Not to be picky here, but they were not "SPOOFED" by The Onion, they were "DUPED".
Classically speaking -- in dictionary terms -- you are correct, sir. However, this being a Nerd site, CmdrTaco was apparently using Geekspeak. In this jargon, "spoof" means "to fool", derived from the ability of hackers to create false email headers; this technique being referred to as "spoofing", with the resultant back-formation of "spoof". Linguistically speaking, the reversal of the meaning of a term is an important part of the creation of a sub-language; the example that springs to mind just now is the early-'70's use in the African-American culture of the term "bad" to mean "very good".
And, to be even more exacting, they weren't "duped" -- the use of "dupe" implies a conscious motive toward the Beijing newspaper on the part of "The Onion", which did not exist. "Fooled" is probably the appropriate word to use here.
The goal here is to create a mechanism for collecting definitions and translations for words and phrases in less common language pairs
(as well as for slang terms that are not covered by most formal dictionaries).
So wouldn't you want to also capture information that indicates, say, *metaphorical* usage? For example, "die Tote Hose", (dee TO-tah HO-sah) in German might be accurately rendered in the New York City dialect of American English as "Fuhgeddaboudit!" [It means -- literally --"the dead trousers" and -- metaphorically -- "old news", "not worth talking about", etc.] This indicates the necessity for some level of meta-information, which is precisely what the Semantic Web is all about.
It seems like this could benefit from a Semantic Web interface of some sort. As other posters have noted, capturing contextual information is vital to adequate translation.
Perhaps this Semantic Web interface could be a third component, somewhere between the first SOAP protocol and the second SETI-like protocol, designed to give volunteers some kind of contextual clues to increase the accuracy of their translation.
BTW, some posters have also raised the question of "Trolls". Perhaps this could be avoided by first asking volunteers to rate the accuracy of other volunteers' translations. Maybe having a high meta-mod score would lead to increased "first translation" opportunities and decreased "this must be checked" translations.
The only difference between 1984 and 2001 is that the guy on the screen during the Two Minutes of Hate is named Osama instead of Emmanuel, and at the end he turns into a wolf instead of a sheep.
If you think 1984 was prescient, go back and read Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley. We seem to be managing to bring both dystopias into being at the same time. Scary.
So you have a backdoor to all encryption: in 2005, Osama Bin Laden II has managed to crack the back door -- but he doesn't tell anybody, because that would undercut public confidence in the cryptosystem.
Sa-a-ay: you know C0de R3d III? Everybody says it was the Ch1nes3, but coulda it been *slam1c t*rr0rists? or the NS&?
How can we vote for a paty that is dedicated to keep the constitutional rights of citizens and does not sell itself to business when there is NO SUCH PARTY?
Sure there is. Let's start with the national parties: the Green Party (in every state), the Libertarian Party (ditto), the Constitution Party, the Peace and Freedom Party (in California), the Socialist Party, [what's left of] the Reform Party, etc. I could list half a dozen more.
What? You've never heard of any of these parties? Well get your head over to google and start searching. What's ironic, of course, is that parties are small *precisely because* they don't kowtow to the corporations. Yet thousands of dedicated Americans keep them going *anyway*.
Just because you are a Czech, by the way, doesn't mean that you can't join up with one of them. Freedom is the business of everybody. So do something -- don't just wring your hands.
The destruction of civil liberties on the net is not happening this week because of the evil Taliban. It is happening because the advocates of Carnivore et al are opportunists using patriotism to get what they wanted all along.
"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels -- and the first refuge of politicians."
(Don't know who said it, but it has the flavor of Ambrose Bierce.)
IIRC, the Etch-a-sketch toy (EAS) consists of magnetic filings, which are temporarily attached to the surface by a continuous pointer device. Shaking the toy dislodges the filings, thus presenting a "clean" surface.
Might it be possible to place some kind of electronic grid upon the face of the EAS, so that, by activating any given intersection (similar to a telephone "bar-type" switching network) a "dot" of iron filing might appear? Of course, the resultant picture would be fairly low-res, but it *might* be adequate for print. I think that one could achieve at least 320 * 240 pixels, perhaps similar to an old C64 screen.
I am presuming that the grid would connect out of a conventional serial or parallel port from a conventional computer. Any thoughts on the feasability of this?
Usually after my first major caffeine hit in the morning, I get the "coffee shits".
Wierd! Me too! I theorize that the rise in blood pressure combined with the sugar and cream I liberally add (coffee is bitter!) inadvertently send the signal to my colon that it's time to excrete by suggesting to my brain that I've just had an adrenaline rush: time to dump 'n' run!. Sugar level in blood and blood pressure rise suddenly: what else is it supposed to think?
Well, that's what I get for having a highly interconnected neural network as my CPU 8^P.
