Sorry to feed the troll, but what an asshole of a comment.
Didn't his parents notice what? That he was sitting at home, for all of a "few hours" just after he was "suspended"--not expelled--before committing suicide?
You asked, "I really don't understand the intent of posting this article on slashdot. How does it apply to anything?" and yet it's clear from your comment that you didn't read the article (or if you did, that you have absolutely no reading comprehension skills).
Why don't we try rephrasing your queries so that they apply to your post: "How can anything you posted apply to anything?" given that you didn't even bother to read the accompanying article. "I really don't understand the intent of posting your comment to slashdot."
Was it your extensive, intuitive knowledge of the particulars of the case allow you to make the judgment, "The poor kid was disturbed and unstable, so he did something silly"? Because he committed suicide, he is "disturbed and unstable"? You might reasonably argue that, but you certainly don't provide a substantive account. And a 13-year old committing suicide is "silly"? You think maybe somehow your factually bereft opinion is significant, what, because you're utterly ignorant of the particulars but you're what, a CS major, male, a student? Because you're projecting your own disturbed, unstable character onto others to compensate for some other perceived lack in yourself? It's all just idle speculation. The difference is, you're directing your speculation on a dead 13-year old who can't defend himself.
surely there's *some* non-greedy rationale?!
on
Is Law Copyrighted?
·
· Score: 1
Of course on the face of it, as described, the idea of copyrighted laws seems ludicrous. So I'm trying to understand the underlying rationale.
If profit was the only motive, it seems like a pretty roundabout way of making money: organize a group to draft legislation and push it through a legislature so that you can sell print and electronic copies of the text. Although USD6.7 million over ten yeas isn't too shabby. Well, for the sake of humor you might say this constitutes a better business plan than most recent dot-bombs, but honestly, it doesn't sound like the kind of work you get into for the sake of profit.
If laws are private property and you have to pay to view the laws, then you have a basis for arguing that ignorance of the law constitutes innocence. Homelessness laws aside, poverty isn't a crime in the U.S. yet, but instituting a direct financial barrier to access to the laws seems to force ignorance of the laws to people below a certain income level.
It's already the case that the sheer number of laws on the books, court rulings, precedents, etc. at least indirectly creates a financial barrier to knowledge of the laws insofar as you essentially have to be able to afford to consult a lawyer about any non-trivial legal concern.
The argument that without these private interests, we would have "dilapidated, outdated building codes, because nobody would do it for free" seems to suggest some motive for the public good/safety--i.e. passing laws. Yet if that's the intent, why betray that intent by introducing barriers to knowledge of these laws? The argument seems inconsistent. Furthermore, the argument suggests that when there's no financial interest directly at stake, laws don't get passed. While the cynical might make a good case for this, it is nevertheless the case that we have laws for the benefit of public health and safety that, if anything, run contrary to coprporate financial interests. So what's the rationale? Or is it just incoherent/inconsistent?
The most amazing thing to me is this has withstood a federal court challenge and appeal.
I thank you for the wonderful books you leave behind for us to rediscover and enjoy again and again.
I have only the best of memories reading your books, from the Hitchhiker's to the Dirk Gently series to my first Infocom text adventure game on my Apple IIe.
The fact that you can use recycled vegetable oil is pretty cool. In Kaua'i, they have a number of tour boats that use recycled veg. oil--from the local McDonald's or other fast food chain. Sometimes the exhaust smells like french fries--just depends where the fuel came from on that day.
And from what I understand it's 98% efficient (compared to trad. diesel).
Disclaimers:
- New Scientist site is *still*/.'ed, so I haven't been able to read the article
- Not really a "math person"
What do you mean by mathematical truths? If you mean theorems, aren't the theorems provable as consequences of particular assumed axioms? If you mean the axioms themselves, well, then mathematics isn't an especially special case is it? Isn't any system going to have to have certain fundamental axioms you take as true, that aren't proved?
I'm not sure I follow how you're tying your first philosphical point about the seeming discrepancy between mathematics and the physical sciences (or what Quine calls the double standard in ontology) with Chaitin's findings.
I implemented this about a year or so ago at my last job. MS Access as a front end on NT 4 with the MyODBC driver and MySQL on Solaris x86.
It was faster to develop the front end interface for the end-users and from the end-users' perspective, it was a better ui than we could have provided without cooking together entirely too much framing, JavaScript and DHTML for such a small target audience (e.g. to present subforms within subforms).
