You know, with GSM this might not be such a bad idea.. But as it is, I'd need a laptop for Sprint, another for Verizon, another still for Cingular... Boy! This is sure to be good for the economy..
I can't believe I'm actually getting into an argument about the feasibility of "Klingons".. *sigh*
Ok, you say that Klingon women who are weaker and therefore not able to do 'honorable' things much are responsible for Klingon advancement? Who builds the ships?
Would a great and honorable warrior lift a finger to implement the specs of a designed they do not see as an equal? Really.. If someone you look down upon told you what to do, how would you react?
Certainly a strong, honorable and enlightenned leader could require warriors to build according to their females design, but this would either:
a) Elevate the status of females to euqlly honorable to males, or
b) end with the death of the leader, probably premature, for the continual humiliation of honorable warriors by forcing them to do work they consider dishonorable.
The only alternative I see to all this, while still maintaining the intellectual role of the Klingon female, is slave labor.
Males fight and rule.. Females design.. Slaves implement the designs under guard of males. That's the only way it could work.. But, with the exception of prison camps (ST-VI) we've not seen Klingons as keeping slaves.
If slaves were used to such a degree as to build cities, space ships, power plants and so forth, they would necessarily be an integral part of the Klingon culture. They are not.
If it is my opinion that it is OK for me to break into your home and beat your family, would you see my point as well? He has no argument to be seen.
Cracking without permission is trespassing. Having an opinion and acting on it are two very different animals, as you point out.
If all he was doing was advocating breaking and entering, and/or dissemenating bomb making information, the issue would be messy..
But, especially now, preaching civil disobedience and informing people how to make bombs, is likely to get one branded a Terrorist. Not that it's right, but it's a fact.
And as you point out, your right to free speach ends when you exploit my means of speaking to do it.. In this case, the guy is toast.. But, by extension of the principle, the Government is above the Law, and this is sure to become a problem if it isn't already.
I doubt that video will ever become as commonplace as music, for the simple reason that I can listen to music while doing something else, on the computer or in the room/house/proximity.
With video, I sorta have to pay attention to the moving pictures, and that keeps me from getting other things done.
"We" by Yvegeny Zamyatin, written in 1927, is a precursor of Orwell's 1984. It's a classic dystopic novel, which features, among other things, transparent dwellings for exactly the purpose you suggest.
First, companies will leech money from superior sources in any manner they can. If you can't beat them, sue them. Sue them for being named similarly. Hell, next we'll see Microsoft sue Stallman because Emacs can be used for editing text, same as Word.. A clear violation, and interference in Microsoft's Freedom to Compete.. For them, it's a drop in the bucket, for a small company defending against such idiocy, is bankrupcy.
Second part of the lesson? Hackers, don't be so fucking clever with your program names.. Don't call it Krayon if it's anything even remotely similar to Crayon. Don't call it Killustrator if it's an Illustrator work-alike. Don't call it Gnutella if it smells like chocolate and hazelnuts.
Yes, in principle, naming cleverness is a form of expression and should be protected by the Freedom of Speach (which BTW only applies in the US, and even there it's a very iffy thing lately)..
In practice, unless you have money to burn on 'standing up for your principles' in court, name it something else; something that won't give rich companies an excuse to sue.
It's an industrial boiler design system in which each meaningful component is modelled as an object.. Then these objects are parts of subsystems of the boiler, and the subsystems all comprise the boiler itself..
I put in a bunch of data files read by the loader object, and used to set the parameters of the internal objects.. Then I simply look at boiler.getEfficiency(), and the necessary computations in all the subjugate objects are done, and there it is..
OOP is more about the architecture of your program and about the way you concieve of the data.. If you think of it as ripping through tables of numbers, you'll at best have a procedural, iterative solution that uses arrays or structs..
If you extend the concept of a struct to be an analogue of a 'thing', and then tell the 'thing' to solve for some attribute of itself based on other internal, and external, factors, you're thinking in OO.
That way, each company would have to sign the message digest of the message with their private key, and you could validate sender by verifying the signature.
Purdy dern simple, if the Fed would just quit seeing crypto as a weapon.