(a) In General -- It is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies that adhere to the security system standards adopted under section 104.
Here's why it will not pass: by *requiring* "certified security technologies", it violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, which specifically *forbids* Congress from limiting free speech rights. The Courts have *repeatedly* held that the government -- Federal or State -- *cannot* exercise control over the *content* of speech *before* it is published. This bill appears to do exactly that. Let's state what it really is: a bill to require all communication instruments to contain a back-door for the use of the No Svch Ag3ncy. Needless to say, this is an unconstitutional stretch of the Federal government's powers; any of our representatives or senators who actually vote for it should be dis-elected at the next election (assuming that there is one) as insufficiently protective of our Constitutional rights.
For instance, Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga, chair of the HumanMarkup TC and the motivating force behind HumanML, told InternetNews.com that in psychology, HumanML could be used to:
Sort, index, and file patient psychological records based on cultural background, personality, type of pyschological disorder
Provide containers to embed culturally, contextually specific information that may be relevant in psychological diagnoses
Provide recommended specifications to express both culturally specific, neurolgically specific, belief specific, DSM-IV specific breakdowns.
I don't know what [paranoid]you[/paranoid] think about this but
[multiplepersonalitydisorder]I[/multiplepersonal it ydisorder] don't think it's a good idea.
No, wait, [multiplepersonalitydisorder]I[/multiplepersonalit ydisorder] do think it's a good idea.
[dependentpersonalitydisorder]What do you all think about this[/dependentpersonalitydisorder]?
[antisocialpersonalitydisorder]I[/antisocialpers on alitydisorder] really don't care what you think! 8^D
The ISP informed users of its Optus@Home broadband service that it would terminate customer accounts found to be downloading pirate software or copyright material.
"What....right have Optus got to play policeman? They are a conduit-a provider, that's all,"
one ZDNet Australia reader said. The users added that if an individual is breaking the law on the Internet, it should be treated in a similar way to somebody abusing the telephone system. "The police should have to apply for a warrant and then present that to the telco to authorise
monitoring for a specific person for a specific period," the reader said.
"I wouldn't call it policing, we're just trying to comply with the law and by highlighting the issue to customers, its putting us in a better position as acting as a responsible Netizen on the Internet," the spokesperson said.
They are both right *and* wrong. It *is* their system after all, so they have a right to determine access rules. On the other hand, just because something is *copyrighted* does not mean it is therefore *pirated*. They are wrong in thinking that they can have it both ways: as a conduit and as a 'law-complyer, not a policeman', as the spokesperson rather torturously puts it. A conduit, by definition, has *no* rules regarding content. The fact that they feel entitled to "[try] to comply with the law and... [act] as a responsible Netizen" (as if a corporation were a person -- which it IS NOT), puts them squarely in the camp of being an editor of content, and, thus, no longer an actual conduit. I believe that, due to that, under Australian law, they now come under a different category of legislation. Any exemption that they received for being merely a conduit should now be re-examined in the light of their decision to become a "traffic" cop.
I agree with the reader: if Excite@Home suspects that there is a copyright violation, they need to *go through the proper channels* -- not arrogate the law unto themselves. A corporation -- being comprised of unelected people, and, thus, being neither democratic nor representative -- is *not* the government, and shouldn't think of itself in that manner.
Re:Nanotech solves this problem: a better solution
on
Carbonate The Ocean
·
· Score: 2
[We use a bunch of solar-powered, self-reproducing machines to trap the excess carbon dioxide.]
Strange. I was just thinking today about someething similar. CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane) are the two big greenhouse gases. What if you had a bunch of devices, floating at the edge of space,that selectively (through nano-holes) sucked in CO2 thru one port and CH4 through the other (different size holes, of course), then zapped them with electricity (floating at the edge of space, remember, so endless solar power), dropped the water overboard and cached the carbon locally. The water would become [pure] rain, and the weight of the cached carbon would gradually cause the device to sink down into the lower atmosphere, where these devices would be gathered up and the carbon they were now full of [excellent pure-carbon coal] harvested. Then it could be burned again. (Or used to make buckyballs or something.) (Or take it to the bottom of the ocean and use the pressure to make industrial-grade diamonds.)
[I think that the reason so much troubles are plaguing independent sites is that their revenue model, dependent on ad revenue, is backed by inefficient and ineffective ad display systems... The existance of this "Ad-pache" would allow smaller sites to have an easier time selling ads and attracting revenue...With such a system in place and showing tangible results, the playing field might be leveled for the small guy.]