I don't remember exactly all the issues I ran into, I seem to remember some minor glitches in Access and having to issue some kind of special instructions to the users when certain kinds of updates and deletes needed to be done (sorry that's not terribly specific). But the setup was a breeze: set up the permissions for the users in MySQL, install the MyODBC driver on the client workstations, set up the DSN on the client, link the Access frontend to the MySQL db, rinse, wash, repeat.
Other posters have mentioned SQL Server & other dbs--whatever, if you were running on FileMaker, I doubt your database needs were all that sophisticated. And unless your db needs have changed significantly to include replication, transactions etc., stepping to MySQL seems like a reasonable decision. Then again, you didn't exactly specify what your db needs were either.
That said, if your boss is itching for a MS solution, you're probably just sticking your neck out to be cut off introducing Linux and MySQL esp. if your boss thinks you're only doing so because it makes you feel warmer and fuzzier inside about the technologies you're using.
This may no longer apply, but I remember an oft cited example used be how reading comprehension questions might have things like crew and regattas as their subject--something non-upper-middle-class, non-east-coasters (and by extension, most minorities, too) were probably an order of magnitude less likely to be familiar with.
I'm sure there's a flaw in this reasoning somewhere...
Perhaps Sony figures that Bleem! users are more likely to be using pirated games? It's slightly more of a hassle to chip a PSX to accept burned cd's than it is to use Bleem! to work with.iso images from your local warez site, right?
But ppl who want to pirate games will always find a way. I don't think Bleem lowers the bar that much. So I'm not sure what Sony's deal is either. I mean I can get a chipped console for less than $100 now--and I can use a real "dual shock" controller and get DDR pads too;) and not deal with all hassle of emulating a psx on my pc....
It's only because of sheer tenacity and Big Three ingenuity that Detroit has survived
Survive? Please. GM and Ford occupy two of the top five slots in Fortune'sGlobal 500 list.
Unions have helped millions of non-union workers too. Remember when 12-hour work days were "normal" for the working public? Me neither. Unions played a great part in allowing us to take paid vacations & holidays, pensions, health care, grievance procedures for granted so that we can instead worry about whether our employer is going to include enough beer in the next WebVan purchase.
There certainly are problems with labor unions, but demonizing them is just an corporate-brainwashed, intellectual cop-out. Labor unions don't exist because corporations make a habit of treating their employees as ends in themselves rather than as an expendable means to greater profits.
Could they have made SMDL any less accessible to the casual, interested party?
Seems like a lot of the info is out of date (e.g. predictions that SMDL will likely be adopted by ISO in late 1996). The only link to a draft is in postscript format from a (for me) unresponsive ftp site.
SMDL also sounds like it wants an import tool or at least some kind of pretty interface for score writing--I can just imagine how horrendous transcribing a score manually would be in SMDL! SMDL isn't just for scores, right? It's supposed to be able to describe
Anyway, I found this link: XML and Music which had some other ventures in the music markup arena.
In principle, a text/ASCII markup sounds preferable to a binary format, IMHO.
I've used Access as a front-end (using linked tables) to a MySQL database for administrative end users. You can get some pretty quick and dirty "pretty" reporting that way without having to actually import data as you noted.
Sorry if this is old hat, but I just heard about ANI for the first time not so long ago.
In cases like this, or toll-free crisis/abuse call centers that profess to be anonymous, is ANI disabled?
For instance, some posters were suggesting that students use the hotline to report all students, or non-geeks/jocks, for instance--a suggestion which would then want the stipulation that such calls be placed from a pay phone or something.
err, for those who don't know what ANI is:
ANI stands for Automatic Number Identification. It is a service feature in which the directory or equipment number of a calling station (read as ?telephone?) is automatically obtained. Enhanced 911 systems, 800/888 numbers and big companies make the most use out of this feature
I don't think that's a fair assessment of Dune. For instance, I remember reading Max Weber's essay on the routinization of charisma and being surprised how much it helped in an understanding of the politics of Dune. I think you could enjoy Dune just as a fictional adaptation of a host of literature on mob psychology and leadership nd charisma.
Also, I don't think your argument by way of example of the term Bene Gesserit is any less paper-thin. The term may not mean anything per se, but Herbert certainly invested a great deal in developing the background of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood--arguably as much as Tolkien did for any race or class in LotR. Consider the BG as religious order, political unit, or the description of the BG breeding program, blah blah.
My Middle-Eastern friends have always pointed out to various cultural and language references in Dune as well.