They won't focus it or route airplanes and satellites.. Those scorch marks across the city will be just a by-product of super-cheap energy. We'll all come to accept it, and after a while, we'll incorporate them into our rezoning and urban revitalization projects.
And hey, if Godzilla or a giant space monster shows up to terrorize the city, the beams will actually be a welcome sight.. Well, sound actually.. Sort of like the sizzle of frying bacon, only it'll be asphalt..
If the spam doesn't have a valid email address, and doesn't provide any reliable contact information by which to track down the offenders, how can the spammers expect to hook anyone on their crap schemes?
After all, if it is just as difficult to chase down the spammer, as it is to try and take advantage of whatever they are offering..
I can see how this might work for some types of spam.. The 'hot stock tip' bit for example simply counts on someone out there buying a stock to drive up the price..
But when there's a product or service involved? Whom do you pay? And if you know whom to pay, you know whom to sue..
I get as much as a few dozen bits of spam each day at my 'public' address.. And these are the ones that I can't 'umbrella' filter by country, domain, etc.. Most of these are not even in English, or from the US.. Spam laws don't work in the areas most responsible for pumping out spam..
Sad waste of bandwith, tis all. And the spammers are counting on the fact that it is much easier to simply delete their crap than compile, research and file suit.
Well, you can look for alien lifeforms with one via Seti@Home, and you can crack strong encryption on the other through distributed.net, and still have plenty of processing power left over for pr0n surfing, idling in IRC, and compulsively reloading slashdot in the quest for the elussive Frist Psot!!
My favorite aspect of the book was LeGuinn's attempt at blending stereotypically male and female characteristics into those of uni/multisexual beings. While reading the book, I alternated my gender perception of characters, and noticed different characteristics emerge from them as a result.
Consider the complex political situation of Winter. If you read the interactions between politicos, viewing them as female, they appear remarkably petty and intriguant. When presumed to be male, they suddenly seem ruthless strategists.
The opportunity to choose and change the gender of characters at will gave me the opportunity to discover some of my own gender-based prejudices - one's I was not aware I had - and to confront and correct for them.
The book was a real eye-openner for me in this respect.
When read from a different perspective entirely, it is a brilliant treatise on the meaning of "Statesmanship" and "Patriotism". The exploration of what it means to do the right thing for one's people, versus the recognition of this, and the consequences, is something that is as poingiant in today's terrorist age as it was during the times of the Vietnam and Cold Wars.
The World of Winter is a great creation in itself. The detailed and lifelike descriptions of the land, it's people, and their lifestyle and culture, all leave the reader awestruck and familiar with the planet.
The relationship that develops between Genly and his liaison on the glacier, was a remarkably beautiful and touching motif.
The tribal, almost mind-altering Seer experience, simply oozed sexuality, and cleverly melded the pagan "sexual divinity" with LeGuinn's own Taoist leanings.
Definitelly a worthwhile read, especially given how accessible U.K. LeGuinn's writing style is.
Auto hacking isn't dead, it's mutated and evolved. No longer can you rebuild your carburator with a Swiss Army knife, like you could on old VW Bugs.. No longer can you do those little tweaks that let you eek a few extra HP's out of your 'Cuda..
Similarly the computer hackery of yore has passed from sight, only to be replaced with OC madness, case modification, heavy-duty server setups in one's broom closet, and so on..
It used to be that hackers would race hard-drives across table tops, and race Mustangs down the main drag. Now, the script-kiddies and rice-boys put skins on their virus generators and Acura Type R stickers on their Dodge Neons!!!
Flash has replaced content. It's all about appearances, and who cracks first.. Neon light kits under the chasis of either your Dell or your Civic warn that you are clearly a force to be reckoned with.. A 40 pound spoiler and a muffler the size of a coffee can are the automotive equivalent of running an animated desktop hack or semi-transparent windows - performance be damned!!
Just as in computing, auto-hacking has simply grown, and become so widely exposed that it's attracted it's own brand of poseur. There's the wankers who put stickers on their cars, because race cars have stickers, so stickers turn mom's old beater into a renegade from Indy.. There's the wankers who assign unique audio events to every window action and have true-color, animated mouse pointers.
