Carnivore and source and PR and stuff...
on
FBI Rep To Speak
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· Score: 1
I dont think that the FBI would send to this event one of his Geeks in Black, who knew the way Carnivore really works. If it were left to me, I'd just send someone who knew how to do some good Public Relations, in order to improve Carnivore's image to the public.
The web site listed the names and addresses of doctors who perform abortions. It also expressed the opinion that abortion was a crime against humanity. Nowhere did the web site directly incite violence against the doctors.
"Directly" as in "you people go now and kill these murderers"? No. But it did provide them the motivation, and the information needed for those who wanted to hurt those doctors. It doesn't take a genius to see the consequences of encouraging people to take care of things, and then giving them the tools (info) to do it.
Besides, I dont recall the owner of the website putting his own name, address and personal information on it. Was he being a coward? Defending his right to privacy? Didn't think no one wanted to know his personal details?(I could be mistaken about it, tho. It's been long, and they pulled the website already)
I am not a citizen of the USA, but while Im in favor of Free Speech as a rule, Im a stronger believer in the Rights to Privacy. By posting something that wasn't avaliable to the general public, the doctors' rights to privacy were violated.
> Hey, Kaplan... ya wanna write an RFC on exactly what a "link" is?
Ask British Telecom. They've got a patent on it.
So the next time Nintendo releases a game where you rescue Zelda, it's not gonna be "The Return of Link" but "The Return of Some Guy with Pointy Ears Dressed Up in Green with Great Powers"? No, wait, that would be Yoda...
I think the gamma ray laser project was one of the last SDI funded research projects in the 90's. I think they got the whole concept to work, but I'm not sure if it got developed further.
Sadly, I think those research projects were left uncompleted due to the disappearence of Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, a pioneer in the research of Gamma Rays. I wonder what became of him?
Im not sure about the normal wear and tear of space, but they could be used for wear and tear down here closer to the ground.
I guess out there the danger comes not quite from wear but from collisions with debris...
I don't know if a thin coat of ultrananocrystalline watchamacallits would help. I mean, they could be made strong enough to withstand such an impact, I guess, but then the stuff they're protecting would shatter from the shock or something.
That would be funny. Kind of like Daffy Duck's Anti-disintegrating Vest, which wont disintegrate (or protect the owner from disintergating, either!)
However, I do wonder why you believe that having some quantity of carbon at a higher density than some other density would immediately change the effects of gravity on it... thus plumetting it through the planet.
THat's easy. You get the same weight but in a lower volume, and assuming the shape remains the same, a lower area of contact (is that the right term? or is it point of contact? or something else?) with anything underneath. So a spectacular increase of density would mean that the same area would have to sustain a really, really bigger weigth. Therefore punching a hole in whatever material it may be.
It's like resting a knife on its side over a balloon instead of on its point. Same mass, but reduce the area of contact and blammo, no more balloon.
Everybody knows these is no such thing as a phantom
Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film. Saying its name five times in front of the mirror will never result in U.D.F. appearing behind you with a diamond hook on its hand. That's just another urban legend. A myth.
...there are over 400 universities who signed up with this company to provide them with a shiny new "free" advertising-supported student intranet in exchange for many many eyeballs.
- Let's see. 2 tablespoons of Newt tongues.
- Check, master...
- Legs of spider, 1 oz.
- Check, master!
- 20 eyes of drama arts students...
- Uh, we're out of those, master!
- WHAT?! Get me some, now!
- Yes, master! I'll send an e-mail to Pipeline right away, master!
- Harumph. Can't do decent witchcraft anymore these days... How in the seven circles of Hell am I suppose to make this Microsoft server to work without black magic?
I like computers (I'm even studyin comp sci at the moment), though I never played RPGs and I do definitely believe in magic. Where's your theory now?:)
So you're trying to disbelieve my theory? Roll a saving throw, now!
All kidding aside, I never said it was an explanation for _every_ case. There's always an exception to the rule. I'll bet you're a science fiction fan, tho. So instead of being classified as a "demon-worshipping dragon-killing weirdo", I'll bet you get classified as an "UFO-nut Vulcan-salutin' Trekkie". And I don't mean it in a derogatory way, being a part-time Trekkie myself.
Think about it, for a second. Elves, alien abductors. They're both petite, with green or gray skin, and pointy ears. It's like David Brin says in his book "Otherness", we've taken the elves from the forests which we have already explored to death, and have put them into outer space as aliens.
I guess deep down we all want to believe in something which cannot be rationally explained.
The magazine Scientific American went so far as to suggest that our anthropomorphic view of machines can be attributed almost exclusively to Kubrick's movie.
