Postscript format is much better than MS word format - it's much more stable, can be read on more platforms, and produces good camera-ready copy. Postscript documents can be distributed as.pdf (use ps2pdf) and then Windows users will be able to read them using Adobe Acrobat.
As a Windows user, no.
Postscript documents aren't that easy to create and view terribly. Windows Ghostscript is a rather unfriendly package that produces extremely poor output. And I've tried ps2pdf when I've wanted to distribute - it didn't work.
If you want to send stuff like I needed to - simple layed out pages, basically - then PS is usable. But if you just want to send a report, it's crazy.
My suggestion? RTF. I'm an ex-Amiga user and it was far and away the easiest way to move formatted text around.
Do you think churches give away free bibles out of the goodness of their heats?
I'm assuming you mean hearts, but...
Yes, we do. Churches aren't in it for the money, I can tell you, as the son of a minister. We're doing what we do because we believe it's right, and part of that involves trying to get new believers - not so we can drain them of their money but so we can help them. You may not think we're helping, but we do.
Some are inevitably bad eggs, but most are really doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
No, that would damage the forums as has been discussed many times before. Anonymous posting is a useful service and there are plenty of legitimate AC's who post good comments.
There are also clowns like this, but that's the price we pay. I can't see the balance changing all that soon.
You and I (and other similar users) might move, but we all know that a pretty huge percentage of site users are lurkers. Heck, I've lurked for long periods before. So they'd still benefit from slashdot.
As an aside, how would we organise the move? The only really reliable way to get in touch with the slashdot users to move them would be for us to mention the new site here at every possible oppotunity. Which would end up with slashnot and fishbot (or whatever...) being viewed as trolls by many as they'd have to do pretty much that to move us.
ISWYM, but I'd have difficulty classing someone you'd define as a 'weak atheist' as anything other than a lazy agnostic. And it's still not quite what I was referring to.
I suppose the point is that we're talking a big question here. I mean, how much bigger can you get than 'Why am I here?'. Now, if you've come to the conclusion that there are no gods, so be it. I disagree with you but you're welcome to your opinion.
If you've come to the conclusion that you haven't seen any evidence so far so you're going to assume there aren't, that's not something I could agree with. I'd prefer it if you looked a little harder. Now, if you then decide that there still aren't any gods, fine - but you've now got the information to make the decision.
Those I was particularly objecting to, though, are those who decide that they don't much care whether there are any gods and so will believe there aren't. This strikes me as a little head-in-the-sand, to be honest, and is what I was objecting to particularly.
Ultimately, if you want others to refer to you by a specific term, feel free. However, you may find that that term has connotations or baggage which force others not to use it in reference to you, though. And to say that you believe there are no gods when you actually mean that you haven't met one yet but you're not going to consider the possibility is a little odd.
Please note again, this criticism isn't just aimed at atheism - there are plenty of people in any religion who are there by default rather than conviction.
I'd have to agree with what I'd perceive to be the broad sentiment here.
I've met genuine atheists. But not many.
Seriously, there are plenty of people who, after thought and/or investigation, have conclueded that there is no deity. There are rather more who have simply decided that the whole thing sounds potentially iffy and like it might make their life harder, so don't bother really thinking about it.
This isn't unique to atheism - there are plenty of Christians whose faith is on a similar footing - but to call yourself an atheist when you're rather closer to a lazy agnostic isn't right.
I can never remember which was which of APL and PL/1 but whichever I'm thinking of would be absolutely perfect for this. Obscure symbols, an obsession with making the code as small as possible and a general belief that it's easier to reimplement than try and understand someone else's code.
You can see why not many people use it any more...
They had someone on Radio 4's Today program this morning explaining this - may have been one of the scientists concerned but I'm not too sure, I wasn't very awake:)
Anyway, that's pretty much the explanation they gave, about it forming on the inside. It's a similar phenomena but not the same, so explaining why they go in a straight line in planes.
Whenever we're talking to a bot, we tend to use our knowledge of how they work to try and break them by giving reasonable but awkward answers. However, my memory of the Turing Test was that you had two groups of answerers - one human (who were allowed to respond however they pleased) and one of bot. The bot was decided to have passed if over half couldn't tell which was which.
