And the WP journalist responsible for this trash ought to be horsewhipped. As if we need more hysteria about the internet right now.
Anyone who thinks a few religious fanatics hiding in caves somewhere can take the internet down has another think coming. Or, to paraphrase Emperor Palpatine, "The infrastructure is quite safe from your pitiful little band."
-Kasreyn
I was gonna see this one when it came out on TV...
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 2
...but then I heard they cast that Tom Cruise guy in it for some reason, instead of an actor.
Why are you guys starting a new interview with Mr. Bar when we still haven't seen the results of that interview with Alan Cox? Or did I just miss it when it posted?
I use my net connection for email and websurfing. I'll be glad when I'm no longer being billed to help cover the bandwidth of people downloading DVD-rips. Metering bandwidth = good.
I've been working for the company that is compiling Indiana's telephone privacy list. This is an opt-out list of names and numbers which telemarketers are prevented by law from calling.
"...which will likely be called "The Anarchist in the Library." Basic Books will publish it next year.
JH: That sounds like it may be of interest to Slashdotters."
Hmmm, I wonder... it has the word Anarchist in it... YA THINK? =P Maybe "Anarchist Cathedrals in the Cryptonomicon Nutshell" would do a bit better, but it'd be a close thing.
"JH: Are you dissing Ice Cube?
SV: [laughs] No! He's an O.G.!"
Credibility: out the window! Woosh! Buhbye!
"I knew that Napster would radically change the ways we interact with the copyright system. And I knew the DMCA would radically undermined the democratic safeguards that were built into our copyright system. But I knew that there was much more to this story."
I suppose you also know the Unified Field Theory and the color of Sharon Stone's panties, right, smartfuck? Get over yourself and your 20/20 hindsight. Oh, and it's "undermine".
"JH: CBDTPA would make a new computer ship with copy protection. What would it do to things like the iPod?"
Star Trek: You'd be amazed at how many old trekkies can argue, for long periods of time, about inconsistencies between the movies and series, and between series.
Star Wars: Even though Lucas should be the one to define the SW universe, there's been a ton of third party creation in the SW universe, leading to TPM and AOTC throwing a lot of it on its ear.
In movies belonging to established franchises, some bugs are scientific errors, some are characterization or self-consistency errors, and some are failures of the writers to do their homework on the franchise they're writing about.
-Kasreyn
P.S. Yes, I know no one cares. I'm posting it anyway. I have no life.
The average human has a FAR greater understanding of his sense of sight than he does of his sense of hearing. How can we give an AI understanding of something we ourselves understand so poorly in the first place?
Note that I speak as a Clarke fan with a homebrew HAL desktop theme, and a lifelong audiophile... If only my computer actually MEANT it when he says "good morning, Dr. Chandra" ^_^
Just because you and I were sane and responsible children, doesn't mean others are. Columbine is a case in point.
We don't let kids drive, because they might go off the road and kill someone. They're immature and inexperienced. Is it so much of a logical leap to decide that they shouldn't be entrusted with small, portable, concealable weapons which give untrained children the ability to kill?
I simply argue they should be kept out of the hands of children. I don't have a problem with adults having them. I live in a state where nearly every adult owns one (no, not TX) and I've been to NYC where almost no one has them, and guess what? People are a lot more polite here, as could be expected.
Maybe I spoke hastily, but also where I live there's a large proportion of gun-owning hicks who think ANY firearm legislation means "the guvmint's tryin' ta take our guns!"
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. I agree. But children would have an awful harder time butchering their classmates before being stopped, if they didn't have access to the guns in the first place.
It's the DESIRE to kill. Neither DOOM nor Spec-Forces training give you that. The Columbine kids had the desire to kill because they were more than a bit cracked. Good soldiers don't have the desire to kill, they're following orders. "The greatest warrior is he who does not need to kill".
Besides, DOOM only teaches you how to use arrow and control keys to cause pixellated images of inhuman, evil monsters to undergo pixellated animations of death. I hardly think that's the same as training kids to kill real people with real guns.