Then there are guys who rewire their own auto audio systems, making sure the trunk DOES NOT rattle when they turn the music up, and those who put performance parts in and then actually USE them in motocross events. These are the overclockers and liquid-coolers of the auto-hacking world.
Take a look at the Honda Insight, and note the very cool side-mirror to LCD screen hack.. There is still auto-hacking.. But like real PC hacking, it takes effort, perseverence and creativity.
And of course Moby Dick is really a metaphorical foretelling of Operation Eternal Snipe-Hunt, where the Whale symbolizes Al Qaeda, Captain Ahab is obviously G.W. Bush and his cabinet. The loss of Ahab's leg is the destruction of the Twin Towers, and the Maori warrior is allegorical of the 'Global Coalition' bent on destroying the White Whale.. Arrgh! Matey!!
Then there's the crew, all of whom have different motivations for setting out on the hunt, and whose resolve waivers and falters at different times during the crusade..
Also, Moby Dick is a cautionary tale that the US government should reread, seeing as blindly following a demented leader is sure to kill everyone except the commentator, Ishmael..
Ishmael, Israel, what's the difference? It is clear that the US is doomed to failure in this enterprise, and Israel will rise out of the ashes of the Middle East - and we are beginning to see this happen as we speak..
Well, but what about the anthrax, you ask.. I'm glad you asked.. The appropriate parallel on the high seas is scurvy.. Yes, the lack of vitamin C which causes one's teeth to fall out is an appropriate symbol for the anthrax scare which has driven the US Government out of it's very offices, rendering the law making process virtually toothless..
Damn!! I'm on a roll!! My English Lit teacher would be so proud.. I should post this to www.adequacy.org.. They'd like it there.;)
Did you ever think that they would outlaw smoking in US cities? Not in buildings, but on the sidewalks?? Well, they have.
Give the West Coast a chance.. L.A., with it's smog and fad-o-philia, just might pass an ordnance restricting emissions to such a ridiculous level that a Segway becomes a viable option for people running between opposite ends of town.. Especially since you can fit one of these things in your standing space on a bus or subway (granted, with a little ramp to off/load it.
For that matter, look at many European cities, especially those with 'old' cobble-stone sections where cars and motorcycles are not permitted..
And hell, if the price halves in a couple of years, I'll buy one just for the whiz-bang 'skiing without the snow' factor.
Why 2 wheels? Because 3 would be 'stable' and leaning would be a problem. With 2 wheels, leaning is what provides the lion share of the propulsion, with batteries running the balancing computer and stabiliser. With 3 wheels, the batteries would need to provide propulsion, making the effective range of the thing so small as to make the device pointless.
Sharper Image has been selling motorized scooters for some time now. They are junk toys for bored executives. This is different entirely.
Two side by side wheels require active stabilization, but allow the lean of the rider, the placement of the rider's center of gravity, to power movement. The 'controlled fall' and stabilization are the true breakthroughs here.
Yes, I did. But I laugh at Chevy Chase falling down on purpose more than I do at Bloopers. Funny is funny, staged or not. Well, actually, purposeful 'accidents' such as those 'outtakes' are even more easy to appreciate because dozens of people worked very hard to make it look like a bunch of bloopers.
Typecasting virtual actors is begging the point. They are created for a particular role, custom-fit. In the 'real world' an actor is chosen based on how well they can deliver the role. In the VR world, the role dictates the actor created for it.
I'm not quite sure where the Space Ghost Show and other such cross-pollination experiments fit in..:)
Van Damage would probably be a lot more amusing playing a fairy than a He-Man anyway.:)
Slashdot Mirror
You know, with GSM this might not be such a bad idea.. But as it is, I'd need a laptop for Sprint, another for Verizon, another still for Cingular... Boy! This is sure to be good for the economy..
I can't believe I'm actually getting into an argument about the feasibility of "Klingons".. *sigh*
Ok, you say that Klingon women who are weaker and therefore not able to do 'honorable' things much are responsible for Klingon advancement? Who builds the ships?