I dunno about this. I think people have been naming machines for the last few centuries. After all, sailors name their ships (they dont just call them "the boat"), train drivers name their machines, and you have to admit, everyone has now and then spoken to your car whenever something's wrong.
What's interesting, tho, is that they're female names, most of the time. goes to show you that geeks with no social life have been around even before there were computers...
The closest I can think of geeks coming to this is Magic: The Gathering, and D&D. I don't think anyone (very few anyway) took this stuff seriously. It was just a game to geeks then, and it still is. I disbelief! I disbelief!!
Back on topic: I can think of a few friends of mine who took AD&D (and it's online descendance, MUDs) a bit more seriously that the regular crowd. Not that they thought the game was *real*, exactly, but they did tend to limit their social life to gaming. Other than that, they still each kept to their own points of view regarding religion.
You know, I think we're getting close to a possible cause here...Ok, here's what I think:
Role-Playing Games require an open mind in order to have fun playing them. More to the point, the people who played those games were mostly geeks. Why? Because they a) were smart enough to fully enjoy the game, and b) didn't have much of a social life anyway. We're talking about the stereotypical nerd here, I know, but bear with me.
Time ago, you couldn't just learn to code by using a "XXXX for Dummies" (tm) book. You had to try and experiment, and you also had to be smart and have a mind open to new ways of thinking. Which, amazingly, coincided with the description of RPG players.
So you had lots of proto-hackers, playing D&D and similar games, and the rest of the people just looked at them and thought to themselves: "Hey, they're always talking about demigods and magic and powers and stuff. They must believe in witchcraft and the like".
Add to that the many references to Adventure games included in the repertoire of many of those hackers, and there you go. That's where the idea that most hackers believe in magic comes from. Of course, that's just my theory.
I think that, in the beginning, most hackers were considered by everybody else to be incredibly smart. I mean, if they could work out how to operate them "blinkenlighten" contraptions, well they must know things that no ordinary people know. Things of the occult. Things like magic.
It would be fun to have magical powers, tho. If only to annoy stupid users who come up with strange new ways of screwing things up.
"So, what happens if I press *this* button here?" "No, you don't want to do that. That's basically a low-level format of your hard drive, and..." "Hey, Format! My kid learnt something about this in school! Let's see what happens..." "YOU TOUCH THAT BUTTON AND I'LL TURN YOU INTO A FROG... OR SOMETHING!"
... now my pr0n will come out all grainy. Groan...Good pun. Painfully funny, too.
Real clever of you to bring it up.
Re:The mark of the Devil
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
Yes, some people have been marked by the Devil as being his, and it is not suprising that in a decent Christian society that (they?) are unable to find the opportunities that God-fearing men do.
So _that's_ why Howard Stern's ratings have been going down lately!
I'd say that any meteors and comets that come close enough to hit the elevator shaft were going to hit Earth anyway. Although that's a good point regarding the junk. At orbital speeds, even a marble could blow a chunk off the shaft.
("Heh heh, he said blow..."
"Yeah, huh huh, and shaft! Huh huh...")
While I agree with several things DHartung wrote, and I disagree with several other points, there's one thing I'd like to speak my mind about:
What kind of incompetent school did you go to, that you believe speaking English is a pre-requisite for mastering high technology?
Actually, I'd say that as of today, speaking English is a pre-requisite for communicating with people in the area of high technology.
For example, let's say we have a Mexican engineer (for instance, me), a Russian mathemathical expert, a Hindu computer programmer and a Japanese nano-technology expert. Add in a couple of European team members, and you definitely have to have a common language. English, right now, is such language. Maybe in 50 years it'll be japanese or french or tagalog, who knows?
The point is, it's not a matter of nationalistic pride or anglo-centrism (if there is such a word). It's a matter of convenience.
Chances are that any project spending the kind of money that it'd take to build a 50km tower and a stairway to heaven will be able to negotiate how much graft it'll have to pay the local government, given the boost the thing will be to the local economy.
Actually, if you think about it, it would be more the other way around. Local governments competing between themselves to be chosen as the site of the space elevator.
Slashdot Mirror
I dont think that the FBI would send to this event one of his Geeks in Black, who knew the way Carnivore really works. If it were left to me, I'd just send someone who knew how to do some good Public Relations, in order to improve Carnivore's image to the public.
The web site listed the names and addresses of doctors who perform abortions. It also expressed the opinion that abortion was a crime against humanity. Nowhere did the web site directly incite violence against the doctors.