I don't know why DOOM gets all people's anger. IMO Wolfenstein is much "worse" in their viewpoint, because the enemies being killed are humans. I'm such a softy I get a pang of remorse from the Wehrmacht guards shrieking "Mein Leben!". I switched to DOOM because killing demons was easier on my conscience. =P
But blaming things like Columbine entirely on things like DOOM is utterly ridiculous, logically. It's simply the most politically correct thing to attack.
I don't remember the name of the author, but this was the story. It was posted to either/. or k5 as I recall.
Reposted WITHOUT consent of the author; if anyone reading this is or knows the author, please let me know.
****
A Letter From 2020
Dear Me,
I'm not sure if reading this letter is illegal. I thought it only fair to warn you; it might be better to just destroy it.
The actual writing has been a bit of a chore. Word.NET isn't what it used to be. Even Microsoft.NET couldn't afford to patent everything, so whilst I can do Find, there's no Replace anymore. One good thing about having only one legal operating system is that it's very stable. I'm glad they never update Windows.NET; anyone can live with three or four crashes a day and the hourly rent is less than I pay for my apartment.
I try to remember what it was like when I was a kid but it's really difficult; the world has changed so much since then. I found a paper book the other day that described the rise and fall of something called the "Internet". It started out with people putting up links on computers so that they could follow the link and read things on other computers for free. After it got to be popular, companies started to create machines with lots of links that you could search to find things of interest. But someone put up a link to something illegal and got sued and had their machine shut down. This happened a few times and people started to take the links off their machines. The search engine companies were the first to go and without them, you couldn't find anything. Eventually no one put up links anymore because the legal risk was too great. The important thing is that it reduced terrorism. I'm not sure how it could have worked anyway. Anything I write on my computer or any music I create gets stored by Word.NET and Music.NET in encrypted formats to protect my privacy. No one but me, Microsoft.NET and the National Corporation can read or hear my stuff even if they could link to it.
I shouldn't admit it, but sometimes I go to certain places and speak to the subversives. I know its wrong but their warped views on things have some kind of morbid fascination. For example, I spoke to someone who claimed to be a historian the other day. She had courage all right, admitting to an illegal activity like that. I hadn't understood why it was illegal until she explained. History, she told me, gives you context. You can compare today with some time in the past; ask questions like, "are people better off", "look at the different forms of doing business", "compare corporate records or the rights of citizens" (I think she meant employees).
But what interested her was that future generations will know nothing about us; all our records and art are stored digitally, most of it will simply disappear when no one rents it anymore -- remember the sadness when the last digital copy of Sgt. Pepper was accidentally erased? And the data that does survive will all be encrypted and in proprietary formats anyway -- even if there were historians they'd have no right to reverse engineer the formats. I can vaguely remember that people used to have physical copies of music and films, although I'm not sure how that was possible, or what the point was when we can rent whatever we like from the air interface. I don't think it matters that those who come after us can't read our writings or hear our music or see our films; these things are temporal anyway, if no one rents them then they can't be worth keeping.
The saddest subversive I met claimed to be a programmer. He said that he was writing a program using Basic.NET. He must have been insane. Even if his program worked he wouldn't be allowed to run it. How could one person possibly check every possible patent infringement in a program they wrote? And even if he hadn't infringed he couldn't sell it without buying a compatibility license from Microsoft.NET and who could possibly afford that? He had said something about gippling the software, which apparently means giving it away, but mad as he was, even he knew that under WUCITA that would be illegal.
These subversives really don't seem to understand that a few restrictions are necessary for the sake of innovation. And progress has been made. We don't have spam since most people can't afford an email license due to the expensive patent royalties. Our computer systems all have the same operating system, user interface and applications so everyone knows how to use them, and although they crash and don't work very well, we all know the limitations and can live with them. We have no piracy of intellectual property since we rent it as we want it and have no means of storing it.
It was the USA that showed the world the way of course. First the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, then more and more software patents. The Japanese followed suit. The Europeans were a problem, which is only to be expected, with their anti-business un-Christian socialist tendencies. Fortunately, common sense prevailed, helped along by the good old dollar I've no doubt and they accepted both software patents and a redefinition of copyright to suit global corporations. Once the USA, Japan and Europe had uniform intellectual property laws to protect our corporations and our way of life, everyone else had to play ball or they couldn't trade. The result has been that every algorithm and computer program and every piece of music and film (after all music and film can be put into digital form and are therefore a form of software) have been patented. No more variations on Beethoven (unless you've got the patentees approval). No more amateur participation in music or film which might risk lowering standards. No more challenge to established business and business practices.