Anyway. I've been playing with Alicebot after someone recommended it above - won the Loebner Prize or something similar. Now, I managed to catch it out, but it's doing far better than any other I've played with. It's actually managed to recover from a bad conversation, which most can't.
Whether it could pass a Turing Test or not I wouldn't know, but with a bit of luck in the questions it would stand a fair chance.
These things could be programmed to be the other party in chat room sex, or to catch perverts trying to have chat room sex with a minor.
One slight problem though...
Surely you wouldn't be able to pin a charge on someone for that as they're not actually propositioning anyone at all? I mean, if people can be done for making indecent suggestions to computers...
It gets better - that's the cheapest rate with all the standard discounts.
If I want to log on between 8 AM and 6 PM during the week (when I'm at home this is - right now the university pay!) it's 5p/min before discounts, 3.75 after. Daytime rate, even with discounts, that amount of use would cost you £365.70, assuming my maths is better than it was last night:)
1p = 1.6 US cents, roughly.
Now you see REALLY why we don't like our telecom or the regulator that allows this...
If I was getting paranoid, I know what I'd do. Put on a cap and dark glasses then head off on foot at a busy time of day. Make sure I'm wearing very anonymous clothing and not carrying anything. That way, I'm harder to track by CCTV.
Next, go to a net cafe, paying with cash. Open a webmail account with fake details - not exactly tricky - and use that to submit it to as many different servers as I could think of. But don't do anything else or it's easier for someone to establish a usage pattern and identify you. DEFINITELY don't log in to any other services...
Finally, go. Flush the cache on your machine manually, take all media with you and go. But go via a park (or somewhere else secluded with plenty of cover) and remove a top layer of clothing - say, cap, glasses and jacket. Dump these in bushes or wherever and go home.
The potential problem here, though, is with electricity and output standards. You appear to be in the US - I'm in the UK. If we both bought standalone DVD players then swapped, neither would be usable. You have 525/30 NTSC with 110v AC, we have 625/25 PAL with 240v AC.
Out of interest, what makes region locking globally illegal?
I remember moans about covermounted applications 5-6 years ago with the Amiga magazines. The main problem from the developers was that, when something was essentially free, it doesn't have to be better, just good enough. And good enough is a pretty low threshold - people will put up with quite a bit if it saves them money.
I'm glad to see Linux expanding into new markets. It's not for me right now, but it's good to see community development having such a huge impact. But is it chosen because it's better or because it's good enough and free?
Sure, there's the cost of porting (well, sometimes) and the cost of striping it down to what you need (well, sometimes again) but after that it's free. You give the code back - not a problem, it was cheap to modify anyway in the corporate scheme of things - and it's suddenly zero unit cost as well as short development time. Plus, sites like slashdot give them free publicity! Now, how many bean counters are going to work against that one?
I'm sure there are companies who've chosen Linux purely thanks to technical superiority. Really, I am. But I suspect most are simply using a cheap shortcut that generates them good publicity via the Linux bandwagon.
My take on it isn't actually that at all - more that Palms succeeded mostly due to having just enough functionality while being cheaper. WinCE boxes are more powerful but the benefits aren't always clear to the user comparing the two in Dixons, while the Palm costs £100 less. So which do they buy?;)
They're nice machines, sure, but I don't think the interface is actually as nice as some people seem to think.
We seem to be mostly agreed that this is harassment to maintain a stranglehold over the player market. If these things are out there and NOT being pursued, our case is rather stonger.
How can we bring this to the attention of the EFF to use in their defence?
My apologies - it was knocked up fairly quickly in Excel:(
Let's see. 7 KB/sec means you can get 420 KB/min or 24.6 MB/hour, or 590.625 MB/day so yes, 6 days, 18 hours, 32 mins 22.9 secs. Which is, of course, assuming conditions that never happen.
My apologies for the duff initial maths. Can't see where the problem is - I went over it a few times coming from the other direction, but this is clearly right.
Oh well...