"Directly" as in "you people go now and kill these murderers"? No. But it did provide them the motivation, and the information needed for those who wanted to hurt those doctors. It doesn't take a genius to see the consequences of encouraging people to take care of things, and then giving them the tools (info) to do it.
Besides, I dont recall the owner of the website putting his own name, address and personal information on it. Was he being a coward? Defending his right to privacy? Didn't think no one wanted to know his personal details?(I could be mistaken about it, tho. It's been long, and they pulled the website already)
I am not a citizen of the USA, but while Im in favor of Free Speech as a rule, Im a stronger believer in the Rights to Privacy. By posting something that wasn't avaliable to the general public, the doctors' rights to privacy were violated.
Just my 2 cents worth...
> Hey, Kaplan... ya wanna write an RFC on exactly what a "link" is?
Ask British Telecom. They've got a patent on it.
So the next time Nintendo releases a game where you rescue Zelda, it's not gonna be "The Return of Link" but "The Return of Some Guy with Pointy Ears Dressed Up in Green with Great Powers"? No, wait, that would be Yoda...
So if I get this straight, it's against the law to save someone else the whole 2 seconds it takes to cut & paste a link?
Is that some obscure plan to make people think instead of being lazy or something?
Note that the Fnord! Server is covered by the GPL, rather than our license
What, Microsoft is now a believer of Discordianism? Or is this all still part of Operation Mindfuck?
Null Serviam, I say!
I think the gamma ray laser project was one of the last SDI funded research projects in the 90's. I think they got the whole concept to work, but I'm not sure if it got developed further.
Sadly, I think those research projects were left uncompleted due to the disappearence of Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, a pioneer in the research of Gamma Rays. I wonder what became of him?
Im not sure about the normal wear and tear of space, but they could be used for wear and tear down here closer to the ground.
I guess out there the danger comes not quite from wear but from collisions with debris...
I don't know if a thin coat of ultrananocrystalline watchamacallits would help. I mean, they could be made strong enough to withstand such an impact, I guess, but then the stuff they're protecting would shatter from the shock or something.
That would be funny. Kind of like Daffy Duck's Anti-disintegrating Vest, which wont disintegrate (or protect the owner from disintergating, either!)
However, I do wonder why you believe that having some quantity of carbon at a higher density than some other density would immediately change the effects of gravity on it... thus plumetting it through the planet.
THat's easy. You get the same weight but in a lower volume, and assuming the shape remains the same, a lower area of contact (is that the right term? or is it point of contact? or something else?) with anything underneath. So a spectacular increase of density would mean that the same area would have to sustain a really, really bigger weigth. Therefore punching a hole in whatever material it may be.
It's like resting a knife on its side over a balloon instead of on its point. Same mass, but reduce the area of contact and blammo, no more balloon.
...each pound of which weighs over ten thousand pounds
Uh... so a meter of dark matter would be how long exactly?
actually, what about something so simple as cd-rom's that are scratch-proof?
Great idea! As useful as coating eyeglasses and contacts lenses.
Oh come on!
Everybody knows these is no such thing as a phantom Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film. Saying its name five times in front of the mirror will never result in U.D.F. appearing behind you with a diamond hook on its hand. That's just another urban legend. A myth.
Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film! Yeah, right!
...there are over 400 universities who signed up with this company to provide them with a shiny new "free" advertising-supported student intranet in exchange for many many eyeballs.
- Let's see. 2 tablespoons of Newt tongues.
- Check, master...
- Legs of spider, 1 oz.
- Check, master!
- 20 eyes of drama arts students...
- Uh, we're out of those, master!
- WHAT?! Get me some, now!
- Yes, master! I'll send an e-mail to Pipeline right away, master!
- Harumph. Can't do decent witchcraft anymore these days... How in the seven circles of Hell am I suppose to make this Microsoft server to work without black magic?
I like computers (I'm even studyin comp sci at the moment), though I never played RPGs and I do definitely believe in magic. Where's your theory now? :)
So you're trying to disbelieve my theory? Roll a saving throw, now!
All kidding aside, I never said it was an explanation for _every_ case. There's always an exception to the rule. I'll bet you're a science fiction fan, tho. So instead of being classified as a "demon-worshipping dragon-killing weirdo", I'll bet you get classified as an "UFO-nut Vulcan-salutin' Trekkie". And I don't mean it in a derogatory way, being a part-time Trekkie myself.
Think about it, for a second. Elves, alien abductors. They're both petite, with green or gray skin, and pointy ears. It's like David Brin says in his book "Otherness", we've taken the elves from the forests which we have already explored to death, and have put them into outer space as aliens.