I'm crazy to have written I know. But I am so happy in the world and I remember how unhappy I used to be. I wanted to somehow pass back to you the knowledge that its all going to be okay, that the world really is getting better.
I promise you, during my high school years I played at least TEN TIMES as much DOOM as the Columbine shooters. I lived and breathed DOOM. It was my way to vent aggression.
Most people who know me find me peaceful to a fault. Gandhi is one of my heroes. I've never been in a fight. I've never punched anyone. I don't own a weapon (well, I have a pocket-knife...).
The Columbine shooting was a combination of nutty kids and adults who left guns within their fucking reach. It had nothing to do with videogames. But of course, videogames are easier for a Congresscritter to attack. It makes them look good at re-election time, and the gun lobby is much stronger and stupider (for the LAST TIME idiots, we don't want to take away your guns, we just want to keep them out of the hands of kids!).
Besides, no one ever got re-elected telling Americans they're bad parents.
In The Sims, there are no discrete conditions for "winning" or "losing" the game; the only goal is what you choose to do with your Sims, and the narratives you construct for them -- which vary wildly from player to player. (This is sometimes referred to in the industry as a "sandbox" game, and it's also a strong aspect to Black & White.)
Actually, Maxis (makers of SimCity, Earth, etc., etc., etc., Robosport, The Sims itself I think) originally used the term "software toy". Since AFAIK SimCity was the first highly successful game that allowed you to play noncompetetively (not even competing against a computer), I think Maxis deserves to have their term used.
The mention of B&W is noteworthy... Peter Molyneaux, originally of Bullfrog Productions, Ltd., has ALWAYS gone with a bit of the software toy flavor. In both Dungeon Keepers 1 and 2 you were able to continue playing after you'd beaten a level, just for fun and play, with no goals or enemies to deal with. I whiled away many happy hours in college trying to see how much gold I could mine (my DK1 record - 6.2 million. Top that!)
-Kasreyn
Editors PLEASE don't pick this one...
on
Ask Alan Cox, Activist
·
· Score: 3, Informative
...I can't think of anything more boring and done-to-death to waste one of the 10 questions on.
This was evident to all people blessed with brains, upon our first watching. Do you think just because they can talk to him in the Matrix, that Morpheus & crew know where Neo's *physical body* is in? That is to say, which pod he's in?
Or should they just go around randomly cracking open pods? Wow, after only 3 billion they'll have a 50% chance of finding him!
And this after the "tracer program" mention a moment earlier in the plot. Do you actually pay attention?
Sure, it's fluffy scifibabble, but at least it's self-consistent and fairly logical.
When Neo caused Smith to explode, I took that as a representation of Neo deleting the actual code for Smith, permanently.
Else why did Agents Brown and Jones freak out and run? If Neo *didn't* have the power to permanently destroy Agents, what did Brown and Jones have to fear?
Smith is coming back due to his popularity and the truly wonderful job the actor did in his role in Matrix 1 (He stole many scenes IMO), but there will have to be some good explanation of his return.
Maybe the machines just clicked "restore from backup". =P
Slashdot Mirror
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
God, I can't believe you morons didn't notice the Sagan quote. What more does he have to do, brand "TROLL!" on your mothers' foreheads?
-Kasreyn
And the WP journalist responsible for this trash ought to be horsewhipped. As if we need more hysteria about the internet right now.
Anyone who thinks a few religious fanatics hiding in caves somewhere can take the internet down has another think coming. Or, to paraphrase Emperor Palpatine, "The infrastructure is quite safe from your pitiful little band."
-Kasreyn
...but then I heard they cast that Tom Cruise guy in it for some reason, instead of an actor.
Oh well.
-Kasreyn
Why are you guys starting a new interview with Mr. Bar when we still haven't seen the results of that interview with Alan Cox? Or did I just miss it when it posted?