Would a great and honorable warrior lift a finger to implement the specs of a designed they do not see as an equal? Really.. If someone you look down upon told you what to do, how would you react?
Certainly a strong, honorable and enlightenned leader could require warriors to build according to their females design, but this would either:
a) Elevate the status of females to euqlly honorable to males, or
b) end with the death of the leader, probably premature, for the continual humiliation of honorable warriors by forcing them to do work they consider dishonorable.
The only alternative I see to all this, while still maintaining the intellectual role of the Klingon female, is slave labor.
Males fight and rule.. Females design.. Slaves implement the designs under guard of males. That's the only way it could work.. But, with the exception of prison camps (ST-VI) we've not seen Klingons as keeping slaves.
If slaves were used to such a degree as to build cities, space ships, power plants and so forth, they would necessarily be an integral part of the Klingon culture. They are not.
If it is my opinion that it is OK for me to break into your home and beat your family, would you see my point as well? He has no argument to be seen.
Cracking without permission is trespassing. Having an opinion and acting on it are two very different animals, as you point out.
If all he was doing was advocating breaking and entering, and/or dissemenating bomb making information, the issue would be messy..
But, especially now, preaching civil disobedience and informing people how to make bombs, is likely to get one branded a Terrorist. Not that it's right, but it's a fact.
And as you point out, your right to free speach ends when you exploit my means of speaking to do it.. In this case, the guy is toast.. But, by extension of the principle, the Government is above the Law, and this is sure to become a problem if it isn't already.
I doubt that video will ever become as commonplace as music, for the simple reason that I can listen to music while doing something else, on the computer or in the room/house/proximity.
With video, I sorta have to pay attention to the moving pictures, and that keeps me from getting other things done.
"We" by Yvegeny Zamyatin, written in 1927, is a precursor of Orwell's 1984. It's a classic dystopic novel, which features, among other things, transparent dwellings for exactly the purpose you suggest.
What this thing needs is neural input, a'la Hardwired..
I think the lesson here is two-fold.
First, companies will leech money from superior sources in any manner they can. If you can't beat them, sue them. Sue them for being named similarly. Hell, next we'll see Microsoft sue Stallman because Emacs can be used for editing text, same as Word.. A clear violation, and interference in Microsoft's Freedom to Compete.. For them, it's a drop in the bucket, for a small company defending against such idiocy, is bankrupcy.
Second part of the lesson? Hackers, don't be so fucking clever with your program names.. Don't call it Krayon if it's anything even remotely similar to Crayon. Don't call it Killustrator if it's an Illustrator work-alike. Don't call it Gnutella if it smells like chocolate and hazelnuts.
Yes, in principle, naming cleverness is a form of expression and should be protected by the Freedom of Speach (which BTW only applies in the US, and even there it's a very iffy thing lately)..
In practice, unless you have money to burn on 'standing up for your principles' in court, name it something else; something that won't give rich companies an excuse to sue.
It's an industrial boiler design system in which each meaningful component is modelled as an object.. Then these objects are parts of subsystems of the boiler, and the subsystems all comprise the boiler itself..
I put in a bunch of data files read by the loader object, and used to set the parameters of the internal objects.. Then I simply look at boiler.getEfficiency(), and the necessary computations in all the subjugate objects are done, and there it is..
OOP is more about the architecture of your program and about the way you concieve of the data.. If you think of it as ripping through tables of numbers, you'll at best have a procedural, iterative solution that uses arrays or structs..
If you extend the concept of a struct to be an analogue of a 'thing', and then tell the 'thing' to solve for some attribute of itself based on other internal, and external, factors, you're thinking in OO.
That's all there is to it, in a nutshell.
Cut... Paste into a telnet session..
What 'trace'?
Granted, not 'technically' a 'forward', but still.
That way, each company would have to sign the message digest of the message with their private key, and you could validate sender by verifying the signature.
Purdy dern simple, if the Fed would just quit seeing crypto as a weapon.
They won't focus it or route airplanes and satellites.. Those scorch marks across the city will be just a by-product of super-cheap energy. We'll all come to accept it, and after a while, we'll incorporate them into our rezoning and urban revitalization projects.