Incidentally, let's look at what that would cost over here. Assuming you find it on an FTP site with resume so can only do this at the weekends when the calls are cheapest, you get charged 1p/min. Premier Line (cost: £6 per quarter) combined with Friends and Family can drop that down to 0.75p/min. There's also BT Together but last time I heard that saved a maximum of 70p a month or something silly so I'm not bothering with that:)
Anyway, in perfect conditions you're still going to take 9752.4 minutes. By my reckoning you'd have to pay £73.14 for the phone call at the least.
Once again, my apologies for getting the maths wrong, though I did check it, honest... But it's still not even slightly practical, TBH.
This may well make DVD copying easier. But it's only creating one more avenue.
Let's see. If you can lay your hands on DVD mastering equipment (which seems to be a possibility for a number of firms in Hong Kong) you can just create a bit-for-bit copy. Not protected against in any way.
If you've got a video capture facility - not that uncommon, comes with most TV cards - you can grab the image THAT way and then copy it out however you want. VHS and VCD seem the popular ways. Both are possible, though you may need a descrambler box as they've done some funny things with the data output to try and mess up the equipment.
There seems to be software out there to copy direct to VCD - I've seen it referred to and I once heard someone on another machine in a lab referring to their using it. Can't find a copy to prove it, though.
Theoretically (read I'm told this is possible but research hasn't turned up any links yet) you can write a fake video driver that grabs the data on the way through and can also do what it likes with it.
Then there's DeCSS. Which will, admittedly, produce a decrypted playback stream. But you play that how? You can't burn your own DVD as DVD-R discs are sold with a section pre-burnt blank precisely to stop this. If you can get round this then you really don't need DeCSS as you can just make a bit-for-bit copy, encryption intact. And this can't exactly be traded over the net like an MP3 - the resulting file is GIGABYTES large.
Let's say 4GB for example - well, that's 4096000 KB by my arithmetic. On a 56Kb modem running at maximum possible efficiency you might get 7KB/sec. If I started downloading it now and nothing went wrong on the way, it wouldn't be finished until 23rd March next year! Assume more realistic conditions - my modem normally connects at 31,200 - and I'd be waiting until Christmas 2001.
Somewhere in the film industry there's probably someone who genuinely believes that this is copy protection. They deserve our pity. The only practical purpose this serves is maintaining a stranglehold on who can manufacture players. And I can't see that as defensible.
This suit deserves being laughed out of court. Our perpetuating the MPAA's bogus argument should be avoided, in case we inadvertently give credibility to these individuals.
Disclaimer, before I get accused of being a pirate for researching this: I don't posess a DVD drive of any form. Or any DVDs. Or any pirate VCDs or VHS cassettes I've ripped on friends' computers. I do posess a CD-RW drive, purchased so I can make backups of my work.
No, I actually do know about functional languages. I'm a CS undergraduate and there's a compulsary module on Miranda I had to take. Didn't much like it and haven't touched it since, but I'm aware of its existence.
One sentence in particular screamed out at me, though:
You are obviously very ignorant, when it comes to methods of software development.
To which I'd have to reply - sorry if this sounds like namecalling - that you're more than a little ignorant if you think all that many software developers use functional languages. Sure, they're a nice curiosity and sure, they're useful for some stuff - I've done that short quicksort and mergesort, too - but how much genuine, commercial use is there? Almost none.
Next time you see a computing paper of any description, find the recruitment section. And look which languages are in demand. I see plenty of C/C++, Java, VB (spit)... I don't think I've ever found an ad for Haskell, Miranda or any other functional language.
The point here is relatively simple: while functional languages may well be rather closer to mathematics, they just aren't used in any quantity for serious development. And they're still not pure maths.
Computer programming the way almost all do it - imperative programming - is most definitely not mathematics and the parallel with engineering is a good one. Both are essentially science-based but with a heavy artistic component, both benefit from similar development cycles. And both are legitimate patents.
Slashdot Mirror
Postscript documents aren't that easy to create and view terribly. Windows Ghostscript is a rather unfriendly package that produces extremely poor output. And I've tried ps2pdf when I've wanted to distribute - it didn't work.
If you want to send stuff like I needed to - simple layed out pages, basically - then PS is usable. But if you just want to send a report, it's crazy.
My suggestion? RTF. I'm an ex-Amiga user and it was far and away the easiest way to move formatted text around.