-Kasreyn
I use my net connection for email and websurfing. I'll be glad when I'm no longer being billed to help cover the bandwidth of people downloading DVD-rips. Metering bandwidth = good.
-Kasreyn
Will the game prevent you from having two large towers built right next to each other? If there's a NYC scenario, will it have the WTC "edited" out?
Just curious.
-Kasreyn
"Remember, an equivalent bill has not yet been introduced in the Senate."
For once, the editor of story remembers to include a line to keep all the dimwits around here from going off half-cocked.
If only it WORKED...
-Kasreyn
Hi folks,
I've been working for the company that is compiling Indiana's telephone privacy list. This is an opt-out list of names and numbers which telemarketers are prevented by law from calling.
Indiana residents can call 1-888-834-9969 or visit the Attorney General's website to register.
Cheers,
-Kasreyn
"Anyone passing through London (England)"
I mean, he even SAID England just so people would notice it.
Judge Limbaugh is a judge in the U.S. of A., which means his fatuous idiocies can be safely laughed to scorn by the British.
-Kasreyn
"...which will likely be called "The Anarchist in the Library." Basic Books will publish it next year. JH: That sounds like it may be of interest to Slashdotters."
/.ers patting themselves on the back can't ALL be wrong...
Hmmm, I wonder... it has the word Anarchist in it... YA THINK? =P Maybe "Anarchist Cathedrals in the Cryptonomicon Nutshell" would do a bit better, but it'd be a close thing.
"JH: Are you dissing Ice Cube? SV: [laughs] No! He's an O.G.!"
Credibility: out the window! Woosh! Buhbye!
"I knew that Napster would radically change the ways we interact with the copyright system. And I knew the DMCA would radically undermined the democratic safeguards that were built into our copyright system. But I knew that there was much more to this story."
I suppose you also know the Unified Field Theory and the color of Sharon Stone's panties, right, smartfuck? Get over yourself and your 20/20 hindsight. Oh, and it's "undermine".
"JH: CBDTPA would make a new computer ship with copy protection. What would it do to things like the iPod?"
Maybe things like this?
"But I am optimistic that this new level of awareness and activism will make a difference."
Yeah, 600,000
"I was observing how the underlying body of samples were getting thinner, more predictable, more obvious, less playful."
Only intelligent point he had to make. For this I load an article? Feh.
-Kasreyn
I thought he pointed out he wasn't INTERESTED in Keanu Reeves as Neo, dammit!
^_^
-Kasreyn
LotR: plenty of inconsistencies from the books.
Star Trek: You'd be amazed at how many old trekkies can argue, for long periods of time, about inconsistencies between the movies and series, and between series.
Star Wars: Even though Lucas should be the one to define the SW universe, there's been a ton of third party creation in the SW universe, leading to TPM and AOTC throwing a lot of it on its ear.
In movies belonging to established franchises, some bugs are scientific errors, some are characterization or self-consistency errors, and some are failures of the writers to do their homework on the franchise they're writing about.
-Kasreyn
P.S. Yes, I know no one cares. I'm posting it anyway. I have no life.
The average human has a FAR greater understanding of his sense of sight than he does of his sense of hearing. How can we give an AI understanding of something we ourselves understand so poorly in the first place?
Note that I speak as a Clarke fan with a homebrew HAL desktop theme, and a lifelong audiophile... If only my computer actually MEANT it when he says "good morning, Dr. Chandra" ^_^
-Kasreyn
No one would have cared, or even noticed, if the film board hadn't brought it up in the first place.
-Kasreyn
Just because you and I were sane and responsible children, doesn't mean others are. Columbine is a case in point.
We don't let kids drive, because they might go off the road and kill someone. They're immature and inexperienced. Is it so much of a logical leap to decide that they shouldn't be entrusted with small, portable, concealable weapons which give untrained children the ability to kill?
-Kasreyn
I simply argue they should be kept out of the hands of children. I don't have a problem with adults having them. I live in a state where nearly every adult owns one (no, not TX) and I've been to NYC where almost no one has them, and guess what? People are a lot more polite here, as could be expected.
Maybe I spoke hastily, but also where I live there's a large proportion of gun-owning hicks who think ANY firearm legislation means "the guvmint's tryin' ta take our guns!"