Whether or not LotR is "better" than Dune as literature, in depth, etc., however, is a holy war I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole =)
The second point is this: What's wrong with waste? Why is it intrinsically bad to leave all the lights of my house on whenever I want to. Notice that this question is different from the question of pollution or landfills. That is a clean versus dirty environment problem; the question of "waste" is a different question. And that's where a lot of environmentalists go wrong. Instead of focusing on the real problem, which is cleaning up messes, they choose to focus on limiting technology, progress and convenience.
Given that we don't have clean power, if I consume power that I could just as well not (e.g. you cited leaving the lights on whenever/at all times), then I am unnecessarily contributing to a "dirty environment".
While part of the end solution may be to find clean power, as you suggest, it doesn't obviate conservation needs in the meantime.
No one's attacking Christmas tree lights per se (or if someone is, s/he can shove it). As I undestand it, there are folks in California that don't have sufficient power. The official who had the town/city/whatever tree lights put out was making a statement--not to take power from the grid for decorative lighting when there are other folks who don't have adequate power to see by. Or something like that--I may be misremembering the article I read.
I think the original poster's question was intended in the sense of a classic problem in personal identity: If person A has his brain transplanted into the body of person B (B-body-person), after the operation, would the B-body-person be person A or person B from before the operation, or neither?
I think a lot of people would call it a body transplant (and not a brain transplant)--leaning toward the conclusion that B-body-person is indeed person A, because of the sameness of brain.
There's a collection called Personal Identity edited by John Perry that covers a wide range of problems like this if anyone's so interested;) I've got this on the brain, so to speak, since I'm reading Slashdot to put off writing a draft of my final on Personal Identity:P
In the article, one of the doctors is quoted saying:
The infant's good nerves from the right side of his body will grow slowly through the mother's nerves over to his left arm. Her nerves are not providing any function. They are serving as conduits, pathways to direct the child's own nerves to grow back together.
So, the transplanted nerves can help damaged (torn, in this case) repair themselves, while serving no actual nerve functions? I didn't think nerves could self-repair, but then, IANAD by any stretch of the imagination. However, this would suggest real hope for paralysis victims (as the result of certain kinds of accidents/nerve damage). Or am I misunderstanding the doctor's statement?
Ah! I always wondered what the source of this behavior was (thanks JArneaud!). ZoneAlarm users are probably used to seeing the blocked UDP alerts as well.
Can the originator of this Ask Slashdot confirm/deny JArneaud's/MS KB's theory that this behavior should cease with a client with a working remote dns entry?
Slashdot Mirror
However, the 1600SW still has a) the better dpi (110) versus the ACD (72) and b) vastly better price (USD1500 vs. USD2500).
And, SGI's multilink adapter means greater video card support for pc's, versus the ACD.
I take this to mean that you've actually played games on the Apple 15/17/22 lcd displays? Can you give some particulars? (which lcd, games, vid card).
In most reviews of the 22" ACD, the reviewers go ga-ga over the picture quality, wide viewing angle, minimal color distortion (for an lcd), etc., but I have only seen one review specifically mention game performance, and in this review, the conclusion is: "Gamers, this is not your monitor."
So does anyone have first-hand experience with games like Quake3 or Unreal that contradict this?
Sorry to feed the troll, but what an asshole of a comment.
Didn't his parents notice what? That he was sitting at home, for all of a "few hours" just after he was "suspended"--not expelled--before committing suicide?
You asked, "I really don't understand the intent of posting this article on slashdot. How does it apply to anything?" and yet it's clear from your comment that you didn't read the article (or if you did, that you have absolutely no reading comprehension skills).
Why don't we try rephrasing your queries so that they apply to your post: "How can anything you posted apply to anything?" given that you didn't even bother to read the accompanying article. "I really don't understand the intent of posting your comment to slashdot."
Was it your extensive, intuitive knowledge of the particulars of the case allow you to make the judgment, "The poor kid was disturbed and unstable, so he did something silly"? Because he committed suicide, he is "disturbed and unstable"? You might reasonably argue that, but you certainly don't provide a substantive account. And a 13-year old committing suicide is "silly"? You think maybe somehow your factually bereft opinion is significant, what, because you're utterly ignorant of the particulars but you're what, a CS major, male, a student? Because you're projecting your own disturbed, unstable character onto others to compensate for some other perceived lack in yourself? It's all just idle speculation. The difference is, you're directing your speculation on a dead 13-year old who can't defend himself.
Of course on the face of it, as described, the idea of copyrighted laws seems ludicrous. So I'm trying to understand the underlying rationale.
