all, a widely used technique for extracting Gold involves the use of Cyanide, leading to the possibility of long term environmental damage. Quite a few gold mining companies have been accused of serious human rights abuses.
There's a link in the wired article to "The Sordid Saga of Sex.com," in which the original registrant of sex.com claims that NSI transferred ownership of "sex.com" to a rather shady character, after recieving a forged letter approving the transfer. The article is here. Apparently the new owner is something of a crook. Sex.com supposedly pulls in $100 million annually...
To work, a lung must be able to inflate. In the case of premature infants, the neonate's lungs will tend to stick together, in part because the infant has not been able to produce surfactant (which keeps lung tissuues from sticking together.)
In the case of the Abyss, the extreme pressure at the bottom of the ocean will cause a lungs to collapse, if the incoming gas pressure is not high enough. The problem one gets is that oxygen and nitrogen can be toxic at high pressure. Theoretically, if a liquid, such as a perflourocarbon, could substitute for the carrier gas (He, N, etc), high pressure diving could be made more practical.
In neither case does one actually breathe liquid in place of oxygen. The liquid just carries the oxygen. Perflourocarbons can theoretically substitute for red blood cells--a person with perflourocarbon blood would still need oxygen.
BTW, for those who plan to do deep diving, perflourocyclohexane has its share of problems. But, there are thousands of possible perflourcarbons to choose from. I would suggest doing a search in the scientific literature. You might start with Leland Clark, who has written dozens of papers on the subject.
There's a user manual available here for ASCI Blue. LLNL is already working on a 10 teraOPS machine called ASCI White. 8000 processors... ASCI Red is currently 1.8 TeraOPS.
There's a user manual available here for ASCI Blue. LLNL is already working on a 10 teraOPS machine called ASCI White. 8000 processors... ASCI Red is currently 1.8 TeraOPS.
Moral context is suprisingly irrelevant in a whole host of areas, including many scientific fields. (Pray tell us what relevence moralism has to quantum field theory.) In fact, moralism is a source of much bias, and a barrier to effective analysis.
Communist regimes have caused the deaths of million of people-- yes, but it is not appropriate to blame Marx, until you can explain why his political ideas led neccesarily to
human suffering. Bonus points for not mentioning Ayn Rand.
Some say that EVIL (as you so gently put it) is a social construction. In any case, it is very difficult to define-- there are many people who might well be evil, but very little in common among them.
DVDs are encrypted to both stop piracy, and to protect Hollywood's incremental release dates.
A film is usually released in its country of origin first. Some months later, other countries may see it. This is done to save on film printing costs. The DVD zone system--which forms a large component of DVD "encryption" is designed to ensure that a people in Australia don't order a US-imprinted DVD instead of viewing the film in theaters.
Of course, this system ends up shafting the foriegn film buff. Many Japanese films simply don't make it into the US market/zone, and thus are inaccessible to the most import savvy viewers. Of course, one could always buy a Japanese-encoded DVD player, but that's rather expensive.
One oddity with the zone system is that China forms its own zone. Of course, China is home to many a pirate, but this also allows the government of the PRC to essentially control film imports more effectively.
The whole incremental release system will be obsoleted by digital distribution systems, anyway. Bravo for the crackers!
Actually, I have both for Windows-- I just anted to know whether gtting the Linux Gold package was worth my while.
What features does it add that aren't in the Second Century?
But space hasn't been explored. Sure, Star Trek's been to a lot of planets with bipedal aliens, and introduced a dozen forms of fictional radiation, but what of real science? Ideally, any new show should be set in an eralier era, in which technology is less distinguishable from magic.
I liked DS9, if only because it tried to develop a (somewhat) plausible political and social background for some of its cultures. Nimoy actually makes the Starfleet Academy idea sound plausible-- until I had read this article, ST:Starfleet Academy reminded me of BH:90210.
"Piracy" is not an organized activity. Individual "Piracy" organizations may merge with other outfits, take advantage of synergistic relationships, and engage in strategic partnerships, but that does not mean that your local supplier of bootleg MP3s is somehow involved in some international drugs conspiracy.
As for pornography, I doubt that Playboy Enterprises is "mobbed up." There are many perfectly legitimate organizations distributing MP3's, and equally legitimate enterprises distributing pictures of naked people.