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. I agree. But children would have an awful harder time butchering their classmates before being stopped, if they didn't have access to the guns in the first place.
-Kasreyn
It's the DESIRE to kill. Neither DOOM nor Spec-Forces training give you that. The Columbine kids had the desire to kill because they were more than a bit cracked. Good soldiers don't have the desire to kill, they're following orders. "The greatest warrior is he who does not need to kill".
Besides, DOOM only teaches you how to use arrow and control keys to cause pixellated images of inhuman, evil monsters to undergo pixellated animations of death. I hardly think that's the same as training kids to kill real people with real guns.
I don't know why DOOM gets all people's anger. IMO Wolfenstein is much "worse" in their viewpoint, because the enemies being killed are humans. I'm such a softy I get a pang of remorse from the Wehrmacht guards shrieking "Mein Leben!". I switched to DOOM because killing demons was easier on my conscience. =P
But blaming things like Columbine entirely on things like DOOM is utterly ridiculous, logically. It's simply the most politically correct thing to attack.
-Kasreyn
I don't remember the name of the author, but this was the story. It was posted to either /. or k5 as I recall.
Reposted WITHOUT consent of the author; if anyone reading this is or knows the author, please let me know.
****
A Letter From 2020
Dear Me,
I'm not sure if reading this letter is illegal. I thought it only fair to warn you; it might be better to just destroy it.
The actual writing has been a bit of a chore. Word.NET isn't what it used to be. Even Microsoft.NET couldn't afford to patent everything, so whilst I can do Find, there's no Replace anymore. One good thing about having only one legal operating system is that it's very stable. I'm glad they never update Windows.NET; anyone can live with three or four crashes a day and the hourly rent is less than I pay for my apartment.
I try to remember what it was like when I was a kid but it's really difficult; the world has changed so much since then. I found a paper book the other day that described the rise and fall of something called the "Internet". It started out with people putting up links on computers so that they could follow the link and read things on other computers for free. After it got to be popular, companies started to create machines with lots of links that you could search to find things of interest. But someone put up a link to something illegal and got sued and had their machine shut down. This happened a few times and people started to take the links off their machines. The search engine companies were the first to go and without them, you couldn't find anything. Eventually no one put up links anymore because the legal risk was too great. The important thing is that it reduced terrorism. I'm not sure how it could have worked anyway. Anything I write on my computer or any music I create gets stored by Word.NET and Music.NET in encrypted formats to protect my privacy. No one but me, Microsoft.NET and the National Corporation can read or hear my stuff even if they could link to it.
I shouldn't admit it, but sometimes I go to certain places and speak to the subversives. I know its wrong but their warped views on things have some kind of morbid fascination. For example, I spoke to someone who claimed to be a historian the other day. She had courage all right, admitting to an illegal activity like that. I hadn't understood why it was illegal until she explained. History, she told me, gives you context. You can compare today with some time in the past; ask questions like, "are people better off", "look at the different forms of doing business", "compare corporate records or the rights of citizens" (I think she meant employees).
But what interested her was that future generations will know nothing about us; all our records and art are stored digitally, most of it will simply disappear when no one rents it anymore -- remember the sadness when the last digital copy of Sgt. Pepper was accidentally erased? And the data that does survive will all be encrypted and in proprietary formats anyway -- even if there were historians they'd have no right to reverse engineer the formats. I can vaguely remember that people used to have physical copies of music and films, although I'm not sure how that was possible, or what the point was when we can rent whatever we like from the air interface. I don't think it matters that those who come after us can't read our writings or hear our music or see our films; these things are temporal anyway, if no one rents them then they can't be worth keeping.
The saddest subversive I met claimed to be a programmer. He said that he was writing a program using Basic.NET. He must have been insane. Even if his program worked he wouldn't be allowed to run it. How could one person possibly check every possible patent infringement in a program they wrote? And even if he hadn't infringed he couldn't sell it without buying a compatibility license from Microsoft.NET and who could possibly afford that? He had said something about gippling the software, which apparently means giving it away, but mad as he was, even he knew that under WUCITA that would be illegal.