I guess deep down we all want to believe in something which cannot be rationally explained.
The magazine Scientific American went so far as to suggest that our anthropomorphic view of machines can be attributed almost exclusively to Kubrick's movie.
I dunno about this. I think people have been naming machines for the last few centuries. After all, sailors name their ships (they dont just call them "the boat"), train drivers name their machines, and you have to admit, everyone has now and then spoken to your car whenever something's wrong.
What's interesting, tho, is that they're female names, most of the time. goes to show you that geeks with no social life have been around even before there were computers...
...mentioning fashion models is equivalent to being a Nazi.
Well then:
Hail Schiffer! Kate moss über alles!
The closest I can think of geeks coming to this is Magic: The Gathering, and D&D. I don't think anyone (very few anyway) took this stuff seriously. It was just a game to geeks then, and it still is.
I disbelief! I disbelief!!
Back on topic: I can think of a few friends of mine who took AD&D (and it's online descendance, MUDs) a bit more seriously that the regular crowd. Not that they thought the game was *real*, exactly, but they did tend to limit their social life to gaming. Other than that, they still each kept to their own points of view regarding religion.
I like my religion like I like my hardware: Do-It-Yourself.
That's cool, as long as you don't think of sex the same way...
All I can say is,
"/Dev/Null Serviam!"
You know, I think we're getting close to a possible cause here...Ok, here's what I think:
Role-Playing Games require an open mind in order to have fun playing them. More to the point, the people who played those games were mostly geeks. Why? Because they a) were smart enough to fully enjoy the game, and b) didn't have much of a social life anyway. We're talking about the stereotypical nerd here, I know, but bear with me.
Time ago, you couldn't just learn to code by using a "XXXX for Dummies" (tm) book. You had to try and experiment, and you also had to be smart and have a mind open to new ways of thinking. Which, amazingly, coincided with the description of RPG players.
So you had lots of proto-hackers, playing D&D and similar games, and the rest of the people just looked at them and thought to themselves: "Hey, they're always talking about demigods and magic and powers and stuff. They must believe in witchcraft and the like".
Add to that the many references to Adventure games included in the repertoire of many of those hackers, and there you go. That's where the idea that most hackers believe in magic comes from.
Of course, that's just my theory.
I think that, in the beginning, most hackers were considered by everybody else to be incredibly smart. I mean, if they could work out how to operate them "blinkenlighten" contraptions, well they must know things that no ordinary people know. Things of the occult. Things like magic.
It would be fun to have magical powers, tho. If only to annoy stupid users who come up with strange new ways of screwing things up.
"So, what happens if I press *this* button here?"
"No, you don't want to do that. That's basically a low-level format of your hard drive, and..."
"Hey, Format! My kid learnt something about this in school! Let's see what happens..."
"YOU TOUCH THAT BUTTON AND I'LL TURN YOU INTO A FROG... OR SOMETHING!"
... now my pr0n will come out all grainy.
Groan...Good pun. Painfully funny, too.
Real clever of you to bring it up.
Yes, some people have been marked by the Devil as being his, and it is not suprising that in a decent Christian society that (they?) are unable to find the opportunities that God-fearing men do.
So _that's_ why Howard Stern's ratings have been going down lately!
I'd say that any meteors and comets that come close enough to hit the elevator shaft were going to hit Earth anyway. Although that's a good point regarding the junk. At orbital speeds, even a marble could blow a chunk off the shaft.
("Heh heh, he said blow..."
"Yeah, huh huh, and shaft! Huh huh...")
While I agree with several things DHartung wrote, and I disagree with several other points, there's one thing I'd like to speak my mind about:
What kind of incompetent school did you go to, that you believe speaking English is a pre-requisite for mastering high technology?
Actually, I'd say that as of today, speaking English is a pre-requisite for communicating with people in the area of high technology.
For example, let's say we have a Mexican engineer (for instance, me), a Russian mathemathical expert, a Hindu computer programmer and a Japanese nano-technology expert. Add in a couple of European team members, and you definitely have to have a common language. English, right now, is such language. Maybe in 50 years it'll be japanese or french or tagalog, who knows?
The point is, it's not a matter of nationalistic pride or anglo-centrism (if there is such a word). It's a matter of convenience.
Chances are that any project spending the kind of money that it'd take to build a 50km tower and a stairway to heaven will be able to negotiate how much graft it'll have to pay the local government, given the boost the thing will be to the local economy.
Actually, if you think about it, it would be more the other way around. Local governments competing between themselves to be chosen as the site of the space elevator.