Greg
Yes, we do. Churches aren't in it for the money, I can tell you, as the son of a minister. We're doing what we do because we believe it's right, and part of that involves trying to get new believers - not so we can drain them of their money but so we can help them. You may not think we're helping, but we do.
Some are inevitably bad eggs, but most are really doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
Greg
No, that would damage the forums as has been discussed many times before. Anonymous posting is a useful service and there are plenty of legitimate AC's who post good comments.
There are also clowns like this, but that's the price we pay. I can't see the balance changing all that soon.
Greg
You and I (and other similar users) might move, but we all know that a pretty huge percentage of site users are lurkers. Heck, I've lurked for long periods before. So they'd still benefit from slashdot.
As an aside, how would we organise the move? The only really reliable way to get in touch with the slashdot users to move them would be for us to mention the new site here at every possible oppotunity. Which would end up with slashnot and fishbot (or whatever...) being viewed as trolls by many as they'd have to do pretty much that to move us.
Oh well...
Greg
Read at highest score first and you see almost none.
:)
I get the occasional troll over here, but most of them I only ever see in very new threads, those I bother reading through to the end or in M2.
Having said that, some are actually very funny
Greg
ISWYM, but I'd have difficulty classing someone you'd define as a 'weak atheist' as anything other than a lazy agnostic. And it's still not quite what I was referring to.
I suppose the point is that we're talking a big question here. I mean, how much bigger can you get than 'Why am I here?'. Now, if you've come to the conclusion that there are no gods, so be it. I disagree with you but you're welcome to your opinion.
If you've come to the conclusion that you haven't seen any evidence so far so you're going to assume there aren't, that's not something I could agree with. I'd prefer it if you looked a little harder. Now, if you then decide that there still aren't any gods, fine - but you've now got the information to make the decision.
Those I was particularly objecting to, though, are those who decide that they don't much care whether there are any gods and so will believe there aren't. This strikes me as a little head-in-the-sand, to be honest, and is what I was objecting to particularly.
Ultimately, if you want others to refer to you by a specific term, feel free. However, you may find that that term has connotations or baggage which force others not to use it in reference to you, though. And to say that you believe there are no gods when you actually mean that you haven't met one yet but you're not going to consider the possibility is a little odd.
Please note again, this criticism isn't just aimed at atheism - there are plenty of people in any religion who are there by default rather than conviction.
Greg
I'd agree with you, but...
There are plenty who practice bad science and treat it as if it were religion. They're who our original poster was referring to, I'd suspect.
Greg
I'd have to agree with what I'd perceive to be the broad sentiment here.
I've met genuine atheists. But not many.
Seriously, there are plenty of people who, after thought and/or investigation, have conclueded that there is no deity. There are rather more who have simply decided that the whole thing sounds potentially iffy and like it might make their life harder, so don't bother really thinking about it.
This isn't unique to atheism - there are plenty of Christians whose faith is on a similar footing - but to call yourself an atheist when you're rather closer to a lazy agnostic isn't right.
Greg
Well, that was pretrty much my thought, yes....
:)
On a bad day the things I could be put away for don't bear thinking about if computers count here
Greg
I can never remember which was which of APL and PL/1 but whichever I'm thinking of would be absolutely perfect for this. Obscure symbols, an obsession with making the code as small as possible and a general belief that it's easier to reimplement than try and understand someone else's code.
You can see why not many people use it any more...
Greg
They had someone on Radio 4's Today program this morning explaining this - may have been one of the scientists concerned but I'm not too sure, I wasn't very awake :)
Anyway, that's pretty much the explanation they gave, about it forming on the inside. It's a similar phenomena but not the same, so explaining why they go in a straight line in planes.
Greg
Whenever we're talking to a bot, we tend to use our knowledge of how they work to try and break them by giving reasonable but awkward answers. However, my memory of the Turing Test was that you had two groups of answerers - one human (who were allowed to respond however they pleased) and one of bot. The bot was decided to have passed if over half couldn't tell which was which.
Anyway. I've been playing with Alicebot after someone recommended it above - won the Loebner Prize or something similar. Now, I managed to catch it out, but it's doing far better than any other I've played with. It's actually managed to recover from a bad conversation, which most can't.