If profit was the only motive, it seems like a pretty roundabout way of making money: organize a group to draft legislation and push it through a legislature so that you can sell print and electronic copies of the text. Although USD6.7 million over ten yeas isn't too shabby. Well, for the sake of humor you might say this constitutes a better business plan than most recent dot-bombs, but honestly, it doesn't sound like the kind of work you get into for the sake of profit.
If laws are private property and you have to pay to view the laws, then you have a basis for arguing that ignorance of the law constitutes innocence. Homelessness laws aside, poverty isn't a crime in the U.S. yet, but instituting a direct financial barrier to access to the laws seems to force ignorance of the laws to people below a certain income level.
It's already the case that the sheer number of laws on the books, court rulings, precedents, etc. at least indirectly creates a financial barrier to knowledge of the laws insofar as you essentially have to be able to afford to consult a lawyer about any non-trivial legal concern.
The argument that without these private interests, we would have "dilapidated, outdated building codes, because nobody would do it for free" seems to suggest some motive for the public good/safety--i.e. passing laws. Yet if that's the intent, why betray that intent by introducing barriers to knowledge of these laws? The argument seems inconsistent. Furthermore, the argument suggests that when there's no financial interest directly at stake, laws don't get passed. While the cynical might make a good case for this, it is nevertheless the case that we have laws for the benefit of public health and safety that, if anything, run contrary to coprporate financial interests. So what's the rationale? Or is it just incoherent/inconsistent?
The most amazing thing to me is this has withstood a federal court challenge and appeal.
I thank you for the wonderful books you leave behind for us to rediscover and enjoy again and again.
I have only the best of memories reading your books, from the Hitchhiker's to the Dirk Gently series to my first Infocom text adventure game on my Apple IIe.
The fact that you can use recycled vegetable oil is pretty cool. In Kaua'i, they have a number of tour boats that use recycled veg. oil--from the local McDonald's or other fast food chain. Sometimes the exhaust smells like french fries--just depends where the fuel came from on that day.
And from what I understand it's 98% efficient (compared to trad. diesel).
Disclaimers: /.'ed, so I haven't been able to read the article
- New Scientist site is *still*
- Not really a "math person"
What do you mean by mathematical truths? If you mean theorems, aren't the theorems provable as consequences of particular assumed axioms? If you mean the axioms themselves, well, then mathematics isn't an especially special case is it? Isn't any system going to have to have certain fundamental axioms you take as true, that aren't proved?
I'm not sure I follow how you're tying your first philosphical point about the seeming discrepancy between mathematics and the physical sciences (or what Quine calls the double standard in ontology) with Chaitin's findings.
It was faster to develop the front end interface for the end-users and from the end-users' perspective, it was a better ui than we could have provided without cooking together entirely too much framing, JavaScript and DHTML for such a small target audience (e.g. to present subforms within subforms).
I don't remember exactly all the issues I ran into, I seem to remember some minor glitches in Access and having to issue some kind of special instructions to the users when certain kinds of updates and deletes needed to be done (sorry that's not terribly specific). But the setup was a breeze: set up the permissions for the users in MySQL, install the MyODBC driver on the client workstations, set up the DSN on the client, link the Access frontend to the MySQL db, rinse, wash, repeat.
Other posters have mentioned SQL Server & other dbs--whatever, if you were running on FileMaker, I doubt your database needs were all that sophisticated. And unless your db needs have changed significantly to include replication, transactions etc., stepping to MySQL seems like a reasonable decision. Then again, you didn't exactly specify what your db needs were either.
That said, if your boss is itching for a MS solution, you're probably just sticking your neck out to be cut off introducing Linux and MySQL esp. if your boss thinks you're only doing so because it makes you feel warmer and fuzzier inside about the technologies you're using.
Now we'll ever know if sysadmins are hard at work or having mudsex.
This may no longer apply, but I remember an oft cited example used be how reading comprehension questions might have things like crew and regattas as their subject--something non-upper-middle-class, non-east-coasters (and by extension, most minorities, too) were probably an order of magnitude less likely to be familiar with.
Perhaps Sony figures that Bleem! users are more likely to be using pirated games? It's slightly more of a hassle to chip a PSX to accept burned cd's than it is to use Bleem! to work with .iso images from your local warez site, right?
But ppl who want to pirate games will always find a way. I don't think Bleem lowers the bar that much. So I'm not sure what Sony's deal is either. I mean I can get a chipped console for less than $100 now--and I can use a real "dual shock" controller and get DDR pads too ;) and not deal with all hassle of emulating a psx on my pc....
It's only because of sheer tenacity and Big Three ingenuity that Detroit has survived
Survive? Please. GM and Ford occupy two of the top five slots in Fortune's Global 500 list.