Lev, you are *so close* to the right answer. I run a little-city entertainment guide. One of the most popular pages on our site is a listing of local bands. I am writing some PHP code that: a) will expand each listing into a micro-site, where bands could create added value with pay-to-play pictures, lyrics, etc. (thus enhancing *my* revenue stream) nestled within my site; b) enable each band to sell MP3s through their site; c) have advertisements on the entertainment guide from the bands (more revenue for me), and d) have those MP3s randomly chosen to go streaming out over an automated internet radio station, which will also display that band's ad (linked of course back to their micro-site) while the song is playing. See? It's not just *big* business that has to advertise, it's *everybody* who has something to sell. It's the synergistic code that ties it all together that triggers the network effect!
Heck, I just went out and *bought* someone's old Amiga 500 for $40 just for the 4-voice stereo soundcard. 'Course, I'm still using my old C64 with its primitive SID chip and 6502 machine language to make music, too. Hmmmm, what I really need now is a MIDI interface to the Amiga so I can patch my keyboard into it. (And some way to make it talk to my BeBox.) Let's hear it for lo-fi hacking!
[The biggest question that haunts the whole Amiga picture is: why bother]?
Because it wasn't the [outside] apps that were important, it was the [inside] *ability to multi-thread tasks on a personal computer* that was important. That's one of the reasons that truly multi-threaded Linux (successor to truly multi-threaded UN*X) is eating fakey pseudo-multi-threaded W*d*z lunch, and why Apple's OS X (based on BSD UN*X) is bringing the Mac world back to life.
[Since all software is basically textual representation of numbers and mathmatical formulas, wouldn't software patents be equivalent of patenting Math so that nobody could use formulas without paying royalties?]
You are confusing the map and the territory. Software is *not* just "textual representation of numbers and mathematical formulas*, it is the *action* which *operates utilizing* the numbers and the mathematical formulas. By your definition, "thinking" is equivalent to "sucking your thumb" since they both use the action of the brain to accomplish a task. Clearly, to both you and me, "internal cogitation" is not equal to "external thumb wetting". Unless you externalize what you are thinking (via voice, say), it *appears* that the external action (hardware) accomplishes something and the internal action (software) does not. Thus, by your definition, thumb-sucking would be patentable and thinking would not be. But, as humans, we know that the output of thought is *just as important* as the wetting of thumbs, so your idea does not hold as much water as your thumb might. 8^D
Okay, I've just read what I wrote (mmm...reading...software...) and I guess it might be confusing if you can't make the telelogical distinction. Let me try another tack.
Think of software as being a machine built out of information. So is a novel. But software is a *special kind* of a machine, because it acts and has a telelogical (er, "tool-using") effect in the world that the novel does not. All the novels in the world piled up one on top of the other are just a pile of unliving paper and cannot cause as much action as a tiny software machine that can take the input of "2+2" and give you back the output of "4". Do you see the difference?
[This gets us around the 'software is patentable *because* it can be turned into hardware' argument. Unfortunately, this argument can also be used to justify the 'therefore DNA is patentable because it *does stuff*' argument. However, in my view, DNA is *specifically NOT patentable* because it is pre-existing in nature and hence represents Nature's prior art. The mere re-combination of pre-existing patterns does not, to my view, necessarily qualify as 'something new'. If that were so, someone would have already tried to patent "sex" -- and succeeded. But I digress...]
So, to conclude, software, to the unknowing, simply looks like a stream of letters and numbers -- hence the idea that, since it may be an *original* stream, that it is *at least* free speech. But software is *special* in that it also, situated in the proper hardware context, can *do* things (i.e. achieve a telelogical result independent of its creator). I hope that I have made myself clear; to wit, used the telelogical function of language by combining pre-existing patterns to cause a meaningful result in your brain independent of myself -- *without* therefore asserting that I have a right to patent "language". Yes?
[The law requires that a patent be granted for an invention unless...]
Isn't that a little bit like "guilty until proven innocent?" If so, it's certainly -- metaphorically speaking -- a violation of the *spirit* of the Constitution, which was, if I am not mistaken, to *limit* the power of the government.
This little clause seems to go the other way, saying that the government (in the form of the Constitutionally established Patent office) *must* act, unless it can be shown that there is a reason for it *not* to.
At what point did the government move from *allowing* patents to *requiring* them?
[The sun produces its energy by fusing four hydrogen nuclei (otherwise known as protons) into a single helium nucleus (otherwise known as alpha particles: two protons and two neutrons). The four
constituent protons are just a tad heavier than an alpha particle, and the extra mass is turned into energy. Nuclear fusion in the lab (which *has* been done before, many times) doesn't follow the exact same process. It typically uses deuterium and tritium, which are hydrogen-2 (a proton and a neutron) and hydrogen-3 (a proton and two neutrons), respectively. Tritium is radioactive.]
Hmmmm... it's too bad someone hasn't thought up a process to quickly (probably at femtosecond speeds) *alternate* between fission and fusion.
Tritium seems to be the key, since, being radioactive, it can either spontaneously emit a neutron and become deuterium *or* be compressed by the laser pressure into the fusion process with deuterium.