Whether it could pass a Turing Test or not I wouldn't know, but with a bit of luck in the questions it would stand a fair chance.
Greg
Just been playing with it and managed to throw it fairly quickly.
Anyway, it lost control of grammar, so I replied:
Wow, that's a badly formed sentence!
To which Miss Bot replied:
I'm glad you're impressed. A badly formed sentence is a terrible thing to waste.
:)
Greg
Interestingly, I'm told that transcripts with Eliza have been given to psychoanalysts before.
:)
Eliza is normally defined as paranoid and psychotic
Looks like this one was right on the mark...
Greg
But is this an issue if we use Slashdot-controlled news servers ratehr than standard servers?
I mean, if we're getting comments from (for example) nntp.slashdot.org couldn't that still create it all on demand?
Greg
Surely you wouldn't be able to pin a charge on someone for that as they're not actually propositioning anyone at all? I mean, if people can be done for making indecent suggestions to computers...
Greg
It gets better - that's the cheapest rate with all the standard discounts.
:)
If I want to log on between 8 AM and 6 PM during the week (when I'm at home this is - right now the university pay!) it's 5p/min before discounts, 3.75 after. Daytime rate, even with discounts, that amount of use would cost you £365.70, assuming my maths is better than it was last night
1p = 1.6 US cents, roughly.
Now you see REALLY why we don't like our telecom or the regulator that allows this...
Greg
If I was getting paranoid, I know what I'd do. Put on a cap and dark glasses then head off on foot at a busy time of day. Make sure I'm wearing very anonymous clothing and not carrying anything. That way, I'm harder to track by CCTV.
Next, go to a net cafe, paying with cash. Open a webmail account with fake details - not exactly tricky - and use that to submit it to as many different servers as I could think of. But don't do anything else or it's easier for someone to establish a usage pattern and identify you. DEFINITELY don't log in to any other services...
Finally, go. Flush the cache on your machine manually, take all media with you and go. But go via a park (or somewhere else secluded with plenty of cover) and remove a top layer of clothing - say, cap, glasses and jacket. Dump these in bushes or wherever and go home.
Would that be secure enough for most people?
Greg
OK, which countries sell region-free players?
The potential problem here, though, is with electricity and output standards. You appear to be in the US - I'm in the UK. If we both bought standalone DVD players then swapped, neither would be usable. You have 525/30 NTSC with 110v AC, we have 625/25 PAL with 240v AC.
Out of interest, what makes region locking globally illegal?
Greg
It's certainly interesting to see this, but...
I remember moans about covermounted applications 5-6 years ago with the Amiga magazines. The main problem from the developers was that, when something was essentially free, it doesn't have to be better, just good enough. And good enough is a pretty low threshold - people will put up with quite a bit if it saves them money.
I'm glad to see Linux expanding into new markets. It's not for me right now, but it's good to see community development having such a huge impact. But is it chosen because it's better or because it's good enough and free?
Sure, there's the cost of porting (well, sometimes) and the cost of striping it down to what you need (well, sometimes again) but after that it's free. You give the code back - not a problem, it was cheap to modify anyway in the corporate scheme of things - and it's suddenly zero unit cost as well as short development time. Plus, sites like slashdot give them free publicity! Now, how many bean counters are going to work against that one?
I'm sure there are companies who've chosen Linux purely thanks to technical superiority. Really, I am. But I suspect most are simply using a cheap shortcut that generates them good publicity via the Linux bandwagon.
Greg
Palm user here :)
;)
My take on it isn't actually that at all - more that Palms succeeded mostly due to having just enough functionality while being cheaper. WinCE boxes are more powerful but the benefits aren't always clear to the user comparing the two in Dixons, while the Palm costs £100 less. So which do they buy?
They're nice machines, sure, but I don't think the interface is actually as nice as some people seem to think.
Greg
OK.
We seem to be mostly agreed that this is harassment to maintain a stranglehold over the player market. If these things are out there and NOT being pursued, our case is rather stonger.
How can we bring this to the attention of the EFF to use in their defence?