Why is the BPI trying to make us believe that MP3.com is somehow a front organization for the Mafia? There's very little profit in it. If I was a Mob figure, I might intead target a conventional record company. After all, record companies already know how to get an artist to sign contracts they can't refuse.
I've visited the "War in Heaven" website, more out of curiousity than anything else. Apparently the game's author wrote this game more out of a desire to promote his own theological theories than anything else.
Most Christians I know don't believe in this "War in Heaven" (heresy), and disdain the hyper-athletic (muscular?) Christianity from which it comes.
Is the War in Heaven purely limited to the spiritual realm? There are those who believe that eventually, such a war will be fought on Earth. Unfortunatly for the rest of, a battle between pure good and pure evil (or, most likely, two or three warring factions who believe themselves to be "good" and their enemies to be "evil") will quite possibly lead to atrocities.
Quite possibly, this why most christian sects have dicarded the "war in heaven" concept.
As for your comments on Gangis (sic) Kahn (sic), Napolean (sic), and Hitler:
Christianity has nothing to do with concepts of personal freedom. There are sects that correspond to an individual's desire for freedom, and sects that cater to individual's desire for conformity.
I really don't know much about the Great Khanate, so I cannot comment on whether Genghis's conquest was motivated by theology.
As for Hitler:
The Judenfragen was well established in the Germany's political literature. Certainly Hitler was not the only anti-semite in Germany, nor was he the first. In large part, anti-semitic tendencies within the German staes was motivated by religion. Both Martin Luther and the Catholic Church preached that the Jews, (and presumably, not the Romans) were responsible for Jesus's death. Thus the Jugenfragen- lit. "Jewish Question," which was based of the supposition tht Jews were not Germans (and vice versa).
Two: Hitler was motivated by the concept of the "Ubermensch," or Superman. In the Nazi interpretation, Superman transcends ordinary morality, and is free of the constraints of ordinary society. Thus free of moral constraints, work on the Final solution could begin. If mass murder is not wrong, then mass murder is possible.
Except that the if the balon (quarter pint) is 12.5 cl, then the pint is 50cl, and hence half a liter and not a real pint at all.
I've gotten used to the centiliter thing, even though it seems only to be used in Wine
a bottle = 75 cl.
a magnum = 150 cl.
...
a nebuchanezzer = 1500 cl
It's a nice system, but my local American grocer converts everything into the American ounce equivalent, complete with three digits after the decimal point. To make matters worse, they calculate the unit cost (so many cents per ounce) as though I was somehow both crude enough to buy wine by the ounce, and too stupid to notice that wine bottles come in standard sizes.
How does the CSM cover medical issues? I would think that any discussion of medicine would violate tenets of the CS faith...
I've finished reading the doubleclick patent and I must confess that I'm a little ignorent as to how this ad thing really works. Doubleclick's patent seems to be for targeted advertisements. Somehow I doubt that slashdot advertisements are targeted towards individual accounts (a component of the doubleclick patent, but I'm sure that Andover.Net keeps track of how much "screen time" a company has bought. (also a component of this patent.) Any patent lawyers want to take a crack at this?
Avalon Hill got bought because of a trademark fight.
Once upon a time, Avalon Hill published an English board game called "Civilization," in which players would play one of several great civilizations, and try to "advance" their civilization into the Iron Age. Avalon Hill had a microcomputer games divison, that produced "Computer Civilization."
In the meantime, Sid Meir produces Civilization, others produce Civilization II, and somehow, the trademark gets split between Microsoft and Activision-- which apparently had a hand in the development of "Civilization II."
Activison later releases "Civilization:Call to Power," and Hasbro, having in meantime, bought Microprose, releases a kludgy "Civilization II:Test of Time," presumably to cannibalize Activison's sales of Call to Power.
To strengthen Hasbro's hold over "Civilization: the Trademark" Hasbro buys Avalon Hill, granting them rights over "Civilization" and "Advanced Civilization". Also, this will allow them to finally release the long awaited "Dr. Ruth's Computer Game of Good Sex," and also give them control over a bunch of wargames.
Incidentally, Runequest may be dead, but the world of Glorantha will still live on through a game of a different title, to be published by Issaries Games, a startup company with some very peculiar business plans. I believe this company will be more less seperate from the Chaosium, which originally published Runequest.