Use the spontanous tritium radioactivity -- fission -- to keep sending energy back into the fusion process, thus generating a nearly constant heat flow from the fusion process and thus making fusion feasible. (I guess you'd need about twice as much tritium as deuterium.) Except for the minor engineering problem of keeping the high energy particles trapped inside the system long enough to be re-routed back into the fusion process, it seems doable. (IANANP, obviously.) Any nuclear physicists out there want to explain why this *can't* work?
Perhaps this is part of the key to how "dirty" palladium jump-starts the so-called 'cold-fusion' process. Again, IANANP.
Hmmm....Probably by the time the aliens get the human DNA, it will be so tattered by cosmic rays that the clones they make won't live.
*or* When they get here, the tagging viruses they develop from it won't attach to members of our species. It may cause interestingly bizarre diseases in us, however.
Another hmmm... you know that disease where a person's skin turns to stone? Maybe it's already happening....
Oh yeah -- your question. Answer: clone a person's DNA four times (for a total of 5 spiral strands). Use a nanocomputer to constantly check across all 5, and when one base-pair gets zapped by cosmic rays, note the difference and repair it using the well-known gene repair protocol that already exists inside DNA.
Why 5 strands instead of 3? Extra redundancy: what if 2 of the 3 strands were changed -- to *different* base-pairs -- before the the nanocomputer was able to react? It wouldn't know which of the three was correct.
Of course, you'd need 5 copies of the nanocomputer too. The mind reels at all of the recursive juggling that would have to occur to make sure that all of the watchers -- and the watchers of the watchers, etc. -- were kept in working order.
Anyway: what exactly is the *point* of sending human DNA into space? If we're so gung-ho to get human DNA out there, let's just cut to the chase and send *people*. (Or -- better yet -- the PDA version of people: smaller, cheaper -- and faster breeding.) It would be interesting to see how the selection pressure of energetic cosmic rays would push the DNA-evolution envelope.
Even here in Ann Arbor, we recently had to act up and kick some censor butt. It was a two-pronged attack: the school system tried to slip some kind of cyber-nanny onto the local school computers at the same time the local public cable access people tried to switch the "voluntary self-censorship" system (a rather unsatisfactory compromise reached two years earlier) to mandatory. Fortunately, certain people were awake and rallied a few other of us, and we nipped it in the bud by, on one hand, showing up at the Cable Commission meeting (which was televised -- heh) and defining "government censorship" for the Commissioners, and, on the other, by a flurry of pointed articles in the local print media, suprising the local superintendant who was steaming full-speed ahead in a "Save the Children!" phase. But it could have been different -- and worse.
My point? A few people stopped it. "Eternal vigilance *is* the price of liberty", folks. Sometimes there's just no substitute for showing up and raising hell.(You'll be happily suprised at the amount of covert support you'll find.)
P.S. Hooray for GREX: community-built, community-supported, and community-utilized computing resources!!!
When I was talking about this with Ian back in 1998 (it was still his senior project then), he emphasized how, by dynamically redistributing files so that they would end up *physically* closer to their users, the Net would become more efficient. To give a nonsensical example, say a person in Russia put up a web-page, and a lot of people in Florida found it interesting. The file itself would eventually migrate to a server in Florida, because that's where most of the people were accessing it from.
Of course he also pointed out the untraceability of where the file originated, but the dynamic and ever-fluid nature of exactly where the physical file might be was what captured my imagination at the time.
Thus it seems that applications with geographic overtones might be conceived as the truly legitimate ones. For example, if Derrick May and Juan Atkins could have posted MP3s to Freenet, they would have quickly seen techno take off in Europe; that's where they would have headed to do their live shows. (Of course they did that anyway, but by tracking record sales, a somewhat slower process.)
Similarly, any kind of culture-based phenomenon could exploit this: an author in Maine finds that Samoans can't get enough of his stuff; Romania goes gaga over a tricky Brazilian beat; people in West Germany start a political party based on ideas that first popped up in New Zealand -- you get the idea.....
Slashdot Mirror
Classically speaking -- in dictionary terms -- you are correct, sir. However, this being a Nerd site, CmdrTaco was apparently using Geekspeak. In this jargon, "spoof" means "to fool", derived from the ability of hackers to create false email headers; this technique being referred to as "spoofing", with the resultant back-formation of "spoof". Linguistically speaking, the reversal of the meaning of a term is an important part of the creation of a sub-language; the example that springs to mind just now is the early-'70's use in the African-American culture of the term "bad" to mean "very good".
And, to be even more exacting, they weren't "duped" -- the use of "dupe" implies a conscious motive toward the Beijing newspaper on the part of "The Onion", which did not exist. "Fooled" is probably the appropriate word to use here.