Greg
My apologies - it was knocked up fairly quickly in Excel :(
:)
Let's see. 7 KB/sec means you can get 420 KB/min or 24.6 MB/hour, or 590.625 MB/day so yes, 6 days, 18 hours, 32 mins 22.9 secs. Which is, of course, assuming conditions that never happen.
My apologies for the duff initial maths. Can't see where the problem is - I went over it a few times coming from the other direction, but this is clearly right.
Oh well...
Incidentally, let's look at what that would cost over here. Assuming you find it on an FTP site with resume so can only do this at the weekends when the calls are cheapest, you get charged 1p/min. Premier Line (cost: £6 per quarter) combined with Friends and Family can drop that down to 0.75p/min. There's also BT Together but last time I heard that saved a maximum of 70p a month or something silly so I'm not bothering with that
Anyway, in perfect conditions you're still going to take 9752.4 minutes. By my reckoning you'd have to pay £73.14 for the phone call at the least.
Once again, my apologies for getting the maths wrong, though I did check it, honest... But it's still not even slightly practical, TBH.
Greg
I have to agree about weighted questions, but...
This may well make DVD copying easier. But it's only creating one more avenue.
Let's see. If you can lay your hands on DVD mastering equipment (which seems to be a possibility for a number of firms in Hong Kong) you can just create a bit-for-bit copy. Not protected against in any way.
If you've got a video capture facility - not that uncommon, comes with most TV cards - you can grab the image THAT way and then copy it out however you want. VHS and VCD seem the popular ways. Both are possible, though you may need a descrambler box as they've done some funny things with the data output to try and mess up the equipment.
There seems to be software out there to copy direct to VCD - I've seen it referred to and I once heard someone on another machine in a lab referring to their using it. Can't find a copy to prove it, though.
Theoretically (read I'm told this is possible but research hasn't turned up any links yet) you can write a fake video driver that grabs the data on the way through and can also do what it likes with it.
Then there's DeCSS. Which will, admittedly, produce a decrypted playback stream. But you play that how? You can't burn your own DVD as DVD-R discs are sold with a section pre-burnt blank precisely to stop this. If you can get round this then you really don't need DeCSS as you can just make a bit-for-bit copy, encryption intact. And this can't exactly be traded over the net like an MP3 - the resulting file is GIGABYTES large.
Let's say 4GB for example - well, that's 4096000 KB by my arithmetic. On a 56Kb modem running at maximum possible efficiency you might get 7KB/sec. If I started downloading it now and nothing went wrong on the way, it wouldn't be finished until 23rd March next year! Assume more realistic conditions - my modem normally connects at 31,200 - and I'd be waiting until Christmas 2001.
Somewhere in the film industry there's probably someone who genuinely believes that this is copy protection. They deserve our pity. The only practical purpose this serves is maintaining a stranglehold on who can manufacture players. And I can't see that as defensible.
This suit deserves being laughed out of court. Our perpetuating the MPAA's bogus argument should be avoided, in case we inadvertently give credibility to these individuals.
Disclaimer, before I get accused of being a pirate for researching this: I don't posess a DVD drive of any form. Or any DVDs. Or any pirate VCDs or VHS cassettes I've ripped on friends' computers. I do posess a CD-RW drive, purchased so I can make backups of my work.
Greg
No, I actually do know about functional languages. I'm a CS undergraduate and there's a compulsary module on Miranda I had to take. Didn't much like it and haven't touched it since, but I'm aware of its existence.
One sentence in particular screamed out at me, though:
To which I'd have to reply - sorry if this sounds like namecalling - that you're more than a little ignorant if you think all that many software developers use functional languages. Sure, they're a nice curiosity and sure, they're useful for some stuff - I've done that short quicksort and mergesort, too - but how much genuine, commercial use is there? Almost none.
Next time you see a computing paper of any description, find the recruitment section. And look which languages are in demand. I see plenty of C/C++, Java, VB (spit)
The point here is relatively simple: while functional languages may well be rather closer to mathematics, they just aren't used in any quantity for serious development. And they're still not pure maths.
Computer programming the way almost all do it - imperative programming - is most definitely not mathematics and the parallel with engineering is a good one. Both are essentially science-based but with a heavy artistic component, both benefit from similar development cycles. And both are legitimate patents.
Greg