These subversives really don't seem to understand that a few restrictions are necessary for the sake of innovation. And progress has been made. We don't have spam since most people can't afford an email license due to the expensive patent royalties. Our computer systems all have the same operating system, user interface and applications so everyone knows how to use them, and although they crash and don't work very well, we all know the limitations and can live with them. We have no piracy of intellectual property since we rent it as we want it and have no means of storing it.
It was the USA that showed the world the way of course. First the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, then more and more software patents. The Japanese followed suit. The Europeans were a problem, which is only to be expected, with their anti-business un-Christian socialist tendencies. Fortunately, common sense prevailed, helped along by the good old dollar I've no doubt and they accepted both software patents and a redefinition of copyright to suit global corporations. Once the USA, Japan and Europe had uniform intellectual property laws to protect our corporations and our way of life, everyone else had to play ball or they couldn't trade. The result has been that every algorithm and computer program and every piece of music and film (after all music and film can be put into digital form and are therefore a form of software) have been patented. No more variations on Beethoven (unless you've got the patentees approval). No more amateur participation in music or film which might risk lowering standards. No more challenge to established business and business practices.
I'm crazy to have written I know. But I am so happy in the world and I remember how unhappy I used to be. I wanted to somehow pass back to you the knowledge that its all going to be okay, that the world really is getting better.
Sincerely,
Mark.
****
end repost.
-Kasreyn
I promise you, during my high school years I played at least TEN TIMES as much DOOM as the Columbine shooters. I lived and breathed DOOM. It was my way to vent aggression.
Most people who know me find me peaceful to a fault. Gandhi is one of my heroes. I've never been in a fight. I've never punched anyone. I don't own a weapon (well, I have a pocket-knife...).
The Columbine shooting was a combination of nutty kids and adults who left guns within their fucking reach. It had nothing to do with videogames. But of course, videogames are easier for a Congresscritter to attack. It makes them look good at re-election time, and the gun lobby is much stronger and stupider (for the LAST TIME idiots, we don't want to take away your guns, we just want to keep them out of the hands of kids!).
Besides, no one ever got re-elected telling Americans they're bad parents.
-Kasreyn
ntnt
It's late and maybe it's just my brain failing to do the math right, but how is 10% of 1026-400 == 26??
1026 - 400 = 626. 10% = 62.6 ($63)?
Of course, I'm probably wrong and I'm making an ass of myself. Please explain anyway.
-Kasreyn
Actually, Maxis (makers of SimCity, Earth, etc., etc., etc., Robosport, The Sims itself I think) originally used the term "software toy". Since AFAIK SimCity was the first highly successful game that allowed you to play noncompetetively (not even competing against a computer), I think Maxis deserves to have their term used.
The mention of B&W is noteworthy... Peter Molyneaux, originally of Bullfrog Productions, Ltd., has ALWAYS gone with a bit of the software toy flavor. In both Dungeon Keepers 1 and 2 you were able to continue playing after you'd beaten a level, just for fun and play, with no goals or enemies to deal with. I whiled away many happy hours in college trying to see how much gold I could mine (my DK1 record - 6.2 million. Top that!)
-Kasreyn
...I can't think of anything more boring and done-to-death to waste one of the 10 questions on.
-Kasreyn
This was evident to all people blessed with brains, upon our first watching. Do you think just because they can talk to him in the Matrix, that Morpheus & crew know where Neo's *physical body* is in? That is to say, which pod he's in?
Or should they just go around randomly cracking open pods? Wow, after only 3 billion they'll have a 50% chance of finding him!
And this after the "tracer program" mention a moment earlier in the plot. Do you actually pay attention?
Sure, it's fluffy scifibabble, but at least it's self-consistent and fairly logical.
-Kasreyn
When Neo caused Smith to explode, I took that as a representation of Neo deleting the actual code for Smith, permanently.
Else why did Agents Brown and Jones freak out and run? If Neo *didn't* have the power to permanently destroy Agents, what did Brown and Jones have to fear?
Smith is coming back due to his popularity and the truly wonderful job the actor did in his role in Matrix 1 (He stole many scenes IMO), but there will have to be some good explanation of his return.
Maybe the machines just clicked "restore from backup". =P
-Kasreyn