The goal here is to create a mechanism for collecting definitions and translations for words and phrases in less common language pairs (as well as for slang terms that are not covered by most formal dictionaries).
So wouldn't you want to also capture information that indicates, say, *metaphorical* usage? For example, "die Tote Hose", (dee TO-tah HO-sah) in German might be accurately rendered in the New York City dialect of American English as "Fuhgeddaboudit!" [It means -- literally --"the dead trousers" and -- metaphorically -- "old news", "not worth talking about", etc.] This indicates the necessity for some level of meta-information, which is precisely what the Semantic Web is all about.
It seems like this could benefit from a Semantic Web interface of some sort. As other posters have noted, capturing contextual information is vital to adequate translation.
Perhaps this Semantic Web interface could be a third component, somewhere between the first SOAP protocol and the second SETI-like protocol, designed to give volunteers some kind of contextual clues to increase the accuracy of their translation.
BTW, some posters have also raised the question of "Trolls". Perhaps this could be avoided by first asking volunteers to rate the accuracy of other volunteers' translations. Maybe having a high meta-mod score would lead to increased "first translation" opportunities and decreased "this must be checked" translations.
1) Suing anyone who replies and quotes my copyrighted message.
Is that a god in your pocket, or are you just glad to sue me?
2) DNA is written in base 4 -- native language.
3) Half the representation cost of base 2.
4) Your own hands are naturally base 4 -- the thumb is a carry.
The only difference between 1984 and 2001 is that the guy on the screen during the Two Minutes of Hate is named Osama instead of Emmanuel, and at the end he turns into a wolf instead of a sheep.
If you think 1984 was prescient, go back and read Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley. We seem to be managing to bring both dystopias into being at the same time. Scary.
Sa-a-ay: you know C0de R3d III? Everybody says it was the Ch1nes3, but coulda it been *slam1c t*rr0rists? or the NS&?
Just wonderin'...
Songs with Questionable Lyrics
Clear Channels List of
Songs with Questionable Lyrics
Artist
Title
Drowning Pool
"Bodies"
Mudvayne
"Death Blooms"
Megadeth
"Dread and the Fugitive"
Megadeth
"Sweating Bullets"
Saliva
"Click Click Boom"
P.O.D.
"Boom"
Metallica
"Seek and Destroy"
Metallica
"Harvester or Sorrow"
Metallica
"Enter Sandman"
Metallica
"Fade to Black"
All Rage Against The Machine songs
Nine Inch Nails
"Head Like a Hole"
Godsmack
"Bad Religion"
Tool
"Intolerance"
Soundgarden
"Blow Up the Outside World"
AC/DC
"Shot Down in Flames"
AC/DC
"Shoot to Thrill"
AC/DC
"Dirty Deeds"
AC/DC
"Highway to Hell"
AC/DC
"Safe in New York City"
AC/DC
"TNT"
AC/DC
"Hell's Bells"
Black Sabbath
"War Pigs"
Black Sabbath
"Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"
Black Sabbath
"Suicide Solution"
Dio
"Holy Diver"
Steve Miller
"Jet Airliner"
Van Halen
"Jump"
Queen
"Another One Bites the Dust"
Queen
"Killer Queen"
Pat Benatar
"Hit Me with Your Best Shot"
Pat Benatar
"Love is a Battlefield"
Oingo Boingo
"Dead Man's Party"
REM
"It's the End of the World as We Know It"
Talking Heads
"Burning Down the House"
Judas Priest
"Some Heads Are Gonna Roll"
Pink Floyd
"Run Like Hell"
Pink Floyd
"Mother"
Savage Garden
"Crash and Burn"
Dave Matthews Band
"Crash Into Me"
Bangles
"Walk Like an Egyptian"
Pretenders
"My City Was Gone"
Alanis Morissette
"Ironic"
Barenaked Ladies
"Falling for the First Time"
Fuel
"Bad Day"
John Parr
"St. Elmo's Fire"
Peter Gabriel
"When You're Falling"
Kansas
"Dust in the Wind"
Led Zeppelin
"Stairway to Heaven"
The Beatles
"A Day in the Life"
The Beatles
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
The Beatles
"Ticket To Ride"
The Beatles
"Obla Di, Obla Da"
Bob Dylan/Guns N Roses
"Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
Arthur Brown
"Fire"
Blue Oyster Cult
"Burnin' For You"
Paul McCartney and Wings
"Live and Let Die"
Jimmy Hendrix
"Hey Joe"