And hey, if Godzilla or a giant space monster shows up to terrorize the city, the beams will actually be a welcome sight.. Well, sound actually.. Sort of like the sizzle of frying bacon, only it'll be asphalt..
[sarcasm]
How else can you sue people for accessing your content in 'inappropriate' ways?
If someone came to a deep page without first going through the 'EULA' page, or some other crank..
[/sarcasm]
If the spam doesn't have a valid email address, and doesn't provide any reliable contact information by which to track down the offenders, how can the spammers expect to hook anyone on their crap schemes?
After all, if it is just as difficult to chase down the spammer, as it is to try and take advantage of whatever they are offering..
I can see how this might work for some types of spam.. The 'hot stock tip' bit for example simply counts on someone out there buying a stock to drive up the price..
But when there's a product or service involved? Whom do you pay? And if you know whom to pay, you know whom to sue..
I get as much as a few dozen bits of spam each day at my 'public' address.. And these are the ones that I can't 'umbrella' filter by country, domain, etc.. Most of these are not even in English, or from the US.. Spam laws don't work in the areas most responsible for pumping out spam..
Sad waste of bandwith, tis all. And the spammers are counting on the fact that it is much easier to simply delete their crap than compile, research and file suit.
Well, you can look for alien lifeforms with one via Seti@Home, and you can crack strong encryption on the other through distributed.net, and still have plenty of processing power left over for pr0n surfing, idling in IRC, and compulsively reloading slashdot in the quest for the elussive Frist Psot!!
I mean, how could you have access to the Internet and NOT read a.b.p.e.* ???
My favorite aspect of the book was LeGuinn's attempt at blending stereotypically male and female characteristics into those of uni/multisexual beings. While reading the book, I alternated my gender perception of characters, and noticed different characteristics emerge from them as a result.
Consider the complex political situation of Winter. If you read the interactions between politicos, viewing them as female, they appear remarkably petty and intriguant. When presumed to be male, they suddenly seem ruthless strategists.
The opportunity to choose and change the gender of characters at will gave me the opportunity to discover some of my own gender-based prejudices - one's I was not aware I had - and to confront and correct for them.
The book was a real eye-openner for me in this respect.
When read from a different perspective entirely, it is a brilliant treatise on the meaning of "Statesmanship" and "Patriotism". The exploration of what it means to do the right thing for one's people, versus the recognition of this, and the consequences, is something that is as poingiant in today's terrorist age as it was during the times of the Vietnam and Cold Wars.
The World of Winter is a great creation in itself. The detailed and lifelike descriptions of the land, it's people, and their lifestyle and culture, all leave the reader awestruck and familiar with the planet.
The relationship that develops between Genly and his liaison on the glacier, was a remarkably beautiful and touching motif.
The tribal, almost mind-altering Seer experience, simply oozed sexuality, and cleverly melded the pagan "sexual divinity" with LeGuinn's own Taoist leanings.
Definitelly a worthwhile read, especially given how accessible U.K. LeGuinn's writing style is.
Auto hacking isn't dead, it's mutated and evolved. No longer can you rebuild your carburator with a Swiss Army knife, like you could on old VW Bugs.. No longer can you do those little tweaks that let you eek a few extra HP's out of your 'Cuda..
Similarly the computer hackery of yore has passed from sight, only to be replaced with OC madness, case modification, heavy-duty server setups in one's broom closet, and so on..
It used to be that hackers would race hard-drives across table tops, and race Mustangs down the main drag. Now, the script-kiddies and rice-boys put skins on their virus generators and Acura Type R stickers on their Dodge Neons!!!
Flash has replaced content. It's all about appearances, and who cracks first.. Neon light kits under the chasis of either your Dell or your Civic warn that you are clearly a force to be reckoned with.. A 40 pound spoiler and a muffler the size of a coffee can are the automotive equivalent of running an animated desktop hack or semi-transparent windows - performance be damned!!
Just as in computing, auto-hacking has simply grown, and become so widely exposed that it's attracted it's own brand of poseur. There's the wankers who put stickers on their cars, because race cars have stickers, so stickers turn mom's old beater into a renegade from Indy.. There's the wankers who assign unique audio events to every window action and have true-color, animated mouse pointers.