Unions have helped millions of non-union workers too. Remember when 12-hour work days were "normal" for the working public? Me neither. Unions played a great part in allowing us to take paid vacations & holidays, pensions, health care, grievance procedures for granted so that we can instead worry about whether our employer is going to include enough beer in the next WebVan purchase.
There certainly are problems with labor unions, but demonizing them is just an corporate-brainwashed, intellectual cop-out. Labor unions don't exist because corporations make a habit of treating their employees as ends in themselves rather than as an expendable means to greater profits.
Disclaimer: I'm not a union worker
umm, they just list off "features" of each bot. it's like a consumer reports product comparison sheet with humorous(?) commentary.
they could have at least set them at each other.
although the history lesson on the omnibot was interesting--i must have overlooked that aisle at toysrus in search of more garbage pail kids.
dammit, meant to hit preview, not submit :P
nevermind that incomplete sentence in the post previous and here's that link again:
Here's the link again:
http://xml.coverpages.org/xmlMusic.html
Could they have made SMDL any less accessible to the casual, interested party?
Seems like a lot of the info is out of date (e.g. predictions that SMDL will likely be adopted by ISO in late 1996). The only link to a draft is in postscript format from a (for me) unresponsive ftp site.
SMDL also sounds like it wants an import tool or at least some kind of pretty interface for score writing--I can just imagine how horrendous transcribing a score manually would be in SMDL! SMDL isn't just for scores, right? It's supposed to be able to describe
Anyway, I found this link: XML and Music which had some other ventures in the music markup arena.
In principle, a text/ASCII markup sounds preferable to a binary format, IMHO.
I've used Access as a front-end (using linked tables) to a MySQL database for administrative end users. You can get some pretty quick and dirty "pretty" reporting that way without having to actually import data as you noted.
In cases like this, or toll-free crisis/abuse call centers that profess to be anonymous, is ANI disabled?
For instance, some posters were suggesting that students use the hotline to report all students, or non-geeks/jocks, for instance--a suggestion which would then want the stipulation that such calls be placed from a pay phone or something.
err, for those who don't know what ANI is:
AFAIK, you can't "caller-id block" ANI.
Also, I don't think your argument by way of example of the term Bene Gesserit is any less paper-thin. The term may not mean anything per se, but Herbert certainly invested a great deal in developing the background of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood--arguably as much as Tolkien did for any race or class in LotR. Consider the BG as religious order, political unit, or the description of the BG breeding program, blah blah.
My Middle-Eastern friends have always pointed out to various cultural and language references in Dune as well.
Whether or not LotR is "better" than Dune as literature, in depth, etc., however, is a holy war I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole =)
Given that we don't have clean power, if I consume power that I could just as well not (e.g. you cited leaving the lights on whenever/at all times), then I am unnecessarily contributing to a "dirty environment".
While part of the end solution may be to find clean power, as you suggest, it doesn't obviate conservation needs in the meantime.
No one's attacking Christmas tree lights per se (or if someone is, s/he can shove it). As I undestand it, there are folks in California that don't have sufficient power. The official who had the town/city/whatever tree lights put out was making a statement--not to take power from the grid for decorative lighting when there are other folks who don't have adequate power to see by. Or something like that--I may be misremembering the article I read.
"touch-tone"? That's old skool ;) At least keyword voice recognition.
(This too has been posted in jest)
Of course, to combine the HHC with a Palm V, you need yet another connector thingamabob, but hey, what price consumer geekdom?
/. seems /.'ed)
(Sorry if this gets posted twice,
I think a lot of people would call it a body transplant (and not a brain transplant)--leaning toward the conclusion that B-body-person is indeed person A, because of the sameness of brain.
There's a collection called Personal Identity edited by John Perry that covers a wide range of problems like this if anyone's so interested ;) I've got this on the brain, so to speak, since I'm reading Slashdot to put off writing a draft of my final on Personal Identity :P
So, the transplanted nerves can help damaged (torn, in this case) repair themselves, while serving no actual nerve functions? I didn't think nerves could self-repair, but then, IANAD by any stretch of the imagination. However, this would suggest real hope for paralysis victims (as the result of certain kinds of accidents/nerve damage). Or am I misunderstanding the doctor's statement?
Can the originator of this Ask Slashdot confirm/deny JArneaud's/MS KB's theory that this behavior should cease with a client with a working remote dns entry?
FYI, rendered in about 2 secs for me using Netscape 6 on win2k over DSL