Jackson Brown
"Doctor My Eyes"
John Mellencamp
"Crumbling Down"
John Mellencamp
"I'm On Fire"
U2
"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
Boston
"Smokin"
Billy Joel
"Only the Good Die Young"
Barry McGuire
"Eve of Destruction"
Steam
"Na Na Na Na Hey Hey"
Drifters
"On Broadway"
Shelly Fabares
"Johnny Angel"
Los Bravos
"Black is Black"
Peter and Gordon
"I Go To Pieces"
Peter and Gordon
"A World Without Love"
Elvis
"(You're the) Devil in Disguise"
Zombies
"She's Not There"
Elton John
"Benny & The Jets"
Elton John
"Daniel"
Elton John
"Rocket Man"
Jerry Lee Lewis
"Great Balls of Fire"
Santana
"Evil Ways"
Louis Armstrong
"What A Wonderful World"
Youngbloods
"Get Together"
Ad Libs
"The Boy from New York City"
Peter Paul and Mary
"Blowin' in the Wind"
Peter Paul and Mary
"Leavin' on a Jet Plane"
Rolling Stones
"Ruby Tuesday"
Simon And Garfunkel
"Bridge Over Troubled Water"
Happenings
"See You in Septemeber"
Carole King
"I Feel the Earth Move"
Yager and Evans
"In the Year 2525"
Norman Greenbaum
"Spirit in the Sky"
Brooklyn Bridge
"Worst That Could Happen"
Three Degrees
"When Will I See You Again"
Cat Stevens
"Peace Train"
Cat Stevens
"Morning Has Broken"
Jan and Dean
"Dead Man's Curve"
Martha & the Vandellas
"Nowhere to Run"
Martha and the Vandellas/Van Halen
"Dancing in the Streets"
Hollies
"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"
San Cooke
Herman Hermits, "Wonder World"
Petula Clark
"A Sign of the Times"
Don McLean
"American Pie"
J. Frank Wilson
"Last Kiss"
Buddy Holly and the Crickets
"That'll Be the Day"
John Lennon
"Imagine"
Bobby Darin
"Mack the Knife"
The Clash
"Rock the Casbah"
Surfaris
"Wipeout"
Blood Sweat and Tears
"And When I Die"
Dave Clark Five
"Bits and Pieces"
Tramps
"Disco Inferno"
Paper Lace
"The Night Chicago Died"
Frank Sinatra
"New York, New York"
Creedence Clearwater Revival
"Travelin' Band"
The Gap Band
"You Dropped a Bomb On Me"
Alien Ant Farm
"Smooth Criminal"
3 Doors Down
"Duck and Run"
The Doors
"The End"
Third Eye Blind
"Jumper"
Neil Diamond
"America"
Lenny Kravitz
"Fly Away"
Tom Petty
"Free Fallin'"
Bruce Springsteen
"I'm On Fire"
Bruce Springsteen
"Goin' Down"
Phil Collins
"In the Air Tonight"
Alice in Chains
"Rooster"
Alice in Chains
"Sea of Sorrow"
Alice in Chains
"Down in a Hole"
Alice in Chains
"Them Bone"
Beastie Boys
"Sure Shot"
Beastie Boys
"Sabotage"
The Cult
"Fire Woman"
Everclear
"Santa Monica"
Filter
"Hey Man, Nice Shot"
Foo Fighters
"Learn to Fly"
Korn
"Falling Away From Me"
Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Aeroplane"
Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Under the Bridge"
Smashing Pumpkins
"Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
System of a Down
"Chop Suey!"
Skeeter Davis
"End of the World"
Rickey Nelson
"Travelin' Man"
Chi-Lites
"Have You Seen Her"
Animals
"We Gotta Get Out of This Place"
Fontella Bass
"Rescue Me"
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels
"Devil with the Blue Dress"
James Taylor
"Fire and Rain"
Edwin Starr/Bruce Springstein
"War"
Lynyrd Skynyrd
"Tuesday's Gone"
Limp Bizkit
"Break Stuff"
Green Day
"Brain Stew"
Temple of the Dog
"Say Hello to Heaven"
Sugar Ray
"Fly"
Local H
"Bound for the Floor"
Slipknot
"Left Behind, Wait and Bleed"
Bush
"Speed Kills"
311
"Down"
Stone Temple Pilots
"Big Bang Baby," Dead and Bloated"
Soundgarden
"Fell on Black Days," Black Hole Sun"
Nina
"99 Luft Balloons/99 Red Balloons"
Sure there is. Let's start with the national parties: the Green Party (in every state), the Libertarian Party (ditto), the Constitution Party, the Peace and Freedom Party (in California), the Socialist Party, [what's left of] the Reform Party, etc. I could list half a dozen more.
What? You've never heard of any of these parties? Well get your head over to google and start searching. What's ironic, of course, is that parties are small *precisely because* they don't kowtow to the corporations. Yet thousands of dedicated Americans keep them going *anyway*.
Just because you are a Czech, by the way, doesn't mean that you can't join up with one of them. Freedom is the business of everybody. So do something -- don't just wring your hands.