Then there are guys who rewire their own auto audio systems, making sure the trunk DOES NOT rattle when they turn the music up, and those who put performance parts in and then actually USE them in motocross events. These are the overclockers and liquid-coolers of the auto-hacking world.
Take a look at the Honda Insight, and note the very cool side-mirror to LCD screen hack.. There is still auto-hacking.. But like real PC hacking, it takes effort, perseverence and creativity.
WIMPs? MACHOs? Are you sure we're not talking about Dork Matter here?
He's not dead.. He's pining for the fjords!!
Well, sort of..
I was just thinking of reimplementing EDLIN as a VBA Word macro..
Why port Debian to Win32? Why not just develop Windows in EMACS and reach critical bit-mass and go back in time?
Bwaaahaahaa!!!
;)
And of course Moby Dick is really a metaphorical foretelling of Operation Eternal Snipe-Hunt, where the Whale symbolizes Al Qaeda, Captain Ahab is obviously G.W. Bush and his cabinet. The loss of Ahab's leg is the destruction of the Twin Towers, and the Maori warrior is allegorical of the 'Global Coalition' bent on destroying the White Whale.. Arrgh! Matey!!
Then there's the crew, all of whom have different motivations for setting out on the hunt, and whose resolve waivers and falters at different times during the crusade..
Also, Moby Dick is a cautionary tale that the US government should reread, seeing as blindly following a demented leader is sure to kill everyone except the commentator, Ishmael..
Ishmael, Israel, what's the difference? It is clear that the US is doomed to failure in this enterprise, and Israel will rise out of the ashes of the Middle East - and we are beginning to see this happen as we speak..
Well, but what about the anthrax, you ask.. I'm glad you asked.. The appropriate parallel on the high seas is scurvy.. Yes, the lack of vitamin C which causes one's teeth to fall out is an appropriate symbol for the anthrax scare which has driven the US Government out of it's very offices, rendering the law making process virtually toothless..
Damn!! I'm on a roll!! My English Lit teacher would be so proud.. I should post this to www.adequacy.org.. They'd like it there.
But if you were to turn the wheels on a bike or rollerblade by 90 degrees...
Did you ever think that they would outlaw smoking in US cities? Not in buildings, but on the sidewalks?? Well, they have.
Give the West Coast a chance.. L.A., with it's smog and fad-o-philia, just might pass an ordnance restricting emissions to such a ridiculous level that a Segway becomes a viable option for people running between opposite ends of town.. Especially since you can fit one of these things in your standing space on a bus or subway (granted, with a little ramp to off/load it.
For that matter, look at many European cities, especially those with 'old' cobble-stone sections where cars and motorcycles are not permitted..
And hell, if the price halves in a couple of years, I'll buy one just for the whiz-bang 'skiing without the snow' factor.
Why 2 wheels? Because 3 would be 'stable' and leaning would be a problem. With 2 wheels, leaning is what provides the lion share of the propulsion, with batteries running the balancing computer and stabiliser. With 3 wheels, the batteries would need to provide propulsion, making the effective range of the thing so small as to make the device pointless.
Sharper Image has been selling motorized scooters for some time now. They are junk toys for bored executives. This is different entirely.
Two side by side wheels require active stabilization, but allow the lean of the rider, the placement of the rider's center of gravity, to power movement. The 'controlled fall' and stabilization are the true breakthroughs here.
Yes, I did. But I laugh at Chevy Chase falling down on purpose more than I do at Bloopers. Funny is funny, staged or not. Well, actually, purposeful 'accidents' such as those 'outtakes' are even more easy to appreciate because dozens of people worked very hard to make it look like a bunch of bloopers.
:)
:)
Typecasting virtual actors is begging the point. They are created for a particular role, custom-fit. In the 'real world' an actor is chosen based on how well they can deliver the role. In the VR world, the role dictates the actor created for it.
I'm not quite sure where the Space Ghost Show and other such cross-pollination experiments fit in..
Van Damage would probably be a lot more amusing playing a fairy than a He-Man anyway.