"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels -- and the first refuge of politicians."
(Don't know who said it, but it has the flavor of Ambrose Bierce.)
Might it be possible to place some kind of electronic grid upon the face of the EAS, so that, by activating any given intersection (similar to a telephone "bar-type" switching network) a "dot" of iron filing might appear? Of course, the resultant picture would be fairly low-res, but it *might* be adequate for print. I think that one could achieve at least 320 * 240 pixels, perhaps similar to an old C64 screen.
I am presuming that the grid would connect out of a conventional serial or parallel port from a conventional computer. Any thoughts on the feasability of this?
Wierd! Me too! I theorize that the rise in blood pressure combined with the sugar and cream I liberally add (coffee is bitter!) inadvertently send the signal to my colon that it's time to excrete by suggesting to my brain that I've just had an adrenaline rush: time to dump 'n' run!. Sugar level in blood and blood pressure rise suddenly: what else is it supposed to think?
Well, that's what I get for having a highly interconnected neural network as my CPU 8^P.
(a) In General -- It is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies that adhere to the security system standards adopted under section 104.
Here's why it will not pass: by *requiring* "certified security technologies", it violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, which specifically *forbids* Congress from limiting free speech rights. The Courts have *repeatedly* held that the government -- Federal or State -- *cannot* exercise control over the *content* of speech *before* it is published. This bill appears to do exactly that. Let's state what it really is: a bill to require all communication instruments to contain a back-door for the use of the No Svch Ag3ncy. Needless to say, this is an unconstitutional stretch of the Federal government's powers; any of our representatives or senators who actually vote for it should be dis-elected at the next election (assuming that there is one) as insufficiently protective of our Constitutional rights.
I agree with the reader: if Excite@Home suspects that there is a copyright violation, they need to *go through the proper channels* -- not arrogate the law unto themselves. A corporation -- being comprised of unelected people, and, thus, being neither democratic nor representative -- is *not* the government, and shouldn't think of itself in that manner.
Strange. I was just thinking today about someething similar. CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane) are the two big greenhouse gases. What if you had a bunch of devices, floating at the edge of space,that selectively (through nano-holes) sucked in CO2 thru one port and CH4 through the other (different size holes, of course), then zapped them with electricity (floating at the edge of space, remember, so endless solar power), dropped the water overboard and cached the carbon locally. The water would become [pure] rain, and the weight of the cached carbon would gradually cause the device to sink down into the lower atmosphere, where these devices would be gathered up and the carbon they were now full of [excellent pure-carbon coal] harvested. Then it could be burned again. (Or used to make buckyballs or something.) (Or take it to the bottom of the ocean and use the pressure to make industrial-grade diamonds.)
Chemical equation:
2 CO2 + 2 CH4 + electricity --> 4 C + 4 H2O
Lev, you are *so close* to the right answer. I run a little-city entertainment guide. One of the most popular pages on our site is a listing of local bands. I am writing some PHP code that: a) will expand each listing into a micro-site, where bands could create added value with pay-to-play pictures, lyrics, etc. (thus enhancing *my* revenue stream) nestled within my site; b) enable each band to sell MP3s through their site; c) have advertisements on the entertainment guide from the bands (more revenue for me), and d) have those MP3s randomly chosen to go streaming out over an automated internet radio station, which will also display that band's ad (linked of course back to their micro-site) while the song is playing. See? It's not just *big* business that has to advertise, it's *everybody* who has something to sell. It's the synergistic code that ties it all together that triggers the network effect!
Because it wasn't the [outside] apps that were important, it was the [inside] *ability to multi-thread tasks on a personal computer* that was important. That's one of the reasons that truly multi-threaded Linux (successor to truly multi-threaded UN*X) is eating fakey pseudo-multi-threaded W*d*z lunch, and why Apple's OS X (based on BSD UN*X) is bringing the Mac world back to life.
You are confusing the map and the territory. Software is *not* just "textual representation of numbers and mathematical formulas*, it is the *action* which *operates utilizing* the numbers and the mathematical formulas. By your definition, "thinking" is equivalent to "sucking your thumb" since they both use the action of the brain to accomplish a task. Clearly, to both you and me, "internal cogitation" is not equal to "external thumb wetting". Unless you externalize what you are thinking (via voice, say), it *appears* that the external action (hardware) accomplishes something and the internal action (software) does not. Thus, by your definition, thumb-sucking would be patentable and thinking would not be. But, as humans, we know that the output of thought is *just as important* as the wetting of thumbs, so your idea does not hold as much water as your thumb might. 8^D
Okay, I've just read what I wrote (mmm...reading...software...) and I guess it might be confusing if you can't make the telelogical distinction. Let me try another tack.
Think of software as being a machine built out of information. So is a novel. But software is a *special kind* of a machine, because it acts and has a telelogical (er, "tool-using") effect in the world that the novel does not. All the novels in the world piled up one on top of the other are just a pile of unliving paper and cannot cause as much action as a tiny software machine that can take the input of "2+2" and give you back the output of "4". Do you see the difference?
[This gets us around the 'software is patentable *because* it can be turned into hardware' argument. Unfortunately, this argument can also be used to justify the 'therefore DNA is patentable because it *does stuff*' argument. However, in my view, DNA is *specifically NOT patentable* because it is pre-existing in nature and hence represents Nature's prior art. The mere re-combination of pre-existing patterns does not, to my view, necessarily qualify as 'something new'. If that were so, someone would have already tried to patent "sex" -- and succeeded. But I digress...]
So, to conclude, software, to the unknowing, simply looks like a stream of letters and numbers -- hence the idea that, since it may be an *original* stream, that it is *at least* free speech. But software is *special* in that it also, situated in the proper hardware context, can *do* things (i.e. achieve a telelogical result independent of its creator). I hope that I have made myself clear; to wit, used the telelogical function of language by combining pre-existing patterns to cause a meaningful result in your brain independent of myself -- *without* therefore asserting that I have a right to patent "language". Yes?
Isn't that a little bit like "guilty until proven innocent?" If so, it's certainly -- metaphorically speaking -- a violation of the *spirit* of the Constitution, which was, if I am not mistaken, to *limit* the power of the government.
This little clause seems to go the other way, saying that the government (in the form of the Constitutionally established Patent office) *must* act, unless it can be shown that there is a reason for it *not* to.
At what point did the government move from *allowing* patents to *requiring* them?
Hmmmm... it's too bad someone hasn't thought up a process to quickly (probably at femtosecond speeds) *alternate* between fission and fusion.
Tritium seems to be the key, since, being radioactive, it can either spontaneously emit a neutron and become deuterium *or* be compressed by the laser pressure into the fusion process with deuterium.
Use the spontanous tritium radioactivity -- fission -- to keep sending energy back into the fusion process, thus generating a nearly constant heat flow from the fusion process and thus making fusion feasible. (I guess you'd need about twice as much tritium as deuterium.) Except for the minor engineering problem of keeping the high energy particles trapped inside the system long enough to be re-routed back into the fusion process, it seems doable. (IANANP, obviously.) Any nuclear physicists out there want to explain why this *can't* work?
Perhaps this is part of the key to how "dirty" palladium jump-starts the so-called 'cold-fusion' process. Again, IANANP.
*or* When they get here, the tagging viruses they develop from it won't attach to members of our species. It may cause interestingly bizarre diseases in us, however.
Another hmmm... you know that disease where a person's skin turns to stone? Maybe it's already happening....
Oh yeah -- your question. Answer: clone a person's DNA four times (for a total of 5 spiral strands). Use a nanocomputer to constantly check across all 5, and when one base-pair gets zapped by cosmic rays, note the difference and repair it using the well-known gene repair protocol that already exists inside DNA.
Why 5 strands instead of 3? Extra redundancy: what if 2 of the 3 strands were changed -- to *different* base-pairs -- before the the nanocomputer was able to react? It wouldn't know which of the three was correct.
Of course, you'd need 5 copies of the nanocomputer too. The mind reels at all of the recursive juggling that would have to occur to make sure that all of the watchers -- and the watchers of the watchers, etc. -- were kept in working order.
Anyway: what exactly is the *point* of sending human DNA into space? If we're so gung-ho to get human DNA out there, let's just cut to the chase and send *people*. (Or -- better yet -- the PDA version of people: smaller, cheaper -- and faster breeding.) It would be interesting to see how the selection pressure of energetic cosmic rays would push the DNA-evolution envelope.
My point? A few people stopped it. "Eternal vigilance *is* the price of liberty", folks. Sometimes there's just no substitute for showing up and raising hell.(You'll be happily suprised at the amount of covert support you'll find.)
P.S. Hooray for GREX: community-built, community-supported, and community-utilized computing resources!!!
Of course he also pointed out the untraceability of where the file originated, but the dynamic and ever-fluid nature of exactly where the physical file might be was what captured my imagination at the time.
Thus it seems that applications with geographic overtones might be conceived as the truly legitimate ones. For example, if Derrick May and Juan Atkins could have posted MP3s to Freenet, they would have quickly seen techno take off in Europe; that's where they would have headed to do their live shows. (Of course they did that anyway, but by tracking record sales, a somewhat slower process.)
Similarly, any kind of culture-based phenomenon could exploit this: an author in Maine finds that Samoans can't get enough of his stuff; Romania goes gaga over a tricky Brazilian beat; people in West Germany start a political party based on ideas that first popped up in New Zealand -- you get the idea.....